Upgrading and Analyzing Apple's Nehalem Mac Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2009 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
The Downside to Innovation
I’ve always appreciated Apple as a company because it isn’t afraid to completely ditch backwards compatibility in favor of embracing a new technology. For years Apple’s notebooks shipped with DVI ports on them and no direct VGA output. I loved it because I had DVI monitors, but that wasn’t true for everyone. Today Apple’s display interface of choice is mini DisplayPort:
Mini DisplayPort, to the left of the DVI port
It’s a cute little connector that we first saw Apple use on its updated MacBook and MacBook Pro. The benefit of the mini-DP connector is that it can easily be adapted to VGA or single-link DVI; adapter cable sold separately of course.
Since most users only have a single display, the new Mac Pro’s video card ships with both a dual-link DVI and a mini-DisplayPort output.
The mini DisplayPort output is just pure awesomeness.
Cute.
The mini-DP plug is just so much more pleasant than DVI or VGA connectors. There’s no annoying screws to worry about, just plug it in and the connector is secure. After using mini-DP on the Mac Pro I’m sold - I want one of these connectors on everything and I want monitors with mini-DP outputs.
It’s not all praise unfortunately. For starters, Apple doesn’t ship the Mac Pro with a mini-DP to DVI adapter. Given that there’s only one Apple display that uses mini-DP, it’s probably safe to say that next to no one has a mini-DP capable display. I’m all for early adoption of new technologies, but on a $3299 system just bundle the adapter ok?
The problems continue: natively this port will only drive a 1920 x 1200 panel, such as Apple’s 24” LED Cinema Display.
If you want to connect a single-link DVI display to the mini-DP port you need the adapter I showed in the picture above. Apple sells it for $30. It also comes in a VGA flavor.
If you want to connect a dual-link DVI monitor to the mini-DP output you need a different adapter:
This adapter draws power from the machine’s USB port. I’m guessing that there isn’t enough room/power to feed all of the DL-DVI pins from the mini DisplayPort connector so the adapter relies on USB to help out.
Reading through the customer reviews for this adapter it seems that many users are having compatibility issues with Apple’s mini-DP to DL-DVI converter with non-Apple displays. Not to mention that the adapter itself costs $99.
Between the high cost of the adapter and the high likelihood of problems, I’d suggest simply getting another video card if you want to have multiple 30” displays connected to your Mac Pro. Apple sells the GeForce GT 120 for $150 as an upgrade option, and at least with it each 30” display will be driven by its own frame buffer, which should make for smoother Exposé and Dashboard operation.
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analog1 - Thursday, July 16, 2009 - link
Why not run the same benchmarks, like Premier pro cs 4 and Photoshop on a Core i7 PC?I think the results will surprise a low of people. I have sen comparisons done with Protools - a highly threaded proffessional DAW ( Digital Audio Workstation) 8 core nehalem Mac Pro (16 thread) vs an OCed i7 920 (3.6 ghz) and the 920 beat the mac pro by roughly 20%. This is probably due to much higher clock speeds, much higher memmory speeds and bandwidth, and much more efficient OS! (yes Windows XP). All this for about $2000 less.
If display cards had anything to do with this test the price/performance difference would be even higher. This is testing audio processing only.
I think if Anand could take the time and bench an OCed or stock i7 920 vs 8 core mac pro on the apps used with the same content we will all be finally able to throw the mac 'CREATIVITY' marketing slogan out the window for good.
I use macs every other day and am writing this on a mac (dual G5, but still). I also use PCs on a daily basis. all for work no play. I have been doing this for years, and honestly I don't understand why people like macs. they are SIMPLER not BETTER.
OSX has nice animation, and the iPhone is cool. Bravo Apple. Now can we please get a REAL bench for these apps PC vs Mac so we can all go to sleep knowing we actually do have the best system for $1000, even if it was designed by Antec+Seasonic+Corsair+Termalright+Gigabyte and so on... (and not buy Apple)
tstm - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
What this article deserves, is a slap to Apple because of their memory configurations.The low end Mac Pro comes with four (4) memory slots. That's utterly ridiculous, considering that Nehalem supports triple channel memory. Adding 8GB (4x2GB) of memory will bring the memory bandwidth down somewhat, which is unacceptable for a $2500 machine.
