would it be stupid to buy a 2010 quad core now ?

[NightSun]

Yep, did the same, browsing through the forums and the web in these days. I'm going to call them later in the afternoon. Let us know how far did you get.

One question still remains for me: is it possible to safely use the dual Mac Pro with only 1 CPU installed? That would be a very nice compromise, with swapping in only a single (bud dual-capable X6xx) Hex CPU and adding later another one when needed: that is, speed right now, and even more speed in the future.

I found the Early 2009 Service Manual, in which it is stated that the technician could test if a given CPU works by leaving CPU B socket empty, installing the CPU into socket A and the computer should boot up. So, in this sense, for testing purposes it should definitely work, but another question whether is it ok using the Mac Pro in this configuration for a prolonged period. In principle, the X58 chipset is supporting this setup and other workstations with X58 dual socket motherboards, like HP, Dell, can be used with only 1 CPU. But I have not found any reports about someone using the Mac Pro in such a way.

 

[derbothaus]

2.93 Hex would perform only slightly under W3670 3.2 Hex, though interestingly this benchmark site is even listing X5670 over W3670 in rank: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5670+@+2.93GHz

FYI on those tests. I DL'd the tests because the numbers were so weird to me and my W3680 scores 10622. Which is what it should be. They are averages for submissions and they are worthless for ranking as you can see a 3.47Hz same chip is faster than a 3.6GHz?

 

[nanofrog]

One question still remains for me: is it possible to safely use the dual Mac Pro with only 1 CPU installed?

Yes.

You do not have to use 2x CPU's in a DP model, but it must be a DP series CPU designed to run in the machine (cannot stuff an SP based CPU in a DP system and have it work - reason = the chipset cannot turn off the unused QPI channel; SP chipset = X58, DP chipset = 5520 which is an X58 with a second QPI channel on it in order to connect to 2x CPU's).

 

[VirtualRain]

Just keep in mind that the 2009 DP systems used naked CPU's which complicates the swap to a retail CPU with an IHS. It's not impossible to swap, just more delicate and prone to issues. Just be sure you know what you are getting yourself into.

 

[Zwhaler]

To answer the question in the title of this thread...

It is NOT stupid to buy a 2010 Mac Pro now. If you need the machine to use as a tool to get serious work done then anybody would agree that the opportunity cost of waiting far outweighs the cost of buying a so called 2010 computer. In reality the machine is top of the line and is less than a year old which is new by workstation-class desktop computer standards. I just ordered a top of the line Mac Pro and have no regrets.

 

[NightSun]

Yes, I browsed through the related threads here and know that it is more complicated than just a simple swap. I'm going to get a thermal pad with appropriate thickness and do the way as some people reported in this forum. Well, initially I did not like the idea much to mess around with this no-IHS->IHS issue and certainly there are some risks in doing this CPU exchange, but it is not the most complicated things on earth, either. Let's hope it is gonna work alright. I will report how far did I get.

 

[nanofrog]

Yes, I browsed through the related threads here and know that it is more complicated than just a simple swap. I'm going to get a thermal pad with appropriate thickness and do the way as some people reported in this forum. Well, initially I did not like the idea much to mess around with this no-IHS->IHS issue and certainly there are some risks in doing this CPU exchange, but it is not the most complicated things on earth, either. Let's hope it is gonna work alright. I will report how far did I get.

I'd stay away from thermal pads, as they don't transfer heat as well (fine for some things, but not for CPU's IMO). Just use a good thermal paste, such as arctic silver 5 (should be an easy one to find).

As per what makes it difficult, is the lack of the retention mechanism (aka lid), and the need to remove the fan connectors from the heatsinks and manually connect them during the assembly process due to the increased height of the IHS equipped CPU's (details are in the How-To).

 

[NightSun]

Nanofrog, many thanks for clarifying this technical issue and your suggestions. Regarding the thermal pad, I meant to use it on the contact surface between the heatsink and the processor daughterboard, for which at the bottom of the heatsink there is a thin slip of thermal pad already installed in factory. But as I learned due to the added height of the new CPU it won't contact any more, so it should be substituted for a thicker thermal pad, otherwise the fans cannot be regulated and will spin at full speed. Apart from that, definitely thermal paste is the way to go between the CPU and heatsink.

