2.93Ghz Nehalem Mac Pro, Amazing Geekbench

Someone over at macrumors just received their 2.93ghz 8 core machine with the ati 4870.

He ran geekbench and came up with a score of 17627!!! That is freakishly fast.

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/115594

Harpertown 3.2Ghz 8 core:

Overall Performance: 9602
Integer Performance: 10859
Floating Point Performance: 14408
Memory Performance: 2749
Stream Performance: 2089

Nehalem 2.93Ghz 8 core:

Overall Performance: 17627
Integer Performance: 16444
Floating Point Performance: 29697
Memory Performance: 5075
Stream Performance: 4636

Pretty much 2x faster.

It seems to have dethroned the Sun.

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=161587&d=1236634815

I'm thinking about either the 2.66Ghz Nehalem or the 2.93Ghz before picking one up at the Apple Store.

But for NOW the 2.93Ghz looks like the one I want.

 

wow that is a huge improvement. Intel is at the top of their game.

 

Yup, Core i7 Xeons. Total domination.

 

Yeah, those things are a beast. Encoding a 2hour movie would take like 10 minutes

 

yeah... thats a really kick-butt machine... just wait til you can get that same processing power in a Laptop in a few years...

 

That would be wicked in a laptop... but do the mainstream people really need 8-core rig's burning their laps? I once thought about getting a Mac Pro, but the funds just weren't there so I ended up building a new desktop. Apple needs to come out with something between the Mac Pro and Mac Mini (iMac doesn't count).

 

Moore's Law. I have a Pentium II processor that I have been holding onto just so I don't forget how far we've come. Thing is a brick. In four or five years I can't imagine how many cores will be in the "top of the line" desktop. 32? 64? Quad core laptops will make it to the shelves this year I have no doubt that within the next several years there will be a native 8-core mobile processor.

 

Depends on how you encode it

I can give you the x264 settings I use for ultra high quality and it is gonna take a while still.

 

Adding hyper threading and built in mem controller really seem to help...

 

Depends on your goal. I just downgraded my HP desktop, which running a 125W Athlon 6000+, to Athlon x2 5050e. After running Handbrake for a month straight, 24/7, I got my electric bill. While the 6000 was a bit faster, I and my wallet prefer the 45W 5050e. Plus when I was doing Handbrake on the 6000, my fan came on at full blast immediately and ran 'til it was done. With the new CPU, you can't even tell Handbrake is running. Besides, who needs that much juice for Office and Internet?

 

It breaks down into a pretty detailed comparison. If one cpu is clock per clock more efficient even if it uses more power it could get the same tasks done faster than the lower wattage rated cpu, and thus use less power to get it done, thats in addition to less time and time is money

I use a [email protected] and the only task that makes me wish I had a i7 is video encoding, for anything else it would be overkill. (A 8 min clip can take 2 hours on insane encoding settings, but only 5 min with regular settings)

But its not a big upgrade, I will wait for the next big thing, probably 6 core cpu's, right now its not the cpu upgrade that is killer its the fact a new ram type and mobo socket is needed too so that adds up to a lot for little gain if you already have a good quad.