The 8 core version, on the other hand, comes with 8 slots, again not a multiple of 3. With DDR3 SDRAM 4GB sticks being so ridiculously expensive, this makes any larger memory configs for the Mac Pro extremely expensive.
There's one more gripe: The server CPUs Apple uses could use RDIMM or UDIMM memory, which is _a LOT_ cheaper than normal DDR3 SDRAM mostly because it's being used in server configurations where it's not unheard of to have 192GB of ram in a machine, no one wants to pay gazillions for the 8GB DDR3 SDRAM sticks that would require.
Buying a server board with 18 RDIMM/UDIMM memory slots for building a similar workstation as the Mac Pro would be an insanely much better solution for anything that requires memory to operate (running multiple test VMs for instance). I think it's pretty sad that apple is not even trying to cater professionals with this "Mac Pro" toy they've built. I really would like to use an apple computer, but these drawbacks made me use a Hackintosh, which has its own drawbacks.. but for workstation use none are so bad when you compare it to the Mac Pro.
fmaste - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
So, this is a good computer after changing the CPU and buying a second video card. How could someone say that this is OK? I don't think that Apple notebooks are expensive, you really get a premium notebook with all premium components, but this seems very overpriced.I like Apple and OSX a lot, but the case and interior design don't cost that much, you can build your own computer for much less, and with one of the awesome cases reviewed here at anandtech.
Also, what about GPU performance and comparison?
Third party GPUs? How? Expansion slot available?
Power, Noise, heat?
What about Boot Camp?
Type of memory?
And I would really appreciate a price and performance comparison with other workstations and what you can build for that money.
Tutor - Thursday, July 16, 2009 - link
This is my dream machine at post #10. I call it MyHackedUpMac.Tutor - Thursday, July 16, 2009 - link
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=71393...">http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=71393...BoboGO - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors!12GB (6 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) memory
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 with 2GB GDDR3 memory
8X Blu-Ray Writer
250GB Vertex SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive
22X DVD/CD double-layer writer with LightScribe support
X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series 7.1 Channels PCI-Express Sound Card
Thermaltake Xaser VI Black Aluminum Computer Case
Sorry, no monitor included.
Ships: 3 days
Total Cost: $5833.00
vailr - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Re:"I couldn’t wait any longer and I ended up building a Hackintosh based on Intel’s Core i7. Literally a day after I got it up and running, Apple announced the new Nehalem-EP based Mac Pro."
More details, please.
List of parts used & cost, the method used for installing OSX, & a "bang for buck" comparison with Apple's equivalent machine.
TIA
erple2 - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
That's a good question. Also, how much time did you spend getting the Hackintosh up and running?And for the final question, how much do you believe your time to be worth? I know how much I am paid per hour at my job. It doesn't take that long of hassling with a Hackintosh to make it worth my while to just buy the Mac instead. Include time spent when I go to update the OS and have to research which updates will work with my particular Hackintosh, plus those times that I accidentally do an update that I didn't fully research and hosed my setup. Oh, and make sure that I factor in some time for when my soundcard just didn't quite work right after a reboot...
Ultimately, it boils down to the triplet: Time, Money, Productivity - pick two.
Baked - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Wait, people actually upgrade their Mac? I thought they just buy a new one when it gets real slow. At least that's what happens at the places I worked at. Buy a brand new Mac, use it for a few years, buy a new one and send the old one to surplus. We do buy memory from micron instead of doing it through Apple though.xz4gb8 - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
You said, "Between the high cost of the adapter and the high likelihood of problems, I’d suggest simply getting another video card if you want to have multiple 30” displays connected to your Mac Pro. Apple sells the GeForce GT 120 for $150 as an upgrade option, and at least with it each 30” display will be driven by its own frame buffer, which should make for smoother Exposé and Dashboard operation."If you allow non-Apple displays, many higher-end displays have DisplayPort connectors - see the Dell 3008WFP, for example. A mini-DP to DP cable is under $20 including shipping.
The mini-DP to DVI adapter is too clunky and tends to unplug itself. The mini-DP to HDMI adapter is under $20 and is slightly less clunky. Neither are as elegant as the mini-DP to DP cable.
I make no claims for the Video card performance.