Early 2009 Mac Pro Quad Core

The reason for this power and ability is two quad-core chips which, although not fast in this standard iteration, tag-team efficiently to offer a very steady, fast processing stream. 

(With the 27-inch iMacs starting to arrive with Intel i5 and i7 chips, Mac Pro towers may lose their dominance in audio-visual studios, except I expect new Mac Pros some time after February as well, using faster, newer chips from Intel.) 

So this things clocks at a paltry (these days) 2.26GHz per quad-core processor whereas even a bog standard 21.5-inch new iMac has two cores clocking 3.06GHz, but think of this as a fairly speedy, powerful truck hauling tonnes of stuff compared to a family sedan with five people in it plus a picnic hamper. 

I talked about this beastie on the Herald recently and ran a couple of Cinebench tests, but for this mac-nz review I have become a Geekbench subscriber as well, for as you’ll see, I became a little suspicious of the Cinebench results.

On the Herald, I did an NZ dollar price comparison of what those cores will cost you, each, by the way. 

Essentially, if you (rather illogically) divide the price of a Mac by the number of CPU cores you pay, on the MacBook Pro 13-inch, NZ$1299.50 per core.

For each iMac 21.5-inch core, you pay $999.50. For both of these, of course, you get a monitor thrown in.

The Mac Pro costs you $724.88 per core. If you add up the savings per core over the iMac, although it has faster cores, you end up with $2196.96, which is more than enough for a 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display ($1599) or good to put towards an Apple 30-inch ($3198).

Cinebench tests

MacBook Pro 13-inch, tested July 2009, OS 10.5.7, 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics Card

21.5-inch late 2009 iMac, OS 10.6.1, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics card

Mac Pro, from March 2009, OS 10.6.2, 2 x 2.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon ‘Nehalem’ processors (8 cores), 6GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics card.

*Slower than the two consumer Macs, but it is a slower processor

Cinebench is multi-platform. You can download it free (unlike the US$19.95 for Geekbench) and run the versions for your Unix or Windows’ boxes. So why don’t you? And tell us in the comments. Get it from Maxon, its German creator.
The reason I’m a little suspicious is that when I restarted the Pro in 64-bit mode, Cinebench seemed to still run the tests in 32-bits. Anyway, the results were virtually identical. Also, Cinebench reported the Gighertz of the processors as 2.4GHz when they are 2.26GHz, and it reported that the Pro had 16 processors, but that’s understandable – it’s actually reporting the 16 threads because i7 chips have hyper threading, which gives each chip 4 real cores, plus 4 virtual cores. As far as operating systems are concerned, there’s no difference between cores and threads, apparently. (Or so say some commenters o the Herald story.)

64-bit Geekbenched

So I invested in Geekbench and ran the Gb tests, too. They showed a little more difference between the 64-bit and 32-bit systems – indeed, Geekbench comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, one for each, in case you feel like starting up in 64-bit (just start or restart your Mac then hold down the 6 and 4 keys; I’m at a loss as to why Snow Leopard doesn’t yet have an option just to make the OS boot in 64-bit by default, on these powerful and/or latest machines).

By the way, Geekbench also comes in Linux and Windows versions so you can test PCs against Macs against Linux boxes and see how they all rate. 

The overall Geekbench score in 32-bit mode was 11,626, and in 64-bit mode a faster 12,951. After a restart, and no other applications running, I got an even more impressive 13,074 in 64-bit mode.

As tested, the system is (according to Geekbench):

Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Build 10C540)

Model Mac Pro (Early 2009)

Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F221BEC8

Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz

Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5

Processors 2 Threads 16

Cores 8 Memory 6.00 GB  1066 MHz DDR3

Processor Frequency 2.26 GHz Bus Frequency 5.87 GHz

L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB

L2 Cache 256 KB L3 Cache 8.00 MB

You can see lots of Geekbench results online, and you’ll see that my scores were consistent and about where you’d expect. 

Photoshop tests

Finally, I measured a set of Photoshop routines designed to test speeds across various platforms, following the instructions carefully (thanks to photographer Andrew Hales for passing this info on). You can do this test yourself – just go to http:/photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=170063.

I ran it three times in 32-bit mode: first time 31.4 seconds, second time 21 seconds, third time 26.8 seconds. The average is 26.4 seconds.
Then I ran it three times in 64-bit mode. The times I got were 26.2 seconds, then 20.3 then 20.1, averaging out to 22.2.

Apparently, this test is getting a bit dated now, so I tried a more complex test from Driver Heaven. The DH script is fully compatible with all platforms, including Apple Macintosh, and is stored as a ZIP file. The test uses a script compatible with Photoshop V7, right up to the latest CS4, which I have. You also need 512MG RAM minimum, accessible to Photoshop. 

