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Nehalem Mac Pros Arrive: Unboxing and Benchmarks
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After some research, it looks like I made a mistake there. That picture doesn't even show the CPU. That thing is probably the southbridge or the northbridge. Like I said, I don't know much.
Did the unboxing produce any genuine pictures of the CPUs?
I think the CPUs are under those massive aluminum heat sinks that are on the motherboard with the memory chips. Haven't seen photos of the actual processors yet.
I just wonna know some little thing. I see Apple finally change their DDR2 with DDR3 and this time with a price who's totally correct ... 
BUT, what happened with the HD SAS ? The RAID card is always here but without the SAS drive... And second thing, what about the graphic card ?
The ATI is good I'm sure, but what about the nvidia quadro series who was the stars of the Mac Pro? I'm especially talking about the quadro 5800/or 5600, whatever, even a n295 could be great (or same with ATI), the ATI is so good to be the star this time?
Or Apple will change that soon ?
I ask that because I wonna buy this new one for my work (video, audio, compositing and 3D) and I will be really sad if I see they change the graphic card and HD just few month after...
(I hope you'll understand all my english!)
BUT, what happened with the HD SAS ? The RAID card is always here but without the SAS drive... And second thing, what about the graphic card ?
The ATI is good I'm sure, but what about the nvidia quadro series who was the stars of the Mac Pro? I'm especially talking about the quadro 5800/or 5600, whatever, even a n295 could be great (or same with ATI), the ATI is so good to be the star this time?
Or Apple will change that soon ?
I ask that because I wonna buy this new one for my work (video, audio, compositing and 3D) and I will be really sad if I see they change the graphic card and HD just few month after...
(I hope you'll understand all my english!)
Just to be clear, you're talking only about Handbreak and ffmpeg or whatever it's using, if that's correct. h.264 is not limited to four cores itself.
Figure out your budget first, then find the sweet spot in what's available.
I would think if you immediately see the value in these computers, you're probably lusting the 2.93 anyway. Otherwise, I'd probably wait until 10.6 comes out and see how it goes from there. If it really looks like all the multi-threaded initiatives will pay off, then one of these Macs will be a gift that keeps giving. Otherwise, buying a previous gen might make the most sense if you must have a tower.
As far as the RAM. I'm a little befuddled at how 8 GB isn't enough unless you're looking using this computer years down the road, and even then. I have 8 GB in my '07 octo running FCS, and CS, Office plus more all day, and I never get paging by the end of the week. I'm not sure what I could do that would seriously cramp 8 GB of memory. Sure, more would be nice, but if there wasn't this tri-channel thing, I'd probably get 8 GB again, but looks like I'll be getting 6x2GB.
I'd be more curious about using 3 slots vs 4 than worrying about >8 GB. $0.02.
H.264 encoding is NOT limited to 4 cores. When you encode with Compressor 3 and utilize qmaster, you will use 8 cores since Qmaster will basically split down your movie to 8 pieces and send each piece to a different core. I use it all the time and see 800% CPU usage on activity monitor when I do that. The encode speeds are quite fast with qmaster.
What's really sad is that you have Nehalem-EP systems in your hands; and I'm *STILL* under NDA to not talk about Nehalem-EP...
I can say, though: I really like the benchmark results.
I can say, though: I really like the benchmark results.
I'm sure that has got something to do with Apple's insisting on having a Mini Display Port, that's why the Quadro disappears.
Audio apps like Logic are enormous ram hogs. I have more than 8 gigs in my quad G5 already, being limited to 8 is pretty much a deal breaker.
Is it really?
Well, I'm really looking forward for the time, that you can shed some light on the sheer performance of these procs.
According to this post they seem to be wicked fast.
Definitely a nice piece of computer, and you don't need to drink the Apple Kool-Aid to admire this.
Well, I'm really looking forward for the time, that you can shed some light on the sheer performance of these procs.
According to this post they seem to be wicked fast.
Definitely a nice piece of computer, and you don't need to drink the Apple Kool-Aid to admire this.
I hope not. I re-read the apple tech specs several times and they make no distinction about the Turbo. If this is the case aren't apple mis-selling their product?
RobP
It is entirely possible if you map down to what the root cause of the scalability problem is. In fact it makes alot of sense. The 2.26 is a more balanced machine. In other words, there is a closer match to its memory speed than the 2.93.
Typically, in multiprocess boxes you don't see linearly improvements when you can't efficiently parallelize the workload and/or keep the workload fed. The older tech Xeon get worse speed ups because the cores are taking hits trying to get through the memory bottleneck of the shared bus for all 8 cores. The 2.93 has more of a memory bottleneck problem than a 2.26 processor will if they share the exact same memory speeds. More bottleneck problems leads to lower than ideal speed up.
The counter intuitive result would be for the cpu speed to go up 2.93 , 3.0 , 4.0, etc. while keeping the memory system exactly the same and the speed up number would not go down at some point (or at least flat). Likewise, keeping the memory system constant and add 2x, 3x. 4x number of cores sharing it and the single-vs-parallel numbers not go down.
Only balanced systems get linear speedups. Otherwise you run into bottlenecks. Similar to Amdahl's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdal's_law), applying "more" only on one part of the solution doesn't always make it go faster.
The 2.23 system is a better balanced system. The 2.93 system is going to be better at a heavy mixture of both parallel and scalar workloads. The most expensive models are rarely the best balanced ones.
