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See the original image at macworld.com

Internal changes bolster latest Mac Pro

macworld.com — Macworld's Speedmark tests of Apple ’s latest high-end desktop system—the eight-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro released earlier this week—show that it's notably faster than the four-core 2.6GHz Mac Pro it replaces in Apple's product line.

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  • pauldy, on 01/13/2008, -15/+137In other news 2 pounds of feathers weighs more than a pound of lead.
    • Metalaco, on 01/13/2008, -3/+33OH MY SCIENCE
    • LmaoTzu, on 01/13/2008, -4/+28hed asplode
    • nycmac247, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6Insightful, but you've got to hand it to them - their interior industrial design is pretty nice.
    • djh816, on 01/13/2008, -1/+58>4??

      Don't believe it.
    • Drizzit, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2If you put in 2 4 core proc's in the older Mac Pro's the performance gains were minimal. Course this was before leopard as well.
    • bariswheel, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Miss Lippy's car, (looks left then right) is green!!!
  • cxzsaq, on 01/13/2008, -21/+5cool!
    • fkr3, on 01/13/2008, -3/+13Yeah... who would have thought the computer with bigger and better hardware would be faster than the old model with older hardware!!!!!! And more importantly, who would have thought such an obvious piece of trivia could convert into ad impressions so well!

      I wish there was a bury option called "Useless trash written for diggs".
  • TheWorm, on 01/13/2008, -7/+69Hmmm, new 8 core 2.8 ghz Mac Pro is faster than the old 2.6 ghz 4 core? Alert the press! This is huge!
    • ThreeDee912, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1/sarcasm
    • nycmac247, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2SAS drive are cute?
    • buddhistMonkey, on 01/13/2008, -2/+4Actually, the article was comparing the new 2.8 GHz Mac Pros to the old 3.0 GHz machines. In half of the tests, the new 2.8 GHz Mac blew away the old 3.0 GHz model. On the other half, the old 3.0 GHz barely edged out the new Macs. That means that the new low-end Mac Pros, with a slower chip, are faster than the old top-of-the-line.

      So, maybe it's not alert-the-press-caliber news, but it's good news for me, since I'll be picking up one of these babies as soon as someone answers my Craigslist ad and buys my kidney.
    • spankaccount, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1According to the stats, the new 8 core 2.8 machine is faster than the 3.0 quad core too. Interesting. This means the newer chips are more efficient.
  • TacticalPenguin, on 01/13/2008, -46/+28Only apple fanboys need told that 8 cores @ 2.8ghz will be faster than 4 cores @ 2.6ghz.
  • iceman989, on 01/13/2008, -17/+6I think the new mac pro is a good upgrade to the line. The coolest thing the new computer can do is use 8 monitors. I would buy this new addition to the model line if the price was lower. The only thing I wish apple would do differently is to sell a tower at an under a thousand dollar price point. I don't understand why they cant just fit the guts of an imac in a tower and sell it for less then the imac because it wouldn't include a monitor. This would allow upgrades with the ease that one is used to with a PC; for example adding hard drives.
    • zeptobyte, on 01/13/2008, -1/+9Right. Upgradeability is bad for Apple. They have full control over Macs, so no one can shop around for a better deal. And if they can't upgrade parts, then they have to just buy a new one whenever they want something better, instead of adding small bits to the same one for years.
      • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2the problem with that theory is that most people keep their macs in production for a lot longer than pc users do....
        • stevealford, on 01/13/2008, -3/+2Because it was such a large investment that they have to keep it for a long time to get a return on their money. Most PC users don't spend two grand on their system, so they can update or get rid of it after a couple of years without any qualms.
          • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2you're crazy.. if a machine can not perform in production, they get rid of them.. period.

            I know most of the workstations we install from HP are expensive too.

