New Nehalem Mac Pro's Announced

[chiefnobum]

There ya go Tweak. Buy yourself a new machine. They look awfully tasty.

Courtesy of Tom's Hardware - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple- ... ,7162.html

The Apple store went down this morning and while the little post-it note on our screens came with the message, “we’re updating the store for you and will be back shortly.” We tried not to get too excited. Could be nothing, we thought. It wasn’t.

ZoomApple has announced a new Mac Pro based on Intel’s Nehalem (Xeon) processor. With a starting price of $2,499, the new machine comes packed with either a single 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500, or a dual 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 and the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 with 512 MB of RAM. Apple has also tidied up the inside of the machine to allow for easy expansions. The Pro includes four direct-attach cable-free hard drive carriers for installing up to 4 TB of internal storage and an optional cable-free Mac Pro RAID card allows the four internal drive bays to be set up in RAID 0, 1, 5, or 0+1 configurations.

The new quad-core Mac Pro, $2,499 (US):

one 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 series processor with 8MB of L3 cache;
3 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 8GB;
Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory;
640 GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
Mini DisplayPort and DVI (dual-link) for video output (adapters sold separately);
four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire 800 ports;
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; and
ships with Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Mighty Mouse.

The new 8-core Mac Pro, $3,299 (US):

two 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with 8 MB of shared L3 cache;
6 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 32 GB;
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory;
640 GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
Mini DisplayPort and DVI (dual-link) for video output (adapters sold separately);
four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire 800 ports;
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; and
ships with Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Mighty Mouse.
Available from next week, the Mac Pro is now cheaper than the previous entry model by $300. Enough to tempt you?

[Nanashi]

Good find... $ 2499.95 isn't a bad buy. Do you know if the Memory is Fully Buffered or just standard DDR-3 ECC, it seems like its just standard? With 1TB Western Digital 32mb CAche drives at 120$. Getting the 2.26 GHz loading 3 Hard Drives @ 120.00$ each , and 3GB of DDR3 1333MHZ ECC3 at 100$, a system config with 12GB of RAM and 3TB hard drives should cost 750$ more. Not bad for 4000$. With HT you have 16 executable threads this thing is going to be a monster.

[chiefnobum]

Not sure if it's fully buffered, but the ram isn't so expensive in comparison to what Apple normally charges so I'm guessing not (except in the case of $6100 for 32GB). I do find it rather odd that the quad is only 8GB while the 8 core is 32GB. I'm wondering if that is just what apple is offering or if it really can't do it. Judging from the website, it might be that it really is a hardware limitation, but I would've thought they would use the same motherboard and both be able to handle 4GB modules.

[davidaltemeier]

Good find... $ 2499.95 isn't a bad buy. Do you know if the Memory is Fully Buffered or just standard DDR-3 ECC, it seems like its just standard?

Yeah, standard.

[Tweak]

I am thrilled. I'd love to hear any thoughts on which way to go--8 vs 4 core, how much memory is really needed for Logic crammed with tons of plugins/synths/samplers. I'm going to go 4 displays. Really like the 25.5 LGs. Going to run PC software on it too. Particularly the MS Expression suite and sound forge, vegas, and sonar. I am looking forward to having only one computer!

[Nanashi]

I answered the other thread.


To gauge your question

A New i7 with out any optimization can be assumed to be 1.2x's as fast as its previous cousin at the same clock speed.
The 8 core i7 2.26GHz is roughly the speed of an 8 Cor e 2.8GHz Mac Pro. of the last generation The 2.66GHz is roughly the speed at 3.20Ghz Quad. My personal opinion interms of power today the Quad is more power. Again this is factroing the software isn't designed to take advantage of the i7 strength which is far better multi core integration than the Core 2 ever had.


That being said I think the 2.26GHz is the Better investment. I think the perfromance difference is marginal, and that you won't be dissapointed in the least with the slower clock speed. I also think as multicore integration improves you'll enjoy hte decision more.

In terms of Memory its hard to say. Given that the Mac Pro memory costs around 30$ a gig I'd say doing 12GB isn't a bad idea, considering your current machine has 6GB. But realistically Most windows users have been constrained to 3GB.

[Esrb99]

also remember that on the OSX front, snow leopard is being designed for multi-core optimization, so Logic will probably be optimized soon for multi-core macs.

[Tweak]

Here's and interesting thread on the 4 core vs 8 core issue

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=662602

[Nanashi]

Look closely at the numbers posted in the chart. On nearly all application related tasks the 3.0GHz 965 out paces the Core 2 by 15-35%. Then look at the bench marks on the top. In Memory bandwidth its 90%. Then 3D Mark Vantage their is a 50% advantage. 3D Mark Vantage number is particularly interesting, because tis designed to stress the best hardware at the time of its relief. Its a good indicator of how your computer will perform on an application 2 years in the future.

The interesting thing about that is all of those are consumer applications besides a handful like Cine Bench which don't show the i7s real strength. Server Benchmarks are a better indicator. Effectively AMD had maintained some of its customer base in the server world last round because of the core 2 core communication provided by hyper transport. Intel now gains that with quick path.