reezer
macrumors member
Now that I think about it, the Dell I use has 8 DIMMS that are expanded to 16 DIMMS via two riser cards everything ECC. I would suspect that the MacPro is too crammed to for that setup.
New 12-Core Mac Pros Now Available for Order
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Now that I think about it, the Dell I use has 8 DIMMS that are expanded to 16 DIMMS via two riser cards everything ECC. I would suspect that the MacPro is too crammed to for that setup.
billgates99
macrumors regular
What sort of practical impact can I expect to see going from 8GB or 16GB to 32GB RAM? 64GB?
When I went from using 4GB to 16GB, the main difference I noticed was that I could load large files in photoshop and media composer really quickly. also, I could switch back and forth between various creative suite apps without any lag. It's hard to imagine what it would mean to work with 64GB.
PeterQVenkman
macrumors 68020
Yup, it's fantastic. If you can't find it for under $600, just wait for a coupon. I signed up for a Dell Small business email newsletter and got 10% off when it was already on sale.
No matter what, though, you'll need a dongle to hook up to a mac laptop. Thankfully mine is still the old model with DVi on the side.
Dell also backs this up with their "premium" guarantee. Any dead pixels, bright pixels, stuck pixels, you name it, they send you out a replacement the next day. Wonderful.
It also rotates into portrait mode, but for the life of me, I can't think of a reason to do that in my workflow. Perhaps for some of those photoshop dudes out there.
jjahshik32
macrumors 603
Oh man not another Bluray comment!!
If you want a Bluray player to watch movies, just buy a cheap Bluray player!
reezer
macrumors member
Visualizing scientific data sets..... some of the unstructured data sets associated with large computational meshes for Maxwell's equations, Navier-Stokes, etc. exceed the 10GB range. If you want to render isosurfaces, etc. you need at least 10x the data set size in RAM depending on the visualization software you use. Most of those software packages also use all the cores you can feed them as well. 64GB is not a hard number, but it can take a 24 hour animation rendering down to 2 hours if you don't have to hit the swap.
typecase
macrumors 6502
Exactly right. I ordered a total of _6_ of the 12 core 2.96 GHz machines today with 12 - 24 GB of RAM for doing scientific simulation software development and visualization. We can use every core possible and every GB available.
I've literally owned each of the last 3 generations of Mac Pro... each bought the day they were released... and each maxed out. Every core they've added (even virtual ones) speeds up my workflow...
BTW: I've seen even more comments in this thread about the price of the entry level Mac Pro. I went and compared to the Dell T7500 with a quad-core nehalem... and the Mac is cheaper... and as I mentioned earlier the high end is nearly identical with the 12 core Westmere coming in at around $7k for both Mac and Dell. I really don't understand what people are talking about.
When you are talking about workstations you have to compare _workstations_. These are machines for accomplishing _work_... and are priced accordingly!
Help requested: MP vs iMac
I'm looking to replace my 2006 Mac Pro (2x3GHz Xeon, 2 GB RAM). I do scientific computing/statistical analysis, so pure processing speed is my main concern. I don't care about expandability, graphics, HDs, games, etc. -- just computational speed. I'm buying this for work so price is not a major concern, although value per $ is important. The main software I use is R, which doesn't (easily) take advantage of multiple cores. I'm hoping to keep whatever I buy for at least 4 years.
I had been planning to buy a new MP, leaning towards the 3.33GHz 6-Core Westmere. However, today I was in the Apple Store testing some R code on the previous Nehalem MP (they didn't have the new model yet) and the new iMacs (3.2 GHz i3, 2.8 GHz i5). I was surprised to see that performance for my needs was roughly comparable across all three machines. That being the case, I am now considering buying two 3.2 GHz 27" iMacs, which would cost about the same amount as one 6-core MP (and I wouldn't have to buy a separate monitor). With two iMacs, I could get true multiprocessor performance from R, even if each iMac is slightly slower than one MP. There would also be some work involved in stitching together the results from two machines into one set of results at the end, but I think I can deal with that.