 

[Levina]

Wow, NightSun, that's quite an undertaking! I wish I had the skill and nerve to do something like that, but even thinking about it makes my palms sweat!

So does this mean that you are going with the 2.26 Octo after all?

I called them up yesterday and just received word that it will ship today - no extra charge. Considering my options it's still the best deal.

By the way, one of the APRs here had a sale of a few 2009 2.26 Octos. Also new. Their price was € 2999. I got it for € 1775...

 

[NightSun]

Yep, I also called them that I would proceed with the 2.26 Octo-core. And indeed we got a very good deal at this price. Even a refurbished one at Apple Store (e.g. at store.apple.com/fr) sells for €2449, so that ours is a really great bargain.

Anyway, you might well also think about exchanging the CPU, if not now, then later on, since single-thread performance is quite a pain with the 2.26 Xeon CPU as reported by many. And yes, it will demand my nerves, since there are some risks involved, you can see that Anandtech back in 2009 fried their logic board and one of the CPUs when tried to upgrade the base configuration. So caution needed. I'm going to report about how it turned out once I received the Mac and the new CPU.

 

[HelsinkiMac]

Levina and Nightsun - I hope everything is sorted and you end up with something you are both happy with (refund or DP model). I'm really sorry that my suggestion seems to have not worked out :-( That's pretty terrible of them as ebay sellers to take the money then turn around and say we don't have any left, and especially to a) have possibly sold while waiting for your money, and b)to say pay more for what we do have in stock. If you still are having problems PLEASE PLEASE enter into a dispute with paypal/ebay or both as soon as possible, as after a certain time they will do nothing (40 days I think but please CHECK this). I'd still consider giving them neutral or negative reviews once it is all worked out. I don't think my money went through paypal echeck so I was lucky, it was cleared almost straight away and arrived fairly quickly.

Nightsun - if I had known that you could upgrade just one of the CPUs and run as a SP I might have gone for the DP after all! If you do that, let us know when it arrives and how you get on. When you have massively upgraded and are playing&working with your DP dodeca-core machine I will be very jealous! For me, it was really about the cost, immediate upgrades were way out of my price range (GPU,CPU etc) and their offer on the 2.93 SP was pretty much as far as I could stretch, and is perfect for me.

Levina - looks like you will do similar, or just stay with the stock CPU. The discount looks pretty nice compared with that ARP I couldn't find a single Pro discounted model in Finland at all! Was looking for second hand on ebay plus CPU, Ram, GPU etc upgrades when I spotted the offer...

Anyway, fingers crossed for you that you both end up with a machine you are v happy with for a good price.

 

[nanofrog]

Regarding the thermal pad, I meant to use it on the contact surface between the heatsink and the processor daughterboard, for which at the bottom of the heatsink there is a thin slip of thermal pad already installed in factory.

Ah, OK. That makes more sense.

 

[Levina]

Anyway, you might well also think about exchanging the CPU, if not now, then later on, since single-thread performance is quite a pain with the 2.26 Xeon CPU as reported by many.

I have been reading up on the upgrade and am actually beginning to warm up to the idea. It doesn't seem too complicated. Just have to watch for those pitfalls, is all. But it will have to wait a bit as I can't justify spending another € 1300 right now.

HelsinkiMac. Swift payment seems to have been the trick here. With both NightSun and I it took some time to get the money to the seller and they obviously didn't like waiting for it...

Of course it was unethical and against eBay rules. I have contacted eBay Customer Support you know. Just gave them a short summary of what had happened and asked them how binding a purchase really is and they answered the same day with a very lengthy, pretty personal and most helpful reply. They really take this stuff seriously and I was pretty impressed with the quality of that reply.

I have also contacted PayPal, asking them why it took so long to transfer my money. They too sent me a lengthy explanation plus advice on what to do if I couldn't sort things out with the seller. That was also a pretty decent reply.
They also told me that the moment I hit the PayPal button (which was minutes after I hit the Buy it Now button), the seller received a notification that I had initiated payment and that money was on its way! I had wondered about that. So there really is no excuse for what they did.

But I called op the seller yesterday, talked to a most kind and helpful woman (who immediately knew who I was by the way), and the Mac Pro should be arriving before the end of the week. So all is well now.

