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Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

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Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#51

Post by tracker1 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #30
dasmoth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think performance numbers have been a good way to distinguish between mid-range and high-end for a while now. Especially for users who are looking for a single machine that covers a range of uses including games . ECC memory is a high-end feature. As is the specific choice of GPUs. Arguably, the fast PCIe SSD counts, too, although I suspect that won't last -- everyone benefits from I/O bandwidth, and there's…

So what makes the Mac Pro a mid-range computer? Bear in mind that it's not a consumer product, it's squarely aimed at audio/video/graphics professionals, even though it'll blow any current gaming rig out of the water with those specs.

Well, being limited to a 256gb mSATA SSD might hold it back a little. It's not the hardware I have issue with so much as the form factor... I think the form factor screams low-mid range, and not upgradable. I think the form factor would be great with mid-range consumer hardware, a Core i7 and two consumer class GPUs.

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#52

Post by ricardobeat »

tracker1 wrote: post #51
ricardobeat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what makes the Mac Pro a mid-range computer? Bear in mind that it's not a consumer product, it's squarely aimed at audio/video/graphics professionals, even though it'll blow any current gaming rig out of the water with those specs.

Well, being limited to a 256gb mSATA SSD might hold it back a little. It's not the hardware I have issue with so much as the form factor... I think the form factor screams low-mid range, and not upgradable. I think the form factor would be great with mid-range consumer hardware, a Core i7 and two consumer class GPUs.

I don't see mention of a 256GB limit anywhere. You also have 6 ports capable of 20GB/s, enough for way more external storage you'll ever need during the machine's lifetime.

The key in the new Mac Pro is extensibility (those 6 ports, each daisy-chainable). Thunderbolt is like a PCIe cable, you could add a better GPU, storage or whatever you wanted as external devices. It's much more open to third-party manufacturers than the current model of apple-sanctioned upgrades.

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#53

Post by ricardobeat »

kryten wrote: post #39
ricardobeat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what makes the Mac Pro a mid-range computer? Bear in mind that it's not a consumer product, it's squarely aimed at audio/video/graphics professionals, even though it'll blow any current gaming rig out of the water with those specs.

It is a mid-range machine and it is a consumer product. It's more a Mac Mini Pro than a Mac Pro. This is a high end machine. Go compare: http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z820_...

They're in the exact same ballpark. That workstation has 2 x 8 cores, and a higher RAM ceiling on it's favor. On the other hand, it's limited to 7 PCI slots for expansion, three of them slow/legacy, vs a max of 36 chained devices on the Pro. The quadro GPU it comes with is 3.5x less powerful than the one in the mac pro, and it will come in at a higher price tag.

Do you by any chance drive a mid-range Bentley?

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#54

Post by kryten »

ricardobeat wrote: post #53
kryten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mid-range machine and it is a consumer product. It's more a Mac Mini Pro than a Mac Pro. This is a high end machine. Go compare: http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z820_...

They're in the exact same ballpark. That workstation has 2 x 8 cores, and a higher RAM ceiling on it's favor. On the other hand, it's limited to 7 PCI slots for expansion, three of them slow/legacy, vs a max of 36 chained devices on the Pro. The quadro GPU it comes with is 3.5x less powerful than the one in the mac pro, and it will come in at a higher price tag. Do you by any chance drive a mid-range Bentley?

Except in the HP it all goes inside, which is where I need it so it can be locked and powered from one supply, every part is replaceable, the GPU can be upgraded, it has a hot swap enclosure built in and guaranteed support for 5 years.

Plus some kit I use won't go on the end of a thunderbolt bus...

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#55

Post by sjtgraham »

diroussel wrote: post #38
stephencanon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geekbench doesn’t use the GPU; Geekbench also doesn’t use AVX, so half of the floating-point performance of recent cores is left on the table. Actually, looking at disassembly of Geekbench, they barely even use SSE vectors, so it’s really nearly 3/4 of the floating-point performance that goes unmeasured by the benchmark. One could perhaps argue in the defense of the benchmark that many consumer applications don’t tak…

I guess a LINPAK Benchmark would be more suitable? http://www.top500.org/project/linpack/

Apple also has it's own heavily optimised version of LINPACK available in Accelerate.framework

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#56

Post by nileshk »

newman314 wrote: post #47
nileshk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not support CPU upgrades in the Mac Pros. You need non-standard tools to do it, it's not as easy as in a typical PC, and occasionally have to hack a firmware update depending on what Mac Pro model and what new CPU you want to use. The firmware hack is because Apple does not update firmware in older models to support newer CPUs, even though the hardware is otherwise capable of it. I think people who upgrade…

What did you change to get Mountain Lion running?

I followed these instructions to install Mountain Lion on my 2007 Mac Pro 2,1: http://www.jabbawok.net/?p=47

Note: For a Mac Pro 1,1 (2006), you may also want to update to the 2,1 firmware depending on what CPU you are using (have to create an account and login on these forums to download the file): http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1094.0.html (The 1,1 and 2,1 are identical hardware except for firmware)

Re: Apple's New Mac Pro Begins Showing Up in Benchmarks

#57

Post by ricardobeat »

kryten wrote: post #54
ricardobeat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in the exact same ballpark. That workstation has 2 x 8 cores, and a higher RAM ceiling on it's favor. On the other hand, it's limited to 7 PCI slots for expansion, three of them slow/legacy, vs a max of 36 chained devices on the Pro. The quadro GPU it comes with is 3.5x less powerful than the one in the mac pro, and it will come in at a higher price tag. Do you by any chance drive a mid-range Bentley?

Except in the HP it all goes inside, which is where I need it so it can be locked and powered from one supply, every part is replaceable, the GPU can be upgraded, it has a hot swap enclosure built in and guaranteed support for 5 years. Plus some kit I use won't go on the end of a thunderbolt bus...

The Thunderbolt bus is faster than 4 out of the 7 PCIe ports on the HP. You're trying hard not to get it.
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