Owners of the 2006 Mac Pro have been waiting for Apple to release NVIDIA’s 8800GT for them to install in their Macs. The 8800GT shows significant performance increases on the 2008 Mac Pro over other video cards but this is not the case with the earlier Mac Pro. In fact, the 8800GT in Apple’s own Leopard operating system benchmarks below ATI’s X1900XT and the standard NVIDIA 7300GT in some tests.

Below I’ve created a table comparing the NVIDIA 7300GT (standard in the 2006 Mac Pro), the ATI X1900XT (an upgrade still available for 2006 Mac Pro owners) and the NVIDIA 8800GT for 2006 Mac Pro (just released with high expectations).

The higher the number, the faster the test result. All these tests were performed using the same 2007 Mac Pro (MacPro1,1) with results averaged from three consecutive tests, all tests were ran after restarting the computer. Computer specifications: 2007 Mac Pro with dual 2.66Ghz dual-core Xeon processors, 4Gb of RAM, two 10,000RPM SATA hard drives in RAID 0 on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2 using Xbench 1.3.

Below is a chart comparing the information from the table above. Taller bars equal a faster result (taller = better).

Conclusion: Since Apple and NVIDIA have just released the 8800GT for the older Mac Pro it is safe to assume that Apple has not yet written drivers that fully utilize the 8800GT’s full potential. I expect to see a software update in a few days or weeks to address the performance issues in OS X. This is the problem with Vista and Apple’s 8800GT for 2006 Mac Pros under Bootcamp, Vista (x64) recognizes the 8800GT as a standard VGA video card and does not allow any 3D applications to run, Vista uses a standard video driver and NVIDIA’s driver utility don’t recognize the card either (but thats another post at a later time).

A graphic showing the chart, table and test information can be found here.

Apple’s Mac Pro doesn’t come with much of a video card in its default configurations. The Mac Pro I have (2007 model with 2x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Xeon CPUs) came with the NVIDIA 7300GT, which is not good for much. The new Mac Pros have the option to get the NVIDIA 8800GT, but the older ones cannot upgrade to the 8800GT because of the PCI Express 2.0 requirement.

For older Mac Pro owners the only upgrade option is the ATI X1900XT, which is a good graphics card but not as good as the 8800GT new Mac Pro owners have as an option. The X1900XT is not as good as an 8800GT, but still better than the 7300GT older Mac Pros came with.

Gaming: Performance differences between the 7300GT and the X1900XT are great. I tried Crysis, Counter-Strike Source and Unreal Tournament 3, all Windows games under Vista Home Premium.

Crysis: With the 7300GT I had to play the game with everything set to Low and at the lowest screen resolution the game supported. Performance, particularly the frame rate were playable, around 24 FPS. With the X1900XT I could play crysis at my screen’s native resolution, 1680 x 1050 with everything on Medium. Performance was comparable, a frame rate in the 20’s. Since the X1900XT does not support DirectX 10 (DX10), the highest setting available in Crysis was High, at the native resolution of the monitor (1680 x 1050) with the quality settings all set to High the game was not playable, but only by a few frames. I suppose that if you liked the quality that High offered and didn’t mind a large hit in the frame rate it would be playable.

Counter-Strike Source: Counter-Strike Source was a game I used to play on my old P4 gaming rig with an ATI 9800Pro, which could play everything set to the maximum setting at the native resolution of the monitor (1680 x 1050). I expected similar performance from the 7300GT, but it did not deliver. Just like Crysis, I had to set the resolution to the lowest setting and reduce the game’s visual setting. The X1900XT took care of all these problems and allowed me to play at my monitor’s native resolution with everything set to the highest setting.

Unreal Tournament 3: I haven’t purchased the retail copy yet, but I will. This game was with the Demo version. I also didn’t have a chance to try this game out on the 7300GT, so this is only on the X1900XT. The game played great, with everything set to the highest setting available and with the resolution set to 1680 x 1050. The performance was great and the frame rate did not get in the way of playing the game.

Below are two screen shots of the Vista Experience Index rating of the NVIDIA 7300GT and the ATI X1900XT.

