Macs Only! Blog Archive--Jan-Jun 2009

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Copyright 2008 by Bill Fox All rights reserved.
Last Updated: July 1, 2009

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[6/15] EVGA GeForce GTX 285 in an Early 2008 Mac Pro--How fast is it?

Frequent readers know that I am a seriously addicted gamer on the Mac. Last month my ATI Radeon HD 4870 arrived after ordering it in March. It was the card I had been looking for on the Mac for nearly a year. It didn't disappoint as noted in last month's speed test.

About that time rumors began circulating that EVGA would make the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 available for the Mac (e.g. see this one). While the 285 is not the latest Nvidia graphics card, it is much more recent than ATI's 4870 and in tests the 285 kicks the Radeon's butt, running nearly as fast as a Radeon 4870X2 with two GPUs. Sure enough, the rumors were true and EVGA's GeForce GTX 285 for the Mac is now available on the Apple Store for $449.95, $100 more than the ATI 4870. I ordered one immediately and it arrived this past Thursday while I was out of town, of course.

Like the 4870, the GTX 285 is two PCIe slots wide and uses both electrical connections from the Mac Pro's motherboard. However, the first 16-lane PCIe 2.0 slot is offset so that the GTX 285 does not cover any of the remaining PCIe slots. The GTX 285 does not have the full slot extension piece that the 4870 has making it a little more difficult to correctly position the EVGA card. EVGA included a CD with drivers but I found a more recent set of drivers on EVGA's web site.

EVGA's GeForce GTX 285 for the Mac has two dual-link DVI ports so it can drive two 30" Apple Cinema Displays. In comparison, the ATI 4870 has only one dual-link DVI port but it also has a new mini DisplayPort and there is a $99 adapter to make it into a dual-link DVI port. So, the ATI 4870 is a bit more versatile if you have the extra cash. The GTX 285 has 1GB of onboard DDR3 memory versus 512MB of GDDR5 memory in the ATI 4870. Both cards require Mac OS X 10.5.7.

So how fast is the EVGA GeForce GTX 285?

To find out, I ran a graphics-related subset of my usual speed tests on my dual quad-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 6GB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.5.7 using both graphics cards plus the original graphics upgrade that came with the Mac Pro, an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT. Here are the results:

EVGA GeForce GTX 285 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870 vs Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT Speed Tests (Higher is faster)
Test EVGA GeForce GTX 285 ATI Radeon HD 4870 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
BENCHMARKS/Mac OS X Version
10.5.7 10.5.7
10.5.7
Cinebench R10 Rendering (8x)
18768 18740
18751
-OpenGL Hardware Lighting
5961 6328
5927
Xbench 1.3
   
- Quartz Graphics
239 241
244
- OpenGL Graphics
177 215
174
-User Interface Graphics
406 406
450
GAME TESTS
     
Quake III Arena (frames/sec)
979 998
981
Halo 2.0.3 (frames/sec)
173 211
169
       
Red is faster by 10% or more.

What? The ATI 4870 is faster and the GTX 285 is no faster than the 8800GT! Yes, that's true for these tests but gaming is all about fast, furious and copious pixels. The lower resolutions (1024x768) and graphics limitations (no FSAA for example) of my usual speed tests don't tax these new graphics cards' abilities. Hey, this is the new era in Mac gaming. You don't have to dumb down the settings any longer!

So I upped the resolution to that of 20" monitor, 1600x1200. Here are the results:

EVGA GeForce GTX 285 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870 Game Speed Tests at 1600x1200 resolution (Higher is faster)
Test EVGA GeForce GTX 285 ATI Radeon HD 4870
BENCHMARKS/Mac OS X Version
10.5.7 10.5.7
GAME TESTS
   
Quake III Arena (frames/sec)
974 995
Halo 2.0.3 (frames/sec)
166 204
     
Red is faster by 10% or more.

The ATI 4870 still beat the EVGA GeForce GTX 285. This probably because the eye candy is still dumbed down and serious gamers may use an even higher resolution. These graphics cards are for serious gamers.

I re-ran the gaming tests with the GTX 285 and ATI 4870 with maximum resolution (2048x1536 for Quake III Arena and 2560x1600 for Halo) plus maximum eye candy (Trilinear filter for Quake III Arena and 4x FSAA, Lens flare High, Model detail High and Smoke particles High for Halo). Here are the results:

EVGA GeForce GTX 285 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870 Game Speed Tests at 2560x1600 resolution (Higher is faster)
Test EVGA GeForce GTX 285 ATI Radeon HD 4870
BENCHMARKS/Mac OS X Version
10.5.7 10.5.7
GAME TESTS
   
Quake III Arena (frames/sec)
970 962
Halo 2.0.3 (frames/sec)
124 84
     
Red is faster by 10% or more.

Now this is more like it. The GTX 285 beat the ATI 4870 on both tests and very significantly for the more important Halo test. The speed of Quake III Arena depends largely on the CPU rather than the GPU and, in reality, no longer is a good test. Halo was the first game on the Mac to really tax the GPU on the graphics card in addition to the CPU. It is still a very good test and the GTX 285 bested the ATI 4870 on my Mac Pro by over 47%.

