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Mac Pro speed question..

R

Raytrace

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 2, 2010
44
0
I know the usual answer to a question like this is "Search for it newb", but searching doesn't always yield desirable results. And there seems to be a lack of a truly universal benchmark comparing all MP machines from the last few years. At least I haven't found it.

Anyway, short and sweet here. Which box would be faster (mainly for FCP and rendering in particular), an '08 3.2 8 core or an '09 2.93 quad? Consider all else equal, ie RAM, HDD, etc.

I'm guessing the 8 core would have the edge but more experienced input from the community would be appreciated.

TNX...
 
I'm assuming their prices are almost equal so 2008 8-core is definitely bigger bang for your buck. It has more RAM slots and as seen in post above, it beats the 2.93GHz quad all the way
 
Geekbench scores are very synthetic at best.

Speaking from a real world standpoint, the Early '08 MP 8-core would outperform any 4-core '09 model rendering under a QMaster virtual cluster in Compressor (part of Final Cut Studio). Despite the '09 4-core's use of HyperThreading (which results in 8 "logical" cores), there is no real substitute for physical processing cores.

In single-threaded tasks, the '09 2.93 quad would be faster at just about everything. So, pick you poison.

With that said, many of us here would agree that the '08 2.8 8-core is the best bang-for-the-buck Mac Pro Apple ever built.
 
I went ahead and sprung for the '08 3.2 8 core for 2600. Considering a year (or 13 months) ago it was a $5K+ machine, It's gotta pack quite a punch for that money.

Sold the MBP yesterday, now it's time for some real power!
 
Raytrace said:
I went ahead and sprung for the '08 3.2 8 core for 2600. Considering a year (or 13 months) ago it was a $5K+ machine, It's gotta pack quite a punch for that money.

Sold the MBP yesterday, now it's time for some real power!
Click to expand...

$2600 is an amazing buy. The 09 2.93 will outperform it, but not by much.
 
Found it at mac of all trades. Once I saw the price I jumped on it cause I knew it wouldn't last long. I'll be able to load that bad boy up with 32 gigs of RAM (I'll start with 16) and have 8 physical cores at my disposal for apps that take advantage of it.

I strongly considered the 2.93 refurb for nearly the same price but I just couldn't help but think that the 3.2x8 core was too good to pass up.

Close call, but I think I'll be happy for a few years.
 
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