New Mac Pros with Nehalem

[Ralph Wong]

Usually Apple doesn't drop the prices right after a release. The only thing I can think of in recent history was the iphone, but I think AT&T was subsidizing the product. The anandtech article says that the Nehalem processors should shine when it comes to video encoding or 3D rendering. With that said, can we get a confirmation from anybody that works at RED that the RED programs will run faster with these new machines. Either that or maybe somebody with a RED camera who purchases the new machines could tell us. I know the actual release date is still a few days away, but I'm just throwing some requests out there right now.

 

[Eric S.]

I can't speak for Apple's prices, since I don't really follow their pricing models closely, but the Nehalem Xeon processors (codenamed "Gainestown") are scheduled to be officially released later this month. As such, I don't think Apple would cut prices so soon after releasing these new Mac Pros.

I don't follow server / workstation-class chips as closely as consumer desktop products, but here's a quick rundown. Server-class chips essentially have an extra seal of approval from Intel and should represent some of the best of the best in chips. Luckily, workstation chips are not always too much more expensive than their desktop brethren. With the current LGA 771 "socket," you can get a motherboard and two entry-level quad processors for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000. I'd imagine that the new Xeon Nehalem platform could be a little pricier, but probably not by too much.

What does all this mean? I guess what I'm saying is that unless you really need a new workstation now, I'd hold off until early April to see what shakes out. That way, we can evaluate some benchmarks, see pricing on a PC Nehalem-based Xeon platform, shake down the new Mac Pros, and watch the economy. Plus, we might even get some new Scarlet renders!

Edit: Unfortunately, I don't have a RED ONE or any experience with Red Alert or RedCine. I can only imagine that Nehalem would do very well with the software, but we won't know how well until some benchmarks are posted.

Edit 2: Wiki actually has some good (and probably pretty accurate) info that could help get you up to speed. Figure that two 2.26 Xeon quad-cores cost $370 each and that a dual-socket motherboard will cost around $500 and you should be in the ballpark. However, I wouldn't trust those low-end chips' prices just yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Does anyone know or have does performances test between these two systems?

Well... at least with SCRATCH...

We are getting the same performance on R3D with a Bloomfield XE that is used to take two CPUs and 8 cores.

Same with REDCINE. Rendering performance on a Bloomfield is equal or greater than 8 cores on a Skulltrail mobo.

Lucas
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ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Best non-extreme chips always come in at $500 a pop, though Xeons can be a bit more. $500 should always get you the new MoBos... though Xeon dual chip Mobos could be a bit more too. $2,000 should get you the main pieces within a month or two of their release. DDR3 RAM is dropping like mad... $3,500 should easily cover a kick arse aircooled coverclocked complete system with two 24" LCDs. That includes two CPUs, MoBo, bad arse video card, Dimms packed with best RAM, case, all the cooling stuff, a few HDDs for the OS and render-to storage. External RAID for footage not included.

The question is how will mac OS run? And will it be worth the pains to you in particular?

But it it worked with little to no bugs, or at least a few that you could avoid without having to waste too much time going the long way home, then you'd have a BEAST... the more cores the bigger the difference guys... we are talking 16... and for all those apps that don't use too many cores you'd still have the benefits of faster clocks... I'd say you would at least get rock of gibraltar stable 3.2GHz, that has been the norm since before we moved to 45nm, and your memory clocks would also add a little bump in performance.

 

[CraigDavidson]

So, finally, the new Mac Pro with Nehalem came out.

Craig, did you try this with Cineform already?

Not yet. We have to wait until they are in the stores. We did test the i7 quad under Windows, and it was much faster decoding CineForm than the previous 8 core.

We are interested to test one of these since the CineForm decode is designed to thread beyond 16 cores, and tends to be bound by memory speed. From the Apple benchmarks, it does not look like ProRes encode benefits much with only a 10% speed improvement.