Nehalem Mac Pros Arrive: Unboxing and Benchmarks

[phytonix]

This benchmark proved that the lowered end new Mac Pro is a joke.

 

[iMacmatician]

Another way to see if a certain process is nicely multithreaded is to open Activity monitor and look on the CPU graph. If you have one core around 100% and the others are pretty much idling, you got yourself a single-threaded Process that only gets faster with higher clockspeed. Beware though, the CPU peak in the graph may switch from one core to another occasionally to balance out heat dissipation on the chip, that usually means one thread is migrating from one core to another.

What happens if an app is using close to 100% CPU on the Activity Monitor list on a dual-core but the CPU meter shows both cores at around halfway?

 

[FF_productions]

Why has nobody commended the fact that it is number 1 on geekbench? I'm seeing overclocked 4 ghz systems with 8 cores, still getting pounded by this Mac.

I want to see some real-world benchmarks, but so far, that's incredible!

 

[kiang]

what most of you seem to forget is that Nehalem does not focus on raw processing speed at all... first there is hyper-threading, so a Nehalem woudl win from a Penryn Xeon with the same clockspeed if it comes to parallel processing.

But the biggest advantage of Nehalem is memory bandwith! Nehalem totally blows away all older Intel architecture hen it comes to reading data from the RAM. So I'd like to see some benchmarks focused on that

 

[8CoreWhore]

Can someone help? i'm now totally confused by these benchmark tests. I've just ordered 8 CORE 2.26GHz machine with the upgraded Graphics card and will max out the ram to 24GB. Will this spec be faster for final cut pro / logic pro / motion than a 4 CORE 2.93 Ghz machine???

Someone please help!

Your's will be faster for rendering, encoding, transcoding, etc... that's what really matters...

 

[jholzner]

My tower is under the desk. Couldn't tell you what it looks like. Don't care. It computes.

Plus, he was talking about the INTERNAL design...which could be important if you want to access internal components, upgrade, etc.

 

[SpinThis!]

Of all the apps I use that are multithreaded, I use this one [Handbrake] the most. Right now I do a 2-pass encode with a turbo first pass.

What settings? Without knowing your exact settings, you won't be able to benchmark it. You should skip 2-pass and just use the Apple TV prset—the best "bang for your buck" preset imo. I used to do 2-pass but it's really a waste of time for the little quality difference.

Too bad handbrake doesn't really scale beyond 4 cores—that's mainly a limitation of x264 (the underlying encoding library) so you won't see Handbrake taking advantage of Grand Central anytime soon, unless someone forks the project.

 

[iBug2]

Here is my Octo 2.8 overclocked to 3185 Mhz

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/115876

 

[SPUY767]

Not yet. At least not through Apples implementation of EFI....

Die yields are so low as yet anyway, these processors are probably performing at their peak. It isn't until the fab is perfected and die yields get so high that the lowe end units are actually underclocked that overclocking becomes a viable scenario. Granted, excellent cooling can eek out a few percent increase over what the processor comes at from the factory.

 

[iBug2]

Too bad handbrake doesn't really scale beyond 4 cores—that's mainly a limitation of x264 (the underlying encoding library) so you won't see Handbrake taking advantage of Grand Central anytime soon, unless someone forks the project.

The thing is though, Compressor does use 8 cores with h.264 if you utilize Qmaster.

 

[cinticom]

8 GB RAM max!

The Quad-Core has an 8 GB RAM-maximum... that's going to seriously limit longevity as software demands increase. Apple dramatically increased the price of a 32 max GB computer from mid-$2000's to lowish-$3000's. A big disincentive to buying the Mac Pro from my perspective.

 

[3587]

So, let me ask you this... I just ordered a Quad Core 2.66 with the 120 in it... With Snow Leopard, will more graphics cards bring out better results eventually? Or will just the one do the trick? Do you think that both graphic cards in the MacBooks will be utilized then as well?

It is nice that the machines are doing well but this confirms that the gulf between iMacs and Mac Pros is even wider. Thus many of us are wondering when Apple will fill that hole.

It will be very interesting to see how well Snow Leopard can leverage these cores. Combined with the GPU this should be one impressive machine for certain tasks. It does suck a bit that the clock rate is slower on the one machine. I have to wonder what brought that on.

Dave.

 

[Modacke]

Ok so the question for me is, Quad Core vs. 8-Core

Here some apps I will be using/learning:

-iMovie 09/Final Cut Express/Final Cut Pro, This will be an app I will be using a lot

-Photoshop, Again this will be an app I will be using a lot

-Any 3D creature and editing app, This also might be an app I will use frequently

-iWeb and any other website creator, Again frequently

-Aperture, I may use this app sometimes

-Any Adobe application,

-And maybe some games......

If you guys can put which speed I should get ex. 2.26, 2.29 ect.

