6 x 2.4Ghz "Westmere" or 4 x 3.2Ghz "Nehalem"...decisions, decisions, decisions...

6 x 2.4Ghz "Westmere" or 4 x 3.2Ghz "Nehalem"...decisions, decisions, decisions...

So I'll likely be upgrading from my Quad G5 before the end of the year. Apple has finally updated the MacPro line so things look good.

Now my issue is do I get the high clocked 4 core or the lower clocked 6 core? I do a fair amount of CPU intensive things, most notably ripping video and audio so more CPUs is always a plus, but faster can be better (but not always). Price wise the machines compare out to within a few hundred dollars of each other so price doesn't really play a big role in this decision. I've always been a firm believer in the old adage "buy the most computer you can afford" but in this case it's the CPU specs that are in question, not my bank account.

Anyone smart on these two CPUs and have any advice? Either will likely fit my needs and be a great replacement for my ageing and ailing Qud G5 machine.

baggss said:

Anyone smart on these two CPUs and have any advice? Either will likely fit my needs and be a great replacement for my ageing and ailing Qud G5 machine.

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I searched the internet for about 15-20 minutes trying to find an exact answer to your question. It seems that the two configurations you've chosen (the faster quad-core setup, and the slower 6-core setup)...don't seem to be showing up much on various benchmarking charts. Here's the best I could find...hopefully it will be of some help:

Cinebench and Geekbench results for 2010 Mac Pros

- Nick

Although it's not exactly what I'm looking at, this snippet seems to point me in a general direction:

Secondly, many of you are trying to decide between the 6-core 3.33 and the 8-core 2.4. Based on the graphs above, the 6-core has the edge in speed. The 8-core has the edge on number of memory slots, though.

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Mainly that although there are 2 less cores the speed makes up for the difference. Since it's roughly an 800Mhz difference per-core that I'm looking at, that's probably pretty significant.

I'm not that worried about memory, I can buy more as I go. What I did find interesting is that the 6 core comes with 6Gb of RAM and the 4 core comes with 3Gb or RAM as part of the base configuration

Thanks.

Moved...

I'd go with the higher clocked quad core. Preciously few software products can take advantage of dual cores, let alone 4 or 6. That may change in the future, but even still I think you'll see greater advantage in the higher clockspeeds.

cwa107 said:

I'd go with the higher clocked quad core. Preciously few software products can take advantage of dual cores, let alone 4 or 6. That may change in the future, but even still I think you'll see greater advantage in the higher clockspeeds.

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Like you said "cwa107"...this has always been my way of thinking as well. Go with the higher clock-speeds.

Many benchmarking programs are written to take advantage of multiple cores (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.)...which of course will show that computers with more cores are MUCH faster than computers with fewer cores. But in the "real world" (where not all programs are written for multiple cores)...speed difference's between say a 3.0ghz Core 2 Duo and a 3.0ghz 8-core computer may not be terrifically different (depending on applications used). Speed differences may sometimes be more related to the logic board architecture, ram used, hard drive speeds, video cards, etc....than the actual number of cores.

- Nick

cwa107 said:

I'd go with the higher clocked quad core. Preciously few software products can take advantage of dual cores, let alone 4 or 6. That may change in the future, but even still I think you'll see greater advantage in the higher clockspeeds.

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I don't disagree. I'm also looking at this from the perspective that OSX will now take advantage of multiple cores (especially SL) nativley. On top of that, one program that I use heavily, Handbrake, is Core aware and will make use of all cores in it's processing. Those two things are really what had me looking at the 6 core machine.

cwa107 said:

Moved...

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Yeah, I thought about that after I posted it...

baggss said:

I don't disagree. I'm also looking at this from the perspective that OSX will now take advantage of multiple cores (especially SL) nativley. On top of that, one program that I use heavily, Handbrake, is Core aware and will make use of all cores in it's processing. Those two things are really what had me looking at the 6 core machine.

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Might be worth it if that's a key app for you. And you're right, with OpenCL and Grand Central, you're going to see a lot of devs hop on the multiprocessing bandwagon since they won't have to worry about addressing each core specifically, they already have an API that will handle those chores.

Tough call.