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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Thanks Apple...

I somewhat agree, Bruce. I think Apple's bigger problem is the iMac. They need to dump that concept -- it sucks. Then give us the $1000 quad-core desktop with a few expansion slots, good connectivity, etc..

For most desktop workstation purposes a quad-core i7 is just fine. For some workstations I do go with dual Xeons. When I need the raw processing power or I'm building render nodes. It's about power per watt and total TCO. Unfortunately, Intel and the motherboard makers all know this better than anyone. So they price their Xeon offerings so they're just cheap enough where they make more sense than adding another full quad-core system or blade, even when building them yourself. ...Bastards.
 
The iMac is brilliant for its market place. Home computers users.
If people where to stop buying the Mac Pro then Apple would drop the desktop line altogether, it already isn't there prime seller.

I think the problem lies with Apples success in the consumer world. Selling iPhones, iPods, Mac Minis & iMacs way out weights selling Mac Pro's and Pro software.

Its a numbers game.

Apple need to remember that the people buying iConsumer products aspire to be Pro's just like Nike will use a top athlete to sell their products Apple need to maintain a Pro level of there products so consumers will buy.

Quite simply a Pro can easily outgrow a Apple because the hardware is limited and thus the big iron software developers won't touch it. Apple develop for the masses and the pro film/video world is small in comparison.

In the same space the big iron software developers need to recognize growing market and the need for a pricing change as more and more artists run small businesses based on one machine and are not large facilities, so can't afford $100k of software.
 
Alex Carr said:
If you can google, you can install osx on anything...

I install OSX from the disc I bought from the apple store, just like the other millions of OSX users... no difference. I just dont need the shiny metal box with an apple on the side.
Click to expand...

I haven't installed OSX on off-the-shelf hardware myself, but my understanding was that not all hardware was supported? Driver issues and such?

Navigas said:
I have a 1 year old 8 core Mac Pro with 12gb ram, is this WAY slower than the new ones or am I ok for now?

Mathias Erichsen
www.resonablefilm.no
Click to expand...

Way slower? No. An 8 core Nehalem Xeon (aka Gainestown) could be up to twice as fast as your current system in certain test settings, but not all. There are a few threads floating around with benchmarks and I'm sure Google could help you find other benchmarks suited to your personal application usage.

Aric said:
Just to clarify Bruce and Richards the MacPro has a server class Xeon 5500 CPU that uses ECC memory, not a desktop class 940. Xeons are much more expensive then desktop class CPUs. You're comparing pro vs consumer level products and prices here. Not a fair comparison.
Click to expand...

Yeah, plus the Gainestowns (Nehalem Xeons) also have dual QPIs (quick path interfaces), which enable the dual socket configuration (even though socket is a misnomer now, let's keep the lingo).

However, not all Xeons are priced astronomically higher than their consumer-level brethren. Look at the Xeon E3110 (Wolfdale) 3.0GHz compared with its functionally equivalent consumer relative, the e8400:

Xeon=$175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117165

Core 2 Duo=$165
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

Obviously many Xeons feature better power ratings and consequently cost more. For equal chips like those, you're paying for Intel's guarantee that these are some of the best chips from their crop, and thus best suited for professional usage. Ultimately, we just don't know how much more the Gainestown chips will be until vendors start rolling them out.

Eric
 
Also, if you're running 24gb of RAM, you definitely want to consider going with ECC memory. You'd average a little less than one memory error a day with that much memory.
 
Bruce Allen said:
99.99% of the time, a 2.66 quad-nehalem Xeon with ECC memory gives you NO practical advantage over a 2.66 quad-Core i7 plus non-ECC memory.
Click to expand...



Jouhne on MacRumors' said:
Go look the Floating point number for the Xeon 3520 vs a similar i7.
Not the same at all. So there is some change between the two.
Core i7 = GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 4
3500 Series = GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
5500 Series = GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5 (same as 3500)
Click to expand...

Seems like a big difference between the xeons and i7's. Why don't we wait until the information is released before we come to judgments.
 
I dont think this thread could be more confusing... Nehalems, Xeons, Harpertowns, Cloverfields....i7's... I thought i7's were nehalem?

is there some kind of graphical chart for simpler comparison?
 
taken from http://boxxlabs.blogspot.com/


There has been a little bit of confusion about these new CPUs so I wanted to put up some facts:

* "Nehalem" is Intel's internal codename for the latest "microarchtecture" on which all of it's new CPUs are based. Intel's codenames for their products while underdevelopment typically are forgotten and supplanted with the retail product names given them by Intel after they are released to the market. But "Nahalem" seems to be sticking around as the popular streetname for Intel's new family of chips. This is causing a little confusion...

* Core i7 is Intel's official product name for the "desktop" variant of Nehalem. All Core i7 systems are "single socket" computers that have only one CPU. The Core i7 product line is aimed squarely at consumer PCs and "entry level" graphics workstations. Core i7 replaces the "Core 2" (including "Duo" and "Quad" and "Extreme") product line. Its Intel codename designation is (was?) "Bloomfield". Core I7 CPUs come in several different speeds and all are "quadcore" parts.

* As in years-past, Intel Xeon continues as the company's official product name for their workstation and server-oriented CPUs. Xeon is sold both as the single-socket Xeon 3500 series (also codenamed "Bloomfield" - same as Core i7) as well as dual-socket Xeon 5500 platform (codename "Gainstown"). These CPUs replace the previous generation (Xeon 3300 and Xeon 5400 product lines) and are the newest high-end offerings based on Intel's Nehalem technology. Sold at different speed "bins", Xeon CPUs are sold as quadcore processors*. (*there is a dual-core variant but it will not likely be used for graphics workstations)

* The new CPUs are priced about the same as the CPUs they are replacing.

