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Dell and HP Workstations vs. Latest Mac Pro - Good Article

Tucom

Tucom

Cancelled
Original poster
Jul 29, 2006
1,252
312
Very well written and neat article about the latest Xeon workstations from Dell and HP and how they favor against the Mac Pro. It also gives you an idea of just how much performance the 2010 Mac Pro is giving up due it's age, which doesn't seem to be much really.

And also on the benchmarks it shows just how superior OS X and Linux are to Windows, and Adobe PhotoShop renders are WAY faster on OS X than Windows.



Link: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/08/as-mac-pro-stagnates-pc-workstations-muscle-ahead/2/


This article really makes me want to try out CentOS.
 
This part made me laugh.

Anyway, this is the reality of real-world benchmarking, and the reality is that mental ray for Maya is a hit-but-mostly-miss renderer that I stopped using years ago because of the problems and lack of testing. What are my hardware recommendations if you are a mental ray for Maya user? Try a V-Ray dongle.
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Also I just looked it up and it has a couple semi misleading points. The T5600 and 3600 can take 4 drives. It seems with this generation sticking in 4 requires the use of 2.5" form factors. The T5600 uses dual package parts even if you opt for a single package version. If you're looking for a hex core machine as cheap as possible, the 3600 would probably make more sense. You wouldn't gain additional pci lanes without configuring the 5600 as a dual cpu setup anyway. Base configuration + a Quadro 4000 and E5-1650 (6 core) on a T3600 with the cheapest of the 3 year warranty options comes out to $2167.70 before tax. It still only has a couple PCI slots, so it may impose restrictions on what cards will fit.
 
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I don't have much knowledge in what this guy is saying, but I enjoyed the article.

Does anyone know an article that compares a hackintosh with a Mac Pro in terms of performance? As he said, some applications seem to have better compilers in OS X. If I concluded correctly, a powerful hackintosh would beat the crap out of a Mac Pro?
 
El Awesome said:
I don't have much knowledge in what this guy is saying, but I enjoyed the article.

Does anyone know an article that compares a hackintosh with a Mac Pro in terms of performance? As he said, some applications seem to have better compilers in OS X. If I concluded correctly, a powerful hackintosh would beat the crap out of a Mac Pro?
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Yes, yes it would. Until an update that breaks compatibility comes along ;)
 
El Awesome said:
I don't have much knowledge in what this guy is saying, but I enjoyed the article.

Does anyone know an article that compares a hackintosh with a Mac Pro in terms of performance? As he said, some applications seem to have better compilers in OS X. If I concluded correctly, a powerful hackintosh would beat the crap out of a Mac Pro?
Click to expand...

There's no real reason to have an article, in essence there are just too many variations possible with hackintosh builds and once they are working they run OSX just like a mac pro anyway.

If you want to go by geekbench scores, a well set up dual processor hackintosh will run 32,000+ with ease compared to ~25,000 of the top of the line mac pro. If you really know what you are doing 35,000 to 40,000 is possible. This is all with the same generation technology as the mac pro.

Aside from that if you are using an SR-2 motherboard you have 7 PCIe slots to play with and as many drives as you care to fit in your case of choice. Mine has 10x 3.5" bays and 3x 5.25" bays.

This all sounds very tasty but as All Taken said, you will need to be careful with how you have it configured. Nightmares can happen and to start with I was one of those cases but with what I have now learned I will never need to buy another pre-built computer ever again, and my machine is likely to still be fairly competitive with the top of the line of whatever Apple releases next year.
 
DJenkins said:
There's no real reason to have an article, in essence there are just too many variations possible with hackintosh builds and once they are working they run OSX just like a mac pro anyway.

If you want to go by geekbench scores, a well set up dual processor hackintosh will run 32,000+ with ease compared to ~25,000 of the top of the line mac pro. If you really know what you are doing 35,000 to 40,000 is possible. This is all with the same generation technology as the mac pro.

