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2008 Mac Pro vs. 2013 4-core nMP
- Thread starter theBigD23
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When reading those benchmark remember that the vast majority of operation are just single threaded, so while the speed boost in multithreaded stuff will be very little, most operation will be executed about twice as fast on the nMP.
Don't know if it's worth the upgrade, in the end it really depends on what you are looking for.
Thanks for the info. I'm ultimately looking to see if I should purchase the 4 core model and upgrade sooner or go all out with the 6-core, 32, D700s and keep it a lot longer.
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Multi-core performance is key to go to the 6-core machine. What main programs truly utilize the 6-core processor?
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Multi-core performance is key to go to the 6-core machine. What main programs truly utilize the 6-core processor?
I have a Mac Pro already and would rather just get the new version than the same form factor.
I went from a 3,1 to a 6,1 (6 core, D700).
Main reason was the Memory performance, PCIe (video card limitations see below), SATAII, and Power consumption of the 3,1 and I wasn't going to go PC or buy second hand 5,1.
There was always something holding back the 3,1 - and it most likely the ECC DDR2 FB-DIMMS running at 800MHz. The memory performance of my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (Ivy-Bridge 2.6GHz i7) is double in comparison, but CPU performance is about the same.
My last upgrade to it was for the Video Card in the 3,1 to which I chose a GTX670 (instead of a 680) from a GTX285. Performance boost was not as I expected (considering at the time it was a $500 upgrade). I put that into my wife's gaming PC where it shines when compared to it being used in the 3,1.
Main reason was the Memory performance, PCIe (video card limitations see below), SATAII, and Power consumption of the 3,1 and I wasn't going to go PC or buy second hand 5,1.
There was always something holding back the 3,1 - and it most likely the ECC DDR2 FB-DIMMS running at 800MHz. The memory performance of my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (Ivy-Bridge 2.6GHz i7) is double in comparison, but CPU performance is about the same.
My last upgrade to it was for the Video Card in the 3,1 to which I chose a GTX670 (instead of a 680) from a GTX285. Performance boost was not as I expected (considering at the time it was a $500 upgrade). I put that into my wife's gaming PC where it shines when compared to it being used in the 3,1.
They are cheap but expensive to upgrade if you want to get them to the performance of nMP.
Upgrading a 2009-2012 Mac pro will be far cheaper than trying to upgrade a nMP. I'm a firm believer in buying bare minimum then upgrading until sufficient.
The question is not what programs truly utilize all the core(BTW they are a lot...), the question is: are your programs taking advantage of all the core? Another thing to consider is consistency, for example even if some of my software are well multithreaded for final rendering and a few other tasks, for everything else they use just one thread so they'll benefit much more from single core CPU speed, that's why I choose a fast clock speed over number of core.
What software do you use?
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I had a 2008 then 2009 then access to a 2013 (due to the project that I'm on now).
You can read about my experience here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1772623/
Btw, my current 2009 is a hard 30% faster than the 2008.
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Hi it seems to me photoshop and fcpx is fully multithreaded, interested to know what current and common software is not ?
You can read about my experience here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1772623/
Btw, my current 2009 is a hard 30% faster than the 2008.
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Hi it seems to me photoshop and fcpx is fully multithreaded, interested to know what current and common software is not ?
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Then maybe wait for a new nMP, I would recommend.
I went from a 2008 to a 2010 (with a GTX780) and can easily feel the performance boost.
I haven't even gotten the 12 core upgrade yet. Waiting for the X5680 to drop in price.
I upgraded a 2009 to geek benches above 30,000 for not that much money.
3.33ghz 12 core upgrade was about 600 bucks (USD)
got 24g ram from a server reseller for 50 bucks
GTX 780 6g was about 580 bucks, flashed for another 150.
Going to put an Apple Samsung Flash 1 TB (read/writes over 1G) for about 700 or under, though you could just stick with a Samsung Evo in an adapter for less
This is a smoking machine, easily on par with the nMP
Is not that simple. Not all the tasks are multithreaded/well multithreaded. Check your activity monitor while working with PS for example. Open the monitor and then start to work on an average PS file, you will see it using all the core in only a very few cases, most of the times some core will remains largely unused and I'm not even sure if you will see significant benefits from anything above 6core. Probably due to the nature of video editing softwares FCPX will do a better job in utilizing most of the cores, but also in this case some operations will be just single threaded.
