Apple intros new Mac Pro with "Nehalem" Xeon processors - Page 13

In the UK, the outgoing 23" Cinema HD Display was priced at £549, and the new 24" LED Cinema Display is priced at £635. So there's a 16% increase in the RRP.

That said, you are getting LED backlighting, an iSight camera, a means of charging a MacBook and speakers of sorts so the new 24" display does represent good value for money (in my book anyway).

Melgross: good to hear that you were indeed right about the quad-core variation supporting more than 8GB of RAM. That gives the quad-core a lot more breathing space in terms of upgradability further down the line.

Just for fun (I need to get out more), I compared the cost of the quad-core and the eight-core where each was upgraded to 16GB of RAM via Crucial. The cost of the 4GB DIMMs means that it's actually cheaper to buy the eight-core machine (for the moment at least)!

4x 2.66GHz / 16GB (4x 4GB) = £3,600.98
8x 2.26GHz / 16GB (8x 2GB) = £2,825.56

It's probably not a realistic comparison, but I thought it was an anomaly worth mentioning.

Fingers crossed, the cost of the higher density 4GB DIMMs will come down shortly!

That is a salient point. I think that is the main reason Apple advertises the quad as only being available with up to 8GB RAM.

Of course, if Apple's implemented the support Intel has in their workstation line for 8 GB and 16 GB DIMMS, then we will all be thinking about upgrading when the price for the 8 GB parts drop early next year, and later, when the 16 GB parts arrive, then drop.

I hope this has been done.

My concern is that it won't void the warranty to put 12 or 16GB of RAM in these machines. Doubtful but who knows.

No way.

I wouldn't worry about that at all.

This is why I always tell people to keep their Apple RAM when they upgrade. RAM is easily replaceable, and it's aupposed to be replaceable. just pop the original RAM back in.

As long as your problem isn't being caused by the third party RAM, which is why keeping Apple RAM is important, as you can put it back, and see if the problems persist, then Apple won't know, or care.

Of course, the one problem I had with a Mac was way back in 1992 with my Quadra 950. Everything was fine until I upgraded the RAM past a certain point. That machine had 16 SIMM slots. I went past the first 8, and had problems with the system recognizing the extra RAM. I got all sorts of crazy numbers.

It turned out that one of the SIMM slots was bad, and Apple replaced the mobo under warrantee, two weeks short of the warrantee running out!

I hadn't returned the computer to them, but to Tekserve, who didn't care what memory was inside. They checked it out, and got the mobo from Apple.

Unless you have a GOOD repair place that does work for Apple, you must return your machine to them with their memory.

A few people have complained over the years that Apple removed their third party memory because it either was defective, causing the problem, or didn't meet Apple's specs, causing the problem, and charged them for Apple memory AND repair costs.

So, keep your Apple RAM, but don't be afraid to upgrade with third party memory from a known, well regarded vendor, and NEVER buy cheap memory from some non Apple memory supplier.

As long as the memory is spec'd to work in the machine, it will be fine. just follow the instructions.

One thing I can say about the New Mac Pro 'Nehalem' quad cpu. My PC owning friend has a PC Nehalem quad core 2.66 o/clocked to 3.3 I think.

It's pretty close between it and a 3.06 core duo on single threaded apps.

But on multi-threaded?

Hyper-threading really kicks in on a Cinebench. 8 Virtual cpus? Ran out twice as fast as my iMac. My iMac score 6700 ish I think.

His Nehalem? Just over 14k. Over twice as fast on 3D rendering.

I can't wait until Apple release a 'Nehalem' iMac or a sane priced single 8-core tower.

Nods. Nehalem is impressive for 'serious' lifting work. But I still think it's lower clocks are holding it back.

If it was in the 3.6-5 gig range. Party time.

Anybody who has an 8 core 2.66 model Mac Pro should be in heaven right about now...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Yeah, it's very good. My dual 2.66 scored about 16,600. That's with the standard 6 GB RAM, as I haven't upgraded that yet, but with the 4870.

It's going to be interesting where the clocks on Nehalem go to. If only AMD was off the canvas and competing again... I'd like to see them pushing Intel. But that's a daunting task. I can't help but feel there's more to come from Intel and they might be sandbagging to some degree.

People are overclocking the Nehalems to some insane speeds with air cooling. Seems to suggest the chip 'has legs'.

I haven't ruled out a future Mac Pro purchase...but things like the lack of 30 inch LED, and gpus like the new GPUs from Nvida giving 280 performance for the price of the 260 (and I'd like to see the Nehalem chip mature a little more...) well...I'd like to see things like that at the Apple store and a return to sane pricing before I jumped on board.

