Apple's Mac Pro: A Discussion of Specifications
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 9, 2006 3:54 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
In many ways, the fact that Apple didn't change the exterior of the PowerMac G5 chassis symbolizes the upgrade that is the Mac Pro. The focus is entirely on the inside of the chassis, on the Woodcrest based Xeon processors, the FB-DIMMs and the four SATA drive bays, however we'd caution you on spending too much on a brand new Mac Pro right away, despite Apple boasting immediate availability. By the end of this year, Intel will begin shipping Clovertown, which should be a drop-in quad-core replacement to the current dual-core Woodcrest based Xeon CPUs. It should allow Apple to replace its dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 option with a pair of quad-core Clovertown based Xeon CPUs. We're not yet sure what the clock speeds or price points will be, but it may be worth waiting for if you can. If you can't wait, there is always the possibility that you may be able to simply upgrade the CPUs in the Mac Pro later on, in which case you may want to go with the lowest end option now and simply drop in Clovertown later. Over the coming days we will hopefully be able to figure out what will and won't be possible with the new Mac Pro design, but we're hoping that the move to Intel means good things for the cost of upgradability on these systems.
By using Xeon on the high end Mac Pros, Apple also paves the way for a more mid-range offering utilizing Intel's Core 2 Duo processor. While it's inevitable that the iMac will be revamped to use Core 2, we're wondering if Apple will decide to introduce a lower end Mac Pro or simply a vanilla "Mac" desktop offering with a single Core 2 processor.
Honestly however, we did have higher hopes for some aspects of the Mac Pro. Like many Apple users, we were looking forward to a revamped case design; while the internals have changed, the fact of the matter is that the standard configuration of the Mac Pro still weighs in at a hefty 42.5 lbs. The bulky chassis does scream high end workstation, but it would have been nice to see something a bit different, possibly slimmed down. Based on how Apple has handled transitioning all of the previous products to Intel platforms, we shouldn't have expected any different on the chassis side. The revamped Apple designs should really start to surface in 2007, most likely starting with the iMac and MacBook/Pro as those models are still using older Yonah based Core Duo processors.
On the technology side, we wanted to see a bit more from Apple. For a company usually on the forefront of adopting new technologies and standards we were surprised not to see any eSATA ports on the Mac Pro. Given that OS X's GUI performance is sometimes tied to the amount of video memory you have, we would also have expected Apple to opt for one of the 512MB GeForce 7300s as an option on the Mac Pro, although admittedly 256MB is pretty good even at 30" Cinema Display resolutions. We thought we might see more of a focus on RAID, especially with the default system configuration, but alas a 250GB hard drive is all you get.
Maybe we're hoping for too much, and maybe we just need to get our hands on a system for review, but until then hopefully this discussion will help those of you buying today make a better buying decision.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
33 Comments
View All Comments
michael2k - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
fb dimms, found in Mac Pros, are fast serial ram using DDR chips.OddTSi - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Perhaps you missed the part where I said "non-ad hoc."I know what FB-DIMMs are, but they're more of a band-aid fix or a hack than a ground-up design.
michael2k - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Maybe you misused "ad hoc". Ad hoc means unplanned and temporary. Why do you think fb-dimm is a band-aid or a hack? Because the RAM chips themselves are not serial in nature?I mean, are you asking "Is there any designs or plans for serial memory chips?"
To be cost effective you either have to use existing infrastructure, or create a logical evolution/adaptation of the existing infrastructure.
AdvanS13 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
does anyone know apples market segment share for dual processor workstations?peternelson - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
1) I think a gpu swap will need drivers or firmware updating.
2) To buy a commodity sata drive is good but it MIGHT require the apple carrier in order to fit into the chassis.
3) You compare apple memory with commodity FBDIMM.
