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Author Topic: New Nehalem Mac Pro  (Read 29412 times)

Mitchell Baum

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« on: March 03, 2009, 11:30:58 am »

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Leonardo Barreto

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« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2009, 11:37:56 am »

Interesting, there is no more FIREWIRE 400 !

   *  Four FireWire 800 ports (two on front panel, two on back panel)
    * Five USB 2.0 ports (two on front panel, three on back panel)
    * Two USB 2.0 ports on included keyboard
    * Front-panel headphone minijack and internal speaker
    * Optical digital audio input and output TOSLINK ports
    * Analog stereo line-level input and output minijacks



Quote from: Mitchell Baum
http://store.apple.com/us

Best,

Mitchell
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jonstewart

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« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2009, 12:10:42 pm »

Photoshop only 1.2x faster than previous. Did you check out the price increase for adding the two fastest processors?

I nearly fell off my chair in shock (here in the UK)

(...anyway, my 2.5 year old MacPro looks just the same as the new one   )
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GregW

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« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2009, 01:05:23 pm »

Quote from: jonstewart
(...anyway, my 2.5 year old MacPro looks just the same as the new one   )

Only on the outside    

Regarding price, you can blame the UK's current and future debt level for the effective devaluation in Sterling.   It's not only Apple. Yesterday BMW announced that it would reduce the specification of UK models to recoup it's currency losses on import. Some HiFi manufacturers have raised their prices by as much as 40% in the UK.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2009, 01:06:18 pm by GregW »
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jonstewart

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« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2009, 01:11:30 pm »

Yes, quite right Greg.

..and it's already happened on a huge range of stuff, including camera gear at all parts of the spectrum.

(... as regards the MacPro... at least I have time to get coffee and relax  ! )
« Last Edit: March 03, 2009, 01:11:59 pm by jonstewart »
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Mort54

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« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2009, 10:06:51 pm »

Quote from: Leonardo Barreto
Interesting, there is no more FIREWIRE 400 !
A Firewire 800 port defaults to Firewire 400 when you plug a Firewire 400 device into it. The main downside is that you have to have a cable with the Firewire 800 connector on one end, and the Firewire 400 connector on the other. But once you have that cable, you can plug in Firewire 400 devices.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2009, 10:07:27 pm by Mort54 »
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bdp

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« Reply #6 on: March 03, 2009, 10:52:25 pm »

No 15,000rpm HD option with these new ones  

There is no firewire 400 on the Mac Books either - I have had to invest in a couple of Sonnet adapters for my back when shooting on location since Christmas - works fine.

Ben
« Last Edit: March 03, 2009, 10:54:09 pm by bdp »
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2009, 01:12:26 am »

Quote from: jonstewart
Photoshop only 1.2x faster than previous. Did you check out the price increase for adding the two fastest processors?

I nearly fell off my chair in shock (here in the UK)

That's a problem, but even more of a problem is the price of RAM for these new babies... as of now I am not aware yet of any third party RAM provider and the Apple prices are way over the top... Besides they won't take 64GB or RAM.

I have just decided to extend the life span of my first generation 8 cores Mac Pro by offering it a boost to 32GB of RAM... and will consider seriously an upgrade at the next generation change.

Cheers,
Bernard

Dustbak

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« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2009, 09:07:25 am »

I just ordered one. I initially figured buying the previous 8-core model thinking it would be priced more favourably. I have been told by several Apple resellers Apple is not planning to drop the prices on that machine. I am not willing to pay the same amount of money as a year ago on hardware that is now more than 1 year old.

The extra RAM, bigger disk, faster video card with more memory as well as the new system architecture makes up for the price difference.

So I ended up with the base version of the new model  (the 8-core base version that is). I will add more memory, bigger disks etc.. at a later stage.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2009, 09:08:56 am by Dustbak »
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rcdurston

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« Reply #9 on: March 04, 2009, 09:19:00 am »

This machine is just a stop gap till the Nvidia Core i7's come out. It will probably be another 6 months or so, depending on how many of these machines they can dump.
I was going to wait but now that Nvidia and Apple are are dispute over who does what with the new machines (i7), everything is up in the air for a few more months. I'll probably get one of these current ones on a tech lease and pawn it out when the Core i7 comes out.
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #10 on: March 04, 2009, 10:02:12 am »

Quote from: John Schweikert
I would be willing to bet the farm that you would not "use" anywhere near 32GB of ram. First load the iStat Pro free widget for OS X and activate the menu version to view ram usage in real time, easier than the activity monitor. Keep track of peak ram usage. I have 10GB and just peak that on a G5 with plenty of photo apps running.

You have just lost a farm, how do you want to proceed for the hand over?

What I typically do in parallel is:

- export sveral 140 MB tiffs from C1,
- queue several x00 megapixels panos in PTgui and Autopano pro,
- open images in PS CS4 that average 1.x GB

I hit the swap bad most of the times I use the Mac.