Nehalem...one nice chip with an even brighter future.

...and when, if Apple puts one into an iMac (with a 28 inch screen I hope!) they'll have to beat the consumers off with a stick.

Lemon Bon Bon.

16K? That's almost 3 times the speed of my iMac in rendering. Not bad at all.

What did your 4870 score in the Open GL test?

For reference my 'new' iMac scored 6600-ish with the 8800GS.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Apple, like other workstation vendors, is very conservative. While I'd like to see them clock the 2.93 to 3.5, and my 2.66 to 3.1, it's not gonna happen. Intel also calls for 1333 RAM for the 2.66 and faster machines, but Apple isn't doing that either.

Our only hope is for a third party cpu upgrade company for the Mac to get off their a**'s, and to get cracking designing a new cpu/memory board that will allow that. When Intel moves off the 1366 socket later next year, a new board would also allow the next generation of chips beyond the 32nm shrink we'll see late this year, and the first half of 2010.

I spoke to the owner of one such well known company, and he admitted that they were looking into it. I'n trying to push him further with this. These companies can't live on G3 and G4 retreads forever.

I don't see what the lack of a 30" LED monitor has to do with the purchase of a Mac Pro. If you really want one, Samsung makes a good one for $2,890.

The price of the Mac Pro is less than the price of my Quadra 950 in 1992 by a great amount, half when inflation is taken into account. And it costs a third as much, if you take the $3,800 Radius graphics card I had to get with it.

The numbers are on their their site. I'll have to look it up.

I went back to the site. Somehow, my name is on the test, when I logged in. but it's the second one down from the Sun X4450. The actual number is 16,460. I got the 6 in the wrong place.

It hasn't got the graphics card results there.

I was going to re-do it when I upgraded my RAM. I even left a note there to mention that, but can't see it now.

I did find my x-Bench scores.

The overall results are 218.43. The Open-GL score for the Spinning squares is 246.51 at 312.72 fps.

there's a lot of variability on both Geekbench and X-Bench.

I just recieved my brand new Nehalem quad core mac pro with the radeon video card.
I have installed an another HD (1,5 Tera) and I am transfering right now all the files of my previous mac quad G5.
I just hear the G5, wich is very noisy.

Grats!

Thanks
Two more hours to wait, until I can try this new beast.
This new mac is very well build.
I have just added a new HD (1,5 Tera) the carrier, have beautiful inox screw, with silent block. This is definitively an improvment compared to my quad G5.

I am considering the purchase of a new Mac Pro. Does anyone know if I purchase the computer with a SATA (not RAID) drive initially, is it possible to upgrade to SAS RAID using the internal drive bays sometime after the initial purchase (field upgrade)?

Does anyone know if third party RAID cards would work as well, also using the internal drive bays?

Thanks.

Yes, you can do that at any time.

There are several SAS raid cards for the Mac Pro.

http://eshop.macsales.com/search/SAS+card

There are others.

Thanks.

If I purchase the system with SATA drives and then later add a SAS RAID card, can I still use the 4 internal bays with SAS drives? Meaning is there a connector on the motherboard to plug a cable from the SAS controller (probably not the Apple controller) into the motherboard to connect to the 4 internal bays?

Thanks.

Jerry

You just use the card, and everything will work fine. I don't remember all the details.

Thanks. So it appears from your reply that there is a connector on the motherboard or such to which a cable connected to a 3rd party SAS RAID card can be connected to use the 4 internal bays with SAS drives (replacing the single SATA drive in the original order and shipped computer).

This helps because I plan to order the computer initially with a single SATA drive and later change to a 3rd party SAS RAID controller using the 4 internal bays and up to 4 external drives.

Jerry

The computer checks for the SAS card, and does its thing. I forget if you need to set something in the software, but it doesn't need any connectors as far as I know.

Hey guys,

Do you know if it is possible to put a NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT card from an Early 2008 Mac Pro into the Nehalem Mac Pro?

The reason I ask is that card struck me as having decent performance and two proper DL DVI connectors?

Should. The GTX 285 also has two DVI connectors.

Can the new Mac Pro support multiple video cards at full speed - or just whatever's installed in the double height slot?

Whatever cards are installed in the second 16 lane slot will use all 16 lanes if they normally would. The other two slots are for 4 lane cards. I doubt if the Nvidia 130 cards would benefit from more than 4 lanes.