Quad 3GHz Mac Pro vs Quad 2.5GHz PowerMac

[THX1139]

Anyway I'm glad you guys aren't too angry with me cause this time forward is really going to be a power explosion on all personal computers and we all know here that OS X is the only way to fly with the new hardware. Once we get Leopard on board and the remainder of all the pro aplications go UB and MultiCore Optimized, 2007 forward are going to be amazing times for creativity with little to no waiting for any processes to get done. 🙂 Whoopie!

Yeah, now all we have to do is be able to afford it. Wonder what the price point on tigerton or clovertown is going to be. Probably way more coin than I have! How is it going to be possible for Apple or any other vendor to utilize those mega multi-core processers and keep the systems affordable for the common man? They are going to need a middle ground machine more than ever! Not every professional is going to need more than 4 cores let alone be willing to pay for it. I think the more processors, the more specialized the computer is going to become.

 

[50548]

The only conclusion following the advent of the duo MacPro x Leopard is this: Microsoft Windows is dead.

 

[epitaphic]

Not every professional is going to need more than 4 cores let alone be willing to pay for it. I think the more processors, the more specialized the computer is going to become.

This is precisely the transition we've been seeing for some time, becoming more and more apparent every 6 months. Computers are no longer general purpose machines. It's already happened to consumers: machines today are way more than what's needed for web and email. For prosumers, its just about right, for gamers, you can never have enough single core + GPU power.

I think its fair to say to that the Mac Pro is in a way too specialized already. If you look at it's server RAM for example, which group of professionals benefits from its strengths? How many professionals will actually be able to get close to using all four cores during their normal workflow?

The way i see it, there are about 8 mainstream lines of professionals:

- 3D Artists
- Coders
- Graphic Designers
- IT
- Multimedia Artists
- Musicians
- Photographers
- Video Editors

Who can fully utilize 4 cores right now? I'd say possibly 3D Artists, Musicians(quad G5 only), and IT.

Sure everyone else will probably get a 15% kick in performance in some apps but for the most part, 4 core Mac Pro is not going to make your apps run any faster (it does give the machine more headroom for ample multitasking though). Of course at the moment there is only a 4 core Mac Pro so it's a bit academic to discuss the fact that a 2 core Mac Pro would be just as productive and much more cost effective. However, as most of you probably already know, there are good chances of an 8 core Mac Pro in January.

Sidenote: This sort of update (new machine in August, new machine following January) is not new. It happened in 2002-2003 resulting in the top of the line machine introduced in August to drop 40% in price in January.​

So the interesting thing to speculate now is, if most of us have a hard time utilizing a quad to its full potential, what would an 8 core do for you? I know its not cost effective for apple at the moment, but in the future I suspect we'll be seeing 4-8 lines of professional macs.

 

[Cheese]

Freescale? Where does Freescale have a 64 -bit spot on their road map? (I want to know) Could this be.. really? Freescale? Now there's a twist I for one, did not see

 

[50548]

Freescale? Where does Freescale have a 64 -bit spot on their road map? (I want to know) Could this be.. really? Freescale? Now there's a twist I for one, did not see

Are they still around? I thought their business was all about embedded procs for cars and radios... 🙄

 

[chatin]

Mac Pro 64bit

Mac Pros will need 64bit Leopard to achieve their full multi-core potential. Expect all Core 2 based Macs to hold value well through the next release cycle of OSX Leopard.

Apple is still selling G5's on the website for $3299! Until
Adobe gets out - and optimizes - universal binaries, Quad G5 will sell for more than Quad Xeon Mac Pros!



🙄

 

[mashinhead]

Yeah, now all we have to do is be able to afford it. Wonder what the price point on tigerton or clovertown is going to be.

Yeah thats what i want to know. Because right now i have a dual-core powermac. I'm interested in this mac pro now, if i have huge upgradability options in the future, and also depending on price. I can wait til january, but if all that will happen by then is that there will be a 1K bto clovertown/kentsfield bto, I probably couldn't afford that anyway, and don't want to wait, but if they are going to upgrade everything, to the octo-core chip and prices are around the same, even if they increase, i would wait.

 

[Multimedia]

Mac Pro Isn't Cheaper 'Cause Of RAM Expense • But It's Definitely Faster Than Quad G5

Mac Pros will need 64bit Leopard to achieve their full multi-core potential. Expect all Core 2 based Macs to hold value well through the next release cycle of OSX Leopard.

Apple is still selling G5's on the website for $3299! Until
Adobe gets out - and optimizes - universal binaries, Quad G5 will sell for more than Quad Xeon Mac Pros! 🙄

Quad G5 is only $2799 on the SAVE refurb page. Refurbs are the same as new with a new warranty. But I think that would be a poor choice compared to a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is not cheaper because you have to add more expensive RAM. But it is faster overall and Rosetta Photoshop performance isn't bad. Quad G5 will also benefit from Leopard don't forget. It's not like Leopard is going to not be written to take advantage of the 64-bit G5 as well.