Aside from that if you are using an SR-2 motherboard you have 7 PCIe slots to play with and as many drives as you care to fit in your case of choice. Mine has 10x 3.5" bays and 3x 5.25" bays.

This all sounds very tasty but as All Taken said, you will need to be careful with how you have it configured. Nightmares can happen and to start with I was one of those cases but with what I have now learned I will never need to buy another pre-built computer ever again, and my machine is likely to still be fairly competitive with the top of the line of whatever Apple releases next year.
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I'm aware of PunkNuggets Hackinbeast with the Dual Xeon setup. Pretty awesome.

But this is just raw power, and you only need this for rendering stuff. I'd like to know how a Hackintosh performs in e.g. OpenCL or OpenGL stuff, or multi-tasking. I consider a 3770k-setup to replace my current 2.66Quad from 2009.
I don't really need raw CPU power, I don't do much rendering, but I want power for Photoshop and Illustrator and stuff like this. And it has to be snappy in everyday-tasks. This is why I would go with Sabertooth Z77, a 3770k, 2 SSDs + 3 HDDs, 32GB of RAM together with a GTX680 - that should be enough. From what I read in tonymacx86, the Sabertooth Z77 works flawlessy without any DSDTs.
 
El Awesome said:
I'm aware of PunkNuggets Hackinbeast with the Dual Xeon setup. Pretty awesome.

But this is just raw power, and you only need this for rendering stuff. I'd like to know how a Hackintosh performs in e.g. OpenCL or OpenGL stuff, or multi-tasking. I consider a 3770k-setup to replace my current 2.66Quad from 2009.
I don't really need raw CPU power, I don't do much rendering, but I want power for Photoshop and Illustrator and stuff like this. And it has to be snappy in everyday-tasks. This is why I would go with Sabertooth Z77, a 3770k, 2 SSDs + 3 HDDs, 32GB of RAM together with a GTX680 - that should be enough. From what I read in tonymacx86, the Sabertooth Z77 works flawlessy without any DSDTs.
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Well you can pretty much judge the performance just from the hardware you have chosen.
What I was trying to say is it's all going to run the same in a hackintosh as it would in a real mac.
Now the same hardware running in Windows would be a different story.

Your list sounds like a great setup, and would definitely do what you want with ease. But at the same time all of that is fully achievable in a real mac as well. Unless you intend to overclock, or if you want to build something yourself to save money.

I guess if you are even asking about hackintosh then one (or both) of these is probably the case, and building a hack could work well for you!

However if you just want to buy a machine that works great with photoshop etc. with very little worry or modification, you can just add your desired RAM, SSDs, HDDs and GPU into the base model 3.2GHz quad core mac pro.
 
DJenkins said:
Well you can pretty much judge the performance just from the hardware you have chosen.
What I was trying to say is it's all going to run the same in a hackintosh as it would in a real mac.
Now the same hardware running in Windows would be a different story.

Your list sounds like a great setup, and would definitely do what you want with ease. But at the same time all of that is fully achievable in a real mac as well. Unless you intend to overclock, or if you want to build something yourself to save money.

I guess if you are even asking about hackintosh then one (or both) of these is probably the case, and building a hack could work well for you!

However if you just want to buy a machine that works great with photoshop etc. with very little worry or modification, you can just add your desired RAM, SSDs, HDDs and GPU into the base model 3.2GHz quad core mac pro.
Click to expand...

I'm actually writing this frome the 2.66 Quad base Mac Pro that I own.
The reason I'm going to build a hackintosh is because I want to build my own computer (I don't know why, I just want to start fiddling with computers). Overclocking - probably, but I'm not sure if voiding warranty is worth that speedbump I'm rarely gonna use.
I'm selling the Mac Pro at the moment, to get the money needed for the hackintosh. If someone's intersted - specs are in the sig below, PM me.

