Green my Apple

A friend referred me today to the following site: greenmyapple.

Quite interesting as earlier today I was talking with a colleague about RoHS directives and wondering why I hadn't heard anything from Apple regarding their compliance.

Everything I've purchased from Sun recently has had some kind of RoHS compliance (they generally say their items are RoHS 5 or RoHS 6, yet I can't find out what the various levels mean) yet I've not seen Apple mention anything about this directive. Even HP and Dell are getting on board, it can only be a matter of time before Apple start complying (I hope!)

High-End Workstation Prices

I've been looking at high-end workstations recently, and it seems like the Mac Pro has finally put an end to the age-old argument that "Macs are too expensive"

Have a look at the following table, where both the Mac Pro configurations really give a good account for themselves - the only differences between the cheaper and the more expensive Mac Pro is the monitor: 23" on the first one and 30" on the second one.

Manufacturer	Workstation Model	CPU Configuration	RAM Configuration	Graphics Accelerator	Hard Drives	Display	Warranty	Operating Systems	Total Cost (ex GST)
Apple	Mac Pro	2 x Dual-Core Xeon 5100 @ 3.0GHz	4GB (8 x 512MB FB-DIMM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB	2 x 250GB 7200 RPM SATA	Apple 23" Cinema HD Display	3 Years Onsite with phone support	Mac OS X and Windows XP SP2	$10,802.00
Dell	Precision 690	2 x Dual-Core Xeon 5100 @ 3.0GHz	4GB (8 x 512MB FB-DIMM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB	2 x 250GB 7200 RPM SATA	Dell 24" UltraSharp LCD	3 Years Onsite with phone support	Windows XP SP2	$11,504.00
Apple	Mac Pro	2 x Dual-Core Xeon 5100 @ 3.0GHz	4GB (8 x 512MB FB-DIMM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB	2 x 250GB 7200 RPM SATA	Apple 30" Cinema HD Display	3 Years Onsite with phone support	Mac OS X and Windows XP SP2	$12,256.00
IBM	IntelliStation Z Pro	2 x Dual-Core Xeon 5100 @ 3.0GHz	4GB (8 x 512MB FB-DIMM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 with 256MB	2 x 73GB 10,000 RPM SAS	IBM 20" TFT LCD	?	Windows XP SP2	$13,002.00
Sun	Ultra 40 Workstation	2 x Dual-Core AMD Opteron 280 (2.4GHz)	8GB (4 x 2GB DDR RAM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 with 256MB	2 x 250GB 7200 RPM SATA	Sun 24" TFT LCD	3 Years Onsite with phone support	Solaris 10 and Windows XP SP2	$13,496.00
Hewlett-Packard	HP xw8400 Workstation	2 x Dual-Core Xeon 5100 @ 3.0GHz	4GB (4 x 1GB FB-DIMM)	NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB	2 x 250GB 7200 RPM SATA	HP L2465 TFT LCD	?	Windows XP SP2	$14,096.00

Boot Camp versus Parallels performance

I've tested some 3D Rendering in 3D Studio Max, comparing render
times when running natively via Boot Camp vs running under Parallels.

I set up a Mac Pro 2.66 with 1GB RAM and installed Windows XP SP2 in
Parallels.
I then installed Boot Camp and installed Windows XP SP2 natively. I
made sure I installed the correct SATA drivers at the time of the
Windows installation, however this made little difference to the
rendering times I experienced. It did make a huge difference to the
boot time for Windows and the launch times for apps like 3D Studio Max.

I downloaded a set of tutorial and demo files from the Autodesk
website and tested identical files from Boot Camp and Parallels.

While loading and editing these files, the display performance under
Parallels was quite acceptable. I wasn't able to try with any
massively complex models, but even some of the moderately complex
models seemed to redraw quite fine.
Also, it seems that 3DS Max uses a single thread for the user
interface, so there's not a massive performance hit in Parallels as
it only virtualises one processor.

Here are the test render results.