            Not all machines are made to just run word.
          • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1@FrantiX: you have never dealt with a lab then? You can't just UPGRADE things.. it causes huge administration problems
    • alwilson, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1I can see you in your mom's basement geeking out on your 8 monitors.
  • gavincato, on 01/13/2008, -6/+36In related news the sky is discovered to be blue

    • masterc, on 01/13/2008, -1/+13This just in: water is found to be wet!
    • skoles, on 01/13/2008, -7/+1Only because it reflects the sea.
      • mattisallama, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2i hope you're being sarcastic somehow
  • xxMarka, on 01/13/2008, -3/+44i have a holographic blastoise
    • freshyill, on 01/13/2008, -1/+10Squirtle!
    • Sornos, on 01/13/2008, -0/+6Blastooooooooise!
    • futebollounge, on 01/13/2008, -0/+14comment of the century
    • TacticalPenguin, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2I have a charizard and a venasaur but no blastoise. Wanna trade?
    • Knucklecallus, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2The funny thing is, I can actually say that I have a holographic blastoise and have ashamedly had one for 7 years
  • digitalarcanum, on 01/13/2008, -14/+24buried as lame, although if there was a "Apple fanboy fapping story" option I would certainly bury it as such.
  • truspect0r, on 01/13/2008, -19/+7In other news, Macs and the PS3 don't have games and x-Box do.
    • GonadHunter, on 01/13/2008, -3/+13wtf this has nothing to do with the PS3 go fap over an elite elsewhere.
      • digitalarcanum, on 01/13/2008, -5/+5says the user with the name gonadhunter.
  • codyman, on 01/13/2008, -7/+28 corewhores should do a bang up job for anything you need processed...
  • joltjake, on 01/13/2008, -3/+218 cores are better than 4? AMAZING!
  • cbreaker, on 01/13/2008, -6/+32The funny thing is how nonchalantly they recommend very expensive upgrades. "3.0GHz and 3.2GHz (for $800 and $1,600, respectively), faster graphics cards including a NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of graphics memory for an additional $2,850." Ohh, is that all? I know the Mac Pro is designed to be a high-end machine, and it's a sweet PC, but sheesh..

    I've had a problem with Apple PC's for awhile because there's no mid-range machine. Sure, there's Mac Minis and iMacs, but if you want a decent and upgradable Mac you have to go with the Mac Pro, and you pay big money for them. There needs to be a mid-range case-based Macintosh that you can get for around a grand. Something that you can get your hands into. The cheapest Mac Pro with a single CPU and a single ATA hard drive (it's not even a 500 or 750gb, it's a $50 320GB) is $2300.

    Are they purposefully trying to keep the normal computer user away from Macintosh?
    • suppah, on 01/13/2008, -12/+4yeah, it's a marketing thing. and they don't want to have a large userbase, so nobody will care to write viruses for macosx.
      • gr3yn3t, on 01/13/2008, -3/+8Could you be any more wrong?
        • digitalarcanum, on 01/13/2008, -6/+5it's been proven OSX really isn't that much secure than windows, so Apple would be caught in a ***** if they made an affordable mid-range mac. Leopard had like 15 updates 2 weeks after it released.
          • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -1/+4it's been proven that there are security holes in ALL oses. Don't confuse security holes as ways virus and malware can actually install on your computer.

            There's a difference between hacking and script kiddie crap that virus does.

            Anyway, you should have a hardware firewall to protect against hackers anyway.. software firewalls are junk.



        • netdroid9, on 01/13/2008, -3/+3I thought most of those were bugfixes and not security patches... I do agree with the less-secure-than-they-make-it-out-to-be thing though. It might have a secure BSD core, but that doesn't mean the entire operating system is secure, as we saw with the month-of-apple-bugs thingy earlier last year.
        • FunkyWitDaSysTm, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3@digitalarcanum

          wrong. just wrong.
          • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1@Funky: get jiggy with the reply system.
      • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -3/+2The first person to write a virus that can do damage and propagate on os x will be famous. They ARE trying.. that's why you see the crappiest of crap, you have to click, give credential, proof of concept virus for os x now.
    • samcrut, on 01/13/2008, -2/+4What bugs me is that they've killed off the $2000 basic tower. It used to be that you could get the slowest tower for $2k and the top system for $3k. Now they're creeping up again just when the economy is tanking. The cheapest you can buy now is $2300.
    • knightboat, on 01/13/2008, -1/+14The build-and-tinker computer crowd isn't as mainstream as some digg users like to think.
    • drunkwally, on 01/13/2008, -10/+4Mac pro is not exactly upgradeable.

