Is this a good deal for a Mac Pro ?

[David Makin]

Hi all, am saving for a MacPro, obviously the latest ones from Apple are the 6-core but they're well over £3000.
Looking around I found this (price including VAT):

http://www.mccdigital.com/products/macpro2.4ghz.html

Which looks like a good buy given that it's the Radeon 5770 video card.

My only real question is if I want to do OpenCL is the 5770 good enough for doing 3D fractals in OpenCL - I mean in terms of being able to develop code, not in terms of it being cutting edge in terms of speed ?

[cKleinhuis]

the graphics card is more than enough to do just plain rendering, it has 800 stream processors, so plenty of speed,
about the mac i can not say anything, and also about opencl i am not sure if those drivers support it, nevertheless,
the macintosh system has very good built in support for gfx card rendering, but i dont know anything about it either...

[hobold]

The product description is a bit contradictory in places. For example, they state 2.4 GHz clock frequency in one place, but 2.8 GHz in another. And they could not wrap their minds around the concept that two quad core processors have 8 cores in total, not eight cores each ... (and this gets more complicated with Hyperthreading. This machine will run 16 threads in parallel under MacOS X.)

All in all this seems to be the standard configuration of the smallest dual processor MacPro, and the standard price. Exactly the same what Apple would sell you directly through their online store ( http://store.apple.com/uk ).

The Radeon 5770 is full featured with respect to the needs of OpenCL. OpenCL generally has a few rough edges, but Apple's implementation is said to be reasonably nice. I do not yet have first hand experience with it, but I might have in another 4 weeks or so ... Anyway, the biggest problem with OpenCL currently is interoperability. The language specification is deliberately vague in a few places, to leave the diverse implementors with a bit of leeway. But this has the side effect that one can unintentionally write platform specific code. OpenCL is not a virtual machine; it is not a smallest common denominator. It is an abstraction from the underlying hardware, but it still allows you to get fairly close to the bare metal.


MacPros in general are fine machines. They are overpriced, but they tend to be overengineered, too (in a positive sense). You won't get the fastest machine or the highest pile of hardware from Apple, but you get a solid workstation with easy access to the innards (if you are so inclined) and a very bearable noise level. Don't ever buy RAM or harddisks from Apple; upgrade those components yourself.

The big selling point IMHO is MacOS X. It may not be the best thing since sliced bread, but arguably the most usable GUI on top of  reasonably nice UNIX underpinnings makes for a very nice combination. You can get Linux-style package management for most of the usual open source software, if you are not content with what Apple has included.


I consider MacPros to be somewhat of a luxury. I happen to like them, and use one myself, but I don't usually recommend them to other people. You should only buy one if you can stand the sight of machines that cost one grand less, but seem to have all the same features and more in their glossy brochures. The one strong point of Apple's computers is that they are very well integrated systems that "just work". You will totally miss out on being your own system administrator. Oh, and Macs tend to retain a bit more resale value than PCs ... but obsolete hardware generally doesn't fetch much, so this doesn't offset the higher price.

[David Makin]

The product description is a bit contradictory in places. For example, they state 2.4 GHz clock frequency in one place, but 2.8 GHz in another. And they could not wrap their minds around the concept that two quad core processors have 8 cores in total, not eight cores each ... (and this gets more complicated with Hyperthreading. This machine will run 16 threads in parallel under MacOS X.)

I think they're just a little sloppy on the typing front - I was pointed there by the Liverpool Apple store when I asked about upgrading the video on an older Mac mini (apparently something Apple themselves have no interest in or support for).

As to the same machine from the Apple store, last time I looked I only remember seeing the single or double 6-core Nehalems available, but I guess I neglected to check all the specs available - and thanks for pointing out that the Westmeres are in fact hyperthreaded, I was assuming this was just the older 4-core non-hyperthreaded Xeons (for which Steve bought a MacPro about 2 years ago at a cost of around £3200).

I know the relative advantages and disadvantages of Apple vs. Microsoft - but in my case it's no contest as I would never consider buying to build myself or buying for speed at the cost of build quality, so the choice (if I actually didn't care which OS) would be reduced to either a Dell system or an Apple - and if you go fairly high end the Dells are actually dearer - also of course I never want to have to program using Microsoft development software ever again if I can avoid it !
The only real alternative to getting an off-the-shelf MacPro would be a high-end, high-quality self build with "illegal" use of a Mac OS and apart from the fact that I don't want a self-build I doin't think I'd last as a registered Apple developer in that situation !!

Thanks for confirming what I really wanted to know i.e. that the 5770 is ample for OpenCL development - if there's some way of using one of them on a MacMini then I could be in the OpenCL business a lot sooner !!

[David Makin]

Just though I'd add that Steve (who I work with) who bought the dual quad core Xeon MacPro 2 years ago just bought a dual 6-core MacPro (apparantly something to do with either spending the money or having to pay tax) - so I added new scores to the Ultra Fractal benchmarks (1 and 2):

http://www.shadoworld.co.uk/UF5/Benchmark/Benchmark%20results.htm

[hobold]

The hexacores are the end of the road and the high point of the evolutionary line that began with PentiumPro, and re-started with Pentium M after the energy-wasting Pentium IV. On the other hand, next year's "Sandy Bridge" processors will begin a new evolutionary line, breaking with some of the concepts that were cornerstones of the PentiumPro pipeline forever.

So if you want to buy a great CPU with outstanding single thread performance, and you don't need it right now, it will pay off to wait for the Sandy Bridge line (AMD's "Bulldozer" will be interesting, too, as it is expected to close most of the single thread gap, and even be ahead of Intel on multithreaded throughput).

But if you just want to get an OpenCL capable Mac, you might want to consider a used MacPro. All models, even the oldest ones from 2006, will accept the new Radeon 5xxx ( http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html ). The 2006 MacPros seem to provide limited bandwidth to their gfx slot, so they don't see much of a difference between 5770 and 5870 cards. The 2008 MacPros, in contrast, can almost fully utilize the new Radeons ( http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g6.html ). So if you can get an older MacPro in good shape for a good price, the 5770 add-in kit is all you need. Not sure about the delivery dates for those standalone Mac compatible gfx cards, though ...

Does Steve still need his older MacPro?

[David Makin]

Unfortunately Steve wants to keep the older MacPro as part of Parys Technografx (and won't even let me borrow it) so that will be my work system when I'm there. In the meantime I'll buy one of his two Mac Minis so I can at least develop for iPhone/iTouch/iPad at home.
It's quite likely I'll not be able to afford a MacPro for several months so chances are when I do get one it will be the next generation of CPUs - here I'm really more interested in overall performance rather than single core (thread) speed since I will obviously be installing Windows using Bootcamp so I can use Ultra Fractal and Uf's multi-threading support works really well.