• Vista Experience Index rating: NVIDIA 7300GT (Mac Pro)
• Vista Experience Index rating: ATI X1900XT (Mac Pro)

Boot camp will only allow you to use 2Gb of RAM, even if your computer has more than 2Gb of RAM. This is not the limit of a 32 bit system, its something Apple did in boot camp. The only solution I know of is to try the 64 bit version of windows, which Apple tells users not to use. Vista Anytime upgrade will not let you change from 32 bit to 64 bit.

Only Vista Business and Ultimate will utilize your Mac Pro’s two physical processors. I wish I knew this before I ordered Vista Home Premium… Vista will see all four cores in my quad-core Mac Pro in Device Manager, but you cannot use more than one physical processor (limited to two cores). Vista Anytime upgrade should take care of this problem. To my knowledge XP does not have a processor limit.

Like most iPhone users, I was waiting for the next update for my iPhone. That update came today (announced at MacWorld 2008) and I eagerly waiting for the update to become available in iTunes.

As soon as it was available I downloaded and installed it. The biggest new feature in 1.1.3 (in my opinion) was the cell tower/current position. I tried it out and the iPhone gave me different locations.

Here’s a pic of my iPhone and my dad’s next to each other displaying different positions.

Navizon from when I had my iPhone hacked would give me similar results. The pushpin in the right iPhone is the correct location (seems it’s good when it works).

Time Machine is an excellent feature, its done in true Apple style, simple yet powerful, but there is one downfall to Time Machine, and thats the hardware it requires. Like most people, I use an external drive for Time Machine, the Porsche designed LaCie 500Gb USB drive.

My problem with the Porsche designed LaCie drive is its noise. This drive has a fan that kicks in after the drive’s been on for a while, it’ll turn off after it’s cooled down, but its annoying either way. I’ve been reluctant to to pull the drive apart because there are no visible screws or access points.

For those wondering, the Porsche designed LaCie 500Gb USB external drive has a 7200 RPM 3Gb/s SATA drive with 16Mb of cache (here’s a link to the drive on newegg).

Originally, I was just going to disconnect the fan inside the drive, but once I saw it had a SATA drive I decided to move the drive inside my Mac Pro. If that’s what you want to do, here’s the instructions to do so.

(more…)

Before Apple released Leopard, I wanted to speedup my MacBook Pro, which came standard with a 5400 RPM SATA laptop drive. It’s (at the time I purchased it) a stock MacBook Pro, with the Intel 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, 2 Gb of RAM and of course the 5400 RPM SATA drive.

The MacBook Pro has the capability of being a kick ass laptop, after all its the fastest windows laptop sold. To get desktop performance out of my MacBook Pro I decided to upgrade the hard drive to a 200 Gb 7200 PRM SATA Hitachi 2.5 inch drive, one which I purchased from Newegg.

The upgrade was easy, the only problem I ran into was the cable for the touch pad and the strip of tape holding it to the drive covered the new drive’s breathing hole. Once installed, I reinstalled Tiger (remember, before Leopard was released).

My results from Xbench are listed below, I tested each drive four times.

5400 RPM stock Apple drive:

• Drive test average: 29.66 (best: 35.29, worst: 14.57)
• Total score average: 97.79 (best: 110.03, worst: 66.27)

7200 RPM Hitachi drive (replacement):

• Drive test average: 41.74 (best: 43.07, worst: 39.97)
• Total score average: 116.62 (best: 118.68, worst: 112.55)

Without the drive test, my MacBook Pro receives a score of 166.18, so you can see how the drive test can drag the score down.

Just for something to compare this 7200 RPM 2.5 inch drive to, the standard 250Gb 7200 RPM SATA drive that came stock in my Mac Pro benchmarks at 51.02 (disk test only), although, with a Western Digital Raptor RAID array (two 36 Gb 10,000 RPM SATA “Raptor” drives in RAID 0 (32k blocks)) gets a score of 114.24 (disk test only).

The 2.5 inch 200 Gb Hitachi 7200 RPM drive that I put into the MacBook Pro gives near desktop performance, and makes a noticeable difference in day to day use, applications launch quicker and OS X feels quicker overall. 7200 RPM drives are the standard for desktops, and should be the same for laptops.

For those wondering which drive I used, here’s a link to it Hitachi 200 Gb 7200 RPM 2.5 inch SATA hard drive.