      3 old Video card choices - nothing else will work.

      The only way you'll ever upgrade a mac is to buy a new one.

      All the steve jobs ***** suckers will dig down the truth, you watch.
      • freakygeeky, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6The 8800 is the top of NVIDIA's desktop product line too. Old? Nope.
        • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -1/+4You can't upgrade the older mac pro's with the newer nvidia card. It's only for the NEW mac pro.
          • Smoozle, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2*****!
          • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1I have a first gen mac pro, I really.. REALLY .. wish it was *****.. it's not, and I'm not happy.

            I kept getting "session expired" trying to reply to you. I'll just reply to myself... you'll get it then
          • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Lets see a link to that
      • johnpaul191, on 01/13/2008, -1/+5i don't have a Mac Pro, but with my other Mac tower desktops i was able to replace the processor, video card, ram, HDDs on top of the obvious expansion card slot abilities. How much more expansion do you want? At some point you will have a pokey motherboard.
        I did my upgrades over time, not out of the box. I'm not a gamer though, and didn't need bleeding edge performance.... if that's what you are talking about.
        • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2You can upgrade the xeon processors (yes all you idiots.. the processors in mac pro's are XEONS and ARE expensive), Ram, HDD's...

          but there isn't a good upgrade path for the video card for the older mac pro's
      • alwilson, on 01/13/2008, -2/+3I've never had a penis in my mouth but I'm still going to digg you down
    • CountSessine, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2Yes, because the people who'd be attracted to a mid-range Mac with an expansion bus aren't "normal computer users". They're cheapo tinkerers who would cost Apple way more money in support costs than they would be paying for their machines. Why are they so expensive? Because they f*ck up their computers, either by sticking a RAM stick in wrong or zapping their logic board with a static electric charge or snapping their motherboard by pushing in an expansion card too hard, or, you get the idea. Also, they *apparently* f*ck up their computers a lot - ie their machine *appears* to be broken when the real problem is that a SATA connector is loose or something. And Apple eats the at least some of the support cost by taking their phone calls, accepting their returns, and diagnosing their f*cked up machines.
      Laptops and imacs are appliance-like and are harder to screw up. And the Mac Pro folks are paying enough money to make supporting them worth while.
  • digitallysick, on 01/13/2008, -2/+5ok, so lets see some time specs. Convert an avi to dvd, the clock starts now.... Its really the only reason i case for a computer that fast
  • sfgeek, on 01/13/2008, -12/+2Insert the Macs are overpriced blah blah argument here, despite the tons of articles demonstrating otherwise. I typically hang onto a mac for at least a year longer than I did with PCs, in the vein alone it pays for itself in spades. I also went about 6+ years without ever having to do a clean install of OS X, I just upgraded. After doing an absurd amount of low level fiddling, I finally did a clean install with Leopard.

    And that was my first encounter with Apple that pissed me off. I had backed up my whole drive to an external partition. Somewhere along the way, I believe when I divided another partition on the same drive, Leopard nuked my whole backup. Needless to say I was furious, if it weren't for .Mac I would have lost everything. Anyway that being said, I have to use a PC at work now for the first time/ It's crippling to use, the damn thing hangs on me all the time, mostly due to the fact that I'm doing video work and other intensive ops. My mac laptop with half the RAM handles it much more gracefully.
  • whiteyMcBrown, on 01/13/2008, -1/+19I'm a huge Mac fan, but I have to say... OBVIOUSLY! I hate when they say "it's our fastest notebook ever" or "fastest Mac ever!". Why would they make a slower one?!
  • LeonardNimrod, on 01/13/2008, -6/+18There sure are a lot of assholes on this blog. If you read the article you will see that they also tested it against the previous model's top of the line, 3.0GHz, 8-core system that cost $1500 more than this new baseline model.

