Upgrading and Analyzing Apple's Nehalem Mac Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2009 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
The Crossroads of Simplicity and Sophistication
Choices. Choices. Apple doesn’t like to present the end user with many choices. Too many choices can confuse, if left unchecked they can become overwhelming. The overburdening of choices is something that most PC OEMs fall victim to. I recently spoke with ASUS and brought this up in a conversation about the Eee PC. Three and four digit model numbers are how you tell one Eee PC apart from another. Perhaps you have the Eee PC 901, or the Eee PC 1000HA or the S101. To an enthusiast who has time to research these things, the model numbers aren’t that hard to figure out - it’s easier than Calculus after all. To someone just looking to buy “one of those Eee things”, it’s overwhelming.
Try buying an Apple notebook and you’re faced with two models: the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. If you’re a consumer, buy a MacBook, if you’re a professional buy the Pro version. Then just select your screen size and you’re done. That’s how Apple wants it to work and for the most part, it does. Very well.
Apple’s simple approach works quite well for consumers, but once you start getting into the high end content creation world it’s not quite so easy. How do you simplify the decision between two very fast cores and four slower cores or eight even slower ones? It wouldn’t really fit within Apple’s well kept home to ask its customers whether they run predominantly single threaded, lightly threaded or heavily threaded applications. Much to my surprise, the two new Mac Pros do effectively that. They present the end user with an option to choose four faster cores or eight slower ones. And there’s much more to the numbers that what Apple publishes on its own website.
These are the CPUs Apple offers on the new Mac Pro:
| Apple Mac Pro (2009) | Quad Core Model | Eight Core Model |
| Default CPU | 1 x Xeon W3520 (2.66GHz) | 2 x Xeon E5520 (2.26GHz) |
The clock speed difference appears to only be 17% at first glance, but there’s much more to the story.
Four or Eight Cores and the Magic of Nehalem
There are effectively three classes of applications that we have to consider when wondering whether or not the new Mac Pro is indeed a good buy. On one end of the spectrum we have single-threaded applications and tasks.
These days CPU performance improvements happen along three vectors: ILP, clock speed and TLP. The first vector of performance improvement is ILP (Instruction Level Parallelism). These improvements are changes to the micro-architecture. They could be as simple as adding a larger/faster cache, or as complex as a faster/more capable SSE unit. These days there are minor improvements in ILP between microprocessor generations. The second vector, clock speed, is also fairly stagnant. The Nehalem based Xeons run at about the same clock speed as the Woodcrest, Clovertown and Harpertown based Xeons that the older Mac Pros used. The final vector, TLP (Thread Level Parallelism), is where we’ve seen some of the biggest gains this round. As the name implies, execute more threads in parallel and you can get more performance. You increase the number of threads you can execute by running multiple threads on a core (SMT or Hyper Threading) or by adding more cores to a chip. Quad-core is still the sweet spot configuration for Xeons, but the Nehalem architecture brings Hyper Threading back to the limelight and now each of those four cores can work on two threads of instructions at the same time.
Well let’s look at how ILP, clock speed and TLP compare from Harpertown to Nehalem (for more details on what makes Nehalem tick, err tock, be sure to read our architectural analysis):
| Apple Mac Pro (2009) vs Apple Mac Pro (2006 - 2008) | Upgrade | Downgrade |
| Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) | Faster memory access Minor microarchitectural updates | Smaller L2 caches |
| Clock Speed | Minor clock speed advantage in some cases | Minor clock speed disadvantage in others |
| Thread Level Parallelism (TLP) | Large L3 cache shared by all cores 2x threads per core (Hyper Threading) |
Looking at the table of improvements you should already know where to expect the Nehalem Mac Pro to excel. With each chip being able to execute twice as many threads as those used in the old Mac Pro, if you’re running a well threaded application then you’ll certainly see performance improvements on the new Mac Pro. What sorts of applications are “well threaded”? Generally things like 3D rendering and professional video encoding. The easiest way to find out is to fire up activity monitor and see how many of your cores are taxed while you’re using your system. If all of the bars are full of blue on a quad-core machine then you’d probably appreciate a Nehalem Mac Pro.
The clock speed improvements are minimal. In a non thermally constrained environment you can add 133MHz to whatever clock speed Apple puts on the box. So the 2.26GHz Mac Pro will most likely run at 2.40GHz and the 2.66GHz Mac Pro will spend most of its time at 2.80GHz, if you’re doing something CPU intensive that is. This is of course do to Intel’s Turbo mode.
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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.