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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rpmurray - Saturday, July 18, 2009 - link
Awesome!!!Please point me to the webpage where I can spec out a system.
BoboGO - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors!12GB (6 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) memory
1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive
250GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
22X DVD/CD double-layer writer with LightScribe support
8X Blu-Ray DVD Burner
X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series 7.1 Channels PCI-Express Sound Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 with 2GB GDDR3 memory
Thermaltake Xaser VI Black Aluminum Computer Case
Piano-black 22" 2ms HDMI Widescreen w/LED Backlight LCD Monitor - w/webcam & speakers
Bonus! Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound Light Weight Circumaural USB Gaming Headset
Ships: 3 days
Total Cost: $6,073.92
ddobrigk - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Here's my take on this:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-262853_10...">http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-262853_10...
Can't remember the exact price in USD, but it was around US$6000 too. And that's with a very-high-end cooling solution.
Tesselator - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
I'm not sure what the author or others here are talking about when they say Apple's extremely outrageous prices are due to Intel's price hike. There is no price hike. There was no price hike. Either the author is misinformed or it's a straw-man technique being employed in order to justify and excuse Apple having gone off the deep end with their price scheduling. With so many of the comparisons in this article omitting the 2008 Mac Pro models all together and only comparing the 2009 to the 2006, I'm to believe the later.Here are the prices of the respective chips at the time the respective Mac Pro machines were released:
2008 Models:
1 x 2.80GHz E5462 Harpertown: $797 ($2299 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 2.80GHz E5462 Harpertown: $797 x 2 = $1594 ($2699 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 3.00GHz X5472 Harptertown: $958 x 2 = $1914 ($3599 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 3.20GHz X5482 Harpertown: $1279 x 2 = $2558 ($4399 overall Mac Pro price)
2009 Models:
1 x 2.66GHz W3520 Bloomfield: $284 ($2499 overall Mac Pro price)
1 x 2.93GHz W3540 Bloomfield: $562 ($2999 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 2.26GHz E5520 Gainestown: $373 x 2 = $746 ($3299 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 2.66GHz X5550 Gainestown: $958 x 2 = $1916 ($4699 overall Mac Pro price)
2 x 2.93GHz X5570 Gainestown: $1386 x 2 = $2772 ($5899 overall Mac Pro price)
As you can see, there is no significant price hike and in fact Intel has provided a massive price REDUCTION in offering the Bloomfield line. This delivers a second more severe slap in the face from Apple to it's user base.
Just look at this price scheduling:
2006
Mac Pro Quad 2.0GHz $2,199 NEW
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz $2,499 NEW
Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz $3,299 NEW
2007
Mac Pro Quad 2.0GHz $2,199
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz $2,499
Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz $3,299
Mac Pro 8-core 3.0GHz $3,997 NEW
2008
Mac Pro Quad 2.8GHz (2008) $2,299 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 2.8GHz (2008) $2,799 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 3.0GHz (2008) $3,599 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 3.2GHz (2008) $4,399 NEW
2009
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz $2,499 NEW
Mac Pro Quad 2.93GHz $2,999 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 2.26GHz $3,299 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 2.66GHz $4,699 NEW
Mac Pro 8-core 2.93GHz $5,899 NEW
That's a $1,000 to $2,000 price hike on Apple's part and the first of it's kind in the past 10 as I've researched it. It might be due to poor sales or future economic projections, I have no idea. But it's unprecedented and completely unjustified by looking at part prices and other offerings in the industry.
I recently priced a DIY build and I could assemble a system with 18 DIMM slots, 6 PCIe slots, 36GB RAM, two quad-core 3.2GHz Nehalem, typical drives, cards, and case go for well under $5k. Apple wants $6K for much much less.
Something isn't right in Denmark!
winterspan - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Thank you for posting this. I'm a frequent reader of Macrumors.com forums, and I actually made a similar chart showing the very similar launch prices of Xeon 5400/5500 when new and how the massive $1000+ increase in price of the new Mac Pros are totally unjustified and ridiculous.
It would still be overpriced, but a far better deal if they tossed the 2.26Ghz in favor of the 2.53Ghz or 2.66Ghz as standard, with the 2.8Ghz and 2.93Ghz as the upgrades. (the 3.2Ghz is clearly too hot) This would be far more similar to the Mac Pro configurations in the past, where the base CPU + 2 upgrade levels usually represented the 3 fastest CPUs available (or nearly that).
