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Author Topic: New Nehalem Mac Pro  (Read 29413 times)

Jack Flesher

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« Reply #60 on: March 11, 2009, 09:16:56 am »

Quote from: RoyS
Does anyone know if the MaxConnect for Mac Pro Optical Drive Bay Disk Mounting Assembly works on the new Quad-Core or 8-Core models? These  products utilize the two extra SATA DATA channels available on the previous logic boards. I have not been able to find if these data channels are on the new boards. Has anyone used these products on previous models? I'm thinking this could work as a back-up within the Mac Pro rather than an external drive enclosure.
Ciao,
Roy

It *looks* like the upper optical bay has not changed, so I am guessing yes, but nothing definitive yet...  Lloyd has one of those in his old box, and I suspect he'll put it in his new box if he can -- we should know tomorrow.  One of the things we hoped would change for the new machine was it having more drive bays --  eight native slide-in bays would have been really cool
« Last Edit: March 11, 2009, 09:17:53 am by Jack Flesher »
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narikin

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« Reply #61 on: March 11, 2009, 10:12:56 am »

identical Nehalem machines have been out for 6 months now for Windows users.  
quite frustrating it still takes Apple so long to react, I thought the switch to Intel was meant to close that gap.
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BJNY

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« Reply #62 on: March 11, 2009, 11:31:23 am »

Apple is getting the Xeon-class Nehalems one month ahead of any other company.

Quote from: narikin
identical Nehalem machines have been out for 6 months now for Windows users.  
quite frustrating it still takes Apple so long to react, I thought the switch to Intel was meant to close that gap.
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Guillermo

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« Reply #63 on: March 15, 2009, 12:56:10 pm »

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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #64 on: March 18, 2009, 11:19:57 am »

Quote from: John Schweikert
Really worthwhile read:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProNehalem.html

Lloyd Chambers' tests on the new machines. Seems like last year's models may be the way to go if you can find them at discount.

Agreed. Just read the whole thing and most notable is the conclusion that the new 2.93 machine is at best going to show about a 15% improvement over the last gen 3.2 and the new 2.66 will about equal it.  So he basically says jump on a last gen 3.2 refurb at a discount while supplies last and put the money you saved into RAM and drives.

Cheers,  
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Ralph Eisenberg

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« Reply #65 on: March 19, 2009, 05:12:24 pm »

Quote from: Jack Flesher
Agreed. Just read the whole thing and most notable is the conclusion that the new 2.93 machine is at best going to show about a 15% improvement over the last gen 3.2 and the new 2.66 will about equal it.  So he basically says jump on a last gen 3.2 refurb at a discount while supplies last and put the money you saved into RAM and drives.

Cheers,


Lloyd Chambers in his interesting review mentions (as an aside) that the video card on the machine he tested was cheap and noisy. This struck a chord, making me wonder about the noise levels of the previous generation machines. In looking at the 2x2,8 previous generation (I've not seen any 3,2 available locally), I noticed that it came with a less powerful video card than on my laptop, leading to two questions: are these latter machines fairly quiet in operation and what graphics card might be used with it?
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BJNY

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« Reply #66 on: March 19, 2009, 05:29:09 pm »

My previous generation eight-core 3GHz Mac Pro
came with an ATI 2600 video card, and is very quiet,
in fact barely noticeable.....

whereas a Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz would drive anyone crazy with its constant revving.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2009, 05:33:37 pm by BJNY »
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Guillermo

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« Reply #67 on: March 19, 2009, 06:18:34 pm »

Quote from: BJNY
My previous generation eight-core 3GHz Mac Pro
came with an ATI 2600 video card, and is very quiet,

Ditto -- my 8-core 3.2 has the 2600 and the entire machine is virtually silent.
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Dustbak

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« Reply #68 on: March 20, 2009, 03:40:40 am »

I have a 2.26 Nehalem MP right next to me when I type this and besides a very slight hum from the 2 large fans it is silent. I have no old version to compare it with but my machine is IMO very quiet. Sofar I find it is doing what it is supposed to do without me having to wait for it which for me is the most important part.

