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Benchmarks: the unofficial eight-core Mac Pro

post #1 of 6
11/14/06 at 8:37am
Thread Starter 
Anyone have the balls to void their warranty and throw a couple Clovertown's into their Mac Pro? Hopefully, when apps become more multi-threaded, the scores will improve even more...

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/...9284700,00.htm

Jon
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post #2 of 6
11/14/06 at 9:06am
I take four things from this:

1. In the high end multi-threaded Apps, The Quad Core Xeons absolutely scream.

2. In consumer single threaded Apps the speed of your highest processor is more important than how many cores you have.

3. In that same single threaded environment, the latency of FB-DIMMs makes the Xeons quite a bit slower than Core 2 Duo machines running regular DDR2 DIMMs

4. Apple's Open GL/ gaming performance has come a long way towards reaching parody with windows. There is only a couple of frames difference.
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post #3 of 6
11/14/06 at 11:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BenRoethig

I take four things from this:

3. In that same single threaded environment, the latency of FB-DIMMs makes the Xeons quite a bit slower than Core 2 Duo machines running regular DDR2 DIMMs

Where do you see this in that benchmark? Hard to tell with the QX6700 they have spec'd as its configured slightly differently than the other test machines. It won the Quake 4 test but I'd have been happier if they had used the same card or at least listed who made the different cards.

FB-DIMMs are slower but I dunno given the iTunes performance that these benchmarks indicate by how much (8 core Xeon 5355 and 4 core QX6700 turned in the same performance).

Vinea
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post #4 of 6
11/14/06 at 11:52am
"parity" not "parody"; that would be the "Zune".


:P


minor nitpick

Quote:
Originally Posted by BenRoethig

I take four things from this:

4. Apple's Open GL/ gaming performance has come a long way towards reaching parody with windows. There is only a couple of frames difference.
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post #5 of 6
11/14/06 at 3:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by iomatic

"parity" not "parody"; that would be the "Zune".


:P


minor nitpick

Quote:
reaching parody

Some might have called it that when PC cards were thrashing Mac cards by 100%...on the same card...

Things have got much better. And will get even better due to Intel switch, using latest Gpus, Open GL 2...Leopard... and the 'multi-threaded' Open GL...

Lemon Bon Bon
You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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post #6 of 6
11/14/06 at 3:17pm
Quote:
I take four things from this:

1. In the high end multi-threaded Apps, The Quad Core Xeons absolutely scream.

2. In consumer single threaded Apps the speed of your highest processor is more important than how many cores you have.

3. In that same single threaded environment, the latency of FB-DIMMs makes the Xeons quite a bit slower than Core 2 Duo machines running regular DDR2 DIMMs

4. Apple's Open GL/ gaming performance has come a long way towards reaching parody with windows. There is only a couple of frames difference.

Good summary.

For things like Lightwave, the Octo will scream compared to a single PPC cpu system like a G5 iMac. And this probably excludes Apple's 'tweaking'. And Leopard.

However, it didn't seem that much faster than a dual dual core Mac Pro at 3 gig.

With the above caveat that Apple hasn't put together a system based on this cpu, optimised it or Open GL 2 or Leopard...other factors to consider...

But a dual dual 3 gigger with a price break after an Octo gets released? Will look like a bargain. It's looking as though it will be a good couple of years until software even begins to go Multi-core mainstream and catch up.

A 3 gig Mac Pro will do for a good several years once CS 3 is released. Along with Leopard and a G80 video card..?

I may yet pass on the Octo. We'll see.

Lemon Bon Bon
You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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