Thanks a lot

 

[iBug2]

So, let me ask you this... I just ordered a Quad Core 2.66 with the 120 in it... With Snow Leopard, will more graphics cards bring out better results eventually? Or will just the one do the trick? Do you think that both graphic cards in the MacBooks will be utilized then as well?

I don't know if Snow Leopard can utilize multiple graphics cards for Open CL. One might hope though, since GPU's doing video encoding will speed that task up by milestones. If multiple GPU's can be utilized it'd be amazing for sure.

 

[jbrjake]

Too bad handbrake doesn't really scale beyond 4 cores—that's mainly a limitation of x264 (the underlying encoding library)

Note, though, that x264 is full of asm optimizations for these new Nehalem chips which give a very significant speed boost at the same clockspeed compared to previous gen CPUs. Also, x264's issues with 8+ cores only come into play when using very low quality settings -- it's not that it can't take advantage of that many cores, just that the way it generates and closes out its threads has some overhead if the threads have very short lifetimes.

 

[diamond.g]

Die yields are so low as yet anyway, these processors are probably performing at their peak. It isn't until the fab is perfected and die yields get so high that the lowe end units are actually underclocked that overclocking becomes a viable scenario. Granted, excellent cooling can eek out a few percent increase over what the processor comes at from the factory.

Low yields? Who said yields were low? The dies that are being used are most likely able to run at much higher speeds than they are currently rated at. Intel has no reason to run them at higher speeds. Especially considering the lack of competition. I wouldn't be surprised if the 4 Core MacPro could run at 3.8Ghz or higher (assuming the cooler Apple uses isn't pants).

All of the CPU's Intel has been making over the past 4 years have been capable of much higher speeds. As soon as AMD gets their act together you will see Intel up the clock to keep up the pressure.

 

[Infrared]

Games are traditionally single-threaded (Half-Life 2 being just one famous example), because they require heavy synchronization and threading only adds to complexity, but not to performance. Games want ONE fast CPU core and a fast graphics card to be happy.

Running Flight Simulator X:



Mind you, I'm not saying it's making efficient use of those 8 cores

 

[ntg]

I don't know if Snow Leopard can utilize multiple graphics cards for Open CL. One might hope though, since GPU's doing video encoding will speed that task up by milestones. If multiple GPU's can be utilized it'd be amazing for sure.

Can someone please try benchmarking Snow Leopard on these beasts - I'd love to know what THAT score will be!!

Nig.

 

[Infrared]

Games used to want one fast CPU core and one fast GPU. But nowadays new games start taking advantage from multiple cores and multiple GPU's. World of Warcraft uses 2 cores and doubles frame rates through the second core. GTA4 uses 4 cores and most games use 2-4 GPU's like COD 5.

Both the PS3 and XBox360 are multicore and a lot of PC games are
ported over from consoles. I don't know if that is or will be a factor.

 

[Mike Teezie]

Very, very impressive.

 

[Umbongo]

The Quad-Core has an 8 GB RAM-maximum... that's going to seriously limit longevity as software demands increase. Apple dramatically increased the price of a 32 max GB computer from mid-$2000's to lowish-$3000's. A big disincentive to buying the Mac Pro from my perspective.

No Apple's marketing says it has an 8GB limit. It should support upcomming 8GB DIMMs and existing 4GB ones providing 16GB or 32GB of memory.

 

[Umbongo]

Low yields? Who said yields were low? The dies that are being used are most likely able to run at much higher speeds than they are currently rated at. Intel has no reason to run them at higher speeds. Especially considering the lack of competition. I wouldn't be surprised if the 4 Core MacPro could run at 3.8Ghz or higher (assuming the cooler Apple uses isn't pants).

All of the CPU's Intel has been making over the past 4 years have been capable of much higher speeds. As soon as AMD gets their act together you will see Intel up the clock to keep up the pressure.

Yeah I remember Intel were talking about having Harpertown running up to 4GHz before it's release.

 

[Infrared]

It is hard for all of you real Pros who have to go backwards or spend so much more for the same performance. I really disagree with Apple's forward thinking here. I think Apple should have started the Mac Pro at Dual 2.66 GHz Octacore Nehalem to compete with its last generation.

It's not impressive that a $1000 PC can run Photoshop
faster than a $3299 Mac Pro.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Good Post.
Good thread.

Thanks, Mac Rumors--I feel good about my old 2.66, still.

 

[roblin]

Being an owner of an 8-core 2008 Mac Pro, I can't tell you how happy I am to see that the new machines do not blow the old ones out of the water.

this. was gonna buy the new one, but the dollar has gotten 50% more expensive so prices in my country are off the scale.

i paid 23k for my 8x2.8ghz now the 8x2.26 is 35k here. guess I was lucky to buy at the right time...