But I would not recomend a G5 Quad to anyone at this point. I'm pondering a Mac Pro purchase myself. But I'm going to try and hold out for a refurb or even see if I can wait for Clovertown. But I'm likely to be one of the first to snag a Mac Pro refurb when they hit the SAVE page in November-December. By then I may even be thinking about waiting for the January 9th SteveNote. Quad G5 is no slouch. But Mac Pro is faster overall.

And I thought you were married to your quad last week ......

While I may be married to my Quad G5, we're not exclusive and she likes a threesome with the younger faster models as much as I do too. 😛

 

[Liske]

Quad G5 is only $2799 on the SAVE refurb page. Refurbs are the same as new with a new warranty. But I think that would be a poor choice compared to a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is not cheaper because you have to add more expensive RAM. But it is faster overall and Rosetta Photoshop performance isn't bad. Quad G5 will also benefit from Leopard don't forget. It's not like Leopard is going to not be written to take advantage of the 64-bit G5 as well.

But I would not recomend a G5 Quad to anyone at this point. I'm pondering a Mac Pro purchase myself. But I'm going to try and hold out for a refurb or even see if I can wait for Clovertown. But I'm likely to be one of the first to snag a Mac Pro refurb when they hit the SAVE page in November-December. By then I may even be thinking about waiting for the January 9th SteveNote. Quad G5 is no slouch. But Mac Pro is faster overall.

What I most would like to know is how does the 2GHz Mac Pro stack up to the Quad G5.

And I thought you were married to your quad last week ......

 

[THX1139]

I stopped by the Apple store tonight to play with a Macpro. I'm getting ready to buy and thought I'd get some hands on experience to see how it performed with Finalcut Pro. I was especially interested in how it handles playback of uncompressed footage.

The store had a 2.6 hooked up to a 30"ACD. Everything on the machine was stock. I launched FCP and it appeared with a project already loaded (about 5 seconds). The project was a simple 20-30 second 720x480 NTSC clip of hockey game footage. I selected the clip and copied it to a new layer and threw a blend mode on it AND changed the speed to 85%. Next I copied and made another layer and changed the speed and offset it and changed the transparency to 80%. 3 layers total with the top two manipulated. I hit the render and it finished in about 30 seconds. 🙂

I know, not very scientific, but I just wanted to get a feel for how fast the Macpro would render manipulated footage. Anyhow, next I changed the output in project settings to "uncompressed" and hit render again. Again, it took less than a minute to render and the CPU usage in console was maxing out at only 42% per core.

Once the render completed, I hit the play button to see how the stock Macpro would handle playback of the uncompressed footage. It played for about 4 seconds then threw an error saying that frames were being dropped during playback. Not good. I was hoping that the Macpro would be able to play uncompressed footage from the timeline without 3rd party acceleration or setting up a raid. The error message suggested turning off RT effects (of which I did, but still had dropped frames) or get a faster drive. There was a couple other things the error suggested, but I can't remember at the moment. I wonder if having the ATI card would have made a difference? Not sure if FCP uses the GPU for playback, but I would think that should make a difference. Ram would probably help too. Anyone know what might be going on? Am I expecting too much out of this machine?

Sorry for sort of getting off topic. I thought this might be an appropriate area to post this; I wasn't feeling up to starting a new thread.

 

[Multimedia]

Thank For Testing FCP on Mac Pro In Apple Store • Underwhealmed Compared To What G5?

I stopped by the Apple store tonight to play with a Macpro. I'm getting ready to buy and thought I'd get some hands on experience to see how it performed with Finalcut Pro. I was especially interested in how it handles playback of uncompressed footage.

The store had a 2.6 hooked up to a 30"ACD. Everything on the machine was stock. I launched FCP and it appeared with a project already loaded (about 5 seconds). The project was a simple 20-30 second 720x480 NTSC clip of hockey game footage. I selected the clip and copied it to a new layer and threw a blend mode on it AND changed the speed to 85%. Next I copied and made another layer and changed the speed and offset it and changed the transparency to 80%. 3 layers total with the top two manipulated. I hit the render and it finished in about 30 seconds. 🙂

I know, not very scientific, but I just wanted to get a feel for how fast the Macpro would render manipulated footage. Anyhow, next I changed the output in project settings to "uncompressed" and hit render again. Again, it took less than a minute to render and the CPU usage in console was maxing out at only 42% per core.

