Upgrading and Analyzing Apple's Nehalem Mac Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2009 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
With this I hope I can retire from writing epic-ly long Apple articles for a while, but I'm not done yet - I must first conclude.
The new Mac Pro is fast and expensive. As I casually mentioned on the performance page, if you're upgrading from a PowerMac G5 then even the cheapest iMac (or even the Mac mini) will have more processing power; an upgrade to the Nehalem Mac Pro will absolutely rock your world.
If you have one of the original Mac Pros from 2006, the new Mac Pro should be an upgrade provided that you're at all CPU bound in your tasks. Clock speed is important however, going from a pair of 3.0GHz Woodcrest based Xeons in the first Mac Pro to a 2.26GHz Nehalem based Xeon won't always give you better performance. The entry level 2.26GHz Xeons for the 8-core Mac Pro are ridiculous given the price point of the system, but so are the upgrade prices for the 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz processors. If you do have a highly threaded workload you can always get the entry level 8-core and then upgrade the CPUs on your own down the line if you're careful.
Now if you’re running applications that stress all eight cores in the $3299 Mac Pro then the clock speed difference won’t matter. But if all you’re doing is stressing four cores then the $2499 machine will perform noticeably better (and save you some money). Apple effectively offers a machine optimized for users of heavily threaded workloads and one for everyone else, they just don’t advertise it as such.
Ultimately, it’s all about snappiness and response time. The new Mac Pro makes tasks that generally take several minutes to hours run in considerably less time, but still on the same order of magnitude of performance. Compiling Adium took 130 seconds on my old eight-core Mac Pro and less than 90 on my new one. That’s a noticeable performance improvement. Unfortunately some aspects of the Mac Pro just haven’t improved that much at all. Application launch time and general use performance are still very I/O bottlenecked; these things need SSDs and with a price tag of over $3,000 there's absolutely no excuse for Apple not including one.
If you have a Mac Pro from last year and aren't doing a lot of heavily threaded work, stick a SSD in your machine, it'll feel better than new.
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wackazong - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
Hello,this may be the right place to ask: What's the difference between the Xeon and the (much cheaper) i7 processors? Couldn't you put an i7 into a Mac Pro?
sdevenshire - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
Hi,I purchased a 2xQuad core mac in Jan 2008 and I would like to upgrade the cpu to the new Nehalem. Apple suggested it could be done but they don't do it. I contacted a number of Mac repair places and they said it can't be done. I realize that upgrading the cpu probably means upgrading the motherboard, but that's fine with me.
Any suggestions on where I could get this done or where I might get instructions for doing it myself?
TIA,
Shane
529th - Thursday, July 30, 2009 - link
If you’ve read our Nehalem articles you’ll know that each chip has three 64-bit wide memory controllers, thus you’ll want to install DIMMs in triplets. You can install four DIMMs, but accessing memory in the fourth module will be slower - something you’ll never notice if you’re wondering. ???This is hindering me from buying a 4 channel UD3R X58 board. My main goal of an i7 build is for editing AVCHD files through Premiere Pro CS4. Being that tri channel will get me 6g and PP CS4 likes more memory, will adding memory to the 4th module screw things up?
newrigel - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
Man, take your hackysack and go buy some laundry soap to clean the crap out of your drawers! You guy's talk about a couple thousand dollars like it's buying a damn house or some huge purchase LOL!Macs are really cost efficient and yes... PC's are cheaper but who gives a damn! If you want to be cheap... be cheap! Hackintoshes (LOL) are just that... a POS and your getting what you pay for! You cheap asses probably hit your ol' ladies up for gas money to get to work hehe...
MACS RULE!
ditchmagnet - Monday, July 27, 2009 - link
Just for fun I went to apples site and customized the mac pro, I just maxed out the hardware choices and then went to newegg and priced out an equivalent PC (Server board, with the same CPUs and everything except more RAM)Total for the apple including shipping and tax is over $20,000
the newegg build is under $9,000
I bet my 920 build at 4.5ghz is faster than the mac pro though, and all for under $1000
moltentofu - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - link
wander over to the egg and buy a lian li. No flashy lights really, no idiot clear side panels. For some reason the hard drive access light and the power light are different colors on mine though.You can get a combo case with a seasonic 550W power supply with it. I put a phenom II x4 3.2Ghz 16 Gigs of RAM and a 1 Gig 4870 in there with aftermarket cooling all around (air not liquid) and it cost me 900 bucks - all from the egg.
If you think you're going to find performance arbitrage basically anywhere in the market you couldn't be wrong-er. Just pick your price/performance point and stick to it.
Thanks for the awesome reviews as usual Anand!
moltentofu - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - link
With one big 'ol caveat to the arbitrage thing and that is: building your own system really does seem to be cheaper right now, and also I can't find component setups in the big name companies right now that make me quite happy.I miss when Dell Outlet used to be affordable. I'm afraid these Macs are just waaay out of range of my meagre salary.
fmaste - Monday, July 20, 2009 - link
Everybody talks about how expensive the Mac Pro is, but, has somebody compared with other brands? Look at this:I customize two Dell Precision Workstations with the same components as the base configurations Apple offers for the Mac Pro.
The results!!
Mac Pro Quad-Core: $2,499.00
Dell Precision T5500: $3,427
Mac Pro 8-Core: $3,299.00
Dell Precision T7500: $3,427
BOTH APPLE OFFERS ARE BETTER!!!!!
Both with the same processors, same amounts of memory at the same speed.
The only difference is instead of a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB you get a 256MB NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 295. And that Dell options have hard drives with less capacity, 500GB vs 640GB. I also added the second Gigabit Ethernet card to both Dells. Dell has no bluetooth option and you may need to add a sound card to them.
Remember, you get a more expensive PC with windows Vista and an ugly chasis.
fmaste - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - link
And here is HPMac Pro Quad-Core: $2,499.00
Same specs configurable HP Z800 Workstation: $3,942.00
Mac Pro 8-Core: $3,299.00
Same specs configurable HP Z800 Workstation: $3,702.00
excalibur3 - Friday, July 17, 2009 - link
So when you hypothetically created your i7 hackintosh, what were it's specs? I'm thinking about doing this (as a thought experiment only of course) and I'm wondering what such a system would price out. How would I know what motherboard to use to be compatible?