New Mac Pro vs. 2010 12-Core

[joker00]

Like many I want the new mac pro.... It's just cool.

I mainly use the mac for office related work (excel, word, power point, safari).
Do use it for games (graphics and process intensive)
Do use it for Aperture and Final Cut/imovie.

I currently have the 2010 MacPro 2x6-Core running at 2.93Ghz.

I am thinking about the Quad Core E5 at 3.7

As far as processor, am I giving up to much??? What would you do?

 

[drmyfore]

Like many I want the new mac pro.... It's just cool.

I mainly use the mac for office related work (excel, word, power point, safari).
Do use it for games (graphics and process intensive)
Do use it for Aperture and Final Cut/imovie.

I currently have the 2010 MacPro 2x6-Core running at 2.93Ghz.

I am thinking about the Quad Core E5 at 3.7

As far as processor, am I giving up to much??? What would you do?

I Think the information below may help you.

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/performance/

ATTENTION: The data is based on the TOP configuration which have Xeon 12cores(the price of the CPU is 2600 USD), Dual FirePro D700 and 1TB SSD(you must know the 2999 Model only have Xeon E5-1620v2, price 300 USD, only for the CPU YOU MUST OFFER ANOTHER 2300 USD, say nothing for Graphic Cards and Storage)

 

[wallysb01]

Like many I want the new mac pro.... It's just cool.

I mainly use the mac for office related work (excel, word, power point, safari).
Do use it for games (graphics and process intensive)
Do use it for Aperture and Final Cut/imovie.

I currently have the 2010 MacPro 2x6-Core running at 2.93Ghz.

I am thinking about the Quad Core E5 at 3.7

As far as processor, am I giving up to much??? What would you do?

It sounds to me like you have more processing power than you regularly use, so in practical terms its probably a lateral move for you. You have a monster machine. It will be much better than the E5 quad core for heavily threaded work, but it sounds like you don't push that advantage very frequently.

 

[JronMasteR]

Like many I want the new mac pro.... It's just cool.

I mainly use the mac for office related work (excel, word, power point, safari).
Do use it for games (graphics and process intensive)
Do use it for Aperture and Final Cut/imovie.

I currently have the 2010 MacPro 2x6-Core running at 2.93Ghz.

I am thinking about the Quad Core E5 at 3.7

As far as processor, am I giving up to much??? What would you do?

Compared to the new base model, I would definitely keep your current machine. Ok, on single threaded workload, the new one would be a little bit faster, but in multi threaded tasks your current machine is much faster.

 

[joker00]

What if I went with the 6 core?

So everyone knows the 12 core I currently have is better to hold on to then get the new quad core.

So what if I get the 6 core? Theres a speed difference on the CPU, plus memory, and faster PCIe storage......

I must admit the 12 core is sweet..... but most of my apps are day to day games and office.... not much iMovie.

 

[SpecFoto]

I agree with the others, your have a great MacPro. I was like you and made the (right) decision a few months ago to upgrade my 2008 MacPro to the latest 2012 MacPro vs waiting for the MP 2013. So happy I did now that I see what the MP 2013 can't do vs my all-in-one box workhorse.

What I would do, if you haven't already, is get a 500 GB SSD and put it in the 2nd tray under the superdrive. And upgrade the video card to a Radeon 7950 or equivalent and install at least 24GB of ram. I bought a pc version MSI Twin Frozer 7950 dual 6 pin card for less than $300, vs. the Apple approved one at $450. The video card is about 3 times faster in games vs the stock AMD 5770 and it does not choke on 100mb PS files. While I don't have a start up screen, because the card it is not the Mac version, with the SSD as my startup drive that wait is about 10 seconds and then the log on screen appears.

I use Aperture with almost 100,000 files in my library and PS all the time. Couldn't be happier with the setup I have now.

 

[deconstruct60]

....
As far as processor, am I giving up to much??? What would you do?

The real issue is not so much what giving up but what you are using. If you hardly ever light up more than 6 cores with significant workload then not particularly giving up much.


Simplification assumption of an instruction per clock for some general back of the envelope work. ( the instruction per clock aren't the same for the two but this is just an approximation. )


4 x 3.7GHz ==> ~ 14.8 throughput rate.

5 x 2.93 GHz ==> ~ 14.7
6 x 2.93 GHz ==> ~ 17.5
8 x 2.93 GHz ==> ~ 23.44

That is the limitations if CPU bound. If moved to FCPX it isn't particularly CPU bound. That will be even less so when the update tuned to this new Mac Pro also ships around December.

If your major "go wide over large number of cores" app is FCPX then not so clear as myopically focusing on CPUs.

In short you should track what you are actually doing. The 'Activity Monitor' app is a coarse grain but GUI friendly way of doing that.

I think you are going to find that your games aren't particularly processor intensive relative to the resources you have available now ( at least in terms of consuming both of your CPU packages with high levels of work work. OS X may dribble very small workloads around to more but utilization percentages below 10-15 is pretty low. )