    The new baseline Mac Pro beat the top of the line Mac Pro in 5 out of 10 tests. Once OS X is optimized to take advantage of SSE4 you will see even more gains.

    If you don't like OS X, Macs, Apple or giant workstations that is fine, but bash an article that benchmarks new and previous systems in an effort to help inform the consumer.
  • overstim, on 01/13/2008, -4/+4Its true, there is no mid-range upgradable mac, and its true id like one, and a lot of you, but that's not in Apple's interest. Its obvious there arent a lot of games out there, so theres no need to provide a gaming machine, and there arent enough tinkerers to make a cheap headless box worthwhile. Apple is only interrested in the casual users, home users, education, and high-end designers, broadcast TV, film and post.
    Theyre obviously doing something right, since theyre growing at double the rate of the rest of the industry.
    • ibis, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1The thing for them is that 99% of people who pay the extra for a Mac Pro would be just fine with a midlevel desktop with a single quad-core like the Q6600, a few gig of RAM, an 8600GT or 8800GT video card and a big harddrive. In fact skip "would be fine" it would be way faster than they need. You'd probably even be better off with a fast dual core chip like the E6850.

      But if they made that computer they'd be competing with all the PC manufacturers head to head, which they don't want to do.
      • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1by compete head to head, you mean like they do with all in ones and laptops?
  • banmaster, on 01/13/2008, -11/+4Hang on. You fanboys had trouble getting your mind around the fact that 4x2.6Ghz CPUs were not going to be as fast as 8x2.8Ghz ones?
    Seriously, are all mac users so ***** DUMB or what??
    • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -4/+5the 8 core model of last gen versus the new 8 core model...

      who's dumb now? of course you raced right to ass!
  • JamesMorris, on 01/13/2008, -9/+5I remember when digg was a cool site with a vast range of news and articles.. It's now 2008 and digg is in the ***** :(
    • kapowaz, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0Not least because of commenters who draw simplistic conclusions from post descriptions instead of reading the whole of the linked article. It's this lazy, presuming attitude that is the biggest source of noise on digg. RTFA then comment on what you didn't like about it. Or, if the subject matter raises your ire in the first place, simply stay away instead of contributing to the noise.
  • TheAmbushAhead, on 01/13/2008, -3/+9I hope they follow this story with a future report about how a 16 core is faster than an 8 core. I mean seriously HOW do they know these things? They're ***** geniuses.
  • AndrewMB, on 01/13/2008, -2/+3I'm no Mac fan and I don't know why you would need 8 cores....but this makes me piss my pants thinking about it!!!!!
    • banmaster, on 01/13/2008, -0/+6I have a quad and for what I do (mainly editing painful wedding videos) it makes a nice diff from dual cores. 8 would be very nice though :)
      • protium, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1I guess you've managed to overcome the IO limitations?
    • samcrut, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4HD video editing, 3D medical radiology modeling, all those fancy graphics you see on the news. Any of those alone will put them to good use, but mostly running 10 applications at once that are actively processing is where most people would feel it.
  • devinx, on 01/13/2008, -9/+0http://oppresseda.myminicity.com/
  • motheroats, on 01/13/2008, -1/+16"The 2.8GHz iMac, with its super-fast 500MB hard drive, proved itself again to be quite a speedy all-in-one system, giving the new Mac Pro a run for its money in both the iTunes and Photoshop tests."

    ehem......1990 called, they want their "super-fast" hard drive back.
    • Refrag, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1I guess you could upgrade to the 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS drive if you're not impressed with the performance of the 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s drive.