Now I have to find some affordable 4Gb sticks (or wait for them to come down somewhat in price) and get 3 large drives (I have decided to stripe 3 drives and do backup external to save me the hassle of going the Raid5 route).
« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 04:28:24 am by Dustbak »
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Ralph Eisenberg

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« Reply #69 on: March 20, 2009, 03:43:56 am »

Thanks very much for the input. Reassuring information.
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Ralph

francois

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« Reply #70 on: March 23, 2009, 02:54:34 am »

This morning Bare Feats published benchmarks of the new Mac Pros with different memory configurations:

http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html
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Francois

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« Reply #71 on: March 23, 2009, 02:36:40 pm »

Quote from: francois
This morning Bare Feats published benchmarks of the new Mac Pros with different memory configurations:

http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html

My machine runs a little faster than theirs, possibly due to my scratch and OS RAIDs and/or possibly because I have 24G ram.  MP08 8x3.2, 24G RAM and I get 36 seconds for Lloyd's speed test.

Regardless, it definitely seems the new machine can really cook!  

 
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GregW

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« Reply #72 on: March 23, 2009, 02:39:27 pm »

Macworld have, just released their reviews and benchmarks of the new Mac Pros.

What caught my eye, is just how carefully you need to look at your intended uses. If you are mostly a Lightroom user with occasional Photoshop work, the top of the line iMac; with an external display, might be a better option, at least until more software is able to make use of the multiple cores.
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RoyS

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« Reply #73 on: March 26, 2009, 05:09:41 am »

Quote from: Jack Flesher
My machine runs a little faster than theirs, possibly due to my scratch and OS RAIDs and/or possibly because I have 24G ram.  MP08 8x3.2, 24G RAM and I get 36 seconds for Lloyd's speed test.

Regardless, it definitely seems the new machine can really cook!

Jack,
I have my Mac Pro 2.26 GHz 8-Core now. I have a 3-Drive Striped Raid which is fairly fast. It looks like I can easily add a fifth SATA Drive in the 2nd optical drive bay. Both optical drive bays are wired for SATA. To secure the drive I'll use a Startech Adapter. I have 2 questions.
1) Does having the System on a 2-Drive Raid0 make a noticeable difference ?
2) The Mac Pro came with a WD Caviar Blue 640 MB drive - should the added drive for the 2 disk RAID0 be the same or would making the second drive Caviar Black make any difference ?
Thanks,
Roy
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rueyloon

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« Reply #74 on: March 26, 2009, 06:00:33 am »

is it possible to boot from a striped drive on the macpro ? I remember I could not do it on the older macs.


cheers

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RoyS

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« Reply #75 on: March 26, 2009, 06:10:26 am »

Quote from: Dustbak
I have a 2.26 Nehalem MP right next to me when I type this and besides a very slight hum from the 2 large fans it is silent. I have no old version to compare it with but my machine is IMO very quiet. Sofar I find it is doing what it is supposed to do without me having to wait for it which for me is the most important part.

Now I have to find some affordable 4Gb sticks (or wait for them to come down somewhat in price) and get 3 large drives (I have decided to stripe 3 drives and do backup external to save me the hassle of going the Raid5 route).

I have the same machine. Here are the XBench drive speeds. I have with a 3 disk RAID0 each with 2 partitions , the boot drive and a FW800Drobo.

System Info
Xbench Version     1.3
System Version     10.5.6 (9G3553)
Physical RAM     8192 MB
Model          MacPro4,1

Drive Number                     1        2         3         4
Sequential MB/sec
Uncached Write [4K blocks      96.00    320.56    310.49    35.73
Uncached Write [256K blocks]   82.78    274.17    273.70    31.73
Uncached Read [4K blocks]      28.45     23.49     24.17     2.73
Uncached Read [256K blocks]    91.35    290.33    270.67    44.64
Random MB/sec
Uncached Write [4K blocks]      2.01     10.94     10.78     2.39
Uncached Write [256K blocks]   73.31    239.83    289.38     9.47
Uncached Read [4K blocks]       0.67      2.00      2.15     0.40
Uncached Read [256K blocks]    29.03     54.19     58.44     9.73

Drive 1 = WD Caviar Blue 640 Mb WDC WD6400AAKS
Drive 2 = WD RE3 WDC WD1002FBYS 1 Tb - 3 Drive RAID0 40 GB Inner (Fast) Partition
Drive 3 = WD RE3 WDC WD1002FBYS 1 Tb - 3 Drive RAID0 960 GB Outer Partition
Drive 4 = Drobo 800 FW with 3  1 Tb Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB Drives
(Using Code was the only way I could get the columns to line up as the formatting removes spaces otherwise)
Interestingly, the small speedy outer partition is not any faster than the rest of the 3 Drive RAID0.
The RAID0 is significantly faster than the solo boot drive.
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Dustbak

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« Reply #76 on: March 26, 2009, 07:09:22 am »

It is more than 3times as fast which it also should but it is good to see it does. I have bought 3 1TB disks, they should be here next week. I also got 12Gb of memory (6x2). I found the 4Gb  sticks too expensive and buy them next year when they have come down in price.