Still, I will not give positive feedback. Haven't decided yet if it will be neutral or negative. But I'm pretty content now and if the Mac Pro is what they said it is (new and sealed) and will register properly with Apple, I might decide on neutral.

 

[nanofrog]

Still, I will not give positive feedback. Haven't decided yet if it will be neutral or negative. But I'm pretty content now and if the Mac Pro is what they said it is (new and sealed) and will register properly with Apple, I might decide on neutral.

I'd be a bit careful, as negative feedback could have a blow-back effect, just in case you need to return the system (haven't read their return policy, so I'm just suggesting "proceed with caution" before hitting the submit button).

 

[NightSun]

HelsinkiMac, thanks for your kind words. Anyway, if everything goes well with shipping and after that, then I will certainly not give negative feedback for them. They made a mistake, this is evident, but nevertheless afterwards they also provided a good offer, 200 pounds below the Buy-it-now price of the 8-core. And in case we had not accepted that, most probably we would have been given a full refund.

 

[Levina]

You're very gracious about it, NightSun. And I agree that they probably would have given us a full refund had we refused their offer. Still, this doesn't change the fact that they sold both our Mac Pro to somebody else; I really had a few rather agonizing days because of it. Maybe it's old age finally creeping up on me.

However, if the Mac Pro checks out, I won't leave Negative feedback either (with which I would most certainly have waited a bit, nanofrog... )

 

[nanofrog]

However, if the Mac Pro checks out, I won't leave Negative feedback either (with which I would most certainly have waited a bit, nanofrog... )

I can certainly understand that the situation got you a bit steamed up (I'd have been too).

But I wasn't sure if you were just venting or really meant it , so I figured I'd try to difuse the situation a little (add some cold water).

 

[HelsinkiMac]

Yeah if you both get your Pros up and running before trying to give ebay feedback I'm certain the grins on your faces will only allow positive feedback!

Seriously I'd probably be quite tempted in both cases to leave neutral feedback, as it documents that there were problems, but that they worked them out in the end. I think I would have been less happy, as I really don't have the money for an immediate CPU/GPU/Ram upgrade, which would mean even if I was getting a potentially better longterm machine, I would have been left with a worse one in the short term. But if you both are happy to change a few things straight away I'm sure you'll be delighted with it! If you need any help on the registering, let me know (it was pretty easy, fill in web form, scan receipt, day later email to say registered!).

Thanks also to Nanofrog for all your advice on this and other threads, you've helped these guys that I 'advised' to buy the Pros to make the decision to go for the DP model much easier I suspect!

 

[nanofrog]

Thanks also to Nanofrog for all your advice on this and other threads, you've helped these guys that I 'advised' to buy the Pros to make the decision to go for the DP model much easier I suspect!

NP.

If you go back and look, I actually recommended the Hex (on an as-is basis for their needs). But when they took a deeper look into the DP model as a possibility, I offered up some information.

But getting the DP and immediately upgrading it is more expensive (again, machine vs. machine from the vendor they're buying/bought from - I won't consider the transaction complete until they have the systems in hand ). Fortunately, they found a really good deal on them which I suspect was the deciding factor when considering the financial aspects of the upgrades.

 

[NightSun]

Hi HelsinkiMac,

Well, let's see how all this turns out. The machine has been dispatched today, so I'm eagerly looking forward to put my hand on it soon. And yes, I would appreciate much if you explained how registration goes - sure, it will be easy but you already have the experience. Thanks for sharing it and also again for letting us know about this great opportunity.

Regarding the SP-DP flip, you are absolutely right that in your situation it would have been a significantly worse compromise if your order on the SP Mac Pro had been cancelled just like ours and only had the option for the DP instead. Without upgrades it is not the best Mac Pro out there, and it caused both for me and Levina some moments of frustration whether we should proceed on this path. Should it not be possible to use it with only a single CPU, I would have dropped the idea and asked for a refund, since even in this way I'm already ~500 EUR over my initial budget plans compared to if I got the SP one upgraded to a 3.2 Hex afterwards. However, it could pay off in the future. Anyway, it was a key information that even a single CPU, though one with dual QPI links and thus expensive, would suffice to boot it up.

