MAC PRO SINgle Quad _ or DUAL Quad ???

[fab5freddy]

I am considering getting a Mac Pro Tower,
but i am not sure if i should get the Dual Quad
or just the Single Quad....?

It is quite a price difference, $ 500 !

I will be doing heavy CS3 Photoshop work,
Will the Single Quad be too little ??

thanks for any advice !!

 

[trainguy77]

The single quad will still be a very fast machine, but the 8 core is going to be more future proof.

People still use the old mac pros at 2.66ghz x 4 cores and they are doing okay. 🙄

 

[Thiol]

I used a single quad Mac Pro for CS3 work and I've never maxed out all 4 processors. You should be fine with a single quad unless you're doing 3D or video work.

 

[CWallace]

Honestly, you should get both CPUs. $500 is actually pretty reasonable based on both Intel's price and the cost of the Apple heatsink. And as noted, it means your system will be viable that much longer.

 

[fab5freddy]

but $ 500 out of $ 2100 is almost 30% more......

i am hoping not to spend that much.....

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

but $ 500 out of $ 2100 is almost 30% more......

i am hoping not to spend that much.....

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

CS3 is fine on four cores, really nothing right now will use all 8 cores, unless you're doing a whole bunch of rendering and exporting of films all at once.

 

[gunbu]

I went with the single processor model also. Honestly, for photoshop you should send the $180 and get 4 more gigs of (3rd party) memory instead of $500 for the other processor.

 

[eXan]

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

Ehh what? It already has the fastest CPUs available today and they wont update it until early 2009.

BTW, getting 8-core is really pointless, especially for CS3 which benefits from more RAM much more than from faster CPU.

Unless you require killer performance in AfterEffects or doing multiple video renders at once, get 4-core.

 

[tom.]

Get the dual processor, its $500/£250 from Apple in America eh? Its ~$600/£300 in the UK (i think) but to buy that processor retail (outside of Apple) it's about £500 or $1000.

Well worth the money from Apple.

 

[nick9191]

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

They updated them in January, next update will be around June 2009 if the last is anything to go by.

And why would they update them 😕 There quite cheap for the price (the 8 core is) And they have the latest CPU's.

 

[StumpJumper]

I went for the single processor, as I mainly use Illustrator and Photoshop.

Adding a second processor would have cost an extra £320 here in the UK, which I consider A LOT of money for something that won't currently make a huge difference.

If money is tight (as it was for me) you would be ten times better off saving the money and buying an extra 8GB RAM from OWC instead - it will make a huge difference to Photoshop.

 

[eXan]

I went for the single processor, as I mainly use Illustrator and Photoshop.

Adding a second processor would have cost an extra £320 here in the UK, which I consider A LOT of money for something that won't currently make a huge difference.

If money is tight (as it was for me) you would be ten times better off saving the money and buying an extra 8GB RAM from OWC instead - it will make a huge difference to Photoshop.

That will actually make ZERO difference in his case.

 

[nick9191]

I think if I was purchasing a Mac Pro, I would get the octo core model because its much better value for money. It would cost more but I wouldn't feel like i'd been ripped off.

 

[CWallace]

but $ 500 out of $ 2100 is almost 30% more......

i am hoping not to spend that much.....

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

The next upgrade will be the six-core CPUs (likely late summer) and then the new Nehalem CPUs (likely around Mac World 2009).

If you think $500 is a good deal of money, you're going to be really disappointed with what those two upgrades are going to run. But at least Nehalem will be a major boost (which is why I am waiting for it before I replace my iMac with a Mac Pro).

 

[Tallest Skil]

The next upgrade will be the six-core CPUs (likely late summer) and then the new Nehalem CPUs (likely around Mac World 2009).

Whoa, wait. Six cores? Since when have six core Penryns been in the cards?

And I pray that you are right about Nehalem being at MacWorld '09 and not WWDC '09.

 

[trainguy77]

Apple needs to upgrade the Mac Pro's very soon

They were updated recently. Also they have an EXCELLENT price for the chips your getting. Try spec a dell with the same CPUS.....🙄

 

[fab5freddy]

Hi TrainGuy 77,

So do you think i can do with a Single Core Mac Pro ??

it is for heavy CS3 PhotoShop Use...

thanks!

 

[trainguy77]

You mean a 4 core. Single CPU. Yes that will be fine for CS3. It will just be more future proof if you go with the 8 core. But if money is a concern then a 4 core will do just fine.

