Intel 8 core CPU

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Stromberg
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Stromberg » Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:25 am

Here is what some googeling says.

"When it comes down to it though, a PC really is a machine capable of running Windows, or a variety of other operating systems such as UNIX, Linux and more as well. PCs, can be built for a fraction of the cost of an Apple machine, and are highly customizable. Hardware can be mixed and matched, and upgraded as well, but in general at a price. Hardware incompatibility issues always arise, for example that 5 year old scanner that worked great with Windows XP, might not be supported in Vista.

The difference with a Mac is that it is capable of running Macintosh OS X, which a generic PC cannot. Modern Macs are also PCs with the ability to potentially run any operating system, including Windows. This is all thanks to the new Intel Core 2 chips they are running on. The downside to a Mac is the price. The lowest priced notebook weighs in around $1,000. But since Apple makes the OS, the hardware, and a good portion of the default software, everything works the second you turn it on."

If you want to read more look at this site.
http://www.elliottrothman.com/blog-post ... mac-and-pc

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fused
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by fused » Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:34 am

well, yeah, the mac pro has a custom mainboard, but i really doubt that it's better than any other high end mainboard out there - because, if whoever builds those things (definitely not apple on their own) had the technology to make this board better than any other they would be plain stupid to keep this for apple.

im not a fan of macs, not at all, and i agree that they are overpriced (theres just no doubt in that... mac entusiasts are most of the time as close-mided as pc enthusiasts :D ), but the mac pro is a hell of a machine. 100% prestige... but smoking hot!

@Stromberg:

fail, any PC can also run OS X... you might run into driver issues, tho ;)
the one and only reason why Apple doenst allow OSX being installed on generic pcs is that it would scratch their shiny "every thing works without a problem"-image. they would be made responsible for any kind of hardware incompabilities just like microsoft is with windows :)

well... im out of this discussion... i already went too far


edit: ok for osx on pc you need an intel machine with SSE3 at least, but perhaps over 50% of the newer generic pcs fall into that category

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Stromberg » Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:01 am

I guess you are right, but just so you know... i dont know anything about mac, i found that on the internett after using google :wink:

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WytRaven
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by WytRaven » Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:33 am

Ok lets do some comparisons here.

First some background. I have been building my own PCs for many years. I've been doing so since finally switching from my Amiga 1200 when it became supremely obvious that Commodore had completely screwed over the most promising machine of that time from a business stand point.

I still own and use a PC, my Fujitsu Stylistc tablet. I do not hate PCs, although it would be true to say that I despise the Windows OS. I despise it primarily due to the fact that out of all possible OSes that have been around in last 20 years it is the least qualified to be the dominant OS on the market.

Ok with that out of the way here are some pictures of my previous machine. A machine built with much love despite the somewhat shabby appearance of it these days (hey it's about 4-5 years old). This is using a Coolermaster Stacker case; a very good case for water cooling because of the space available to work inside. This machine is built from premium parts. Those fans are Noctua P120s (? I think thats what they were called) the vortex defeating 9 bladers. Very nice and very quiet but with four of them thats AUD$100.00 just in fans. The mobo is an ASUS M2N32SLI Deluxe a good stable enthusiast mobo for AM2 socketed AMD CPUs. The CPU is an FX62 a high end dual core with some features of the equivalent Opteron series. Video is provided by an ATI X1900XTX and theres 2GB of DDR800. Hardly an outstanding machine by todays standards but it was bleeding edge brilliant when I built it and extremely expensive; the water cooling setup consisted of about AUD$450.00 alone.

This machine has served me very well throughout it's life and is going to continue to serve as a new machine for my brother'n'law for some years to come yet.

I will post some comparitive pictures of the MP once my camera's battery has recharged so we can look at the differences between a generic high end PC built from quality parts and a high end Mac; a quality comparison only as obviously we are comparing an enthusiast desktop level machine to a professional workstation level machine and that is just ludicrous.
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:idea: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." - Emerson 1841

Stromberg
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Stromberg » Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:47 am

Nice pc you got there :)
I do build my own pc aswell, much better than buying a finished one since they are often more expensive and dont give the best of both worlds.
Just to say i have a nVidia 9800 gtx card, i had one ati before.. and i will never buy ati once again, my pc did freeze and most 3D programs wouldnt work, the viewport had all kinds of artifacts, and one other friend of mine he's pc wouldnt work at all, until he bought a new nvidia card. And one i read about on the internett and he had ati cards everytime he uppgraded they would not work until he had reinstelled the computer a few times and such... i dont mean to bring all my problems with ati cards to you, but i have this friend that i trust when it comes to buying hardware, and he loves ati cards, and bought a more expensive that did perform worse than a competing nVidia card, so i did spend like 300 euros on both does cards when i could spend the half :)
Now i'm done with my hate against ATI cards :P

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by suvakas » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:06 am

My last quadcore render node I bought a year ago was about 575$ (on-board vga + 4GB's of ram + a silent fan). It doubled my rendering speeds (rendering via LAN on 2 quads) and runs solid 24h. Prices have droped by now since i7 is out so it should cost even less at the moment. My point is, that the pure rendering speed is very cheap in our days using PC's.

