Quad 2.93 MacPro Arrived Today

[Abidubi]

Wow... amazing. I was a little worried from reading this forum hearing about crashing, stuttering and funny smells but everything seems to be working perfectly. I have only been goofing around with it for about 45 minutes (I let it warm up via a regular fan as it felt about 0 degrees) and no problems what so ever so far. It is lightning quick (coming from the G5 in my sig). I ran COD2 multiplayer at max setting just for a quick test and it was smooth as butter. I even ran BF1942 to see how well it can handle old PPC apps and it ran just as fast as it does on my G5 so it looks like all games and programs from the PPC era will be perfectly usable due to the 3 years of advancement since. And it's much quieter than the PMG5. I hear my refrigerator 30 ft away much much more.

The 4870 sounds almost as loud as the G5 did when it was working full tilt (than fan must move a lot of air. But that only occurs during startup, then it is whisper quiet. When under load it might make a little more noise but I really don't notice it.

I haven't installed LCC yet as I want to make sure everything is fine before I do, but when I install it I'll report any problems.

I haven't switched all my stuff over yet, but I have switched my 300GB HD over which contains some of my documents etc. The hardest par about switching the HD was getting the cables unplugged in the G5.

Something that surprised the crap out of me is the internet speed. When I got high speed a couple years ago, I had an iMac G3 333Mhz. It could only download at about 50KB/s (a 3mb service) but when I got the PMG5 it would download at about 320KB/s for the same service. My ISP upped the speed to 5mb about 2 years ago and I got a download speed of about 530KB/s. Last year my ISP then upped it to a 7mb connection... but my speed never changed. I contacted them and they gave me BS like "maybe the quality of your home line is not good enough for a higher speed". I figured it was BS but I was being charged the same as before anyway so I didn't really care. Well I just switched the PMG5 out for the MacPro. I was still getting that 530KB/s speed with the G5 today but my MacPro gets... 890KB/s download speed, and upload went up from 80KB/s to 106KB/s. That surprised the heck out of me. I knew processor speed was an influence by my experience with the old iMac, and I always knew that when DLing on the G5 it would take a good chunk of processor time (safari CPU usage increases) but I thought the G5 would be capable of more. Both systems use airport, but that has nothing to do with it as they both get the same speeds whether using wireless or with an ethernet cable.

This system is looking good so far. $2499 or $2999 I don't really care when upgrading every 4-6 years.

 

[VirtualRain]

Congrats... I see you equipped it with 3GB of RAM... that seems to be considered peanuts around here (you would think from the posts around here that OSX can't run on less than 12GB!!! )... what was your rationale?

 

[DeepCobalt]

Congrats... I see you equipped it with 3GB of RAM... that seems to be considered peanuts around here (you would think from the posts around here that OSX can't run on less than 12GB!!! )... what was your rationale?

Well, my guess would be he went with the stock RAM and is going to buy 3rd party RAM to avoid Apple's overcharge... also, the Quad technically is limited to 8GB (unless 4GBs are shown to work).

 

[DeepCobalt]

Wow... amazing. I was a little worried from reading this forum hearing about crashing, stuttering and funny smells but everything seems to be working perfectly. I have only been goofing around with it for about 45 minutes (I let it warm up via a regular fan as it felt about 0 degrees) and no problems what so ever so far. It is lightning quick (coming from the G5 in my sig). I ran COD2 multiplayer at max setting just for a quick test and it was smooth as butter. I even ran BF1942 to see how well it can handle old PPC apps and it ran just as fast as it does on my G5 so it looks like all games and programs from the PPC era will be perfectly usable due to the 3 years of advancement since. And it's much quieter than the PMG5. I hear my refrigerator 30 ft away much much more.

The 4870 sounds almost as loud as the G5 did when it was working full tilt (than fan must move a lot of air. But that only occurs during startup, then it is whisper quiet. When under load it might make a little more noise but I really don't notice it.

I haven't installed LCC yet as I want to make sure everything is fine before I do, but when I install it I'll report any problems.

I haven't switched all my stuff over yet, but I have switched my 300GB HD over which contains some of my documents etc. The hardest par about switching the HD was getting the cables unplugged in the G5.