Cheers,
Bernard

Cfranson

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« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2009, 10:17:12 am »

Quote from: BernardLanguillier
You have just lost a farm, how do you want to proceed for the hand over?

What I typically do in parallel is:

- export sveral 140 MB tiffs from C1,
- queue several x00 megapixels panos in PTgui and Autopano pro,
- open images in PS CS4 that average 1.x GB

I hit the swap bad most of the times I use the Mac.

Cheers,
Bernard
Photoshop and other 32-bit applications can't address more than about 3.5GB of RAM each. While 32GB is most likely far more than is needed, you'll certainly be able to run more applications with that much RAM and still avoid swap, to a point.
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jonstewart

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« Reply #12 on: March 04, 2009, 10:39:30 am »

Yes, the applications can't address more than that, but the excess is used by the system instead of swap on the hard drive. Extra memory might well prove to provide a significant gain.
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2009, 10:53:33 am »

Bernard et al,

With all due respect...

1) Hitting the swap is NOT a reliable indication that RAM usage is maxed -- instead it almost always means the programs you are running cannot efficiently utilize it.  Most machines cannot efficiently use more than 8G or so of RAM.  My machine has 16 and if I run C1 in batch (very effectively uses all 8 cores), Helicon Focus (also efficiently uses all 8 cores), CS4 (very definitely does *NOT* efficiently utilize all 8-cores) and AutoPano Pro (does not use multi-core well)  ALL AT ONCE I tag maybe 12 Gig total of my ram.  Yes, CS4 tags the scratch disk as does APP. (See note #4)

2) The new *BASE* machine is a 2.26 GHz processor, 8 of them yes, but they run at 2.26, or 30% SLOWER than the current 3.2...  The *FASTEST* new Mac Pro at 2.93 GHz ran programs like Aperture about 20% faster than the previous 8-core 3.2 machine; however, most of that gain is likely due to the added throughput of DDR3 RAM, and not anything else.  It is also a bad assumption to lump CS4 into this same class of software --- CS4 does NOT manage processor throughput or RAM nearly as well as Aperture.  Frankly, I suspect that CS4 will run faster on the old machine due to the faster processors -- and probably proportional to processor speed faster -- at least until the time Adobe writes some modern code for CS4 that will utilize all the processing power and RAM available to it. To wit, a friend with a first generation Mac Pro with a single dual-core 2.66 processor and 8 G RAM can run most CS4 benchmarks about 20% slower than my 8-core 3.2 machine with 16G. (See note #4.)

3) DDR3 RAM, an interesting note...  DDR3 is THREE channel RAM.  The *new* 8-core machines still only have 8 RAM slots configured in a new but still 2 banks x 4 slots configuration. Can somebody explain to me how 2 sets of 4-bank memory slots efficiently use 3 channel RAM?  Clearly they do, but it has a few of us surmising they are really only utilizing the full DDR3 in the first three slots of each bank, then let the last pair of slots fall to DDR2 speed or even let them act as DDR1 overflow memory.  Again, most programs simply cannot utilize RAM well yet.  

4) IMO disk I/O is still the significant limiting factor for most of what we as photographers do.  It remains the major bottleneck in our machines.  Here is where having a striped array (RAID-0) works wonders for boosting performance.  I have 6 drives in my Mac Pro (see http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cf...Product_ID=158). I use WD 640's, but the newest high-density 1TB and 1.5TB drives are also screamers.    

*** Of course RAID 0 is for speed and is *LESS* reliability than single drives, so redundant back-up is mandatory; one of the drives in either of my arrays WILL GO DOWN and when it does, I will be DOA on that array.  But I can rebuild it in a matter of a few hours when that happens and the performance gained in the meantime is well worth the rebuild hassle.

Cheers,
« Last Edit: March 04, 2009, 06:18:20 pm by Jack Flesher »
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markhout

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« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2009, 11:05:00 am »

Quote from: jonstewart
Photoshop only 1.2x faster than previous.
Point taken - will be interesting so see some real-life benchmarks on apps that are of relevance for us mere photgs. I am still working of a G4 MDD 2x1.42Ghz, which has been upgraded over the years with memory, graphics and storage and serves me very well. The recent releases of Lightroom and Photoshop get very clunky indeed, so I believe it's time for an upgrade.

I must say that I am surprised to see that buyers of Mac Pros are even contemplating an upgrade over the model that was released a year ago - surely that is not an efficient write-off for photographers that do not require the latest processors and hardware. These Mac pros are made to be upgraded (like I did with my G4) in the course of their lives...

