Upgrading and Analyzing Apple's Nehalem Mac Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2009 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Two Models, Neither Perfect
The one common trend I’ve noticed from companies that are building products people want to buy despite the current economic climate: prices haven’t dropped. Nikon raised prices last year and Apple introduced two new Mac Pros one at $2499 and one at $3299.
The $2499 model comes with a single quad-core Xeon running at 2.66GHz. This is the Xeon equivalent of the Core i7-920. You get 3GB of memory, a 640GB HDD, an 18x DVD-DL burner and a GeForce GT 120.
Another $800 will get you two quad-core Xeons running at a slower 2.26GHz. You get twice the memory and everything else stays the same.
I suspect that for most users the $2499 configuration is more than enough, but for this review I’m testing the $3299 system and will attempt to explain how the $2499 machine would perform.
There’s basically a $30 cost difference between 6GB of DDR3 memory and 3GB of DDR3. It’s silly for Apple to not offer the base configuration with 6GB. Anything less than 4GB in a workstation is ridiculous for a system being made and sold in 2009. 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.
You'll find six DIMMs in the 8-core Mac Pro. Two LGA-1366 CPU sockets, 3 memory channels per CPU socket, 3 DIMMs per chip.
I won’t complain too much about the hard drive. A 640GB HDD is fine, not great and I’ll soon show you how much better one of these machines is with an SSD but no complaints there.
The video card could use some work. I’m not concerned about the GPU power; it’s the amount of memory that bothers me. If any of Apple’s users are likely to have a multi-monitor setup it is a Mac Pro owner, and 512MB isn’t enough to enable silky smooth Exposé across a 30” + 24” setup. And you can forget about smooth transitions on two 30” panels.
Even the upgraded video card, the Radeon HD 4870 only comes with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. Apple charges an extra $200 for that card, even though that’s how much the 4870 1GB cards cost at Newegg. I have no problems with Apple making money, but not even offering a single 1GB graphics card is silly; especially when more memory is actually useful.
If you want the best solution for multiple monitors in a Mac Pro, you’ll want to get two GeForce GT 120s it seems (although there is a 3rd party option).
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jamesst - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
"The Lexar reader is FireWire 800 (woo!) and the iSight is FireWire 400; I can’t use the iSight on the new Mac Pro."You can still use your Firewire 400 iSight camera on the Mac Pro's Firewire 800 ports. All you need is a Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 cable. I know that Belkin makes just such a cable and I even purchased one at my local Apple Store here in Raleigh, NC.
joelypolly - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
I have actually had something similar happen to a socket I was working on. It was a matter of finding a sewing needle and moving each "pin" back to the original position.HilbertSpace - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
It would be interesting to try swapping the 2-socket tray with a 1-socket Mac Pro, and see if it works(?) Would be cheaper to buy the 2-socket board and upgrade yourself, no?MonkeyPaw - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
Are FB-DIMMs going to disappear from the market? While at first it doesn't sound Mac-related, original MacPro owners might soon be running out of memory upgrade options (though I doubt they've held out this long to upgrade). It wasn't cheap to start with, but it seems like it was Band-Aid technology. The IMC was the answer, but FB-DIMMs were a stop-gap until Nehalem-Xeons could arrive. Perhaps a memorial article for the technology is needed?JimmiG - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
Ok so I get it, even the "cheap" Mac Pro uses a Xeon, not an i7... But for all intents and purposes, it's an i7 920.Who in their right mind would pay $2,500 for a i7 920 system with 3GB of RAM, 640GB HDD and a rebranded Geforce 9500 GT? You can build a similar PC (or hackintosh) with the same specifications for the a fraction of the price - in fact you could also bump the RAM to 6GB and throw in a 1TB drive and a 4870 1GB or 4890 if you wanted and still stay *well* below that price point, even if using quality components and case.
The Mac Pro isn't even shiny!
plonk420 - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
did you read page 10?MrDiSante - Thursday, July 16, 2009 - link
Did you read his comment?ltcommanderdata - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
Another great in depth review. Your experiences with upgrading the processors were particularly interesting although I don't think it'd be something I would try.I just wanted to suggest you Boot Camp the Mac Pro and run the benchmarks needed to add 2x2.26GHz Gainestown and 2x2.93GHz Gainestown results to the Anandtech Bench. It might also be interesting to get a sample of the new nVidia GTX285 Mac Edition. It would certainly address the 1GB of VRAM concerns and would be cheaper than getting the HD4870 if you need 2 dual-link DVI ports since you don't need to buy that finicky adapter. There really aught to be DVI to mini-DP adapters though for people who still want to use the 24" LED display.
http://www.glbenchmark.com/result.jsp">http://www.glbenchmark.com/result.jsp
Oh and for interest, there turns out to be a 3D benchmark comparing the various iPhones to other cell phones. It's called GLBenchmark and needless to say, the iPhone 3G S is a screamer. They are also detecting the iPhone 3G S GPU as a PowerVR SGX 535.
ddobrigk - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
Actually, the Nehalem-EX's octo-core possibility is a no-go for now. It is a future product and has not been launched yet.Also, a little bit of nitpicking, but it won't use LGA1366 like these Xeons, it'll use LGA1567, because each CPU will sport a 4-channel memory controller.
In addition, it'll sport 4 QPI links, and its intended target are 4-way and 8-way systems, not really 2-way systems. A few rumors exist about some integrators being interested in 2-socket systems, though we're still a few months from actually seeing any LGA1567 motherboard on display, AFAIK. All we saw was an Intel Demo about it.
Don't know if Apple intends to go with 2-socket nehalem-exs, anyway, because when Nehalem-EX really hits the market, there'll also be the 6-core westmeres, I think. In any case, we're way beyond a reasonable number of cores for the typical user. :D
BrianMCan - Friday, July 17, 2009 - link
MacPro's really aren't meant for typical users ;)Scientific, Video/Movies, 3D, and advanced users who may do many things including the already mentioned, or many things at once. Always other things I can be doing while some video is rendering, including playing some Civ 4, or starting the next video project, researching upgrades & repairs for customers, stuff like that.
Although I personally may wait for the 2nd gen Nehalem MacPro's before I upgrade from my first gen MacPro, other than raw processing power, it does most of what I need efficiently enough.