I still play Halo so it is great finally to be able to play it well at maximum resolution and maximum eye candy on my 30" Apple Cinema Display. But more frequently I play Call of Duty 4 (CoD4), my all-time favorite game to date. I do play it using Boot Camp on Windows XP since it took so long for the Mac version to come out. I'm sticking with the Boot Camp version, partly because I don't want to waste my time playing up through all the ranks again. I have been playing CoD4 with the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 on my Mac Pro and 30" Cinema Display at 2560x1600 resolution and I am even more competitive due to better vision and no slow downs than at the lower resolution of 1600x1000 that I was using with the ATI Radeon HD 4870.

In summary, if you are a serious gamer with a late model (2008 or 2009) Mac Pro and want to play at maximum resolution with all the eye candy enabled, I recommend the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 for the extra $100 over the ATI Radeon HD 4870. The ATI 4870 comes close and is even better at lower resolutions for $100 less if that matters. Another consideration is that the ATI 4870 is an official Apple card and is likely to be supported in future versions of Mac OS X. Hopefully, EVGA will also continue to support its first Mac graphics card and even give us better ones in the future. [Bill Fox]

[5/15] ATI Radeon HD 4870 in an Early 2008 Mac Pro--How fast is it?

I delayed ordering my early 2008 Dual Quad 2.8GHz Mac Pro in order to ensure I got the CTO high end graphics card, an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT. Based on tests with the Windows version of this card, I expected a truly hot set up for 3D games. Unfortunately, I was disappointed because the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro that I had been using for games tested faster! That was using Mac OS X 10.5.2 and it took until 10.5.6 for the Nvidia drivers to improve enough for the Mac Pro to handily beat the Halo score of the MacBook Pro.

I'm always looking for improved graphics performance so I've lamented all along that the ATI Radeon HD 4870 was not available for the Mac Pro. While there are now faster ATI graphics cards available for Windows, Apple made the ATI Radeon 4870 available as a CTO option for the new Early 2009 Mac Pro. To my pleasant surprise, Apple also released it as a kit for the Early 2008 Mac Pro so I ordered one March 5th. It arrived April 29th without drivers which came included with Mac OS X 10.5.7 that was released Tuesday evening.

The ATI Radeon HD 4870 is a wonderful beast. It's large and takes the width of two PCIe slots. Fortunately, Apple has offset the 16-lane PCIe 2.0 slot so it does not cover up the second x16 PCIe slot. Unfortunately, it also uses both motherboard electrical connections so I cannot simultaneously install both the Radeon HD 4870 and the GeForce 8800 GT, which requires only one electrical connection. The 4870 has 512MB of GDDR5 video memory, a single dual-link DVI port to run one 30" monitor and Apple's new Mini DisplayPort. It was not difficult to install. One card or the other will soon be on eBay.

So how fast is the ATI Radeon HD 4870?

To find out, I ran a graphics-related subset of my speed tests on my dual quad-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 6GB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.5.7 using both graphics cards. Here are the results:

ATI Radeon HD 4870 vs Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT Speed Tests (Higher is faster)
Test ATI Radeon HD 4870 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
BENCHMARKS/Mac OS X Version
10.5.7
10.5.7
Cinebench R10 Rendering (8x)
18740
18751
-OpenGL Hardware Lighting
6328
5927
Xbench 1.3
 
- Quartz Graphics
241
244
- OpenGL Graphics
215
174
-User Interface Graphics
406
450
"REAL WORLD" TESTS
   
Quake III Arena (frames/sec)
998
981
Halo 2.0.3 (frames/sec)
211
169
     
Red is faster by 10% or more.

The ATI Radeon HD 4870 does not disappoint. It is 24-25% faster in Xbench's OpenGL test and the OpenGL-based game Halo respectively. It is also 7% faster at the OpenGL Hardware Lighting test of Cinebench R10 even though that might be in the range of random variation in the test.

The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT worked great with Windows XP SP3 on my Boot Camp partition after downloading the latest Windows drivers from Nvidia. The same is true for the ATI Radeon HD 4870, i.e. it works great with Windows after installing the latest ATI Catalyst software and driver. With ATI's Windows-only software one can also play around with the GPU's clock speed and other features of the card. Both cards work well with Windows XP running under Parallels 4.0 as well.

Now that I have the ATI Radeon HD 4870, I have read reports (e.g. see this one) that card maker EVGA recently let slip that Nvidia's newer GeForce GTX 285 will be out for the Mac next month. The GTX 285 is reputed to blow away the 4870 and to be nearly as fast as the Radeon HD 4870-X2, i.e. a 4870 with two GPUs. I can see another graphics card test in my immediate future! [Bill Fox]

[5/13] Mac OS X 10.5.7--How fast is it?