Rendering the file refractive_caustics.max
Boot Camp, rendering at 1600 x 1200: Total render time 0:61
Parallels, rendering at 1600 x 1200: Total render time: 3:51
Boot Camp is 3.8 times faster

Rendering the file throne_room.max
Boot Camp, rendering at 1600 x 776: Total render time 0:17
Parallels, rendering at 1600 x 776: Total render time: 0:59
Boot Camp is 3.5 times faster

Rendering the file loft_with_art.max, changing the view to Camera01
Boot Camp, rendering at 1600 x 1080: Total render time 1:48
Parallels, rendering at 1600 x 1080: Total render time: 6:45
Boot Camp is 3.7 times faster

This is fairly-well in line with expectations that a well-threaded
application that uses as many cores as it has access to will run
faster on a multi-core machine. Due to other system overheads, you
will never see a linear 4 x increase going from one to four cores,
but this shows that it's around 3.5-3.8 times faster.
It also illustrates that the virtual machine running in Parallels
doesn't suffer much of a performance hit at all for the
virtualisation and runs quite well considering that it's all running
on one core.

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AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max on Mac Pro workstations

I've been doing some research into the graphics cards that are either supported or certified for AutoCAD on Windows XP.

Here is the official word from Autodesk:

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 - Supported, not recommended.

Selection window fill colour not visible or displays artifacts

Grips are incorrectly displayed

Cursors and Dialogs leave trails in display

Graphics hardware designed for gaming.

I can confirm that there are graphical glitches when using hardware acceleration on the GeForce 7300 GT.

ATI Radeon X1900 - Not listed on Autodesk's web site, therefore unsupported at present.

The X1800 is listed as supported, not recommended wheras the X1600 is supported, recommended.

If the customer can't stretch to the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 then the X1900 should perform better than the GeForce 7300

I haven't tested this configuration.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 - Autodesk Certified.

This is the highest level of support for AutoCAD 2007.

Autodesk certify the card with specific versions of the drivers

Certified as working 100% by Autodesk on Windows XP

I haven't tested this configuration either, but it would be the recommended spec to use for a CAD workstation.

3D Studio Max is a different kettle of fish and doesn't push the graphics card as hard as AutoCAD does - it uses more of the game-specific hardware on a card to best effect. I didn't encounter any problems with 3D Studio Max on the 7300 GT under either OpenGL acceleration or Direct3D acceleration.

SATA under Windows XP on a Mac Pro

Be aware that at present there are some fairly serious issues with running Windows XP SP2 on a Mac Pro via Boot Camp.

Specifically one showstopper - the SATA controller's drivers are all screwed up from a default install.

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to properly update the Intel SATA controller drivers _after_ installing Windows XP, and the Mac Pro (lacking a floppy) makes it hard to add the drivers during the initial installation.

The easy way to tell if the problem is affecting a machine is to check out the speed of the hard disk.

Using a clean, default Windows XP SP2 installation, once Windows is up and running I was seeing a glorious 3.7MB/sec. Or less.

Slipstreaming the drivers into the Windows XP installation CD, so they are there during the initial installation resulted in speeds of over 60MB/sec. Up to 20 times faster.

In addition to adding the correct SATA drivers, we can also slipstream the other drivers from Boot Camp, such as the latest nVidia drivers and the Apple Keyboard drivers which will save a lot of time manually installing the necessary drivers after installing Windows.

I've successfully used nLite to build a slipstreamed Windows XP SP2 installation CD with the relevant drivers and can confirm it works and the disk performance is what you'd expect it to be.

If I'm are going to deploy more than one Mac Pro with Windows XP, I pretty much need to build myself an XP disk with at least the Intel Chipset and SATA drivers preinstalled, and if I'm going to do that, then it would save heaps of time later on to also slipstream any current Hotfixes from microsoft as well, this way I don't need to spend an hour or so going through Windows Update... What fun!

Damn Apple!

Well, this morning I jump on the internet for my daily dose of news, and what do I see but Intel Core 2 Duo based iMacs, with up to a 24" screen.

Where's my Core 2 MacBook Pro?!?

That aside, the new iMacs look pretty sweet.

Available as a build-to-order with a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo CUP, they can take up to 2GB RAM and can have a 160, 250 or 500GB hard drive factory fitted.

The 24" screen looks like it's a very nice panel, from the published specs, with a 178° viewing angle, higher brightness levels and better contrast than both the 17" and 20" panels.

Other than the graphics hardware in the 24" iMac - a GeForce 7300GT, same as in the standard Mac Pro with a CTO option of a 7600GT)

My money is on this panel making it's way into an Apple Cinema Display very soon =)

Oh, and a speed bump for the Mac mini came through as well...