A lot of softwares are not multithreaded at all, some professional software too because not every task can be splitted between different cores. Even when a software can utilize all the core for final rendering, ecc, it does not mean that it will do the same for every single task. Again, run the activity monitor and check how often your are using all the available CPU resources.
I'm a CGI artist and I can easily fully utilize all my cores(and also all the core available on my render farm), that being sayed you will be very surprised knowing that when our workstation are not rendering/simulating an OC I7 4770K CPU(300$) equipped machine can perform much faster than dual 12core(5400$) Xeon workstation.
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What about the memory bandwidth, lack of thunderbolt 2 and out of date SATA/PCI-E?
The old school Mac Pros I feel are no longer suitable (for the money) to anyone with high memory/IO bandwidth applications.
That's second hand upgrade. So please don't compare that to the retail price of nMP.
What is Apple Samsung Flash? Samsung's Evo's have 500MB R/W and only if you have SATA III. If you stick that into MP it'll be 220 MB R/W.
Compared to nMP's SSD that's a toy.
If you want to get that SSD performance you gotta spend more and buy either PCIe SSD or get a PCIe RAID card and then make an SSD raid.
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Upgrading a nMP? How and why do you upgrade a nMP?
Right now buying an oMP and upgrading it to the specs of nMP is a waste of money imho. Even if it's couple hundred bucks cheaper you are buying a machine which won't have any second hand value and if you keep buying peripherals that you can't use with your future MP's, that's also a waste of money.
Buy a nMP and invest in TB peripherals.
lack of thunderbolt 2 doesn't affect use in a professional video setting, storage in a professional broadcaster or studio facility is usually fibre channel, ethernet or SAS connectable. These large arrays are not thunderbolt anyway.
For personal use, adding a SATA3 cable and raid card for internal raid is perfectly satisfying, though not 4k uncompressed bandwidths neither are small thunderbolt solutions.
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I'm not doing a price comparison. Above comment stated that upgrading an old machine was expensive, I'm pointing out that it is not.
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Samsung apple flash is the same damn pcie hd in a Mac Pro 13 or a rMBP late 13. I have a 40 dollar adapter that lets me put THE SAME HD AT THE SAME R/W SPEEDS as the nMP. 1TB apple spec drives are on ebay from Korea for btw 500 and 700 dollars
Performance on the boot drive is identical, you do not need raid. 4 lane pcie SSD is over 1000g/s
Fair enough. But if you don't use second hand parts, the upgrades are fairly expensive and not everyone would trust second hand components for a professional workstation.
the processors are EOL anyway, they aren't really available new. Boatloads are coming off of 3 year leases, so prices will plummet, and the failure rate on non-overclocked CPUs is extremely low, as most IT people are aware of.
Most resellers of server CPUs offer some warranty and will take back obviously bad CPUs, and once you have a good one its hard to break unless you fail at temperature management - which would kill new CPUs as well
The upgrade parts that count are new, the drives, cables, and GPU. And still not expensive
Most resellers of server CPUs offer some warranty and will take back obviously bad CPUs, and once you have a good one its hard to break unless you fail at temperature management - which would kill new CPUs as well
The upgrade parts that count are new, the drives, cables, and GPU. And still not expensive
I did almost th e same exact upgrades you did on your machine, but I opted for the OWC accelsior instead of the pcie adapter since I needed the HDD trays for storage purposes.
Where does the Accelsior mount? The new adapter to mount an Apple Samsung pcie drive goes in one of the x4 slots, I assumed the OWC drive goes in the same place.
Woops, I thought you were referring to the Velocity x2 adapter where the drives mount in the HDD cage for power and the data cable runs up to it for the second drive. My mistake!
I really don't use many of the professional programs, except for the occasional TCP, Pixelmator.
My main decision is to buy something that will last a long time or something less powerful that I can upgrade later.
Also, my big fear is the new processors that can be used and since it's already been 9 months since release, then another newer version will come out shortly and have my very expensive computer be an oder version quickly.
My main decision is to buy something that will last a long time or something less powerful that I can upgrade later.
Also, my big fear is the new processors that can be used and since it's already been 9 months since release, then another newer version will come out shortly and have my very expensive computer be an oder version quickly.