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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #77 on: March 26, 2009, 09:22:14 am »

Quote from: RoyS
Jack,
I have my Mac Pro 2.26 GHz 8-Core now. I have a 3-Drive Striped Raid which is fairly fast. It looks like I can easily add a fifth SATA Drive in the 2nd optical drive bay. Both optical drive bays are wired for SATA. To secure the drive I'll use a Startech Adapter. I have 2 questions.
1) Does having the System on a 2-Drive Raid0 make a noticeable difference ?
2) The Mac Pro came with a WD Caviar Blue 640 MB drive - should the added drive for the 2 disk RAID0 be the same or would making the second drive Caviar Black make any difference ?
Thanks,
Roy

Hi Roy:

1) Yes -- program launches are faster and any typical process is notably spiffier.

2) When in stripe, you won't notice an appreciable difference between these two drives, so I'd get another Blue to keep it simple. Also the Blues are a tad quieter than my Blacks, and frankly I would buy all Blues if I were doing it again even though they have a smaller cache.

3) Note that the other viable option for the boot drives is to mirror them for redundancy instead of striping them for performance.

Cheers.
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #78 on: March 26, 2009, 09:26:27 am »

Quote from: RoyS
I have the same machine. Here are the XBench drive speeds. I have with a 3 disk RAID0 each with 2 partitions , the boot drive and a FW800Drobo.

System Info
Xbench Version     1.3
System Version     10.5.6 (9G3553)
Physical RAM     8192 MB
Model          MacPro4,1

Drive Number                     1        2         3         4
Sequential MB/sec
Uncached Write [4K blocks      96.00    320.56    310.49    35.73
Uncached Write [256K blocks]   82.78    274.17    273.70    31.73
Uncached Read [4K blocks]      28.45     23.49     24.17     2.73
Uncached Read [256K blocks]    91.35    290.33    270.67    44.64
Random MB/sec
Uncached Write [4K blocks]      2.01     10.94     10.78     2.39
Uncached Write [256K blocks]   73.31    239.83    289.38     9.47
Uncached Read [4K blocks]       0.67      2.00      2.15     0.40
Uncached Read [256K blocks]    29.03     54.19     58.44     9.73

Drive 1 = WD Caviar Blue 640 Mb WDC WD6400AAKS
Drive 2 = WD RE3 WDC WD1002FBYS 1 Tb - 3 Drive RAID0 40 GB Inner (Fast) Partition
Drive 3 = WD RE3 WDC WD1002FBYS 1 Tb - 3 Drive RAID0 960 GB Outer Partition
Drive 4 = Drobo 800 FW with 3  1 Tb Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB Drives
(Using Code was the only way I could get the columns to line up as the formatting removes spaces otherwise)
Interestingly, the small speedy outer partition is not any faster than the rest of the 3 Drive RAID0.
The RAID0 is significantly faster than the solo boot drive.

FWIW, the fastest partition on the drive is the first one and it resides on the OUTER rim of the drive, not the inner.  The following partitions are progressively more inside, and slower...
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #79 on: March 26, 2009, 11:10:23 am »

For posterity here are screen shots of X-Bench on my drive arrays for comparison.  As you can see, striping or RAID-0 can make a huge performance difference, especially going from 1 drive to 2, but even in going from 3 drives to 4 shows notable improvement.

First is my striped pair of WD 640 Caviar Black drives where my OS is loaded:



Next is the fastest (OUTER rim) partition of my 4 drive stripe WD 640 Caviar Blue drives that I use for scratch:



The 4-drive inner partition for working file storage:



And finally my FW 800 Drobo array:

« Last Edit: March 26, 2009, 11:17:33 am by Jack Flesher »
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