Updated Mac Pro Benchmarks and Video of Internals

[milo]

This update still looks like a price increase and a downgrade to the base (non BTO) model.

And don't forget the ram limitation in the new quad, that's a deal breaker for many pro users and unquestionably another downgrade.

So, any "pundits" or PC fanboys still saying that the new MPs are more expensive and less of a value than the previous ones? The new MacPros are simply the most powerful personal workstations in the world...there is simply no room for negative comments.

Um, what?

The benchmarks show that the new machines ARE more expensive and less of a value. Are you looking at the same benchmarks as the rest of us?

And based on the benchmarks, these are NOT the fastest machines in the world by any stretch of the imagination, there have been faster benchmarks posted on other machines.

it doesnt beat it...doesnt it???

It doesn't beat it on single thread, but the old 8 core wins on multithread. But then on single thread the $2499 quad beats the $3199 new 8 core and comes very close to the $4699 model. Not very inspiring results for these new machines - the drop in clock speed would be much easier to swallow without the huge price bump.

 

[sneezymarble]

Try googling Hackintosh stability. There's always problems. You have to be really careful about doing updates. It's more of a hobby.... One day it works fine, and the next you have to figure out quirky problems.

I don't have any need to Google Hackintosh stability since I have all the knowledge I could ever want about it first hand. My Hack's been running perfectly stable for over a year. I use it for Photoshop, Final Cut, Zbrush, and a bunch of animation packages. Not only that but it even took less time to setup and install OSX on this system than it did to install Vista.

I don't doubt that people have problems with their Hackintosh machines and that they have to spend time at the expense of productivity getting them to work right. I do doubt that that is every Hackintosh users experience. Furthermore, I fail to see how the fact that Google returns results about Hackintosh stability entails the conclusion that all Hackintosh machines are unstable. And, I know for a fact it's not my experience. I set it up once, and it's worked reliably since.

 

[Plutonius]

My concern isn't as much the 2009 Mac Pros being internally price consistent, as the lack of price consistency of the CPU price points used between the 2008 and 2009 Mac Pros.

I was trying to show that it looks like Apple is getting a 30% margin based on the 2.26 octo vs the 2.93 octo.

If you compare the 2008 processor prices between the 3.0 octo and the 3.2 octo, you get a processor price difference of $644 and a Mac price difference of $800. Assuming that the 2008 3.0 octo and the 2008 3.2 octo are similar except for the processors, Apple was getting about a 25% margin based on the 2008 3.0 octo vs the 2008 3.2 octo.

It looks like Apple might have increased the margin about 5% but that doesn't even come close to the price increases we are seeing.

The price differences between the 2008 and 2009 Macs appears mostly attributable to parts, manufacturing, and overhead.

Another possibility is that Intel was giving Apple huge discounts in their 2008 CPU prices and they are no longer giving the price discounts for 2009.

 

[milo]

*sigh* I'm utterly amazed. Has anyone bothered to take a look at the i7 on Windows benchmarks? Maybe, just maybe, the Windows performance will give you some idea about the Nehalem performance on OS X once Apple has released Snow Leopard. NONE of the benchmarks you're running are using the hyper-threading features of the Nehalem. That's where it shines.

How do I know that? Because IT SHOWS IN WINDOWS BENCHMARKS. ****ARRRRGHHHHHH****

You're talking about vaporware. Apple hardware has ALWAYS had the potential to run way better with future OS and software updates. Plenty of people have bought knowing that their hardware was sitting idle since the software wasn't really taking advantage yet, but in the hope that the software would come through eventually...only for it to never happen.

Am I the only one who thinks that second hand Mac Pros are starting to become very good deals?

With the new release, used 2006 Mac Pros are bound to come down further in price and there's now a good number of video card options for them that are faster than the original offerings.

I just can't see it being worth $2500 for entry-level. The previous entry level Mac Pro was a couple hundred dollars less. Why in the heck has the price gone *up*?

I'm surprised the prices are still so high for the 2008 models - the 8 core machine that was $2799 is still $2499 or $2599, same as the old EDU price.

Ran CineBench R10 on my i7 920 Hackintosh, and its about the same as the Mac Pro Quad 2.66.