* Core i7 systems are available pretty much everywhere. On April 1st, many PC manufacturers will begin shipping new workstations based in the new Xeon 5500 series CPUs. (Apple began shipping Nahelem-based workstations in March.)


OK. Now that we've got that straight, let's get a little more specific about what these new processors mean for digital artists and content creation in general.

For most digital artists, Nehalem-based systems can be expected to allow their software apps and utilities to perform between 20% to 80% faster than they would on "old" intel Core 2 and Xeon 5400 equivalent CPUs. By "equivalent" I mean to to say - running at the same "clock speed" (which indicates the basic speed of the CPUs internal circuitry).

...."

continued at http://boxxlabs.blogspot.com/
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
I dont think this thread could be more confusing... Nehalems, Xeons, Harpertowns, Cloverfields....i7's... I thought i7's were nehalem?

is there some kind of graphical chart for simpler comparison?
Click to expand...

I understand your frustration completely. Heck, I felt the same way the first time I stumbled across these boards. Short answer: yes. Wikipedia is actually pretty good for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon

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

I'm not sure how useful those will be to you, but they do provide table comparisons.

Basically, you don't need to know all these stupid names. I'm just throwing them out to look credible and to be specific. However, the debate between Xeon and i7 is a good one to have and does require some specificity.

Nehalem is the name of the new "microarchitecture." Basically, all these new chips that are ripping through media encoding tests are based on this Nehalem design.

Then, there are different "series" of chips with their codenames and stock clock rates (i.e. how fast they are). Xeon is a legacy term that Intel keeps around for marketing purposes and usually refers to many series of server-class chips. Same for i7, which refers to consumer-level chips, currently of the "Bloomfield" flavor. Both branches are very similar in most cases, however in this instance, those Gainestown Xeons can be run in dual-CPU configurations. The reason these codenames are useful is because new Xeon and i7 branded chips will be debuting later this year and into next year which WILL be fundamentally different from the current generation. They will probably have a different socket, but who knows how Intel will market them.

Sorry for the confusion. I know tech talk can get bogged down in jargon every now and then.

Eric

Edit: Whew, thanks for backing me up Adam. Together we can fight the onslaught of clever marketing monikers!

Edit 2: Also, great blog. Looks like it's very accessible. Great breakdown of the current SSD landscape, though it might be nice to add information about the page / block writing problem so people don't freak out when their write speeds take a hit over time.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
ECC? I haven't used ECC since my Athlon 600.
Click to expand...

Exactly. ECC didn't make a lot of sense back then, unless you worked in a scientific number-crunching field where one memory error could be devastating. But with the huge amounts of RAM that have been opened up with the dawn of 64-bit computing, memory errors will be more prevalent.

I'd rather not go into error-correcting memory too much here. That topic would probably make plenty of material for an entirely new thread.

Eric
 
Bruce Allen said:
If you're building a rendering farm:
Click to expand...

hey people,

very interesting an informative thread.

I'm putting together a system at the moment for a RED/After Effects project including a small render farm and was hoping for some feedback.

The plan at this stage is to use a MacPro 2.26 with a heap of RAM and an external Raid (Proavio EB8MS) as the main AFX workstation. This would store all the raw footage and do all the compositing. The final renders would then be farmed out to a small PC render farm - 4x PCs with AFX render nodes - with only the associated footage copied at that point. We were planning to have some kind of NAS over GB ethernet (Synology DS508 ?) to share footage to the farm (and store final renders)

does this sound right ?
are we missing something ?
Is GB ethernet going to kill me ?
is there a better way to share the footage between the 4 PCs ?
is there abetter way to move files from the Mac to the NAS ?

many thanks, Daniel
(and apologies in advance for being network and PC illiterate)
 
Daniel Crooks said:
hey people,

very interesting an informative thread.

I'm putting together a system at the moment for a RED/After Effects project including a small render farm and was hoping for some feedback.

The plan at this stage is to use a MacPro 2.26 with a heap of RAM and an external Raid (Proavio EB8MS) as the main AFX workstation. This would store all the raw footage and do all the compositing. The final renders would then be farmed out to a small PC render farm - 4x PCs with AFX render nodes - with only the associated footage copied at that point. We were planning to have some kind of NAS over GB ethernet (Synology DS508 ?) to share footage to the farm (and store final renders)

does this sound right ?
are we missing something ?
Is GB ethernet going to kill me ?
is there a better way to share the footage between the 4 PCs ?
is there abetter way to move files from the Mac to the NAS ?

many thanks, Daniel
(and apologies in advance for being network and PC illiterate)
Click to expand...

Hi Daniel,

You should probably start a new thread for this topic -

No doubt, folks here will have some good ideas for you to consider...

Adam
 
Bruce Allen said:
We're talking price/performance. So it's fair.

99.99% of the time, a 2.66 quad-nehalem Xeon with ECC memory gives you NO practical advantage over a 2.66 quad-Core i7 plus non-ECC memory.
Click to expand...

I think you're wrong but in April we'll find out won't we? :biggrin:

If you turn out to be correct, then yes, it's hard to argue with your logic. If not, I don't have a problem with Apple only making a pro level desktop with Xeons and not offering a basic priced desktop to compete with Dells. Few people today (except pros) buy desktops. Most people buy laptops. In fact, unless you need a server with massive storage and 24/7 availability (which most of us here *do* need but most computer users in general do not) it almost always makes sense to get a laptop.

Also ECC actually slows down memory just a tad, but in my opinion it's probably worth it.
 
Jim & RED, any plans for OpenCL support in RED's software?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

If so, that could potentially provide a nice speed boost on machines with faster GPUs.
 
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