Thanks for the support DJenkins :) That helped a lot!
 
El Awesome said:
I'm actually writing this frome the 2.66 Quad base Mac Pro that I own.
The reason I'm going to build a hackintosh is because I want to build my own computer (I don't know why, I just want to start fiddling with computers). Overclocking - probably, but I'm not sure if voiding warranty is worth that speedbump I'm rarely gonna use.
I'm selling the Mac Pro at the moment, to get the money needed for the hackintosh. If someone's intersted - specs are in the sig below, PM me.

Thanks for the support DJenkins :) That helped a lot!
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Have you popped it on the marketplace?
 
Tucom said:
Very well written and neat article about the latest Xeon workstations from Dell and HP and how they favor against the Mac Pro. It also gives you an idea of just how much performance the 2010 Mac Pro is giving up due it's age, which doesn't seem to be much really.

And also on the benchmarks it shows just how superior OS X and Linux are to Windows, and Adobe PhotoShop renders are WAY faster on OS X than Windows.



Link: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/08/as-mac-pro-stagnates-pc-workstations-muscle-ahead/2/


This article really makes me want to try out CentOS.
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This is a fairly old article (August) and I am quite sure we have discussed it before on these forums. I am not having any luck finding those threads though, but I remember some good discussions. I am fairly sure that I didn't dream about them, which would be sad.
 
El Awesome said:
I don't have much knowledge in what this guy is saying, but I enjoyed the article.

Does anyone know an article that compares a hackintosh with a Mac Pro in terms of performance? As he said, some applications seem to have better compilers in OS X. If I concluded correctly, a powerful hackintosh would beat the crap out of a Mac Pro?
Click to expand...

No, no it wouldn't. Not even close. The 12 Core 24 Thread Mac Pro is only half as fast at the worst than the most powerful, fully decked out Sandy Bridge Xeon workstation, and still manages to beat them on some tests. A Hackintosh using desktop CPU's wouldn't even touch the 24 thread Mac Pro.


For the price? It might be a better deal. But performance and power? LOL No


EDIT: Ok, I thought you meant a Core i Series processor against the 24 thread Mac Pro. Yeah a Dual Xeon Hackintosh could theoretically beat the Mac Pro, for cheaper. But for me, there's no point in running OS X if you aren't going to run it on official Apple hardware.


And the best Workstation from HP that I would get is the Z620 - it's not as long as the 820, and has a cleaner aesthetic, is cheaper, and has much of the same internal layout and design features and look of the 820, with handles and all. It seems about the same size as the Mac Pro.


Even though I'll probably always stick with Apple workstations (On a 1,1 2006 Mac Pro at the moment, until I need to upgrade), it'd be awesome to get a HP Z620 and put CentOS on it and see what it can do, just to try something different.
 
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theSeb said:
This is a fairly old article (August) and I am quite sure we have discussed it before on these forums. I am not having any luck finding those threads though, but I remember some good discussions. I am fairly sure that I didn't dream about them, which would be sad.
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We did..

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Tucom said:
No, no it wouldn't. Not even close. The 12 Core 24 Thread Mac Pro is only half as fast at the worst than the most powerful, fully decked out Sandy Bridge Xeon workstation, and still manages to beat them on some tests. A Hackintosh using desktop CPU's wouldn't even touch the 24 thread Mac Pro.


For the price? It might be a better deal. But performance and power? LOL No
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How about a DP SR-X with a couple Sandys???

No one is going to compare a 3770K with a DP Mac But I would compare my 2700K to any SP Mac Pro
 
theSeb said:
This is a fairly old article (August) and I am quite sure we have discussed it before on these forums. I am not having any luck finding those threads though,
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If you just search on "HP z820" then that will flush most of them out.

thread driven by the same article:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1420424/

one of numerous thread about buying z820 (because need to run Windows and the Mac Pro is so late: blah, blah, blah).
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1416695/
 
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