 

[WardC]

How about a dual-dual (Quad) -- that's what I've got. You can grab a 3.0GHz Quad Woodcrest off the Apple Refurb page for pretty cheap now, about $2199. Add some RAM and setup a dual-HD RAID-0 as bootdisk and you are set to go. And yes, it's FAST.

 

[CWallace]

Whoa, wait. Six cores? Since when have six core Penryns been in the cards?

This would be Dunnington, a 45nm 6-core (3 dual cores per die) Xeon part based on Penryn cores with a 16MB L3 shared cache. It will serve as a "bridge" server/workstation CPU to Nehalem. Apple may very well skip it, especially if they intend to commit to Nehalem at launch (which I really hope they do), but it would be a nice refresh item.

And I pray that you are right about Nehalem being at MacWorld '09 and not WWDC '09.

I believe Nehalem is worth waiting for in a Mac Pro, so I am holding off for it, so the sooner it comes, the happier I will be. 🙂

 

[WardC]

Penryn is not "All That" -- A Clovertown 3.0GHz vs a Harpertown 3.0GHz is not much difference, the hardware improvements give the performance increases in these Mac Pros, not the processor, all they did was to shrink the die set.

The 2.6GHz Santa Rosa-based MBPs are actually faster than all of the Penryn MBPs....

I think we will have to wait until at least the last part of 2009/2010 to see any MAJOR improvments in chipsets.

Future of Mac Pro... (0.5 to a couple years down the line):

I'm talking about 16-core 4.6GHz chipsets with a 2300MHz bus and a 32MB cache....machines upgradable with 512GB of RAM, come standard with dual 10TB HDs and the dual-SLI nVidia xTreme 9952 with onboard 8GB of DDR3 VRAM per card 🙂 Oh, and of course, a 32x Blu-Ray player/writer with the ability to both play and author blu-ray.

Edit: Oh yeah, we'll have affordable super-fast SSD disks by then 🙂

 

[CWallace]

The 2.6GHz Santa Rosa-based MBPs are actually faster than all of the Penryn MBPs...

That seems odd, since the Santa Rosa systemboard platform is superior to the previous systemboard platform. It has a faster FSB (800MHz vs. 667MHz) and the X3100 IGP was superior to the X3000.

 

[Salavat23]

Future of Mac Pro... (0.5 to a couple years down the line):

I'm talking about 16-core 4.6GHz chipsets with a 2300MHz bus and a 32MB cache....machines upgradable with 512GB of RAM, come standard with dual 10TB HDs and the dual-SLI nVidia xTreme 9952 with onboard 8GB of DDR3 VRAM per card 🙂 Oh, and of course, a 32x Blu-Ray player/writer with the ability to both play and author blu-ray.

Edit: Oh yeah, we'll have affordable super-fast SSD disks by then 🙂

Get out of la-la land!

 

[Eidorian]

That seems odd, since the Santa Rosa systemboard platform is superior to the previous systemboard platform. It has a faster FSB (800MHz vs. 667MHz) and the X3100 IGP was superior to the X3000.

They both use the same logic board short of the VRM. The 2.6 GHz Merom wins some tests just due to sheer clock speed.

 

[Tbarr]

I can give you an example of the difference between a MacPro single Quad 2.8 and a FW800 Dual 1.25 G4. I was using a FW800 G4 with an ATI x850 & 7000, 1.75GB of Ram and 5 HDs to follow stocks all day on three monitors. I had Safari windows on all three monitors, Mail running, and iTunes streaming internet radio for around 7 hours a day. According to Menu meters, I was using around 50% of both processors and higher when surfing the web on the main monitor.

Now I'm using a 2008 MacPro, an 8800 & 2600, 6GB of Ram, and 5 HDs to preform the exact same tasks. I have Menu meters combining the 4 cores and it shows around 2-3% processor usage. Big difference. I can fire up Fusion and run XP Pro to stream a CNBC video, at the same time, and the usage goes up to around 8-10%. And when I go to encode a video, I'd say the MacPro is around 6 times faster than the FW800 G4.

I really don't think I needed the other Processor. My machine runs cool, quiet, and fast enough, for me. But I am kinda mad at CNBC, 'cause just after I got a Mac that could run XP fast enough to watch a CNBC video, they fixed their site to where it works fine with Macs now 😡