Comments on: Pre Macworld Crack

By: minxlj

minxlj — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:54:06 +0000

To have the new Mac Pro fully kitted out up to a gobsmacking 32GB and all the customisable trimmings is a cool $27,000. I would sooooo love THAT machine!

By: Alex Lawrence-Richards

Alex Lawrence-Richards — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:02:50 +0000

Marshall, actually last gen’s Mac Pros were able to support 8 30″ displays at once. It just wasn’t advertised as much.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:18:00 +0000

gunnar, to answer your question: yes, the 8 core machines are much faster. It depends on the workload of course of generally you can count on a roughly 50% performance increase. The harpertowns have 12 MB of cache per socket, or 3 MB per core, which is actually _more_ cache per core than the old dual core machines.

By: jon deal

jon deal — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:17:31 +0000

gunnar I believe there is more cache RAM in this latest iteration of chips. And most OS X programs are (and have been for a long while) multi-proc aware. Even back in the dark days of OS 9, Photoshop 2.5.1 was multi-processor aware.

No 2U Xserve, though. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d trade Apple one of my kids for a 2U or 4U Xserve. (One of the louder kids, not one of the cuter ones). :-]

By: Omar

Omar — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:28:18 +0000

That is hot. Hot hot hot. Hot.

Can’t wait to play with one of those.

By: gunnar

gunnar — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:28:04 +0000

question is if it’s faster than a dual dual-core system?

to fit 4 cores in one processor they’ve had to cut down on the cache size - and it doesn’t matter if you have the fastest cpu in the world if you can’t get data in to it fast enough…

and then there’s the question of the software has support for it, but i guess that when it comes to software that you’d notice (like rendiring programs), they’d be the first to be supporters

By: Marshall

Marshall — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:23:42 +0000

I’m working with a first gen MacPro — dual core 2.66, and I can’t imagine more speed making any difference for me at all. I work with RAW files that start at around 13MB and quickly become 200mb, and most processes are still nearly instantaneous. What is making the difference I think is the amount of RAM I have — 5GB.

I bought this machine with the idea that I want to TRY to get at least 4 years out of it, instead of my previous cycle of upgrading every two. Based on current performance, I think that’ll be no problem.

The new machines have awesome spec.. especially for those in video and audio rendering. And support for 8 30″ screens is not outlandish — a musician friend of mine is running THREE 30″s plus a Sony 52″ LCD HDTV, and when you see it all working together, it makes perfect sense. More screens might allow you to spread a live stage across multiple screens. Just make sure you get fan silencing kits or the noise will drive you crazy.

I think you should get one Jon. And build that dream studio.

By: April

April — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:49:57 +0000

…drools…
That is hot sex.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:29:15 +0000

I’ve got an 8 core 3 Ghz from the previous generation. Pretty sweet machine. The new ones are faster but not that much. Looks like the new ones can go up to 32 GB of ram (mine has only 16 GB, boo-hoo).

By: blurb

blurb — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:16:17 +0000

@fred, price is the only thing stopping me from buying one this second.