Thanks everybody for your helping comments, and I will certainly let you know about the progress. Now I'm awaiting for the packages, of the machine and of some upgrades, Crucial RAM sticks already arrived today. Cheers.

 

[nanofrog]

Regarding the SP-DP flip, ... Should it not be possible to use it with only a single CPU, I would have dropped the idea and asked for a refund, since even in this way I'm already ~500 EUR over my initial budget plans compared to if I got the SP one upgraded to a 3.2 Hex afterwards.

I didn't initially realize that you weren't aware a DP system can run with a single CPU (so long as it's a DP model). But I suspect that the price paid for the 2009 is also what's allowed you to manage this (otherwise would have been too expensive and out of budget).

I'm glad it worked out. And please keep us posted as to your success (don't panic about the swap, just take your time and don't force anything = you'll be fine).

 

[NightSun]

You're very gracious about it, NightSun. And I agree that they probably would have given us a full refund had we refused their offer. Still, this doesn't change the fact that they sold both our Mac Pro to somebody else; I really had a few rather agonizing days because of it. Maybe it's old age finally creeping up on me.

However, if the Mac Pro checks out, I won't leave Negative feedback either (with which I would most certainly have waited a bit, nanofrog... )

Hi Levina,

Let us know if everything went alright. I hope we won't have even more frustration and a more agonizing period after we received the machine. The way we embarked could be a bit steeper than it was initially intended, but you know I always liked the challenges.

 

[NightSun]

I didn't initially realize that you weren't aware a DP system can run with a single CPU (so long as it's a DP model). But I suspect that the price paid for the 2009 is also what's allowed you to manage this (otherwise would have been too expensive and out of budget).

I'm glad it worked out. And please keep us posted as to your success (don't panic about the swap, just take your time and don't force anything = you'll be fine).

Well, that one I knew that in general the LGA1366 dual socket motherboards are supporting this (specifically the chipset, of course), but I was not sure if this applies for the Mac Pro as well, since we know Apple has its own way of implementation in certain specific things, like the CPU without IHS. So, thanks for clarifying this.

And definitively, only the great bargain (along with the possibility of using Westmere CPUs thanks to the firmware upgrade hack) allowed me to proceed in this way, otherwise it would have been way more expensive than simply getting a refurb 2010 SP Mac Pro and swapping in the 3.2 Hex.

 

[nanofrog]

Well, that one I knew that in general the LGA1366 dual socket motherboards are supporting this (specifically the chipset, of course), but I was not sure if this applies for the Mac Pro as well, since we know Apple has its own way of implementation in certain specific things, like the CPU without IHS. So, thanks for clarifying this.

It's strictly a hardware issue (due to Intel's designs as a means of saving them money and increasing their profit margins), not firmware.

But I can certainly understand the concern, particularly with what they did with the firmware on the 2009's (i.e. memory runs at a fixed frequency <1066> rather than based off of SPD timings, which would have allowed 1333 with the right CPU and memory). This was solved with the 2010's, but never made available for 2009 owners by Apple. Granted, most won't actually benefit from 1333, but it's more about Apple's thinking that it all users wouldn't have been able to use it as I see it (scientists running simulation software could, as such software tends to be memory intensive as well as true n core multi-threaded).

And definitively, only the great bargain (along with the possibility of using Westmere CPUs thanks to the firmware upgrade hack) allowed me to proceed in this way, otherwise it would have been way more expensive than simply getting a refurb 2010 SP Mac Pro and swapping in the 3.2 Hex.

Exactly. Had you not gotten a good deal, I would have been amazed if you or Levina went for it at all, as it's not cost effective otherwise.

But this is where being patient and finding the right deal can pay off.

 

[Levina]

Thanks HelsinkiMac and Nanofrog for all the advice and thinking with. It's much appreciated.

Now that all is said and done, I'm pretty pleased with my purchase. It was a tough decision but looking at my options it was the best deal after all. The cpu swap will have to wait a bit though, so it'll be a tad slow when running single thread applications. I can live with that for now. So yes, I'm pleased.

However, I agree, HelsinkiMac, that giving neutral feedback is the way to go so as to indicate that not all was well. I'll be fair and nice about it though. See, your splash of cold water helped, nanofrog!

NightSun, will you do the cpu swap right away? I do hope you will give feedback here. I'll be looking out for it!