Thanks for that, and for the info about your system. Are you having any compatibility problems? Things like issues with sound playback? And does your cooling system behave well? Thanks.

 

[iMacmatician]

Another possibility is that Intel was giving Apple huge discounts in their 2008 CPU prices and they are no longer giving the price discounts for 2009.

Or Intel could be charging more for an early release.

 

[milo]

So for months now, people have been saying that you wont notice a dramatic increase in speed with the new nehalem machines running old software. Its been repeated on every site, numerous times that the clock speeds wouldn't improve substantially and so initially the improvements would be lost in the woods.

Why the complaints? How about that despite knowing all that, people didn't expect a drop in clock speed AND a drop from 8 cores to 4 on the low end AND a big price hike on the high end.

People would be fine with a modest improvement at the same price. Or a big improvement and a price bump. But this update is pretty much the worst combination of factors.

Does anyone read the news? It would appear that the newest Mac announcements have met with great success and increased sales. It appears that all of this whining is actually translating into increased sales for Apple.

If you actually read the article, it says that the increased sales are mainly mac mini and some iMac, it didn't mention increased MP sales at all.

why not just download HD content from i-tunes store

Because you already own movies on BR that you bought for your TV?

How does today's top-end Mac Pro at 3.3 GHz qualify as a "pitifully low clock speed"

I assume he was talking about the 2.26, you know, the drop in clock speed that came with the $500 price increase.

 

[DoFoT9]

It doesn't beat it on single thread, but the old 8 core wins on multithread. But then on single thread the $2499 quad beats the $3199 new 8 core and comes very close to the $4699 model. Not very inspiring results for these new machines - the drop in clock speed would be much easier to swallow without the huge price bump.

yup yup, there has to be something going that we dont know about (i smell conspiracy!)

 

[AdamJD]

My 2.66 Quaddie is three years old now and for the graphic design work I do it's still blazing. It's really the first Mac that I've owned that hasn't seemed to slow down over the years. I can't imagine the speed of this thing. Anyone else feel that with the advent of the Mac Pro that the Macs have extended their lifespans by at least two more years than they used to last?

Not sure about that - we always underestimate how powerful software will become and how bloated bloatware will become

I'm looking to upgrade my 2002 Dual 1Ghz though - I think 7 years with it is sufficient! LOL

 

[DoFoT9]

Not sure about that - we always underestimate how powerful software will become and how bloated bloatware will become

hardware can only go so far!! eventually the software will have to catch up!

I'm looking to upgrade my 2002 Dual 1Ghz though - I think 7 years with it is sufficient! LOL

7 years as a primary machine is great! as a secondary machine.. well.. its got another 10 at least!

 

[BenRoethig]

There have been a lot of negative comment on these updates. I was going to get the low end octa until I saw the speed/price combination. Now I'm set to wait maybe another year....

Let's see how sales go though. One thing Apple will respond to....

The thing about dealing with those with unconventional thought processes is the result you get with them isn't always the one you expect. Low sales could also reinforce their beliefs about laptops and all in ones.

Nope, installing RAM in my Early 2008 Mac Pro was dead-easy. The tray is an interesting twist on it as I guess it might be a bit easier, but it's not exactly a revolution. I'm more interested in why they opted for such huge heatsinks, why not liquid cooling? They could have saved a ton of space for a couple more PCI slots, or another row of hard-drives (8 internal drives would have been SWEET).

They tried that with the G5 and it was a disaster. The plumbing has a tendency to leak.

On which note, anyone know if the two bonus internal SATA ports are still there? THe previous Mac Pros had four for each of the hard-drive bays, plus two tucked away behind the fan (data connections only), they still there?

Used for the optical drives.

Can I stick a PCI x4 card in an x8 slot?

Sure can.
x1 slots can take x1 cards
x4 slots can take x1 and x4 cards
x8 slots can take x1, x4, and x8 cards
x16 slots can take x1, x4, x8, and x16 cards.
Mac Pro x4 slots can take any because they use the x16 connector, but x8 and x16 cards are limited to x4 bandwidth.

No Blu-ray, no sale.

No official support yet, but the optical drives are now SATA so you can install even the newest 8x Blu-Ray drives.

