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Mac Pro Unboxing Photos, Early Benchmarks and Notes
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Maya, Renderman and other core/ram eating apps will. FCP doesnt even eat 4GB of RAM
Maya, Renderman and other core/ram eating apps will. FCP doesnt even eat 4GB of RAM
Ok, cool. I might as well keep my 2008 2.8 8 core, upgrade from the 4870 to the 5770, and wait until the next Mac Pro revision arrives as the 2010 models don't impress me enough to upgrade for that much cash difference.
The 64GB max RAM is a huge boon. It would be awesome for the scientific visualizations we do in my neuroimaging lab. Unfortunately the cost is a bit of a barrier. 64GB of RAM for $2850 + a $5000 computer (or even $3500) + a nice monitor is getting pricey. It'd be awesome though.
How are you putting 64G of RAM in the mac Pro. the Apple site says that the machine only supports 32GB of RAM
Crucial's price is high because they are really selling those DIMMs for servers, but OWC sell 64GB for $2,799 which isn't much if you can make use of it. 16GB was $3,500 a few years ago.
Apple only support unbuffered DIMMs, which means a limit of 4GB per DIMM currently. However 8GB registered DIMMs work on the platform too. You can get 8GB DIMMs for every Mac Pro released so far, but they have never been supported by Apple.
man i really want to sell my 2006 mac pro and get one of these! for those that have one, you need to join our folding@home team here at macrumors. they would really put up some big numbers!
LORD. I thought my 2008 2.8 8 core with 4GB RAM and two opticals was expensive. How much did that beast run you? Had to be at least $6000-7000!
No it's not… SSD = Solid State Disk
HDD disk would be redundant; SSD disk is not.
2x 512GB SSDs? Oh damn!
To what do you suggest?
It looks great, it cools great, it's build solidly, it does it's job.
It's a tool, not a fashion statement. To be honest I will put money on not changing it in the next few years!!
100% agree. Some people complain about it. "It's a cheese grater", "it's 7 years old". These people are the ones that complain about Apple being too focused on form not function, yet the purpose of the Mac Pro casing IS more for function. The perforated aluminum casing facilitates in cooling, and the interior is genius. I've built many systems, from high end to low end, and I've always tried my best to arrange the interior components so that owners may easily swap out drives, etc. The Mac Pro is so brilliant any one can get access to system components, even novices.
Mother/logic board are the "spine" of the system, everything plugs into it. The graphics card are the "eyes", the HDD's the brain/memory, built in audio. The mother/logic board is vertically installed, with components such as graphics and HDD's plugging in horizontally (earlier 90's desktops placed boards horizontally at one point). Apple has done an excellent job in creating a great casing around that one component, the logic board. Components simply slide in and out for the system, no need to unscrew anything (unless your taking out a fan, but once the HDD's and RAM boards are removed cleaning and maintenance is a breeze). I'd be hard pressed to redesign such a brilliant machine.
Hey, it's fashion statement too! Apple doesn't let the ugly stuff out the door, and that's OK.
But the main thing about these big box Macs is that they're workhorses. I have an original 2004 PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 next to me that's only being retired because current software (Adobe CS5) requires an Intel box.
In our corner of the web/graphic design field the Macs don't spend minutes/hours/days rendering stuff. We're looking for reasonable speed, expansion, dependability and long product life. Our designers probably spend more time looking at and thinking about their work than actually working on their work. Killer video cards would make no difference to us.
We'll be buying a half-dozen MacPros to replace our old G5s. They'll likely be 2.8 Quad-cores with retrofitted high-redundancy 100GB SSD boot drives (OWC, <$400) for quick boot and app launch, 10GB RAM (original 3 x 1GB, discard one stick, add 2 x 4GB from RAMJet; allows future expansion by discarding more original sticks). The stock 1TB drive can serve as a local scratch disk (our main work files are on the server anyway) or as a TM volume.
Cost per workstation is around $3300.
My inner geek wants higher clock speeds/more cores/32nm Westmere processors and lots more...of everything. But the base 2.8 Quad-core with plenty of RAM is more than we could have dreamed of barely a few years ago. If I had 50% more benchmark speed I doubt that would mean even 5% more productivity.
Great post, and well stated. I agree with your last statement, how much more power do we need? Years ago I thought we needed more and more, now we've almost plateaued in some regards and it seems improvements in software to fully utilize the hardware is crucial. A lot of systems aren't even taxed from the general work done. Perhaps this explains explains Apple's recent focus on iOS4 and possibly renaming OS X to iOS, and streamlining applications further such as Apple did from moving to Snow Leopard from Leopard.
100% agreed.
I upgraded from a G5 Dual 2.0 last year to a 2008 2.8 / 8-Core for my graphic design work and am still waiting for my bread and butter apps to catch up with my system. Until that day arrives, I'm nowhere close to even considering a new machine.
