Mac Pro Unboxing Photos, Early Benchmarks and Notes

[MacRumors]

The new hexacore 2010 Mac Pros have been filtering in over the past few days to the first lucky customers. Here is a set of unboxing pictures from Recruit in Japan. They show the Mac Pro, the SSD drive, ATI Radeon 5870, and new Hexacore Xeon CPUs.

Additional photos and notes are summarized here:

- 64-bit kernel is now default for the 2010 Mac Pros
- Unboxing photos from OWC
- More photos from the forums
- OWC confirms that the new Mac Pros can support up to 64GB of RAM
- Early Cinebench and Geekbench benchmarks for the 2010 Mac Pro
- Portal (game) benchmarks.

The early benchmarks predictably show that in Geekbench and Cinebench, the 12-core Mac Pros see a significant benefit. Of course, the benchmarking tools are optimized for multi-core support. On the other extreme, Portal benefits little from the additional cores. Of course, real life results will likely fall somewhere in between depending on your particular software needs.

Article Link: Mac Pro Unboxing Photos, Early Benchmarks and Notes

 

[HLdan]

Nice! I want one.

 

[DylanLikesPorn]

Damn. This is one fine piece of machinery. Sexy.

 

[karatekidk]

64 GB of memory? Wow...

 

[DMann]

Simply sensational - a thing of beauty.

Looking forward to the delivery.

 

[CFreymarc]

64 GB of memory? Wow...

1 TB RAM and a big battery backup, who needs hard disks then?

 

[kajoob]

Why such a pedestrian videocard in an otherwise brilliant machine? It's a decent card, but for a rig that costs around $4000 or so, it's disappointing.

 

[DMann]

1 TB RAM and a big battery backup, who needs hard disks then?

Hardly cost effective - but, ya!

 

[DoFoT9]

truly a piece of artwork - those pictures are brilliant!

i cant wait until the day that i can afford one! *drool*

 

[kk1ro]

Gorgeous!
Can't wait to get my hexa.

 

[oTaRu]

+1 for mac pro!!! how i wish i can own one...

 

[djourd]

How does the the 3.2 Nehalem compare?

 

[DickKnowsBest]

Why such a pedestrian videocard in an otherwise brilliant machine? It's a decent card, but for a rig that costs around $4000 or so, it's disappointing.

I agree. It's a decent card. But I think they should have included a 5870 standard, and a 5970 option. Also, maybe an Nvidia Quadro FX 4800/5800 option. Well, since Apple seem to be moving to ATI for their desktop GPU options, maybe an ATI Fire Pro V8800. Because if you are paying $5000 for a machine like this, a 5870 is good, even for professional work, but not GREAT. And be serious, you aren't going to be buying a 12 core machine JUST for gaming. Or are you? :0

 

[Mudbug]

the three we ordered should be here tuesday or wednesday.

 

[SynapticLight]

I can only dream.
So how many PCI slots are available? After the Graphics card is in?

 

[JGowan]

I'm very happy to say I'm getting a 12-core on Wednesday...

Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12-core)
8GB (4X2GB) SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Two 18x SuperDrives
Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad

It's replacing a 2002 PowerMac G4 (Dual 1GHz; 1.5GB Ram; 80GB HD)

Totally trading up. Getting two 27-inch Displays in a few weeks from Apple.

Psyched!!

 

[Catfish_Man]

kern*e*l!

 

[bananas]

typo

s/kernal/kernel/

 

[crackbookpro]

Thing is sick

 

[rmbrown09]

I'm very happy to say I'm getting a 12-core on Wednesday...

Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12-core)
8GB (4X2GB) SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Two 18x SuperDrives
Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad

It's replacing a 2002 PowerMac G4 (Dual 1GHz; 1.5GB Ram; 80GB HD)

Totally trading up. Getting two 27-inch Displays in a few weeks from Apple.

Psyched!!

Or you could have just bought,

 

[Acceleroto]

I got a new 2.4GHz 8-core with 8GB of RAM & the 5870. I compared results to a friend's 2008 2.8GHz 8-core and it's faster by a measurable margin in Geekbench.

Geekbench 32-bit score was 13,051 -
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282053

Geekbench 64-bit score was 14,517 -
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282051

Cinebench OpenGL was 26.22fps & CPU was 8.67.

I ran a Portal Demo for BareFeats.com at 1920x1080 resolution & it ran 297fps with AA off & 225fps with 4x AA (all other video options set to high & motion blur on).

The test I ran for them on X-Plane at 1920x1080 resulted in framerate of 143fps.

FWIW, it compiles code in Xcode about 4.6 times faster than my 2008 2.4GHz C2D iMac.

I don't have real-world results yet from After Effects renders, but it crushes my iMac (go figure). However, After Effects wants more than 8GB of ram to use all 16 virtual cores/threads. If you turn the dial all the way up on render speed, it'll jump on 14.

Cheers,

 

[techapocalypse]

Does anyone know if they're gonna make a 5970 for this thing? that'd be a monster...

 

[avkills]

I agree. It's a decent card. But I think they should have included a 5870 standard, and a 5970 option. Also, maybe an Nvidia Quadro FX 4800/5800 option. Well, since Apple seem to be moving to ATI for their desktop GPU options, maybe an ATI Fire Pro V8800. Because if you are paying $5000 for a machine like this, a 5870 is good, even for professional work, but not GREAT. And be serious, you aren't going to be buying a 12 core machine JUST for gaming. Or are you? :0

The 6-core 3.33Ghz would actually be better for gaming. But yeah I am drooling for one of those 12-cores for the edit suite at work.

-mark

 

[Fa7mac]

the three we ordered should be here tuesday or wednesday.

LOL. lucky you LOL

 

[slippyr4]

s/kernal/kernel/

Are you sure? maybe these new Mac Pro's are running Commodore 64 KERNAL, not a 64bit kernel.