 

[AidenShaw]

get a mini instead

I'm looking to upgrade my 2002 Dual 1Ghz though - I think 7 years with it is sufficient! LOL

7 years as a primary machine is great! as a secondary machine.. well.. its got another 10 at least!

If you plan on running the "secondary" 24x7, you'd be better off to junk the G4 and get a mini.

The mini is much more powerful, and uses much less power.

Over 10 years, your power bills will pay for the mini.

 

[awulf]

Thanks for that, and for the info about your system. Are you having any compatibility problems? Things like issues with sound playback? And does your cooling system behave well? Thanks.

The system runs stable, I can even over clock it to 3GHz without any problems, I ran that benchmark at the stock speeds for a fair comparison. I leave it running 24 hours a day. The GPU fan runs at full speed constantly making a bit of sound, but not unbearably loud. I have ordered a passive cooling heat sink for it anyway http://www.coolpc.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=127_3&products_id=1464 .

All programs run as well as on any other Macintosh, no random crashes. Firewire, Ethernet and USB
work flawlessly. As well as the bluetooth dongle, EyeTV 410, RadioShark, Apple Cinema Display 20", HP Deskjet 970cxi, Canon LiDE 200 scanner, wireless mighty mouse and iSight. Goes to deep sleep and wakes up without any problems. I have two 1TB hard drives in a mirrored RAID setup initially from my Power Mac G4, it plugged straight in without any need to reconfigure the RAID. The SATA blu-ray drive also works, but cant play any movies due to lack of software for OS X.

As for sound, Microphone, Speaker out and SPDIF work. There is one little annoyance that occurs when the sound chip idles after a while, it causes the speakers to make a pop sound, but have avoided this issue with a program KeepSoundAwake that runs in the background, which solves the same issue on a lot of Apple Macs. But I have just upgraded the sound driver, and haven't been able to re-produce the pops since.

 

[DoFoT9]

If you plan on running the "secondary" 24x7, you'd be better off to junk the G4 and get a mini.

The mini is much more powerful, and uses much less power.

Over 10 years, your power bills will pay for the mini.

he already has the machine, may aswell keep it!! my family likes to keep our old machines (i dont pay the bills ).

a mini would of course be more powerful, but the G4 is more expandable, in terms of HD space anyways. thats the clincher for me. i use ALOT of storage.

 

[AidenShaw]

(i dont pay the bills ).

When you do, you may reconsider !

a mini would of course be more powerful, but the G4 is more expandable, in terms of HD space anyways. thats the clincher for me. i use ALOT of storage.

add USB drives at 1.5 TB per....

I wonder if the G4 still has the original 40GB ATA-66 drives in it.

 

[Infrared]

Thanks guys. So I suppose 4 cores @ 3.33 GHz can happen, if the heat and power consumption allow that.

So the next question is, how good is Apple's cooling? Is it good enough
to allow turbo boost to kick in?

Also, I notice that Dell's XPS 703x BIOS allows you to choose the level
of turbo boost. So it appears to be configurable, at least for the i7s.
This raises a possibility: could Apple have configured it a certain way?
Could they have disabled it entirely?

It would be nice to see some measured core speeds at this point. I am
not aware of anyone having posted figures yet.

 

[diamond.g]

So the next question is, how good is Apple's cooling? Is it good enough
to allow turbo boost to kick in?

Also, I notice that Dell's XPS 703x BIOS allows you to choose the level
of turbo boost. So it appears to be configurable, at least for the i7s.
This raises a possibility: could Apple have configured it a certain way?
Could they have disabled it entirely?

It would be nice to see some measured core speeds at this point. I am
not aware of anyone having posted figures yet.

It appears as though Apple is using ginormous heatsinks and relying on the system fans to move air around. So overall heat in the daughterboard area looks to be also constrained to memory heat and the heat of the proc before it (in the air flow). People are saying their Mac Pros are really quiet so it may be some time before anyone really gets them cranking.

Apple probably uses what ever default Intel sets. I am kinda surprised there aren't any EFI tools/hacks to expose more functionality.

 

[Infrared]

I was trying to show that it looks like Apple is getting a 30% margin based on the 2.26 octo vs the 2.93 octo.

