Marco.org

Sep 07 2009 ∞
Interesting results from OpenCL Benchmark on my 8x2.8 Harpertown Mac Pro: The 8800GT, despite being a top-of-the-line video card at the time, doesn’t even come close to the 9600GT (that currently comes in every 15” MacBook Pro except the $1699 configuration) in this benchmark. The Mac Pro’s obscene core count helps it remain extremely competitive with modern non-workstation CPUs even when it’s nearly two years old. Despite the Mac Pro’s high price, it stays useful and performance-competitive for many years after purchase — at least 2-3 years longer than a similarly specced laptop. So far, the only limitation I’ve hit on my Mac Pro is I/O performance, and that’s only because I’m holding out on buying SSDs until the X25-M’s next capacity bump and price drop. For the admittedly narrow range of operations for which the GPU can be beneficial with OpenCL, a great GPU can significantly close the performance gap between desktops and laptops. (But I can’t stress how infrequently this will be used for the foreseeable future.)

Interesting results from OpenCL Benchmark on my 8x2.8 Harpertown Mac Pro:

  • The 8800GT, despite being a top-of-the-line video card at the time, doesn’t even come close to the 9600GT (that currently comes in every 15” MacBook Pro except the $1699 configuration) in this benchmark.
  • The Mac Pro’s obscene core count helps it remain extremely competitive with modern non-workstation CPUs even when it’s nearly two years old. Despite the Mac Pro’s high price, it stays useful and performance-competitive for many years after purchase — at least 2-3 years longer than a similarly specced laptop. So far, the only limitation I’ve hit on my Mac Pro is I/O performance, and that’s only because I’m holding out on buying SSDs until the X25-M’s next capacity bump and price drop.
  • For the admittedly narrow range of operations for which the GPU can be beneficial with OpenCL, a great GPU can significantly close the performance gap between desktops and laptops. (But I can’t stress how infrequently this will be used for the foreseeable future.)
Creative Commons License All original content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 U.S. License except that which is quoted from elsewhere or attributed to others. In short, you may reproduce, reblog, and modify my content, but you must provide proper attribution.