Once the render completed, I hit the play button to see how the stock Macpro would handle playback of the uncompressed footage. It played for about 4 seconds then threw an error saying that frames were being dropped during playback. Not good. I was hoping that the Macpro would be able to play uncompressed footage from the timeline without 3rd party acceleration or setting up a raid. The error message suggested turning off RT effects (of which I did, but still had dropped frames) or get a faster drive. There was a couple other things the error suggested, but I can't remember at the moment. I wonder if having the ATI card would have made a difference? Not sure if FCP uses the GPU for playback, but I would think that should make a difference. Ram would probably help too. Anyone know what might be going on? Am I expecting too much out of this machine?

Sorry for sort of getting off topic. I thought this might be an appropriate area to post this; I wasn't feeling up to starting a new thread.

That's great info. Would you please tell us:

1. How fast that is compared to what Mac model-speed you are currently using?

2. IE Were you impressed or not so impressed with how fast-slow it rendered?

3. What kind of speed were you expecting?

I'm no expert, but my guess is that the lack of RAM may have been the culprit. Need more independent tests like this from other FCP users. Thanks a lot. 🙂

 

[Dunepilot]

- 3D Artists
- Coders
- Graphic Designers
- IT
- Multimedia Artists
- Musicians
- Photographers
- Video Editors

Who can fully utilize 4 cores right now? I'd say possibly 3D Artists, Musicians(quad G5 only), and IT.

There's been controversy on Apple's forums over the last few days about the fact that Apple has optimised Logic for quad-core Intel but has never properly utilised the quad G5. Owners of quad G5s have been up in arms about this, as it is being suggested this is a deliberate crippling to avoid admitting that the quad G5 is potentially faster for musicians (reverbs etc have historically been heavily optimised for velocity engine). Apple has removed the threads on the topic, which either points to a smokescreen, or to the fact that they may have software engineers working on rectifying it.

Whatever the case, this is not the way to please your professional customers.

 

[shawnce]

Mac Pros will need 64bit Leopard to achieve their full multi-core potential.

You care to define "their full multi-core potential"?

 

[THX1139]

That's great info. Would you please tell us:

1. How fast that is compared to what Mac model-speed you are currently using?

2. IE Were you impressed or not so impressed with how fast-slow it rendered?

3. What kind of speed were you expecting?

I'm no expert, but my guess is that the lack of RAM may have been the culprit. Need more independent tests like this from other FCP users. Thanks a lot. 🙂

1. Since I'm currently using a G4 titanium powerbook, the Macpro screams in comparrison!! 😱 (Don't ask why I'm using such an old machine...it's a long story).

2. Yes, I was impressed with the render. It was the timeline playback of uncompressed footage that sucked.

3. I was happy with the render speed. I was expecting the rendered footage to play back without dropping frames.

You're correct to assume ram might help. Hard disk speed is another factor because the CPU has to read the data from disk. If the disk can't keep up, then FCP is forced to drop frames. I'm not sure if upgrading to ATI card is going to help or not, as I doubt that FCP utilizes the GPU to any extent.

I'm thinking that anyone who plans to use the Woodcrest to handle uncompressed footage (especially HD), is going to need a breakout box or a raid setup. The way is see it, stock Woodcrest isn't going to cut it for high end compositing. Although, most video editors don't work in uncompressed so that may not be a problem for them, and besides, they usually have a raid setup.

I'm anxious to get a Woodcrest so that I can test it with more ram. I'll definitely go with a raid or 10K drive for the occasional time I need to work with uncompressed footage.

 

[epitaphic]

Owners of quad G5s have been up in arms about this, as it is being suggested this is a deliberate crippling to avoid admitting that the quad G5 is potentially faster for musicians

I think the deal is that when the G5 Quad came out, there was nothing to compare it to. Sure it was going to be faster than a dual but no app to this day can fully utilize it. With the release of the Mac Pro, all of a sudden there is another quad for comparison. With apple's traditional "we moved to a new machine and we'll go through hell to show you how it's much faster than what you've got" they're having to optimize the code to show it. Now why would you go and optimize the code for the old machine? All it'll do is show that the new one isn't that much faster for that particular app.

You know how there's politics in everything? There's also marketing in everything 🙂

 

[Multimedia]

ComputerWorld Review Positively Gushes • Hands on: The new Mac Pro is 'one screamer'

This ComputerWorld Review is far less restrained than the ArsTechnica moderate take:

Hands on: The new Mac Pro is 'one screamer'

You could say they are gushing over it. Looks like a home run in the PC world. Gonna get a ton of switchers - even if they only ever run Windows XP on it. Next question will be "Oh you have a Mac Pro. What OS are you running on it?"

Answer: Whatever works for the job. 😛

 

[AidenShaw]

Gonna get a ton of switchers - even if they only ever run Windows XP on it.

One big problem with running XP, though, is that you need the Boot Camp drivers from Apple.