I'd appreciate any comments anyone might have on this plan. Any drawbacks, or any issues I'm not thinking of?
I'm looking to replace my 2006 Mac Pro (2x3GHz Xeon, 2 GB RAM). I do scientific computing/statistical analysis, so pure processing speed is my main concern. I don't care about expandability, graphics, HDs, games, etc. -- just computational speed. I'm buying this for work so price is not a major concern, although value per $ is important. The main software I use is R, which doesn't (easily) take advantage of multiple cores. I'm hoping to keep whatever I buy for at least 4 years.
I had been planning to buy a new MP, leaning towards the 3.33GHz 6-Core Westmere. However, today I was in the Apple Store testing some R code on the previous Nehalem MP (they didn't have the new model yet) and the new iMacs (3.2 GHz i3, 2.8 GHz i5). I was surprised to see that performance for my needs was roughly comparable across all three machines. That being the case, I am now considering buying two 3.2 GHz 27" iMacs, which would cost about the same amount as one 6-core MP (and I wouldn't have to buy a separate monitor). With two iMacs, I could get true multiprocessor performance from R, even if each iMac is slightly slower than one MP. There would also be some work involved in stitching together the results from two machines into one set of results at the end, but I think I can deal with that.
I'd appreciate any comments anyone might have on this plan. Any drawbacks, or any issues I'm not thinking of?
Luis Ortega
macrumors 65816
I can't believe the outrageous prices for a MP in the last two updates.
If I had to buy a MP today, I would have to go to Windows or build my own hackintosh.
I'm glad that I bought my MP when I did, because it appears that it was the only sane time for MP prices in memory and for the foreseeable future.
When the 8 cores came out in early 2008 there was an attractive performance boost from the ones before, and here in the UK I paid about £1750 for a dual 4-core 2.8 ghz model with a bto upgrade on the graphics card.
Prices are about twice that now.
You have to wonder if the people at apple have gone nuts.
They are trying to sell 12 core machines and their pro apps like FCP are still using only one core and are 32 bit.
If I had to buy a MP today, I would have to go to Windows or build my own hackintosh.
I'm glad that I bought my MP when I did, because it appears that it was the only sane time for MP prices in memory and for the foreseeable future.
When the 8 cores came out in early 2008 there was an attractive performance boost from the ones before, and here in the UK I paid about £1750 for a dual 4-core 2.8 ghz model with a bto upgrade on the graphics card.
Prices are about twice that now.
You have to wonder if the people at apple have gone nuts.
They are trying to sell 12 core machines and their pro apps like FCP are still using only one core and are 32 bit.
theSeb
macrumors 604
You haven't specced like for like. The processor is a different kettle of fish to the one found in the Mac Pro.
theSeb
macrumors 604
Yup, it's fantastic. If you can't find it for under $600, just wait for a coupon. I signed up for a Dell Small business email newsletter and got 10% off when it was already on sale.
No matter what, though, you'll need a dongle to hook up to a mac laptop. Thankfully mine is still the old model with DVi on the side.
Dell also backs this up with their "premium" guarantee. Any dead pixels, bright pixels, stuck pixels, you name it, they send you out a replacement the next day. Wonderful.
It also rotates into portrait mode, but for the life of me, I can't think of a reason to do that in my workflow. Perhaps for some of those photoshop dudes out there.
Portrait mode is excellent for developers and any one that works with a lot of text, say for e.g. DTP publishing.
theSeb
macrumors 604
UK prices are outrageous; the US prices are pretty fair on the high-end machines.
I have to say that I struggle to understand the complaints about the price and the amount of ram and everything in else in between.
Let's take a look at this rationally.