Mark
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Dustbak

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« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2009, 11:25:48 am »

I would have bought the previous version of the MacPro were it not that (for the moment anyway) the price has been kept at pretty much the same level. The newer one was only a couple of 100 euros more expensive. To get a faster video card with 512mb of memory instead of 256 was one thing (especially Phocus appears to really like video memory), 6Gb instead of 2Gb of main memory was another, a larger drive,etc..

When I would have expanded the old version MacPro to that level it would have cost me about the same or probably even more. This is just skipping the whole part of the newer machine that might or might not be faster. Remember, years ago we had Pentium4's that ran above 3Ghz as well, clockspeed isn't everything.

I needed to get a MacPro in the first place, I was already waiting since October last year which was kind of annoying. So now I just did get it. It always feels like such a waste of money having to spend on computers (if I could have bought lenses for it as well ). Anyway, I will receive it somewhere in 4 days and am looking forward to it.

I am pretty sure I would not have upgraded when I already had an 8-core MacPro.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2009, 11:28:43 am by Dustbak »
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #16 on: March 04, 2009, 12:39:10 pm »

Quote from: Dustbak
I would have bought the previous version of the MacPro were it not that (for the moment anyway) the price has been kept at pretty much the same level. The newer one was only a couple of 100 euros more expensive. To get a faster video card with 512mb of memory instead of 256 was one thing (especially Phocus appears to really like video memory), 6Gb instead of 2Gb of main memory was another, a larger drive,etc..

When I would have expanded the old version MacPro to that level it would have cost me about the same or probably even more. This is just skipping the whole part of the newer machine that might or might not be faster. Remember, years ago we had Pentium4's that ran above 3Ghz as well, clockspeed isn't everything.

I needed to get a MacPro in the first place, I was already waiting since October last year which was kind of annoying. So now I just did get it. It always feels like such a waste of money having to spend on computers (if I could have bought lenses for it as well ). Anyway, I will receive it somewhere in 4 days and am looking forward to it.

I am pretty sure I would not have upgraded when I already had an 8-core MacPro.

Except you can get an Apple certified refurb 8-core 3.2 with the good video card and dual optical drives but just 2G ram for $4100 US: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB451LL/A?mco=MjE0NDk5Mw

The corresponding new 8-core 2.93, albeit with 6G ram, will set you back a cool $6000 US. The $2000 savings would buy you lots of RAM and drives. It's doubtful the new entry machine at 2.26 GHz speed is going to compete with the old 3.2 on processor intensive apps, nor will the cheaper 4-core machine.

Given what I know now, I would have bought the 1st generation 8-core 3.0 machine last year instead of the then current 8-core 3.2. At that time I would have saved about the same $2000 which would have bought my 16G RAM, 6 @ 640G drives, new video card, AND paid for my FW800 DROBO external drive array.  And the "old" machine would be maybe 2 seconds slower on most heavy multi-minute CS4 operations. But then that's me :-)

The new machine does have superior cache, so perhaps at the end of the day will be worth it.  Tough to say until we start seeing real-world performance test results.

Best,
« Last Edit: March 04, 2009, 01:12:28 pm by Jack Flesher »
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Dustbak

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« Reply #17 on: March 04, 2009, 01:25:43 pm »

Jack,


Not the same situation here unfortunately. If I would have been able to get a substantial price difference between the 'old' and new version I would have undoubtedly taken the old one. I was actually in the market for the 'old' one but apparently even Apple finds this 'upgrade' not enough to warrant price cuts on the 'old' model. Now if that isn't a real tell-tale sign.

Ah well, you have got to get one in the end anyway. Compared to the 3year old dual core PC I was using before it will be most definitely a step forward  

Indeed, I hope the better cache. 1066FSB speed, etc.. will make up for the difference in clock speed in the end.
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #18 on: March 04, 2009, 01:40:40 pm »

Quote from: Dustbak
Jack,


Not the same situation here unfortunately. If I would have been able to get a substantial price difference between the 'old' and new version I would have undoubtedly taken the old one. I was actually in the market for the 'old' one but apparently even Apple finds this 'upgrade' not enough to warrant price cuts on the 'old' model. Now if that isn't a real tell-tale sign.

Ah well, you have got to get one in the end anyway. Compared to the 3year old dual core PC I was using before it will be most definitely a step forward  

Indeed, I hope the better cache. 1066FSB speed, etc.. will make up for the difference in clock speed in the end.

Okay, understood -- at similar pricing I'd buy the new one too!    And yes, IMO the new 1066x3 RAM (twice as fast as 800x2) and improved cache is where the performance gains will be seen.  And hey, you'll have a "greener" machine to boot ;-)
« Last Edit: March 04, 2009, 01:41:26 pm by Jack Flesher »
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #19 on: March 05, 2009, 06:19:25 am »

Quote from: John Schweikert
Like I said, load the widget show me that it maxes out for 32GB when you install all that. I doubt it.

We'll see, but you should get the keys ready. Where is the farm located by the way?

Cheers,
Bernard

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