Apple intros new Mac Pro with "Nehalem" Xeon processors - Page 3

Originally Posted by Funbruk

So which should I get? The base Mac Pro or the high-end iMac?
I'll use it mostly for games, Photoshop, some Final Cut and 3D...

(Which has the best price compared to it's features?)

Originally Posted by Jarman

- Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 6GB (6x1GB)
- 640GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
- 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
- ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
- One 18x SuperDrive
- Apple LED Cinema Display (24" flat panel)
- Apple Mighty Mouse
- Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) and User's Guide
- AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Card with 802.11n
- AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll

Is this really worth the five grands they are asking me? Give me a break.

Originally Posted by ClassicGuy

My understanding is they want memory in groups of 3 to work "best" with the controllers... so why only 8 slots? You can toss the OM RAM (3 1G sticks) and go with 3 2G sticks for a max of 6G. And THAT'S IT????

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I agree that the price is high, but the price of Mac pros is always pretty high anyway and mostly inconsequential to the purchase decision.

My biggest gripe about this machine is that if the picture is accurate, there seems to be a new motherboard, and new configuration of the entire lower half of the insides. So again, while masquerading as an "upgradeable" Mac, this machine is essentially completely different from the previous model.

I'm not really sure why they even bother to let us open the case since the odds of upgrading a Mac pro past the stuff that you generally get when you purchase it, are something like slim to none. Anyone know if the new processors would pop into the older MacPros? It sure looks like the answer is no yet again.

Originally Posted by e1618978

But according to the ratings on the apple store, the DisplayPort to DVI converters suck mightily.

I don't really follow graphic card revisions and what not - but I found this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...D_4830/26.html

Am I right in assuming that the new 4870 graphics card is a 15% faster card than the 8800gt I have in my 6 month old mac pro? When they update the 30" monitor to displayPort, I may upgrade - but it seems like kind of a blah upgrade, for what will probably cost $600.

Originally Posted by drblank

I was wondering why they removed the 15,000 RPM drive option when they have benchmarks on Apple's MacPro site for read/write speed tests using both 15,000 and 7,200 RPM drives for those tests.

Don't they realize that people need the 15K drives for video apps?

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I didn't say it was Apple's fault, but has there *ever* been a time when the processors could be upgraded? I'm just saying there is a disconnect between the perceived upgradeability of this machine and the reality. It's a tower, but it's simply not upgradeable in the same sense as any other tower. You can add a new video card and a bit of memory. You can add speciality cards too but few exist and most users don't have much of a need for that last survey I read on the subject. It's almost the case that an iMac with easy access to hard drives and memory, could fill this same spot on Apple's line-up.

Exactly, so my "old" machine (hardly a year old) is using incompatible memory and processors from this "new" one. And every time this happens, someone posts to the effect of how happy they are that the new machine is so fantastically "upgradeable" when in fact we might be in the same spot talking about the same thing next year.

I understand all the reasons behind it and the technology choices, but I still have a problem with creating the impression that this is the same upgradeable "tower" type computer we are all used to when in fact it's barely upgradeable at all.

With WiFi, eSATA, and the advent of ZFS, they would be better off offering a much smaller sealed box with just the processors and memory that manages remote or connected storage and put the graphics in the monitor on a small replaceable board IMO. That way, since the processors and memory are hardly ever upgradeable separate from the motherboard, they can be bought (and tossed) as one unit.

Originally Posted by e1618978

The apple webpage says that you can have two monitors on one card, one with dvi and one with displayport. Eight monitors max with four cards.

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

Okay, I should have edited that before I sent it out but calling folks "fools" is not necessary. My point was about the (again) lack of any upgradeability options on what is supposed to be a "tower" type machine.

The MacPro being what it is, could easily be designed so that a new motherboard (along with the new memory and processor architecture), could be dropped in, but yet again they haven't done that either. I'm just saying that with the almost complete lack of upgradeability from the flagship model introduced just last year, this thing might as well be a sealed box.

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Beautiful Systems as always.

NO SLI: No Tesla, No massive OpenCL.

What the hell?

Give me this beautiful system with 3 Full-size PCI-Express 2.0 slots.

Originally Posted by e1618978

The apple webpage says that you can have two monitors on one card, one with dvi and one with displayport. Eight monitors max with four cards.

Originally Posted by ClassicGuy

My understanding is they want memory in groups of 3 to work "best" with the controllers... so why only 8 slots? You can toss the OM RAM (3 1G sticks) and go with 3 2G sticks for a max of 6G. And THAT'S IT????