Probably if I were heavily involved in 3D/Animation/Video, the latest and fastest system would be desirable; but since 90% of my work is print-based, I see this system easily lasting another 6-8 years at least.
That said, I can't tell you how much I wish apps like Painter and Illustrator were updated to take advantage of this great multi-core computer. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for slow software to catch up to hardware. I sometimes wonder if it will ever happen...
Word of warning on the memory, apparently they have to ALL be the same size sticks, as OWC warns.
I'd aim for 12Gb (3x4Gb) to be honest, and keep a set or two of the original sticks so if they have to go back to Apple then can be swapped out.
Are you sure? Looking at OWC's mid-2010 Quad-core RAM page here: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory the identical sticks note only applies to using 8GB sticks.
Here's what Crucial says about the mid-2010 Quad-core:
"...you can install modules one at a time, and you can mix different densities of modules in your computer. But if your computer supports dual-channel memory configurations [this model doesn't—NCAM], you should install in identical pairs (preferably in kits) for optimal performance."
Hmm, Apple's online specs are mute on the subject, so I downloaded the User Manual. Here's what it says:
"Note: If you install different-size DIMMs in your Mac Pro, follow the order in the table. If the DIMM configuration you install doesn’t provide optimized performance, the Memory Slot Utility appears onscreen and recommends an improved configuration.
To use the utility again, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Memory Slot Utility."
So I think that establishes that mix-and-match is allowed, although they should be installed in a certain order. It would certainly simplify things to use all the same though, but since Apple ships weird base configurations—3 x 1GB in a 4-slot Mac, what's that all about?—it's hard to do that without excessive wastage.
Too bad that Apple is stuck in the Bad Old Days on MacPro RAM pricing. A $1775 adder to go from 3GB to 16GB? Yeah, like that's going to happen.
The new Mac Pro
The new Mac Pros are great. I just wish they were more affordable. We got used to having Apple wow us every year by Macworld and WWDC with new revolutionary systems inside and outside the case. Back in the days, when the top of the line system was the Power PC, they were offered with the latest technology available. The Power PC was the first computer with a dvd burner (dvd-ram), no-floppy and a built-in firewire port. There was a time when the whole Power PC line was dual processor. That is why we expected Apple to give us Blu-ray and USB 3.0. Even the first Intel based Apple towers that came out were priced competitively due to discounted prices on the processors by Intel. Apple was the first manufacturer to announce a workstation with the Xeon Woodcrest processor.
These are different times for Apple. Their flagship product is the iphone. The refresh cycle for their computers is based on the availability of new processors from Intel. They don't go to Macworld or NAB anymore; that means no deadlines or pressure to announce new product at those trade shows. The truth is that Intel high-end processors are very expensive. Try to configure a HP or Dell workstation with the same specs as the Mac Pro and you will see that Mac Pros are still more affordable than the competition (that's before applying a generous discount from HP: don't know about Dell).
The Mac Pro is a very efficient professional tool. All it needs is more build to order options like blu-ray drives, usb 3.0 ports, and high-end nvidia cards, and a standard 3 year next business day, parts and labor warranty like the one offered by HP and Dell. I know, I know... Apple has Applecare, but this should be included at no additional cost, at least on the "Pro" machines.
The new Mac Pros are great. I just wish they were more affordable. We got used to having Apple wow us every year by Macworld and WWDC with new revolutionary systems inside and outside the case. Back in the days, when the top of the line system was the Power PC, they were offered with the latest technology available. The Power PC was the first computer with a dvd burner (dvd-ram), no-floppy and a built-in firewire port. There was a time when the whole Power PC line was dual processor. That is why we expected Apple to give us Blu-ray and USB 3.0. Even the first Intel based Apple towers that came out were priced competitively due to discounted prices on the processors by Intel. Apple was the first manufacturer to announce a workstation with the Xeon Woodcrest processor.
These are different times for Apple. Their flagship product is the iphone. The refresh cycle for their computers is based on the availability of new processors from Intel. They don't go to Macworld or NAB anymore; that means no deadlines or pressure to announce new product at those trade shows. The truth is that Intel high-end processors are very expensive. Try to configure a HP or Dell workstation with the same specs as the Mac Pro and you will see that Mac Pros are still more affordable than the competition (that's before applying a generous discount from HP: don't know about Dell).
The Mac Pro is a very efficient professional tool. All it needs is more build to order options like blu-ray drives, usb 3.0 ports, and high-end nvidia cards, and a standard 3 year next business day, parts and labor warranty like the one offered by HP and Dell. I know, I know... Apple has Applecare, but this should be included at no additional cost, at least on the "Pro" machines.
Don't believe everything Apple says on their support pages...
There is a long history of Macs running perfectly with twice the memory Apple claims these machines are supporting. Especially with Macbook models.
My 2.1 Macbook runs fine with 3 GB instead of 2. And after upgrading my Clamshell iBook to 576 MB (according to Apple only 320 possible) I'm even able to run Tiger halfway decently on that G3.