Yesterday evening, Apple finally released Mac OS X 10.5.7 update, both client and server editions. 10.5.6 came out December 15, 2008, so its been awhile. They are available for download via Software Update or as a stand-alone updater from this Apple Web page. If you use the stand-alone updater, I always recommend the combo updater to ensure that you have all the files from all previous updates that 10.5.7 needs. The build number of the final release of 10.5.7 is 9J61.

I had no problem installing Mac OS X 10.5.7, including the Server edition, on my Macs: MacBook Air, Mac Pro, PowerMac G4 Cube, iMac Core 2 Duo and PowerBook G4. I mostly used Software Update but I used the combo updater on my Mac Pro.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 is supposed to have the new ATI drivers for the ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card that I ordered back on March 5th and finally received April 29th. Unfortunately, it could not be used then because no drivers were included in the package and none were in 10.5.6. Apple erred in sending the card early but graciously called me and apologized that I would have to wait for the release of 10.5.7. Two weeks later, i.e. yesterday evening, Veronica from Apple called me to say that 10.5.7 was available for download and it contained the new ATI Radeon 4870 drivers. Despite this very good customer service from Apple, I do not see any new ATI drivers after installing 10.5.7. They are all dated 1/16/2008 and none have a 48xx name. Perhaps, I need to have the card installed first? I'll check this out later.

After installing 10.5.7, I re-ran Software Update to get the Safari 4 Public Beta 5528.17 update that is available to those running Safari 4 Public Beta after installing 10.5.7. I've tried all the apps that I frequently use like Safari, Mail, iWork, Office 2008, Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 and Parallels 4 running Windows XP. None presented any problems. I also updated Adobe Reader and Acrobat with yesterdays updates from Adobe. Everything seems to work fine.

So how fast is 10.5.7?

To find out if there are any performance improvements, I ran a graphics-related subset of my speed tests on my dual quad-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 6GB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.5.7. Here are the results comparing 10.5.7 with 10.5.6 and 10.5.5:

Speed of Mac OS X 10.5.7 vs 10.5.6 and 10.5.5 (Higher is faster)
Test Mac Pro Mac Pro Mac Pro
MacBook Pro 2.4GHz C2D
BENCHMARKS/Mac OS X Version
10.5.7
10.5.6
10.5.5
10.5.2
Cinebench R10 Rendering (8x)
18751
18136
18870
n/a
-OpenGL Hardware Lighting
5927
6062
5301
n/a
Xbench 1.3
 
- Quartz Graphics
244
227
205
192
- OpenGL Graphics
174
196
198
161
-User Interface Graphics
450
400
385
326
"REAL WORLD" TESTS
   
Quake III Arena (frames/sec)
981
970
986
686
Halo 2.0.3 (frames/sec)
169
169
99
115
         

There is nothing remarkable speed-wise about the graphics performance of Mac OS X 10.5.7 when using the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. I'm hopeful that my new ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card will improve the graphics performance significantly. That will be the subject of my next article--stay tuned! [Bill Fox]

[4/23] Apple's Financials Soar despite Economy--Revenue nearly $8.2B

Apple set a record for non-holiday quarterly revenue and earnings during the second quarter (Q2) of Apple's 2009 fiscal year that ended March 31st. Revenues were nearly $8.2 billion and earnings were $1.33 per diluted share. Gross margins increased to 36.4% and cash on hand increased to $28.9B.

In posting this super performance, especially in a down economy, Apple beat the analysts consensus estimated earnings per share by more than a whopping 22%.

Mac sales of over 2.2 million were down 3% from Q2 of 2008 but iPod sales of over 11 million and iPhone sales of 3.8 million were up 3% and and a huge 123% respectively. Among the Macs, desktops (iMacs, Mac Pros and Mac minis) were down 4% and portables (MacBooks, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros) were down 2% as compared with Q2 of 2008. Clearly, Apple record Q2 in 2009 was due to tremendous iPhone sales.

Sales in the three big regions were up in 2009 Q2; Americas by 8%, Europe by 18% and Japan by 18% over 2008 Q2. Retail store sales were nearly flat with 2008, rising a mere 1%, but still about half of the sales were to people new to the Mac.

Apple announced that it expects to have a lower Q3 that ends June 30th with revenue of $7.7B to $7.9B and earnings per share of $0.95 to $1.00. Apple usually performs better than its forecasts. [Bill Fox]

[3/14] Trans International has 1066Mhz ECC RAM for the New MacPro (Early 2009)Parallels Products Rebates!

Trans International announced the availability of 1066Mhz DDR3 PC8500 ECC SDRAM 72 bit memory upgrades for Apple’s all new MacPro (early 2009) based on Intel's latest Nehalem architecture Xeon processor.

The memory upgrades meet all the JADEC & RoHS standards and conform to Apple’s stringent thermal, mechanical and electrical design specifications and guidelines. The special thermal EEPROM has been installed on board.

The MacPro [Nehalem] memory upgrade kits are shipping Now. For all configurations please visit this Trans International Web page. [Bill Fox]


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