To show the huge discrepancy, there are 6!! CPU levels above the 2.26Ghz 5520. (2.4, 2.53, 2.66, 2.8, 2.9, 3.2)
I was looking forward to maybe picking up a Mac Pro for the office, (software dev) but I'm not sure now. If the HAckintosh crew gets to a certain level of progress that offers no-hassle installation and complete compatibility with mainstream components, I can see many enthusiasts who want to dualboot OSX using high-clock speed Core i7 boxes, with loads of ram, SSDs, RAID'd drive storage, GTX285s, etc, and still spending far less than the single-cpu 2.93Ghz Mac Pro.
mcoady - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Firewire 800 works with 400 and 200. You just need a cable with the appropriate connectors, it will auto-negotiate the connection.Firewire rocks.
mesiah - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Too many sites get in mac vs pc battles any time a mac review goes up. I'm not going to bash apple and talk about how overpriced things are. But honestly, I've always been a pc person. In the past apple did have some innovations to tout and some people could justify the premium price. But looking at these 2009 models, it's a disgrace. for 3k+ we are getting 640gb HDDs, video cards with 512mb frame buffers, and 6gb of ram. And in return you get a xeon processor. For a company that tries to cut a niche out by offering the highest performance for a premium, this seems like a joke to me. Its like taking a chevy cobalt and putting a corvette engine in it, then trying to sell it for the price of a Ferrari. It seems to me when it comes to the desktop market these days, people are paying thousands of dollars because they like apples OS, and overlooking the hardware as long as the case looks cool and has a xeon sticker on it. Unfortunately most tech sites these days are in love with apple and just pretend that everything is fine and dandy. I am glad that you pointed out the deficiencies Anand, but I think all apple fans should be more vocal and actually show some disgust for your beloved company for once. If you are going to pay all that money, you should atleast get some innovation to show for it.TheFace - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Since when has apple been all about the performance of the hardware? Apple is about the performance of the hardware/software package. These aren't corvettes or ferraris for you to zip around fun-town with. These are peterbilts and mack trucks to get work done with. This is a PRO model. Just because it LOOKS like a regular pc with it's big boxy structure, doesn't mean it's your home PC. I will concede that the author of the article does make some valid points about the lack of SSD and video card options. The fact is though, the mac pro isn't for the l337 who build SLI OC'd gaming rigs.If you don't understand that Apple rarely makes an upgrade without having an unveiling party about it, then you just don't understand Apple. I'm not saying that that fact is a good thing, but they certainly generate more press and hype than other computer makers.
Shadowself - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Interesting that you state, " I'm not going to bash apple and talk about how overpriced things are." then you go on to do virtually noting but this.Are Apple's Mac Pro systems over priced? Yes. Are they more over priced than historically for Apple? Yes. However, as Anand points out this seems to be a trend with all tier one vendors. The equivalent machines out of HP and Dell are similarly or higher priced. Is this justifiable? No. They are all just gouging their high end users.
mesiah - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
No, I did not bash apples price. I did not compare it to comperable PCs. I clearly pointed out that there is no innovation here to demand the premium price. But people like you are so used to having to defend your purchase based on this argument, thats all you've got. This is not a mack truck by any means. Real workstations have more than 3gb of ram standard. Real workstations have more than a measly 640gb HDD. Real workstations come with high speed SSD or SAS system disks. Yes, it is capable of high end graphics work. And yes, you can get a dell for $8000. But you are making that comparison not me. If you want to make it, go see what you get for 4k from dell. And those dells are not marketed at the main stream. If I walk into a dell store a salesman isn't going to try and sell me a workstation because I am a power user. When I walk into an apple store there is no hesitation to push me in the direction of a 3k+ purchase. But none of that was my point and not what was discussed in my comment. It was simply, where is my innovation that apple is supposed to be all about? I'm not talking about some quad sli water cooled system, I'm talking about simple things like 6GB of ram standard. SSD system drives. Atleast a TB of storage. Seriously, this is for power users and it comes standard with 640GB? I will admit apple gets some things right. And they are damned good at marketing. But please people, you don't have to kiss steves ass all the way to the bank. Don't make excuses for products that are clearly lacking. Otherwise your precious macs will just continue the long slide into bland vanilla every day systems and you will still be paying premium prices for everyday merchandise.