If the MacIntel Pro were able to use any available device (any graphics, any PCIe card which has a Woodie driver, ...), then buying one to run Vista or Windows 2003 would make more sense.

As long as you're tied to proprietary drivers, though, it isn't nearly as attractive. There shouldn't be any Apple software needed to run Linux, Solaris or Windows, outside of a bog-standard BIOS implementation.

Hopefully, however, the Apple pricing will push down the prices on other Xeon workstations. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a comparable Dell to be $600 more than an Apple.

 

[tortoise]

The next Xeon is Clovertown, which is just Woodcrest scaled to 4 cores with a few changes in clock and FSB etc. Tigerton comes next, also 4 cores but MP capable (3+ chips possible) and with a possibility of increased FSB speed, bigger L2 cache and so on.

This will likely suck, because the interconnect Intel is using is just too damn slow. Putting four cores in the same package will just make the situation worse, because a lot of applications are significantly limited by memory performance.

The Woodcrest processors have been put through their paces pretty well on the supercomputing lists, and their Achille's heal is the memory subsystem. Current generation AMD Opterons still clearly outscale Woodcrest in real-world memory bandwidth with only two cores. Unless Intel pulls a rabbit out of their hat with their memory architecture issues when the quad core is released, AMDs quad core is going to embarrass them because of the memory bottleneck. And AMD is already starting to work on upgrading their already markedly superior memory architecture.

 

[amin]

Current generation AMD Opterons still clearly outscale Woodcrest in real-world memory bandwidth with only two cores.

Do you have a reference showing that this translates to better performance in real-world application tests in a head to head competition?

 

[chatin]

The Woodcrest processors have been put through their paces pretty well on the supercomputing lists, and their Achille's heal is the memory subsystem. Current generation AMD Opterons still clearly outscale Woodcrest in real-world memory bandwidth with only two cores. Unless Intel pulls a rabbit out of their hat with their memory architecture issues when the quad core is released, AMDs quad core is going to embarrass them because of the memory bottleneck. And AMD is already starting to work on upgrading their already markedly superior memory architecture.

This is one of the drawbacks of using a server CPU on the desktop. In lights-off Xserve this would not matter as most of the data is already cached in memory.

I think there might be lights out for future MacPro Xeons if AMD where to catch up in the race.

🙄

 

[daneoni]

Yeah im not surprised. I went to my local store today and saw one in all its glory attached to a 30" ACD. It was VERY fast, system prefs launched in micro seconds, a meaty FCP project opened in less than 5 seconds same for Aperture & Logic, 1080p HD trailers were chewed and spit out using less than 10% of processing power. Totally amazing and best part...its very quiet. I played with a Quad G5 once and it sounded like a jet engine taking off.

I defo want one but it'll cost me an arm and leg. Sigh...

 

[Multimedia]

Properly Serviced Quad G5's Are Silent Not Noisy At All

Yeah im not surprised. I went to my local store today and saw one in all its glory attached to a 30" ACD. It was VERY fast, system prefs launched in micro seconds, a meaty FCP project opened in less than 5 seconds same for Aperture & Logic, 1080p HD trailers were chewed and spit out using less than 10% of processing power. Totally amazing and best part...its very quiet. I played with a Quad G5 once and it sounded like a jet engine taking off.

I defo want one but it'll cost me an arm and leg. Sigh...

My Quad G5 is dead silent all the time. Those noisy Quads should have been sent off for repair. I was told the Quad in the Santa Clara Apple Store was also very loud. That is not normal. Properly serviced they run very silent.

 

[AidenShaw]

My Quad G5 is dead silent all the time. Those noisy Quads should have been sent off for repair. I was told the Quad in the Santa Clara Apple Store was also very loud. That is not normal. Properly serviced they run very silent.

dbA ? A system with 9 fans isn't going to be silent, period.

Are your systems in a room with a lot of ambient noise? (A wind-tunnel G4 sounds quiet at Best Buy, yet in my den I can clearly hear the fluid-bearing drive in my Yonah dual... 😉 )

 

[BJNY]

My Quad G5 is silent as well, unlike Dual 2.7's which rev frequently.

I was concerned that the fans at the rear ports never spin, even during the Apple Hardware Test, but I've noticed that in other Quads as well. CPU temps are 50 to 60 degrees celcius.
Multimedia, would you confirm both with your Quad G5, please?

 

[Multimedia]

How Do I Confirm Temperature and Fans Not Spinning?

My Quad G5 is silent as well, unlike Dual 2.7's which rev frequently.

I was concerned that the fans at the rear ports never spin, even during the Apple Hardware Test, but I've noticed that in other Quads as well. CPU temps are 50 to 60 degrees celcius.
Multimedia, would you confirm both with your Quad G5, please?

How do I do that? I never hear any fans from it. Analysis temperature Software links?