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The 2009 (Gainestown) Mac Pro: Everything We Know
- Thread starter Tallest Skil
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Absolutely.
Interesting, but by no means conclusive. Real world testing is needed in conjunction with synthetic benchmarks.
Pls forgive, I'm replying as soon as I've read this, and haven't caught up with this thread in order to know whether what I'm about to say may already be redundant.
What I think is that if you haven't read and absorbed (and digested toward your own purposes) virtually *everything* (esp. re the relative values (in terms of effective/usable speed) of CPU power, RAM, hard drives, and software RAID) at Lloyd L. Chambers'
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/
as well as these two semi-reviews of the new Mac Pros
http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/2009-03-blog.html#_20090303MacPro (a review by the same Lloyd as mentioned above)
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal01.html
then you may want to check these out before plunking down your cash. I'm not familiar with your wants/needs, so I'm not saying that I think your plans are "off" or anything like that; just wanted to support you in making your best decision for yourself. HTH.
Lloyd makes some really good points.
One has to wonder what the heck Apple is thinking with the single Quad core model and pricing it that high.
-Kevin
As badly as I really need a new Mac NOW (chugging along on a 2001 Quicksilver w/ a 2 x 1.6 GHz upgrade and a mere 1 GB of RAM), I'm making a real effort to refrain from purchasing *anything* until reading his (and/or barefeats') forthcoming full review of the new Pros, especially because his quite dismissive article/review 2008 Apple MacBook Pro unibody was such an eye-opener for me. I may end up going with a refurb 2008 Mac Pro.
No...
There is a GAP between the first slot and second slot. The first one is double-wide.
Meaning that the double-wide 4870 does NOT cover up slot two.
http://www.apple.com/macpro/features/graphics.html ... scroll 3/4 of the way down.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Memory interface 128-bit
Frame buffer memory 512MB GDDR3
Memory bandwidth 25.6GB/s
Ports 1 Mini DisplayPort and 1 dual-link DVI
Slots occupied 1
Auxiliary power cables used 0
ATI Radeon HD 4870
Memory interface 256-bit
Frame buffer memory 512MB GDDR5
Memory bandwidth 115GB/s
Ports 1 Mini DisplayPort and 1 dual-link DVI
Slots occupied 2
Auxiliary power cables used 2
Loading the Mac Pro
I plan on using this for financial modeling. Some statistical analysis of loan and lease performance. Some AI applications of rules based systems and neural networks. The idea is to constantly be evaluating and re-evaluating my data constantly. Each of the rules would be tweaked and tested against the data to minimize losses without too big a hit on the number of loans and leases approved.
Similar process with neural network training. The training is a long process on a laptop. Many times the network can not be successfully trained. Once the network is successfully trained, the portfolio will be processed through to see how it compares with other trained nets.
Long story short, this will allow me to do much of my work in batch, minimize losses, and maximize profit margins.
I plan on using this for financial modeling. Some statistical analysis of loan and lease performance. Some AI applications of rules based systems and neural networks. The idea is to constantly be evaluating and re-evaluating my data constantly. Each of the rules would be tweaked and tested against the data to minimize losses without too big a hit on the number of loans and leases approved.
Similar process with neural network training. The training is a long process on a laptop. Many times the network can not be successfully trained. Once the network is successfully trained, the portfolio will be processed through to see how it compares with other trained nets.
Long story short, this will allow me to do much of my work in batch, minimize losses, and maximize profit margins.
Indeed he does.
Let's wait and see what the benchmarks say, Apple is usually a bit on the optimistic side .
That said, even if the benchmarks look good, what about RAM and harddrives ?
The little gain even the Apple figures promise might be challenged once you optimize your setup.
And then the OS and programs need to catch up and be debugged - looking forward to Rev. B here, I assume it will not only be way cheaper and a bit more powerful, but by then both the OS and applications will actually be capable of using the alleged performance gains.
Until then - buy, people, buy, I can't wait to learn from your experiences !