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Stromberg » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:20 am

Suvakas: I'm am surprised of how cheap it's for pc at this time, 3 years ago i did buy a pc for 1300 euro's and right now i could get the same pc for maybe 100 euro's. I gues when i go to school i will maybe buy one more pc so i can use it when rendering.. you can never get enough cpu power :D

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by WytRaven » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:49 am

Ok so here are some photos of the MP. Let's make some comparisons here which illustrate the point I am trying to make.


1. Case is fashioned from CNC milled 3mm aluminium, as is the keyboard. The CM Stacker above is typical of "high end" PC cases as it fashioned from 1mm aluminum. The closest I've seen to Apple case quality is Silverstone (ex-CM engineers) but even Silverstone is a long way off.
2. Screws and other fastening hardware is stainless steel.
3. Where are the cables? Oh that's right there aren't any :)
4. Note the superb layout and design both from an aesthetic standpoint and a thermal standpoint.
5. The removable CPU/RAM tray is just genius and again is built like a tank; rock freakin solid
6. The OS has complete intimate control of all fans in the system and has more thermal monitoring points than you can poke a stick at
7. Didn't take photos but the monitor is also built like a tank with no creaky plastic in sight anywhere. It's a great big chunk of sweet aluminium too.

Now as mentioned previously you can't make a direct comparison between the motherboard in this and the motherboard in the previous machine. The ASUS board is an AUD$350.00 enthusiast board whereas the Apple is a workstation class board and you would need to compare to boards made by Supermicro or TYAN to be fair (boards that start around AUD$900.00 and I can assure the quality is definitely better than enthusiast boards.

The Apple as a whole is an order of magnitude higher quality than any PC you could build from parts available. The reason it is so hard to compare $ value between PC and Apple is because they simply aren't directly comparable on a part by part basis. Apples are built with all parts know and therefore the complete system is a customized/optimized whole. Parts in the PC world are all built and marketed individually on their own merits so there is obviously a drive to reduce costs as much as possible whilst pushing everything to the limits. Example: the ATI HD4870 in this new machine is more expensive than the PC equivalent and is underclocked "OMG!" I hear you say. Well the price is due to supply and demand (Apple being a much smaller user base) and the underclocking is a bloody good thing. By underclocking slightly Apple has reduced energy consumption and heat generation whilst also ensuring stability by running the GPU well within it's specs rather than right on the bleeding edge of it's capabilities. The end result is a difference of something like 2fps but try selling that concept to the PC enthusiast market (and remember this is a workstation not a games machine).

Now get this. My MP with all 8 physical cores pegged at 100% uses less power and is quieter than my previous machine at idle...( think total cost of ownership). I ran it for ~8 hours straight rendering via indigo and the main fans didn't budge from 600RPM :)

I will refrain from commenting too much on Mac OS (X) vs Windows (Vista) as I really am not trying to turn this into another Mac vs PC war but I will say that I have now been using this OS for 2 days solid and I haven't yet had to hunt for help...it just makes logical sense and is very consistent throughout. I already knew this was the case though as my computer illiterate wife hasn't asked me once for help with her (relatively) new iMac, she just "get's stuff done" and yet calls me at work regularly asking for help with her PC she uses at her job. She's been using PCs far longer than she has used a Mac (PC use = ~15 years, Mac use = ~7 months).

Anyway I'm not trying to "sell" anyone on Macs I am just trying to clarify that there is a definite quality difference between PCs and Macs.
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:idea: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." - Emerson 1841

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suvakas
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by suvakas » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:58 am

Hey, that's a mean machine you have there.
I want one too !! :twisted:
I love the "no cables" part. :)

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Godzilla » Sun Jun 14, 2009 6:54 am

I want one :cry:


I don't understand why they offer such powerful CPU's in their pre-builts, but not-as-powerful GPUs?

I mean, if you're running 2 i7's, you might as well stick a high-end card (or 2.. or 3) in there. Not that the 4870 isn't capable, but there are more powerful cards.
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zeitmeister
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by zeitmeister » Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:43 pm

I don't understand Apple's politics in graphic cards either, but this has been the point for ages. :-)

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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by WytRaven » Sun Jun 14, 2009 11:33 pm

Well they seem to be changing tack on that point as you can now get the nVidia GTX285 (being produced by evga) and the 1.5GB Quadro FX4800 "workstation" card... Not that I have need for either personally, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that will welcome both.
:idea: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." - Emerson 1841

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Godzilla
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by Godzilla » Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:12 am

Oh yeah, I saw that on EVGA a few days ago... GTX285 MAC edition.
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by eman7613 » Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:59 am

zeitmeister wrote:I don't understand Apple's politics in graphic cards either, but this has been the point for ages. :-)
Its actually ATI & Nvidia playing games, google for hacking PC gpus to run on macs, usually it is just re soldering certain points - otherwise they are the exact same.

response @ someone
Apple actualy designes the motherboards of their machines themselves usualy - then have another company build it.

Also, macs tend to be like the original N64 controlers - freaking indestructible, slipped on the ice at school - all the electronics in my backpack got damaged - the one survivor: my mackbook pro :)
Yes i know, my spelling sucks

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fused
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Re: Intel 8 core CPU

Post by fused » Mon Jun 15, 2009 10:08 am

someone is asking for reference.

:)

edit: in the end that wasnt even my point. its still the same stuff as found on any other high end/server mainboard...

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