      I wasn't aware that SATA drives were available in 1990, though. Thanks for letting us know.
      • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1Refrag: I was guilty of almost posting the same thing. I caught it as I was replying.. the article says 500MB... MEGA BYTE...

        it was just a joke on a typo
  • timfrietas, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1The Seagate may be slowed, but I have been burned twice in a row by Western Digitals and never by a Seagate. Little slower but rock solid.
    • banmaster, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2I use a combination of WD, Seagate and Samsung and no probs for 5 years so far. Of course I usually sell them and upgrade to a larger model well before any problems might start to appear.
      • bjornski, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1I've had WD and Maxtor drives for years, and have had zero issues with them. I've had Seagates too, and they've very good, especially the new ones.

        If you actually read the reviews on your products before you buy them, you can do pretty well.
    • Zaneris, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1So just because YOU... 1 out of the millions of people who have them had a problem twice... all of them are bad? I've never understood that logic, what if you were the only one out of everyone that had any problems?

      Ever consider that? I hate it and hear it all the time, ford's are bad ... honda's are bad ... bmw's are bad ... because I or a friend had a bad one, and he/she knows a guy that also had a bad one.

      UGH!
      • timfrietas, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Actually, I work for a large company and we initially used a few different drives: Maxtor, WD, Seagate, etc.
        We now have about 2000 hard drives in our system and they are all Seagates except for the legacy servers that we don't use for major things. We just haven't had the issues with Seagates that we do with WD, etc. So no, it is not just based on my personal experience, although my personal experience was enough: a drive failure should occur in about 3 out of every 1000 drives, so that it happened to me twice in a row with one manufacturer suggests their product is suspect...
        • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1" a drive failure should occur in about 3 out of every 1000 drives, "

          ACTUALLY, all drives WILL fail. Period.
  • discofreak, on 01/13/2008, -8/+3but will it play Crysis?
  • stoperror, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1Can we get some SLI or Crossfire support already? Some of us want to use a Mac, but I'm tired of seeing the lame video cards. Quadro? I'm no graphics designer, I don't need 400 certifications. I want a nice card at a nice price that will work...........make that two of them.
    • kapowaz, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0If high-end PC gaming is your cup of tea then a Mac Pro is probably not the most cost-effective solution. You can get the Mac Pro with a GeForce 8800GT graphics card as an option, but only one. From what I read in the manual, the power supply wouldn't be able to deal with two graphics cards with that level of power consumption anyway.
      • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1 I thought the mac pro had a 980 watt PS?
  • Gee1004, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1E-Tard from Justin.TV says Apple will be gone in a couple years.
    • alwilson, on 01/13/2008, -1/+0Yea right. A couple of years is in eternity in technology, but Apple is posting record sales. It's one of the only companies in their sector that actually showed positive growth this past year. They have over 100 billion in cash. Wish I could afford to buy stock.
    • Boondoggle, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Lots of brainiacs said that in 1998 too.
  • andrewpmk, on 01/13/2008, -6/+5Wait a year and you will be able to get a PC with these specs for $500.

    Ripoff Mac
    • kapowaz, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0The original Mac Pro unveiled in August 2006 featured two Intel Xeon 5150 Woodcrest 2.66GHz CPUs. According to newegg.com, these CPUs still retail for approximately $741 each. So no, you won't be able to get a PC with those specs for $500 in a year's time.
  • greenamp, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1100 ppl have already said "8 cores > 4 core NO WAI" so don't say it anymore.
    • narlzac85, on 01/13/2008, -0/+44 cores < 8 cores...yes I checked, its true.
    • threemagic, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1How about those of us that noticed is was last gen 8 core 3ghz vs new 8 core 2.8ghz, can we still say that?
  • euping, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2I'm also upgrading from a Dual 2.7 GHz G5. It seems to me we asked for older Mac comparisons after a previous round of benchmarks and got an encouraging response from the Macworld crew. Hopefully more data is on the way.
  • MrViklund, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1But Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... Of course it's faster! It's 8 cores. The other machine had 4......
  •  

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