Something that surprised the crap out of me is the internet speed. When I got high speed a couple years ago, I had an iMac G3 333Mhz. It could only download at about 50KB/s (a 3mb service) but when I got the PMG5 it would download at about 320KB/s for the same service. My ISP upped the speed to 5mb about 2 years ago and I got a download speed of about 530KB/s. Last year my ISP then upped it to a 7mb connection... but my speed never changed. I contacted them and they gave me BS like "maybe the quality of your home line is not good enough for a higher speed". I figured it was BS but I was being charged the same as before anyway so I didn't really care. Well I just switched the PMG5 out for the MacPro. I was still getting that 530KB/s speed with the G5 today but my MacPro gets... 890KB/s download speed, and upload went up from 80KB/s to 106KB/s. That surprised the heck out of me. I knew processor speed was an influence by my experience with the old iMac, and I always knew that when DLing on the G5 it would take a good chunk of processor time (safari CPU usage increases) but I thought the G5 would be capable of more. Both systems use airport, but that has nothing to do with it as they both get the same speeds whether using wireless or with an ethernet cable.

This system is looking good so far. $2499 or $2999 I don't really care when upgrading every 4-6 years.

Congrats, by the way!!

 

[Abidubi]

My rational is

A) I really don't need more than 3GB right now.

B) When I do need it the price will have dropped anyway, so why buy it now.

C) We don't yet know if the 4GB modules will work. If they do, in 2 years or so they'll probably be very reasonably priced and I wont be throwing away $150 I spent on an upgrade I didn't need anyway.

What I needed was processing power, not cores. 1 core is a horrible choice now a days. 2 is fine but can easily be maxed out. 4 Is perfect for running several single threaded programs at once or a couple multithreaded programs. 8 cores is great for running tons of apps or heavily multithreaded apps, but means nothing in most situations. So I opted for the fastest 4 core instead of the slowest 8 core, and RAM was not an issue.

Hope that explains it. FYI I'll probably pick up 2 500GB WD caviar black's and raid 0 them for the OS, apps and document/user folder, then the 300GB will become a windows HD and a small partition for OSX should something go wrong with the raid, and the stock 640 GB HD will become a time machine backup of the OS and user folder/documents on the raid 0.

PS: 1GB of ram was penuts when I got my PMG5, and 5 years later 3GB was just fine and I haven't more than maybe 25 pageout in the past 1.5 years. If things go the same way 9GB will be just fine 5 years from now, and I may be able to have 12.

 

[VirtualRain]

It's refreshing to see someone who made a "reasonable" purchase... you clearly didn't get caught up in the hysteria that demands you must have 8-cores and 12GB of RAM to be productive! LOL!

It's soo easy to get sucked into that mentality around here.

 

[mattcube64]

Pics or it didn't happen!

That's the exact computer I hope to buy in the late summer during our tax free weekend. Quad-Core 2.66 stock but with a 4870. Congrats on the purchase!

 

[Plutonius]

Congrats...

That's the machine I'm thinking of getting but I'm waiting on Snow Leopard before I decide.

 

[Abidubi]

The 1 bug I just discovered is the static/snow that happens when waking from sleep sometimes. Hope they fix the issue soon, seems just like a driver issue.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Pics of your birth or it didn't happen

 

[OddThomas]

congrats! and can you have a nice long session with COD and let us know if the 4870 gets loud after and hour or so

the "whisper quiet" comment along with the Barefeats comments are really encouraging.. i am looking forward to getting a 4870 for my 08 MP.

 

[Mattww]

Nice write up. I'm trying to decide between a Quad and an entry 8-Core myself - it is great to hear that my old PowerPC games should run nicely in Rosetta.

On a Quad is it possible to run a H264 encode with Handbrake and still play a game like COD at the same time?

 

[peskaa]

Congrats... I see you equipped it with 3GB of RAM... that seems to be considered peanuts around here (you would think from the posts around here that OSX can't run on less than 12GB!!! )... what was your rationale?

I find that really annoying. My 2008 Mac Pro is running with 4GB of RAM and it is a champ, handling CS4 and Aperture with no problems at all - my RAM usage doesn't top out. I see little reason why people are insisting they *need* 8GB or more RAM to putter around on the internet and occasionally edit a photo or two.

 

[DeepCobalt]

So Abidubi, what monitor(s) do you have?

 

[RemarkabLee]

Nice write up. I'm trying to decide between a Quad and an entry 8-Core myself - it is great to hear that my old PowerPC games should run nicely in Rosetta.

On a Quad is it possible to run a H264 encode with Handbrake and still play a game like COD at the same time?

I'd imagine Handbrake (which is multi-threaded) will use as many CPU cycles as it can get its hands on, unless you reduce it's 'nice' value to allow other apps to run well enough.

I'm hoping Snow Leopard will have an easy way to control how apps prioritise - windows has had that functionality for years...

 

[seer]

Aye - congrats on the beast I got the same machine but couldnt quite stretch the to the 2.93ghz and had to settle for 2.66ghz but I have absolutley no complaints.