This is just a set of filters run over a supplied image and you write the timings down for each one; the timings for this Mac Pro were as follows (in seconds):

CMYL Colour Conversion 1.1

RGB colour conversion 1.1

Ink Outlines 15.2

Dust and Scratches 1.5

Watercolour 16.3

Texturizer 1.2

Stained Glass 11.7

Lighting Effects 1.6

Mosaic Tiles 16.9

Extrude 106.9

Smart Blur 118.6

Underpainting 26.7

Palette Knife 23.5

Sponge 22.3

You add all the timings together for the comparison on the site linked above. In this Mac Pro’s instance, the total was 364.6.

Going by the comparisons on the site, with lower scores being better:

But it must be pointed out, it’s a bit silly going down this track of endlessly comparing speeds. The fastest machines are *expensive, overclocked and custom-built gaming machines (Skulltrails are hand-built) and could possibly be further customised to excel in this type of speed test. They remind me of common cars tweaked and customised to within a micron of their working tolerances and so yes, they go like bats out of hell and may beat stock Porsches, Ferraris and the like. But reliable? Goodness no. 

Besides, the Mac Pro as tested is not the fastest Mac Pro, it’s the stock one, and interestingly a stock MacBook Pro 17-inch also appears in the list. 

Expansion

On the Pro, for your money, apart from the stonkin’ great case, you get Snow Leopard thrown in, as with any new Mac. You get the iLife suite of the latest versions of GarageBand, iPhoto, iWeb, iMovie and iDVD, which let you make music, look after and edit up to 250,000 photos, make websites and edit and finish movies then burn them to DVDs. But yeah, all of that is standard Apple software as sold with every Mac, so no extra stuff there for your Mac Pro dollar – but most people by Mac Pros to run Final Cut, Logic, Pro Tools and Adobe Creative Suite, up to and including Premiere. But it’s good to have the standard Apple fare there in case you need it, or you are used to it, and besides, iMovie projects can be opened in Final Cut, iPhoto is see by Aperture and GarageBand talks to Logic, so they’re still surprisingly useful.

This newish Mac Pro has the same quick-remove right-side panel all these aluminium case Pros have had. You can just slide out the processor tray to add more RAM. The hard drive bays slide out too, so pretty much any operator can add whack more storage in (up to 4TB internally). I have done this several times with these and it’s easier than with a MacBook or iMac, which are easy enough in themselves, truth be told.

Moving a bar lets change up to four expansion cards at once. 

The Pro I tested came with Apple’s wired slimline keyboard complete with the numeric section and the page-up/down etc and arrow panel. I prefer this keyboard to the new shorter wireless version which dispenses with the numeric and the page up/page down section, as comes with consumer Macs now. In this instance, the included mouse was the Mighty Mouse, not the new Magic Mouse. 

Video

The Mac Pro graphics card already has two display ports standard. A Mini DisplayPort connects the new 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display with ease while the dual-link DVI port connects a 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display (or any other DVI display). If you really need screen real estate, expansion is where it’s at – you can add up to four NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 cards to connect up to eight displays if you really really want to.

This stock Pro video card (the GT 120) has 512MB of video RAM onboard. In Call of Duty 4 (above), I suddenly got heat hazes, depth of field and other atmospheric effects I’d never seen before. 

I also like the way most of the ports are on the back, but there’s a handy audio-out, two USB2 ports and two FireWire 800 port son the front, for connecting devices as you need them, for downloading video, for example, or whacking in a thumb drive without having to mess around on the back. 

Conclusion: All in all, this thing is designed as an expensive workstation to do expensive  jobs while letting you expansively (and, needless to say, even more expensively) pump up its specs and capabilities at any time with the greatest of ease.

Subjectively, I just love this Mac. Of the five or so Macs I’ve had time with in the last 12 months, this is the one I’d like to keep the most. 
But the writing is on the wall for the next model Mac Pro already, with the latest chip developments at Intel. So some time next year …

Mac Pro Quad-Core early 2009, RRP inc GST $5799, as tested (includes free shipping and one-year warranty from www.apple.co.nz).

System: two 2.26GHz quad-core Intel Xeon Nehalem processors, 6GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video card with 512MB RAM

Mac Pro $4399 (includes free shipping and one-year warranty from www.apple.co.nz) contains one Quad Core Intel Xeon Nehalem processor, 3GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video card with 512MB RAM.

More info: Apple NZ Ltd, or contact your favourite Apple Reseller.