Originally Posted by mark2005

According to Intel pricing at Xbitlabs.com, a 4-core 2.26 Nehalem Xeon (E5520) chip is $373 (in quantities of 1000). The 4-core 2.66 Nehalem Xeon (E5550) chip is $958. The Intel price difference for two chips is $1170. But Apple could be getting a much better price (like $300 or less) on the Mac Pro standard 2.26 chips since they're buying those in much larger quantities than the Mac Pro optional 2.66 chip, moving the price differential over $1300.

So yes Apple is taking a piece, but almost all of the cost difference is attributable to the Intel pricing.

Originally Posted by macshark

These prices are not reasonable. 8x2.66GHz should have been $2999. Offering a $3K+ high end machine with 2.26GHz processors in this day and age is shameful. Looks like Intel is upset with Apple and is no longer providing "preferred" pricing on processors.

The sad thing is that introduction pricing sets the price of a new Apple model throughout its life cycle. Intel will drop the price of the Xeon 5500 processors several times over the next year, but Apple will not pass these savings on to Apple customers. This is probably one area where companies like HP/Dell do better than Apple, as soon as Intel drops their processor/chipset pricing, they also drop their retail prices...

Originally Posted by freakboy

the new chips have 3 memory controllers, so they run fastest w/ the ram chips in sets of 3. It is weird that the ram slots aren't in sets of 3. On core i7 MBs, they mostly have 6 ram slots.. max 24 gigs. (if you can find the 4 gig ram chips).

These mac pros seem like huge bastards if you ask me. They don't know what they are!

And I know they're meant to be workstation class machines, but still, the prices are ridiculous. On the other hand, the new memory architecture is significantly superior to the previous mac pros.

Originally Posted by superkaratemonkeydeathcar

I don't get how an i7 Xeon would be different in mem channels than the consumer i7 cpu.

Originally Posted by melgross

Yeah, this is odd. There are up to three memory channels available. Memory should come in threes. I expected 9 memory slots.

Unless Apple is only going with two memory channels.

What's interesting is that according to testing at Anandtech and other places, three channels of memory didn't give a real performance boost.

We'll have to see when reports come out.

Originally Posted by theBigD23

How can anyone not see this as another price increase? Last year, the price went from 2500 to 2800 and this year, it's going to 3300, for the same type of machine. YES, it's faster, but systems always get faster and cheaper too. The Mac Pros are just getting more expensive. The iMac's got faster, with more features, but are getting cheaper. I'm very happy with my purchase last year. SL and a new hard drive and I'm set.

Originally Posted by DimMok

Its hard to perfect...."perfection".

Still a sexy looking cabinet.

Originally Posted by melgross

No SLI, yes, but the rest?

How do you come to that conclusion?

Though I don't seem to know what Tesla is suppose to be.

OpenCL consists of an API for coordinating parallel computation across
heterogeneous processors; and a cross-platform programming language with a well-specified computation environment. The OpenCL standard:

• Supports both data- and task-based parallel programming models
• Utilizes a subset of ISO C99 with extensions for parallelism
• Defines consistent numerical requirements based on IEEE 754
• Defines a configuration profile for handheld and embedded devices
• Efficiently interoperates with OpenGL, OpenGL ES and other graphics APIs

Originally Posted by brownreese

I marvel at the Pro's design esthetics every time I need to open the case for maintenance. It is a piece of art. I'd rather they continue focusing on improving speed than developing a new look.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

If there are 3 or 6 DIMMs (per socket), the memory controller operates in triple channel, if there are 2 or 4 DIMMs, it operates in dual channel.

Originally Posted by winterspan

And whats up with removing the sole Quadro card?? Apparently professional 3D modeling/animation/CAD/ users don't use the Mac Pro anymore...

Originally Posted by mark2005

According to Intel pricing at Xbitlabs.com, a 4-core 2.26 Nehalem Xeon (E5520) chip is $373 (in quantities of 1000). The 4-core 2.66 Nehalem Xeon (E5550) chip is $958. The Intel price difference for two chips is $1170. But Apple could be getting a much better price (like $300 or less) on the Mac Pro standard 2.26 chips since they're buying those in much larger quantities than the Mac Pro optional 2.66 chip, moving the price differential over $1300.

So yes Apple is taking a piece, but almost all of the cost difference is attributable to the Intel pricing.

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

It's a little odd that Apple has been removing pro options...however, any self-respecting person would buy the absolute base (and just play around with the processor options) and buy memory and storage from some place that isn't hell-bent on ripping its customers off.

It pains me to see what Apple is charging its customers for HD and RAM upgrades.

Originally Posted by MotherBrain

I am really getting a bit tired of hearing that the next model is up to 2X faster. It's getting old and not relative to anything you really do with your computer. I also think it makes Apple look bad. Every model since, who knows when, has been up to 2X faster. If that were REALLY true we would be discussing quantum physics with our HALpro 9000.