Yesterday I had the following running at the same time:

Adobe Master Collection was installing
Itunes playing
iPhone synching
iPhoto was doing its face search thing
iMovie was open
Copying 200GB+ of data from a Windows Home Server Machine
Mail Open
Calendar Open
Safari 4 open
Firefox open
Lightroom was auto importing around 1800 RAW 12megapixel images to it's catalogue, creating 1:1 previews etc
Adium Open
Probably some other things running that I forgot about...

I still wasn't using 3gb of the 6gb of RAM and the highest any of the CPU cores was at was about 20%, occasionally one or two cores would 'spike' to 40-50% ish

Seriously, the only things I expect to tax the quad will be gaming and video encoding. The gaming it will handle without any problem (more old core 2 duo 2.4ghz never maxes both cores gaming) and the encoding is something I do once a week maybe and for my barely pro-sumer needs will be leagues faster than my old (yet decently specced) PC.

The octo is overkill for almost every use except those who work in the heavy video world where they should be using some kind of render farm anyway!

 

[Abidubi]

So Abidubi, what monitor(s) do you have?

I'm using a 25.5 inch Samsung Syncmaster 2693HM. I got it because I have limited space and wanted to plug my 360 into a high resolution monitor. Before I was running it on my 20inch sony TV from 2001 and I couldn't make heads or tails of anything small on the screen (think GTAIV minimap icons).

I use the HDMI to hook up the 360, DVI for the MacPro, sound out of the MacPro into the screen (it has internal speakers that make me glad I have a 2.1 setup) and my speakers are plugged into the screen. HDMI carries sound so it works perfectly. If the source is DVI, I hear the MacPro. If I switch to HDMI I hear the 360.

I had a 20 inch apple cinema display that I got with my PMG5. It was much much better quality than any POS you buy at future shop. Even though it seems over priced ($799CAD for 20 VS $650CAD for 25.5) the quality is there. The view angle was great for the ACD except for the slight purpleness that you could see at extreme angles. But that sure beats the top half of my Samsung being darker than the bottom half because of the angle I'm viewing it, or the orange hue from the sides, or blacks becoming purple when viewing from above and whites becoming grey and light blue/grey becoming
white (basically reversing the colors in a list view). It's not the end of the world as I sit right in front of it but it reminds me why the ACDs cost as much as they do, they are well made. I'm still fairly pleased with my Samsung though. My ACD will be following my PMG5 which will be shipped to my father who is still using a damn iMac 333. I'll be putting the 9600XT back in and trying to sell the X800 though as it's just a waste with him and I might as well try to get $350CAD for it.

congrats! and can you have a nice long session with COD and let us know if the 4870 gets loud after and hour or so

the "whisper quiet" comment along with the Barefeats comments are really encouraging.. i am looking forward to getting a 4870 for my 08 MP.

I was playing EVE last night (max settings smooth as silk) as a total noob trying to figure out how it works, and the 4870 did not sound any louder than at idle even after a good 3 hours. It's obviously not as quiet as no fan at all, but it's way quieter than my old X800. I actually think the PCI slot fan is making more noise than it is.

About the "snow" issue with the graphics card. it's about 50/50 that if the computer or display sleeps, or I change the source, that it will have the snow bug when I try to go back. After trying a couple times (cycling through the video sources) it comes back sometimes after 1 try, sometimes after 5.

 

[sparkie7]

The 1 bug I just discovered is the static/snow that happens when waking from sleep sometimes. Hope they fix the issue soon, seems just like a driver issue.

Pics of your birth or it didn't happen

pure computer porn. the internals of the new MPs are sum'thin else! and that 4870 card. *awesome*

 

[DeepCobalt]

About the "snow" issue with the graphics card. it's about 50/50 that if the computer or display sleeps, or I change the source, that it will have the snow bug when I try to go back. After trying a couple times (cycling through the video sources) it comes back sometimes after 1 try, sometimes after 5.

Why don't you call Apple and have them send you a new ATI card? Maybe it's the card.

 

[OddThomas]

good stuff Abidubi. I also have the Samsung monitors a T240 and 22. They are fine and good since i sit right in front of them, but my daughter has an iMac and that screen is just beautiful. need to save some money and get the Apple 24.

 

[Infrared]

The 1 bug I just discovered is the static/snow that happens when waking from sleep sometimes. Hope they fix the issue soon, seems just like a driver issue.

Pics of your birth or it didn't happen

Hmm, you think it's safe there? It's sitting next to
an Xbox360 which could ... explode at any moment!

 

[Abidubi]

Hmm, you think it's safe there? It's sitting next to
an Xbox360 which could ... explode at any moment!

LMAO, it already RRODed about 2 months ago. At least M$ extended the warranty. I put a couple xbox game boxes between the MP and the 360 as a shield should it blow lol