For those who have scalar workload (running primarily just one program at a time that only using a few threads) and are under 8GB (i.e. many games) the 4 cores are even better balanced.
I don't understand your point. A 1024-core SGI Altix kicks its butt too, but it's hardly a fair comparison.
The point is simply that those who were jumping up and screaming "Fastest machine in the world!" (and using that as an excuse for "apple can charge whatever they want and nobody should complain!") this morning weren't seeing the whole picture.
Am I the only one that noticed the weird thing about the geekbench scores? It listed the machine as having 16 cores, not 8. I thought that was really odd.
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Build 9G3553)
Model MacPro4,1 Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F221BEC8
Processor Intel Xeon X5570 Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
Processors 1 Cores 16
Processor Frequency 2.92 GHz Bus Frequency 6.40 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 256 KB L3 Cache 8.00 MB
Memory 6.00 GB Memory Type 1066 MHz DDR3
BIOS Apple Inc. MP41.88Z.0081.B03.0902231259
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Build 9G3553)
Model MacPro4,1 Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F221BEC8
Processor Intel Xeon X5570 Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
Processors 1 Cores 16
Processor Frequency 2.92 GHz Bus Frequency 6.40 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 256 KB L3 Cache 8.00 MB
Memory 6.00 GB Memory Type 1066 MHz DDR3
BIOS Apple Inc. MP41.88Z.0081.B03.0902231259
Here's a graph of all the unique systems that have been posted so far. If you don't see your Mac Model listed here please run Cinebench10.1 (aka "Cinebench10") and PM your results your results to me! A more complete list might be fun!
Be sure to include the Model and the CPU speed. Like "2009 Mac Mini 3.5" or whatever.
Thanks!
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Be sure to include the Model and the CPU speed. Like "2009 Mac Mini 3.5" or whatever.
Thanks!
This is what I do hope since an 8GB cap is seriously stupid on a machine such as this. Especially seeing that it should be 12GB, which I could live with.
Right now, I just see Apple pushing the quad core Mac Pro at their "mid tower" option that's priced right at the maxed out iMac. When you stick 8GBs of laptop memory in the iMac for $1000, bringing it to $3200, getting a real quad core desktop machine for $2750 doesn't seem bad at all.
I am most likely wrong about it only being offered on the 2.93 models. I was more excited to see new Mac Pros that to check my info.
Thanks for that informative chart, Tesselator. I was hoping someone would make one. A complete chart of all the recent Mac desktops would be really helpful. I was planning on getting the 2.26 Octo, but now I'm not so sure. Unfortunately, the refurbs on the Apple site are slow to appear and get snatched up quickly when they do show up.
Still not sure which model to get...
So I've been monitoring every MacPro post in this forum for the last six months, because I want to upgrade from my Dual 1.8 G5 (4GB RAM) to the new MacPro. After what has been the longest wait ever for a new generation of Macs, I've ended up being very confused since last Tuesday's announcement.
I envision using that new machine for the next four years or more ...
I'm a self employed graphic designer. I usually run at the same time:
my design apps like PS, Quark, Acrobat, (sometime Flash and Dreamweaver);
my internet apps like Mail, Firefox and Safari with a lot of tabs open;
then my entertainment apps like EyeTV and iTunes (with a huge music library).
The only speed/performance problems I run into lately with my old G5 is iTunes (can't handle huge libraries - hello beachball) and Firefox/Safari with lots of tabs open.
So I'm wondering which one of these new models will give me the best value. I don't think I will do any video encoding or 3D rendering in the foreseeable future.
Do the multiple cores help me with running all the above mentioned apps at the same time, or is a faster processor more helpful?
I'm skeptical about the RAM restriction on the quad-model, otherwise I would go for the bottom end 2.66 quad-core with 8GB RAM....
So any suggestion for all the non-audio/video users out there?
Thanks
So I've been monitoring every MacPro post in this forum for the last six months, because I want to upgrade from my Dual 1.8 G5 (4GB RAM) to the new MacPro. After what has been the longest wait ever for a new generation of Macs, I've ended up being very confused since last Tuesday's announcement.
I envision using that new machine for the next four years or more ...
I'm a self employed graphic designer. I usually run at the same time:
my design apps like PS, Quark, Acrobat, (sometime Flash and Dreamweaver);
my internet apps like Mail, Firefox and Safari with a lot of tabs open;
then my entertainment apps like EyeTV and iTunes (with a huge music library).
The only speed/performance problems I run into lately with my old G5 is iTunes (can't handle huge libraries - hello beachball) and Firefox/Safari with lots of tabs open.
So I'm wondering which one of these new models will give me the best value. I don't think I will do any video encoding or 3D rendering in the foreseeable future.
Do the multiple cores help me with running all the above mentioned apps at the same time, or is a faster processor more helpful?
I'm skeptical about the RAM restriction on the quad-model, otherwise I would go for the bottom end 2.66 quad-core with 8GB RAM....
So any suggestion for all the non-audio/video users out there?
Thanks
Okay I'll stop doing it... I'll just let everyone else do it for me.... I'm glad to see my MP is still a contender
All you need is Lov... I mean, RAM! RAM and quick hard drives to load big files and libraries faster.
As you're a multitasker, I'd suggest the slower 8 core system with lots of RAM and 4 fast hard drives in RAID 10 (i.e. redundant pair of striped drives for double the read speeds and redundancy, should one or 2 drives fail). Hard drives are really the bottleneck nowadays, the CPU are mostly waiting for the data to trickle in under normal use.