Originally Posted by winterspan

And whats up with removing the sole Quadro card?? Apparently professional 3D modeling/animation/CAD/ users don't use the Mac Pro anymore...

Originally Posted by Black107

Interesting. Also a thing to consider is that perhaps with the the Nehalem's, the margin between "well performing" and "average/meh performing" chips is much wider. In other words, when Intel makes chips, to my understanding they don't make fundamentally different chips for 2.26 and 2.66 clock speeds. They make one chip. Depending on how each manufactured chip performs, it either gets thrown in the 2.26 bin or the 2.66 bin. Perhaps the chips that are stable/well performing at 2.66 are less prevalent in this architecture.



Agreed. Any experienced G5/Mac Pro use should be well versed in buying hard drives, ram, opticals, and PCI cards from 3rd party vendors.



I agree with this, I'd like to see a little more retrospective benchmarking, kind of how barefeats will usually throw in a setup thats 2 generations old at the bottom of their comparos.



They don't, and many probably never have been. I work in a shop that has all Mac Pro 3.2 Octas doing motion graphics/video production. The guys in our 3d department work on them, although they are always booted into Windows. Lately, for this huge job they've been working on, they brought in rental PCs for themselves and the additional help they brought in, because they're faster. And while I love Macs, and have always used them. I can't help but wonder why the PC I jumped on one day performed better in after effects.

Never the less, my personal machine ( Quad G5, Dec 05) will finally be replaced now. I've been waiting for quite some time.

Originally Posted by melgross

I realize that. But there is an odd number of sockets. It should be 9.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

Each CPU has an independent memory controller and you can't combine them. It isn't 8 DIMM slots as much as 2x 4 DIMM slots. Each controller support up to 9 DIMMs for 18 max.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

Each CPU has an independent memory controller and you can't combine them. It isn't 8 DIMM slots as much as 2x 4 DIMM slots. Each controller support up to 9 DIMMs for 18 max.

Originally Posted by melgross

Fine, then it should have been 6 or 12.

Originally Posted by minderbinder

So does that mean the 8 core machine actually has six memory channels? Who is really going to want to use those last two slots if it is going to hamper performance a bit?

Originally Posted by melgross

I know it's seems like a minor point, but a lot of people are making the error, and it leads to confusion.

The i7 is Intel's brand for desktop chips.

The Xeon is intel's brand for workstation and server chips.

There is no i7 Xeon.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

It should have been, but only 3 DIMMs per CPU would leave the pros less than happy and Ive's design team apparently didn't want bothered with any design changes to the case. The engineers did the best they could using the current case. If they would have widened it slightly from 8.1" to the same 8.9" as the el-Capitan cases, there would have been enough room for the extra slots as well as another USB port on the back and perhaps another pair up front.

Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

In terms of silicon, the i7 and these Xeons are exactly the same- in fact, all of the i7 processors Intel sells have a second, disabled, QPI link. A Xeon and an i7 could be cut off the same wafer. They even use the same package, LGA1366. The Xeon 3500-series *is* an i7, renamed, so it's not dual-socket capable but is otherwise the same as the rest.

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I agree that the price is high, but the price of Mac pros is always pretty high anyway and mostly inconsequential to the purchase decision.

My biggest gripe about this machine is that if the picture is accurate, there seems to be a new motherboard, and new configuration of the entire lower half of the insides. So again, while masquerading as an "upgradeable" Mac, this machine is essentially completely different from the previous model.

I'm not really sure why they even bother to let us open the case since the odds of upgrading a Mac pro past the stuff that you generally get when you purchase it, are something like slim to none. Anyone know if the new processors would pop into the older MacPros? It sure looks like the answer is no yet again.

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

Couldn't they have done something, anything to distinguish it from it's 6 year old design?

Originally Posted by melgross

Well, I meant 6 for the single cpu model, and 12 for the dual.

I'm sure they could have managed it if they wanted to.

Originally Posted by uni

Like re-design the inner case?

Oh wait..

Originally Posted by uni

Nehalem is a completely new architecture that is incompatible with older architectures. This is why you cannot simply "upgrade the processor." If you spent your time researching why this was such a radical change instead of making ill-informed forum posts, you might begin to know what you are talking about.

For example, the Penryn (Early 2008) Mac Pros use dual channel DDR2 memory. These Mac Pros use triple channel DDR3 RAM. These two technologies are completely incompatible with each other. It is IMPOSSIBLE for Apple to make it "easy to upgrade."

Nehalem moves the memory controller onto the CPU. This has never been done before. It is not possible to make this compatible with previous generations of hardware.