How good is this mac pro, really?

[sjaxon]

I am reposting this because I don't think anyone saw it in the place I originally posted it)

I am trying to decide whether I should keep a mac pro I have acquired. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the vmware fusion windows 7 machine in the mac pro gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I keep it or get rid of it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

 

[derbothaus]

Are you running PS in Windows on both or just the i5? Can't really compare Win to OS X + HW. Too many variables. Nvidia is going to rule in Adobe apps. It would help to know exactly which card you have and which i5. Cause some are kind of more powerful than others.
2 5770 mean nothing in OSX. They are not running together ala Xfire. Just there for multi display ports.

 

[bpd115]

Put an SSD in the Mac Pro...

 

[ssgbryan]

I am reposting this because I don't think anyone saw it in the place I originally posted it)

I am trying to decide whether I should keep a mac pro I have acquired. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the vmware fusion windows 7 machine in the mac pro gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I keep it or get rid of it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

No, it isn't a good Mac Pro. You should be embarrassed to own such a machine. You should give it to me

In all seriousness, don't worry so much about benchmarks. They exist to give computer nerds something to orgasm over.

I would recommend that you look to tune the machine. Oh, and an SSD would be a good place to start. See sig.

 

[The-Pro]

I am reposting this because I don't think anyone saw it in the place I originally posted it)

I am trying to decide whether I should keep a mac pro I have acquired. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the vmware fusion windows 7 machine in the mac pro gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I keep it or get rid of it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

Couple things here
1. There indeed aren't very many apps that can make use of 12 cores, 24 virtual. Hardly any to be honest. Photoshop certainly doesnt. It might feel slower in some things but if you actually do something with your Mac Pro that uses all the cores, there will be no comparison to your i5 pc, it will blow it away. What do you use your 12 core beast for?
2. nVidia cards are favoured by adobe products. PS uses CUDA on the nVidia cards, which the ATI 5770 do not have. Go into the PS preferences and look in the performance section for something with Graphics cards. Make sure it is actually using the GPU. Having two 5770 in Mac OSX wont benefit you in anyway apart from being able to drive 6 screen max. So if your not running monitors of both GPU then its a waste of money and essentially only one card is used for everything. If you were in bootcamp you could crossfire them.
3. Start up and app loading is not CPU related. Thats the hard drive. If you want that to speed up, get a SSD. System will boot in 20 seconds and apps open in a flash.

If the things you do, do not use the 12 cores which you have its a complete waste and a single 6-core 3.33 GHz will feel quicker.
So to help in a decision if you should keep the Mac Pro or not. Tell us what you use it for, which programs etc. Do a days work and monitor your CPU and RAM usage in activity monitor, tell us, on average how much of your CPU is used and if it even ever uses all.

The ideal purpose of your mac would be hardcore number crunching. Serious professional video editing would benefit form it. 3D rendering would benefit even more since those programs (FormZ, Maxwell Render, etc) use every bit of CPU power they can get. Thats were a 12 core Mac Pro like yours just thrashes any other machine (unless they have the same, similar or better cpu's)

 

[Knara]

Are you running PS in Windows on both or just the i5? Can't really compare Win to OS X + HW. Too many variables. Nvidia is going to rule in Adobe apps.

Interestingly, not in some cases with Photoshop and the Wacom Cintiqs. There's a good number of reports where the pressure sensitivity will shut off momentarily causing big ol' blotches when using the brush tool or what not. You can apparently somewhat alleviate the issue by using some pretty old Nvidia drivers, or, using some pretty old Wacom drivers (but that also drops you back to before the calibration for the Cintiq moved to 4 point instead of 2 point).

Doesn't happen with ATI. Not sure why.

 

[Zwhaler]

Sounds like a fast machine. If you don't need 2x 5770's (multiple displays) you'd be better off performance-wise with a 5870. SSDs will help but ask yourself do you really need it. That machine is good for anything you throw at it... photoshop, video editing, scientific applications, games (needs a 5870 and even then won't beat a gaming PC in the graphics department), iTunes, and Safari!

 

[GermanyChris]

I am reposting this because I don't think anyone saw it in the place I originally posted it)

I am trying to decide whether I should keep a mac pro I have acquired. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the vmware fusion windows 7 machine in the mac pro gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I keep it or get rid of it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

Sell your workstation or your laptop, it's cool, since this is an option you don't really need a MP