8-Core (Clovertown) Mac Pro Benchmarks
The quad-core Xeon 5300 (Clowertown) represents a pin-compatible replacement for the current dual-core Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) processors that currently reside in the Mac Pro. This possibility was previously demonstrated by AnandTech when they successfully dropped Clovertown samples into the current Mac Pro. No benchmarks were available at that time, but CNet has now posted benchmarks of this same configuration:
As the Xeon 5355 is pin-compatible with the Xeon 5160 processors that came installed in our Mac Pro, we proceeded to swap out the two dual-core processors with the new quad-core processors. .... With the pair of Xeon 5355 processors installed, we booted the system back up and were greeted with eight active processing cores in both the Mac OS and Windows XP via the Boot Camp Public Beta.
Benchmarks compared 3.0GHz 4-core Mac Pros (Woodcrest) vs 2.66GHz 8-core Mac Pros (Clovertown) and showed a 31% improvement in highly multithreaded benchmarks such as Cinebench. iTunes and Quake saw less significant improvements. Their conclusion was that "unless you do work normally relegated to high-end workstations, perform massively multitasking workloads, or just want the bragging rights, eight cores is definitely overkill...at least for now."
Apple had been rumored to be introducing 8-Core Mac Pros as early as this month.
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P-Worm
Gosh, I'll be able to email and type Word docs SO much faster!! :p
yup, and my webpages will load in the blink of an eye... definitely worth whatever apple will charge. ;)
seriously though, how hard is it to get a program to multi-thread? (if thats the right term; being a complete programming novice, i've no idea)
They say that the changes in speed aren't going to effect most people because the programs aren't written for multiple cores. Do you think that we are going to see more consumer apps optimized for multiple processors, or do you think that it just isn't needed?
P-Worm
They're going to have to go multi-thread capable, demands on consumer software is only going to increase as we take what is cutting edge today and integrate it into everyday life.
They're going to need every ounce of grunt they can find. Especially when HD video content becomes the norm - encoding that takes some serious brawn and consumers aren't willing to wait for their results, they don't understand the processes behind it like Pros do, consumers want it all done right now so the quicker we get software over to multi-thread aware the better.
How long before it ends up in the MacBook Pro?
(joking)
Next Tuesday...
well, OSX whooped xp for multicore usage then
I noticed that too. Wonder how Vista will do. XP is 5 years old while Apple has had multiple OS updates since then which were probably optimized for this sort of thing.
is there any way to tell what software is multithreaded and will take advantage of the quad cores? (on the tech specs, etc...)
[/incredibly naive question]
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