Dell Precision T7500 Workstation
1x ugly box
1x Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit,
2 x Dual Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5650
Basic Limited Warranty
2 GB (2 x 1GB ECC 1333 MHz) - the shock, the audacity, the insult!
256MB ATI FireMV® 2260, 2MON, 2 DP w/ 1 DP to DVI Adapter
250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 8MB DataBurst Cache (GASP. I CAN GET A HOME COMPUTER WITH A GAJILLION TERABYTES FOR $899 - THE OUTRAGE)
16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD/Roxio Creator,
no display, no soundcard
Dell Keyboard + Dell Mouse
$4620 Excluding TAX and SHIPPING
Mac Pro
1x Not ugly box
1x Mac OSX Snow Leopard
2 x Dual Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5650
6GB (6X1GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
One 18x SuperDrive
No Display
Apple Magic Mouse, Apple Keyboard with numeric keypad
Basic warranty
$4999 Including TAX? (I think) and definitely including SHIPPING
Digital Skunk
macrumors G3
Only somewhat. It's still Core i7, just not the server variant. You won't notice a difference between the two.
theSeb
macrumors 604
Intel makes too many bloody different, yet similar chips these days. It's difficult to keep up. I miss the simpler days of 80286 and 80386. My 286 had a turbo button to choose between 8 Mhz and duper speedy 16 Mhz.
cmaier
Suspended
You will if the calculations you are performing actually matter.
xBerserker
macrumors member
Exactly what I was thinking. That's my plan for the moment. But I won't be able to buy one until later this year. Saving up .. slowly.
Digital Skunk
macrumors G3
Yes, if and only if. But even for high end video encoding, virtualization, and many other middle-high end users the regular Core i7 chips at $1000 or so cheaper are a great option. Even more so if it can afford you a second or third machine for bridging.
theSeb
macrumors 604
macperformanceguide has some interesting benchmarks and they agree with your thinking. The single CPU 6 core 3.33 GHz will be the one with the best bang for buck for *most* users.
xBerserker
macrumors member
Configure here with a motherboard supporting ECC, and then replace the minimum RAM selected with your own ECC RAM from elsewhere:
http://www.titanuscomputers.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=W1A-STATION+SLI
cmaier
Suspended
Sure. But i7 is often not a good option for scientific, engineering, design automation, and a large number of other purposes. Mac Pro's are competing against other workstations, not against prosumer desktops. Apple doesn't compete directly there. It's fine to point out that Mac Pro's aren't a good value for those who don't need what it offers, but too many people label Mac Pro a rip-off because they are comparing it to systems against which it isn't designed to compete, instead of against its actual competition. It's like calling a Porsche a rip-off because most people only need 150 hp.
Umbongo
macrumors 601
maybe in the next revision Apple will move to 6 RAM slots per CPU
The next high end socket supports quad channel memory so it'll probably 4 again unless they revise the enclosure.
benpatient
macrumors 68000
so wait...which machine is apple selling to HD video editors?
An iMac or MacBookPro won't do it because you need more hard drive throughput (RAID 0) than either of those can manage if you're dealing with a lot of content.
And yet a Mac Pro with 4 internal SATA drives and an external 8-port RAID controller can push/pull 300+ MB per second. If that Mac Pro had i7 processors in it, then the FinalCut Pro junkies would probably actually have faster render times, too. I am pretty sure that Apple sells a lot more Macs to FCP users than to xGrid users who honestly could care less which OS is running their custom-compiled simulations and molecular computations.
It seems like some combination of arrogance/laziness than is keeping them from releasing a machine that could truly sing with their own flagship editing suite at a reasonable price. An i7-based Mac Pro with an externally-powered RAID box could probably cut complex video task processing time down 20-30% and end up costing less. Apple could make one and add an extra 500 bucks premium over their current Mac Pro premium and it would STILL be cheaper just because the relatively exotic (expensive) RAM and CPU were mainstream.
cmaier
Suspended
How many professional HD video editors are there? How many engineers, scientists, mathematicians? Does apple have to serve every market?