What does the new Mac Pro lineup mean to me?

[advres]

I'm getting a sweet octo 2.26 refurb or new for CHEAP once they are released. As a FCP editor who does some work in After Effects but not too much, the added cores won't do jack for me and I can get a nice system cheaply! Thanks Apple for finally dropping them.

 

[Ravich]

Why are you getting an octad if the extra cores wont do jack for you?

 

[saxon48]

In answer to your question, you get a good deal on that octo refurb, and everyone buying the 12-core helps to stimulate the economy alot. haha.

 

[advres]

Why are you getting an octad if the extra cores wont do jack for you?

Because the long term value of the single proc quad isn't cost effective and in the HOPES that Apple gets their head on straight and fixes the apps in FCS suite that are lacking the ability to harness the extra cores.

 

[VirtualRain]

To this day, I still don't see much appeal to the 2.26 Octo. It's slower than a laptop at most tasks and there are painfully few apps which can extract the power of 8 physical cores (16 with HT).

 

[Ravich]

turbo boost theoretically helps with that, right?

 

[synth3tik]

I guess we really need the software to get up to snuff. As stated there are still issues within Final Cut that prevent the software from fully taking advantage of the multiple cores, same goes for Logic Studio. I am still running my 06 Mac Pro for this very reason. I may not have as many cores, but I do have a fast clock speed.

I feel there is not much in the way of differences between the the generations, therefor a refurb on the previous gen is a good buy IMO.

 

[CaptainChunk]

turbo boost theoretically helps with that, right?

Only to a certain extent. I think the max "turbo" frequency on the E5520 is 2.53GHz, still a tad slower than the currently shipping base quad-core MP, which is 2.66GHz.

This has been the biggest criticism since the base 8-core 2009 model launched. It's only faster than the 2008 8-core 2.8 it replaced in certain circumstances; but most of the time, it's not. And it shipped at a $500 increase in price over the previous model, while using cheaper processors.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

turbo boost theoretically helps with that, right?

The turboboost on the E5520 Xeon chip is pretty weak.

 

[advres]

Only to a certain extent. I think the max "turbo" frequency on the E5520 is 2.53GHz, still a tad slower than the currently shipping base quad-core MP, which is 2.66GHz.

This has been the biggest criticism since the base 8-core 2009 model launched. It's only faster than the 2008 8-core 2.8 it replaced in certain circumstances; but most of the time, it's not. And it shipped at a $500 increase in price over the previous model, while using cheaper processors.

So are you suggesting if I want an octo, I would be better off going with an older 3.0 or something for my edit suite? Serious question.

 

[Ravich]

So based on this thing right here

There is a leap from 3500$ 2.4 8 core to 5000$ 2.66 12 core?

 

[VirtualRain]

So are you suggesting if I want an octo, I would be better off going with an older 3.0 or something for my edit suite? Serious question.

Not that you're asking me, but if you really have a massive multi-threaded workload, your best options in my opinion are a) new 3.3 Hexa or b) refurb 2.66 Octo.

 

[CaoCao]

It would be nice if Apple's Professional software used up the number of threads the highest end Mac Pro could handle, would create major incentive to buy the Mac Pro.

 

[CaptainChunk]

So are you suggesting if I want an octo, I would be better off going with an older 3.0 or something for my edit suite? Serious question.

Not necessarily.

At this point, I'd personally look for a 2008 or later machine, because with a 2006-2007, you'd be tied down by an EFI-32 ROM and that limits your graphics card choices considerably.

And I didn't intend on making the 2009 8-core 2.26 look like a total dog. It's still a nice machine. But many of us wished Apple would have made the 2.66 standard instead, for the price.

The best bang for buck Mac Pro ever made was the 2008 8-core 2.8. I'm sticking with mine for a while in my edit suite.

It would be nice if Apple's Professional software used up the number of threads the highest end Mac Pro could handle, would create major incentive to buy the Mac Pro.

Don't we all? However, it's really easy to task every CPU at 95-100% in a Compressor job with a virtual cluster. And I've been loving the heck out of After Effects CS5; it uses all the CPU and RAM you want to give it.