No, you have calculated a margin on the price difference,
not a margin on the absolute price. I.e., you have wrongly
assumed that Apple's percentage margin is the same across
the range.

 

[Flavioparentiq]

Mac Pro arrival

My mac pro is arriving tomorrow, i'll be happy to do all the test the thread's readers request me for a week.

SPECS:

Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Nehalem
16GB (8x2GB)
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
One 18x SuperDrive

 

[cisco0623]

Awsome thread people.

I love reading users opinions and experiences.

I think value wise the new pro's are not such a great bargain, but I think each prospective mac buyer needs to say - what do I need my MAC for.

I like AdamJ have been running my dual 1gig G4 since (I think early 2002). I use it for Logic Pro. I cannot run logic 8 on it (lol) Leopard is OK, but I am finally ready for another 7 year run! The machine is perfectly fine, except that software is now too powerful for it. I don't mind waiting a few extra seconds to process files, etc - it keeps me humble lol

I will probably jump on a 2008 2.8 octo - That thing will be like light years jump compared to my G4, but what difference would I see between the 8-2008 and the new 2009? Probably nothing great.
The $700 difference I will save will allow me to load it up with 10 gig of ram and 2 1tb Hard drives, And I will still have $200 in my pocket. That thing will run the next 3-4 iterations of Logic and OSX fine for me.

I would advise anyone seriously shopping for a macpro to weight these realistic options like I have.

BTW AidenShaw, that cat is gorgeous lol

 

[DELLsFan]

Just how many cores do we need anyway?

Once upon a time it was all about processor speed. Now, it's all about how many cores there are. Do we really need 8 cores to rip/encode our Netflix DVDs?

 

[diamond.g]

Do we really need 8 cores to rip/encode our Netflixowned DVDs?

Yes we do.

 

[AidenShaw]

Do we really need 8 cores to rip/encode our Netflix DVDs?

Thieves need all the power that they can find....

 

[Flavioparentiq]

Awsome thread people.

I love reading users opinions and experiences.

I think value wise the new pro's are not such a great bargain, but I think each prospective mac buyer needs to say - what do I need my MAC for.

I like AdamJ have been running my dual 1gig G4 since (I think early 2002). I use it for Logic Pro. I cannot run logic 8 on it (lol) Leopard is OK, but I am finally ready for another 7 year run! The machine is perfectly fine, except that software is now too powerful for it. I don't mind waiting a few extra seconds to process files, etc - it keeps me humble lol

I will probably jump on a 2008 2.8 octo - That thing will be like light years jump compared to my G4, but what difference would I see between the 8-2008 and the new 2009? Probably nothing great.
The $700 difference I will save will allow me to load it up with 10 gig of ram and 2 1tb Hard drives, And I will still have $200 in my pocket. That thing will run the next 3-4 iterations of Logic and OSX fine for me.

I would advise anyone seriously shopping for a macpro to weight these realistic options like I have.

BTW AidenShaw, that cat is gorgeous lol

I totally agree. I needed mine for heavy final cut editing, photoshop batch action and after effect on full hd 1080p raw footage for a full feature narrative/animation live movie. I thought the 2.93ghz was too expensive compared to the 2.66ghz for only 17% gain, so I went for the octo 2.66 and plenty of ram (16gb) and even with such a beast I know I will still wait hours before the final rendering is over...

 

[mingus51]

Sure can.
x1 slots can take x1 cards
x4 slots can take x1 and x4 cards
x8 slots can take x1, x4, and x8 cards
x16 slots can take x1, x4, x8, and x16 cards.
Mac Pro x4 slots can take any because they use the x16 connector, but x8 and x16 cards are limited to x4 bandwidth.

Pardon my ignorance if I'm reading this incorrectly but are you saying that PCI cards can fit into the PCI-e card slots?

This would mean I wouldn't have to ditch my Delta 1010 in favor of a firewire solution

 

[Umbongo]

Pardon my ignorance if I'm reading this incorrectly but are you saying that PCI cards can fit into the PCI-e card slots?

This would mean I wouldn't have to ditch my Delta 1010 in favor of a firewire solution

Those are all PCI-E only.