don't forget that the next FCP will be rewritten to maximize this architecture and Snow Leopard.
also, go with the octo so that you can go beyond 8gb when the time comes.
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Nehalem multithreaded performance/price: Apple's benchmarks
- Thread starter Weepul
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don't forget that the next FCP will be rewritten to maximize this architecture and Snow Leopard.
also, go with the octo so that you can go beyond 8gb when the time comes.
choosing _ONE_ 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Maybe this is worth considering. Can anyone comment on the "pros & cons" of this choice?
That said, no one is talking about the single processor "Nehalem" option ... the 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon ... which for an additional $500 (oops) has a good clock rate, four cores, and "Nehalem" architecture.Hmm, when considering value, Tesselator did bring up a good point: a quick search revealed that Nehalem single-threaded performance is near equal to Penryn performance, so while the 2.26 GHz Mac Pro might equal the previous 3.2 GHz with a multithreaded app, Safari will run like it's a 2.26 GHz either way, unless I'm missing something or that article is out of date.
Maybe this is worth considering. Can anyone comment on the "pros & cons" of this choice?
Well, the 4-core config is a really good choice for using applications which do not support more than four cores at once.
Photoshop is such an app and will run about 30% faster on a 4x2.93GHz MacPro than it does on a 8x2.26GHz MacPro.
Unless you are rendering movies or CGIs the MacPro with four cores is a better choice.
Lets hope that the quad-core MacPro supports more than 8GB of ram.
In my opinion the 8GB cap is just a marketing gag. As soon as 4GB modules are available you can upgrade the machine to get 16Gigs of ram.
The performance of a 2.93GHz equals the performance of a 3.8GHz Xeon of the previous generation if a gain of 30% is realistic.
Nik made some good points, and it would be a really nice machine.
The biggest downside is cost. The Quad cores use W35xx parts, (W3540 in this case), and is just an i7-940 with ECC enabled. Intel sells them for the same price as their Core i7 counterparts (respective of clock speeds).
Memory capacity may be another, as it can only handle 8GB (4x 2GB DIMM's). You'd have to locate and change out the stock memory and replace it with 4GB sticks, for a max of 16GB. Not an ideal situation.
Great post and analysis. Also…
2.4| x
2.3|
2.2|
2.1|
2.0|
1.9| x
1.8| x
1.7| x
1.6| x
1.5| x x
1.4| x x
1.3| x x x
1.2| x x x x x
1.1| x
Median = 1.35x (1.3x excluding synthetic benchmarks)
Absolutely.That's some great technological progress, huh?
That's kinda like having an entry-level MacBook Pro instead of a high-end MacBook (maybe of the next generation). It's interesting to see what features the MacBook Pro has that the MacBook doesn't, and vice versa.
Apple doesn't have benchmarks. They have graphs.
Just wait for somebody to post some benchmarks before we do this.
Just wait for somebody to post some benchmarks before we do this.
How is that meaningless? Thats like saying comparing the combined 10.64Ghz of the quad 2.66 vs the combined 18.08Ghz of the octo 2.26 is meaningless. It is very much meaningful because thats exactly what it works out to if you are going to be running something that will fully use every last core your machine has.
And thats why anyone doing that kind of work with their system wont even consider the 4 core version. I on the other hand, wont be using many programs that can exploit 8 cores.
Relative to the previous processor performance, the new top of the line does 33.28GHz of processing compared to the 25.6GHz of processing (again on the old scale).
Well, this thread sure hit a wall I guess everyone is waiting for independent benchmarks to help them make decisions, which makes sense. Oddly, there's some sort of performance/price thing that's been set up with the introduction of "Nehalem" ... particularly (at least for me) this 8-core 2.26ghz wrench that's been thrown into the works when compared to having a single 4-core 2.66ghz processor, never mind, a single 2.93ghz processor ... these latter machines which can be purchased for a lot less money than the higher end 8-core models, but even the 8-core 2.26ghz.
None of this is confusing if you're not planning to upgrade, don't think the power increase is that significant, upgrade every year or two, or can easily afford the highest end offerings, even if you don't need them. I'm planning to upgrade around June, though, with the idea that the release of the next operating system will optimize all this multi-core stuff ... including the single 4-core chip, which, let's not forget, is "multi-core." I'm not a computer jock, like some of you here, but I imagine this will help bring some of these issues into focus.
That said, and until the benchmarks arrive, I've read a little about how the Nehalem chip detects when it's not using some of its cores and boosts the processing speed of the remaining ones or one ... making what was a 2.66ghz processor behave like a, let's say 3.xghz processor. Does anyone know what I'm referencing and if so, how this would be applied to the 2.26 8-core, in particular? I must say, it's discouraging to pay so much for what is nominally (and for some applications) a 2.26ghz machine.
Thanks.
I guess everyone is waiting for independent benchmarks to help them make decisions, which makes sense. Oddly, there's some sort of performance/price thing that's been set up with the introduction of "Nehalem" ... particularly (at least for me) this 8-core 2.26ghz wrench that's been thrown into the works when compared to having a single 4-core 2.66ghz processor, never mind, a single 2.93ghz processor ... these latter machines which can be purchased for a lot less money than the higher end 8-core models, but even the 8-core 2.26ghz.None of this is confusing if you're not planning to upgrade, don't think the power increase is that significant, upgrade every year or two, or can easily afford the highest end offerings, even if you don't need them. I'm planning to upgrade around June, though, with the idea that the release of the next operating system will optimize all this multi-core stuff ... including the single 4-core chip, which, let's not forget, is "multi-core." I'm not a computer jock, like some of you here, but I imagine this will help bring some of these issues into focus.
That said, and until the benchmarks arrive, I've read a little about how the Nehalem chip detects when it's not using some of its cores and boosts the processing speed of the remaining ones or one ... making what was a 2.66ghz processor behave like a, let's say 3.xghz processor. Does anyone know what I'm referencing and if so, how this would be applied to the 2.26 8-core, in particular? I must say, it's discouraging to pay so much for what is nominally (and for some applications) a 2.26ghz machine.
Thanks.
Here's a link to the Intel page on it (it's under core i7 at present as the
Xeon chips have not yet officially been released but it is the same for
both I understand).
http://www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/index.htm
My understanding from the white paper and from some other reading is that the clock can increase in increments of 133MHz and I guess it is something like 1 step for 3 cores active (out of 4) up to 3 steps for 1 core active (3 inactive) so the maximum frequency of a 2.26GHz chip will rise only to that of a 2.66GHz chip (it doesn't help that the total cores for 2 chips are 8 because it is the number of cores on the single chip that has the active core that matters as it is all to do with local heat generation/dissipation). The 2.93GHz chip can thus go up to about 3.33GHz.
I hope that this helps (and is right!)
