Nehalem YES - but which one?

[drenkrom]

The Nehalem architecture's main strength is the elimination of the front-side buss for direct and super-fast access to memory. Considering that, I'd personally go for less cores with more memory. More than 8gigs, in fact. The extra memory and fast access to it will come in even handier once Snow Leopard has been out for a while and everyone in Mac-world is humming along at 64-bit. If everyone gets their game together in a period shorter than your computer's lifespan, of course...

Nehalem also supports triple-channel, but the current MacPro's implementation is rather obscure. There is an even number of memory slots, numbered in pairs. While Apple documentation about the machines is rife with references to "fast 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM", there is no mention of triple-channel that I can find. I haven't set up a Nehalem MacPro yet, so am not truly sure, but the mobo design is completely different on my PC LBA-1366 computers, where 6 RAM slots are numbered and coloured in threes. Four RAM slots in a Nehalem computer seems pretty limited to me, but I'm a total geek tweeker, so I may not be a reference.

If you're not maxing out your current CPU, I'm not sure how much performance increase you'll get from the switch, but on my PC's with a 64-bit OS and boatloads of RAM, the difference with Nehalem has been astounding in certain applications. Video renders are now a joke. h264 exports absolutely fly.

Lastly, in choosing a video card for that computer, I'd heartily recommend the ATI 4870 over the Nvidia GT120. The GT120 is little more than a rebadged 9500GT, a notoriously lousy GPU.

IHTH

[Peterjk]

Originally Posted by drenkrom

Nehalem also supports triple-channel, but the current MacPro's implementation is rather obscure. There is an even number of memory slots, numbered in pairs.
IHTH

I've seen this mentioned before. Is there anyone who can give me the best RAM config above 8 gig? Do I go for 12G and how do I place them in the machine? - or 16G? DIGI? Apple?

Originally Posted by drenkrom

Lastly, in choosing a video card for that computer, I'd heartily recommend the ATI 4870 over the Nvidia GT120. The GT120 is little more than a rebadged 9500GT, a notoriously lousy GPU.

IHTH

Note taken. I'll choose the ATI! Thanks.

[Dirk Reinking]

it seems that 3 is the magic .. hhahaahaha
well that means 3 - 2 G sticks on each side..
make 12gig--
ummhh
i have 2 - 2 G sticks on each side -- make 8 G -- and it also works flawlessly
crucial may have some nice offers .

"d is happy cuz he never have to think about cpu and sheit anymore !!"

[Peterjk]

Originally Posted by Dirk Reinking

it seems that 3 is the magic .. hhahaahaha
well that means 3 - 2 G sticks on each side..
make 12gig--
ummhh
i have 2 - 2 G sticks on each side -- make 8 G -- and it also works flawlessly
crucial may have some nice offers .

"d is happy cuz he never have to think about cpu and sheit anymore !!"

I'm just puzzled over the fact that Apple is not having 12G as an option on the quad machines??

[Dirk Reinking]

thats why i mentioned crucial..
apple ram is very expensive.

http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/mpar...3E3949A5CA7304

they have matched pairs of 3 sticks

or just go the 8 G route and put in 2 - 2G sticks later

just a thought

[Montrealaudio]

Im pretty sure apple will sell the nehalems with up to 32 GB ram

[Mark Dann]

Originally Posted by Montrealaudio

Im pretty sure apple will sell the nehalems with up to 32 GB ram

Of course the extra ram will cost more than the machine itself.

No, I'm not joking.

[Peterjk]

Im not questioning that Apple will sell you as many RAM blocks as your heart desiret, Im just curoius to find out why the 12G option is not mentionend as an option in the Apple store. At least not for the Quad Nahalem.

Odd, because it seems to be the way to go. Some say better than 16G?

Please correct me if Im wrong.

[JSR]

Originally Posted by Peterjk

Im not questioning that Apple will sell you as many RAM blocks as your heart desiret, Im just curoius to find out why the 12G option is not mentionend as an option in the Apple store. At least not for the Quad Nahalem.

Odd, because it seems to be the way to go. Some say better than 16G?

Please correct me if Im wrong.

...just Apple marketing to push the 8-core making it seem that you are at a 8-gig limit with the quad-core.

i always get my ram from Other World Computing; never had an issue. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

[Peterjk]

Originally Posted by Dirk Reinking

it seems that 3 is the magic .. hhahaahaha
well that means 3 - 2 G sticks on each side..
make 12gig--
ummhh
i have 2 - 2 G sticks on each side -- make 8 G -- and it also works flawlessly
crucial may have some nice offers .

"d is happy cuz he never have to think about cpu and sheit anymore !!"

Well, well, well it seems that the Quad model only have 4 memory slots, so does the 12g recommendation still fly? 3 times 4G - which is quite expensive even at OWC?

Please advise.