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MacPro Mid 2010 First Impressions?
- Thread starter Nautigar
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5770 (stock config)
Edit: I also have 2 extra HDDs in here (and counting). But diglloyd sort of confirmed today it was the GPU fan noise on twitter.
I just posted Cinebench 11.5 and Geekbench 64 bit results for four 2010, one 2009, two 2008 Mac Pros:
http://barefeats.com/wst10.html
I'll add more permutations to the page as I receive them from "remote mad scientists."
I also recommend Lloyd Chambers page comparing the 6-core Westmere to three other Macs running Photoshop, After Effects, and several other apps. He also has memory bandwidth tests.
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere.html
Meanwhile, I'm compiling comparative results for Compressor, After Effects, iMovie, X-Plane, Portal, etc. Stay tuned.
http://barefeats.com/wst10.html
I'll add more permutations to the page as I receive them from "remote mad scientists."
I also recommend Lloyd Chambers page comparing the 6-core Westmere to three other Macs running Photoshop, After Effects, and several other apps. He also has memory bandwidth tests.
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere.html
Meanwhile, I'm compiling comparative results for Compressor, After Effects, iMovie, X-Plane, Portal, etc. Stay tuned.
The difference dual CPUs (and memory banks) make in the stress test is ridiculous:
Can someone help me out..how does the 4x8Gb 6 core 3.33GHz run slower than the 3x8Gb 6 core 3.33GHz?
Because it runs in a slower mode due to the CPU Memory controller only having three separate channels.
In real life 4 channels is the way forward if you use lots of ram.
I have the stock 8-core and it's very quiet (comparable to the iMac G5 it replaced). I haven't pushed it much yet so the fan speed stayed low.
As for speed, I'm thrilled. Renders that took 3 minutes on the iMac are now finished in less than 15 seconds.
E
so if you were opting for a 6 core 3.33GHz MacPro, then the 3x8Gb RAM would be the highest choice for performance?
Well my 6 core came in this morning, been toying around with it ever since the doorbell rang. The machine has 6gigs of ram and the 5870 card.
I gotta say this is a lovely machine, much better then my old windows desktop. Firstly I installed 2 extra WD Cavier Black 1tb drives, and a Black Magic Intensity capture card. What a snap to install and get running, as much as we might get pissed at some of the petty choices and how Apple puts the screws to us, I was able to get everything installed and running in 10 minutes. I couldn't say the same if this was a windows machine.
Anyway the machine runs smooth and quite, from seeing people talk about the noise of the WD drives and the machine in general I was a bit afraid, but this thing is dead silent compared to my old machine. Granted I haven't put much stress on it yet.
So far I did some quick 720p capturing, which went wonderfully, something my old machine couldn't handle. I gotta say the Blackmagic card works great with Final Cut. TO see how the new machine compares to my MBP, I made a quick 1 minute project using Pro Res422, brought it over to Compressor to encode for Youtube. Did the ole Qmaster trick with 10 instances (I'm gonna try 12 instances at some point) and the encoding was done in about a minute. I also gave an encode a try while using instances from both the desktop and laptop, this took a bit longer as the project needed to be put back together, I'm sure once I start doing my real work where I encode multiple files, this dual machine set-up will hum along nicely.
I'm in the process of installing WoW as thats my main gaming on the Mac, I'll also be setting up bootcamp to do some Windows stuff.
As of right now I'm very happy, I can now do the things I couldn't on my old desktop, capture HD, stream HD, and encode video quickly(unlike the long encodes on my laptop)
**Update** Ran WoW for a bit, settings on Ultra, getting a solid 70-80fps(though I do notice it breaking 100, and droping to about 50 at times) @ 1440x900 and x8 Multisampling flying around and on the ground in Northrend. It's like an entirely new looking game compared to on the MBP, anything above 50fps makes me happy.
I gotta say this is a lovely machine, much better then my old windows desktop. Firstly I installed 2 extra WD Cavier Black 1tb drives, and a Black Magic Intensity capture card. What a snap to install and get running, as much as we might get pissed at some of the petty choices and how Apple puts the screws to us, I was able to get everything installed and running in 10 minutes. I couldn't say the same if this was a windows machine.
Anyway the machine runs smooth and quite, from seeing people talk about the noise of the WD drives and the machine in general I was a bit afraid, but this thing is dead silent compared to my old machine. Granted I haven't put much stress on it yet.
So far I did some quick 720p capturing, which went wonderfully, something my old machine couldn't handle. I gotta say the Blackmagic card works great with Final Cut. TO see how the new machine compares to my MBP, I made a quick 1 minute project using Pro Res422, brought it over to Compressor to encode for Youtube. Did the ole Qmaster trick with 10 instances (I'm gonna try 12 instances at some point) and the encoding was done in about a minute. I also gave an encode a try while using instances from both the desktop and laptop, this took a bit longer as the project needed to be put back together, I'm sure once I start doing my real work where I encode multiple files, this dual machine set-up will hum along nicely.
I'm in the process of installing WoW as thats my main gaming on the Mac, I'll also be setting up bootcamp to do some Windows stuff.
As of right now I'm very happy, I can now do the things I couldn't on my old desktop, capture HD, stream HD, and encode video quickly(unlike the long encodes on my laptop)
**Update** Ran WoW for a bit, settings on Ultra, getting a solid 70-80fps(though I do notice it breaking 100, and droping to about 50 at times) @ 1440x900 and x8 Multisampling flying around and on the ground in Northrend. It's like an entirely new looking game compared to on the MBP, anything above 50fps makes me happy.
I've never found the Mac Pro's to be noisy and I push them daily. Noise is subjective and I have to wonder sometimes if these complainers work with their tower right beside their keyboard or if they've got nothing better to do than obsess on every little thing.
On the other hand, if audio was my trade, I'd be quite concerned. I'm just a lowly Video person, though.
Congrat's on your Mac! I can't wait to set mine up this weekend.
It is as loud as having the Death Star pass you at max speed from 10 feet away, aka dead silent, but wondering why your ear drums didn't explode
My first impression is that it takes longer to boot than my 2008. Not sure why, but when you hold down the option key to change the boot drive. It takes linger to get to the drives choice screen than the 2008 MP. Once it does boot into the OS is seems fast as expected. Seems like there is some extra checking going on during the initial booting process pre OS.
Other than that, the 5870 is louder than I would like, but I guess that goes with the territory. Also a couple of free power leads would have been nice. And why no firewire 400 to 800 adapter included. had to buy a $17 cable.
Other than that, the 5870 is louder than I would like, but I guess that goes with the territory. Also a couple of free power leads would have been nice. And why no firewire 400 to 800 adapter included. had to buy a $17 cable.
Do you have more hardware in your new one? Adding drives and cards will add time to the boot up.
You'll be very happy, compared to my MBP I'm tearing through encodes in Compressor, there was a thread someplace about doing the Qmaster trick and not setting it for all cores, so I'm trying some different settings to see which works best.
With my Mac Pro at work (8-core 20008) I experimented until I found a sweet spot, which is five cores. I only have 8 GB's RAM. I'm guessing it would be happier to use more virtual cores if I had more memory.
I can't wait to get my Hex going! Just waiting for RAM to arrive from OWC.
Is the 6 core easily upgradable? I mean.. if I wanted to put a faster 6 core with the same architecture in there in the future.. would that work?
really? even the single processor 12 core that's listed ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)?wasRedirected=true ) to come out Q2 2011? I can't find your 4Ghz CPU on the list (?)