In the table you quote Apple's UPGRADE (ie on top of base machine) price against the complete cost of the memory. This makes Apple's pricing appear better than it is. Even then it looks like a ripoff, but also consider they are charging you for the base memory in with the basic system price.
aliasfox - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
As far as I've read, the Mac Pros come with carriers in all four bays - carriers that don't need cables (ribbon or round). Didn't know the backs of SATA drives were similar enough that they could just be plugged in.JeffDM - Saturday, August 12, 2006 - link
It's not stated in the Anand article, but all drive carriers are included. Apple's Tech Specs page says it, although it could have been more clearly stated. For what it's worth, I think it is worth downgrading the stock drive to 160GB and spending that difference toward additional drives. Going from 250GB to 160GB saves $75, that price difference would buy you a 250GB SATAII drive.JAS - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
It appears that some people managed to receive their Mac Pro quickly.http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macword/2006/08/ma...">http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macword/2006/08/ma...
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/26/xeon_wood...">http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/2...odcrest_...Check out the memory bandwidth benchmark. Quad channel is needed to match Core 2 systems' memory bandwidth using only dual channel. Dual channel on Xeon 5100 drops to approximately 68% of the quad channel bandwidth. That in numbers is 3.8GB/sec. Not to mention Xeon 5100 series has 25% higher memory FSB. It needs 25% higher FSB and 2x memory channels to achieve the same memory bandwidth numbers the desktop Core 2's can. According to memory latency benchmarks, the latency is also significantly higher on the Woodcrest than Conroe's platform.
The chipset on the Xeon 5100 is worse in performance than the chipset on the Core 2. It will NOT beat Core 2 because of the 25% higher FSB, it will rather be SLOWER. Not to mention FB-DIMM makes it even slower.
SpecFP benchmarks also support this:
Xeon 5160(3GHz/1333MHz FSB/4MB L2/8x1024MB FB-DIMM DDR2-667): 2775
Core 2 Extreme X6800(2.93GHz/1066MHz FSB/4MB L2/2x1024MB DDR2-800 5-5-5-15): 3046
Core 2 Extreme gets almost 10% higher in the memory substem portion of the SpecCPU 2K. benchmark, even though it has 2.2% less clock speed than the Xeon 5160.
Look here: http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&am...
"ScienceMark didn't agree completely and reported about 65-70 ns latency on the Opteron system and 70-76 ns (230 cycles) on the Woodcrest system. We have reason to believe that Woodcrest's latency is closer to what LMBench reports: the excellent prefetchers are hiding the true latency numbers from Sciencemark. It must also be said that the measurements for the Opteron on the Opteron are only for the local memory, not the remote memory."
Xeon 5160 got 70-76ns in ScienceMark, what did Core 2 get?? It got 36.75. Xeon 5160's ScienceMark latency is higher than Pentium Extreme Edition 965's latency, and twice the latency of Core 2.
Everest shows the same thing: http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0801/graph...">http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0801/graph...
Xeon 5160: 99.1
Opteron 285: 57.7(seems higher than FX-62 results but this system uses Registered DDR DIMM, you can see in AT's results that AM2 further lowers latency)
Core 2 Extreme: 59.8
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
dcalfine - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
Overall, I think this is a very well-designed system, and in price comparisons with Dell, the Mac Pro came out over a thousand dollars cheaper for a similar system. I may be a fanboy, but I can admit that Apple still has some work to do here. As good as the Mac Pro is, I think Apple needs to start having better video options. For starters, the X500 chipset is used, which means that there's only one 16X PCIe lane. Also, Apple should get closer with Nvidia and start working in SLI, as well as FX4500X2 and FX5500. A Vanilla FX4500 just doesn't make the cut anymore. Also, the X500 chipset supports one 133X PCIX slot, which, I think, Apple should have incorporated, since not every expansion card has moved to the PCIe format.I'd like to see some speed comparisons between the mac pro and some pcs. I imagine that in most (if not all) test the Mac Pro will come out slightly slower than the PC due to the bells and whistles of Mac OS X, but I'd like to see just how much slower it runs, and how it runs in Boot Camp running Windows/Linux.
But, yeah. Good goin', Apple!
And AnandTech, get your hans on one of these ASAP!