Ok More Questions
Alright this first question may sound stupid but here it goes. Like on wintel platforms you can swap out CPU chassis if you need a faster processor or anything like that. Its fairly common since Intel has pretty much switched over to 64 bits. On the Mac Pro can the same thing be done? Lets say I get the 8 core 2.26 GHz processor, can I upgrade that later done the road to the 2.93 GHz if I need to for any reason? I have asked this already but I don't think I asked it in the right way. I know I want a Mac Pro and nothing else. I'm die hard Apple (I work at an Apple Reseller store) and money isn't an issue although I don't want to blow 6 grand if I can help it. I'm a big time gamer, so I like to have Vista on my computer for that. On Leopard I do Aperture, Xcode, CS3 (waiting to get CS4), CAD, and in the future I do plan to be a game designer so I see myself running 3D Maya, etc. Which Mac Pro should I get? Its all mind boggling. Its just hard for me to figure out what's right, and know that I'm going to get my moneys worth. The last thing I want is to invest in something that I'll be disappointed with (which I doubt in this case).
Alright this first question may sound stupid but here it goes. Like on wintel platforms you can swap out CPU chassis if you need a faster processor or anything like that. Its fairly common since Intel has pretty much switched over to 64 bits. On the Mac Pro can the same thing be done? Lets say I get the 8 core 2.26 GHz processor, can I upgrade that later done the road to the 2.93 GHz if I need to for any reason? I have asked this already but I don't think I asked it in the right way. I know I want a Mac Pro and nothing else. I'm die hard Apple (I work at an Apple Reseller store) and money isn't an issue although I don't want to blow 6 grand if I can help it. I'm a big time gamer, so I like to have Vista on my computer for that. On Leopard I do Aperture, Xcode, CS3 (waiting to get CS4), CAD, and in the future I do plan to be a game designer so I see myself running 3D Maya, etc. Which Mac Pro should I get? Its all mind boggling. Its just hard for me to figure out what's right, and know that I'm going to get my moneys worth. The last thing I want is to invest in something that I'll be disappointed with (which I doubt in this case).
Yes. To use both of them, you will need to purchase the Mini DisplayPort to single-link DVI adapter and plug that into the Mini DisplayPort port on the graphics card that you get.
You can upgrade the Gainestown chips to other Gainestown chips, yes.
Huh? Oh, in response to what I said?
Gainestown IS Nehalem. Nehalem is the chip architecture, not a line.
There is:
Beckton: High end Xeon
Gainestown: Mid range Xeon (in the eight core Mac Pro)
The 3500 series: low end Xeon (in the quad core Mac Pro)
Core i7: Known as Bloomfield. In desktop PCs.
Core i5: Mid-range desktop chip.
and then Clarksfield, which I personally believe will be called Core i3, which will go in the iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook family. Clarksfield is the high-end laptop chip.
There were lower-end laptop chips, but the lines were cancelled.
and possible westmere... as it is just a die shrink (I know this wasn't the case with penryn, but still it is possible)
Westmere will be pin compatible with 1366, but no word on if electrically compatible.
How many times did this happen on LGA 775?
I think 1 out of 2 major updates worked with the previous model, the other didn't
I think the reason is simple for not making a wifi card standard in the Mac Pro:
There are just too many customers that don't want/need it for any number of reasons. If Apple adds it, the cost gets passed on to the customer - why make all these people pay for something they don't want? Work Stations are usually hard wired for max through-put and reliability.
There are just too many customers that don't want/need it for any number of reasons. If Apple adds it, the cost gets passed on to the customer - why make all these people pay for something they don't want? Work Stations are usually hard wired for max through-put and reliability.
I think that it is more for security reasons in businesses.
Because single end-user customers would love it standard.
Should we lock this thread and start a part 2? -- "Everything we really, really, know".
It could be a place for linking to benchmarks, unboxings, etc...
It could be a place for linking to benchmarks, unboxings, etc...
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