8-Core Mac Pro Details Emerging?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

Daily Tech claims to have received details for Intel's next major Core-based Xeon processor (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4253), code-named Clovertown. The processors will be in the Xeon 53xx family (current Mac Pros use Woodcrest cores that are in the Xeon 51xx family), and will be available in the following configurations:

Processor # / Clock (GHz) / Bus (MHz) / L2 Cache (MB) / Price (in 1,000 unit lots)
X5355 / 2.66 / 1333 / 8 / $1,172
E5345 / 2.33 / 1333 / 8 / $851
E5320 / 1.86 / 1066 / 8 / $690
E5310 / 1.60 / 1066 / 8 / $455

In the likely event Apple choses to use Clovertown Xeon core as the next Mac Pro CPU, educated speculation would indicate that Apple would elect to only use the X5355 and E5345, as they are the only models that support a 1333 MHz front side bus, which is what current Mac Pros use. In such a scenario, Apple may elect to keep a Woodcrest configuration at the bottom end for customizability (currently, Apple offers 3 chip speeds in the Mac Pro).

Of interest, the Xeon 53xx series will be using Intel's LGA771 socket, which is the same socket that today's Xeon 51xx series (aka Woodcrest). Therefore current Mac Pro users may be able to upgrade to 8-core machines upon availability of the new chips (expected later this quarter to PC manufacturers according to Daily Tech).

Also mentioned in the article were Intel's Tulsa (Xeon MP) processor and Core-based Kentsfield, aka Core 2 Quadro. Currently, the Tulsa (Xeon MP 71xx series) is highly unlikely to be introduced into a Mac due to its basis on the power-hungry Netburst architecture. Kentsfield/Core 2 Quadro is also unlikely to see an inclusion in any current models.

[ezekielrage_99]

And the wait for 8 Core Mac Pros and Merom MacBook Pros/MaBook is on ;)

Waiting for speed bumps means no one buys a dang thing :cool:

[Mr.Gadget]

Exactly... Now I have to wait even longer to jump into the Mac foray... I'm holding on until these 8-ways come out... I hope it is soon!

I know there isn't much point as I won't need that horsepower, but the bang for buck is what keeps me holding on just a little longer. No way am I waiting until Christmas though! :-)

[relimw]

Is my 8-core MBP going to be announced tomorrow?!? It's a Tuesday after all!!!
Ok, now that that's out of the way...

Would the XServes not be the ideal choice to get Clovertown initially? I mean, we've already been through how few apps make really good use of all those cores, a server would make more sense.

[spicyapple]

Did anyone listen to TWiT? Someone mentioned 80 cores. Clovertown, your days are numbered. ;)

[Eidorian]

That's a pricey chip. You're not going to see killer single thread performance but multitasking would be insane.

[CHROMEDOME]

Sweet...Octo-core.

[ezekielrage_99]

Exactly... Now I have to wait even longer to jump into the Mac foray... I'm holding on until these 8-ways come out... I hope it is soon!

But seriously how many cores does anyone REALLY need?

Still the more the merrier I say :cool:

[relimw]

Ooo, maybe the reason for that long delay into October is because they're waiting for enough Clovertowns to become available.... That'd be a nice surprise.

[rkriheli]

yeah, this will be great if we want to run a small country with.

[Silentwave]

I'd pay for them to try and do a low voltage Clovertown like they did Woodcrest with the 5148LV. That one had a TDP not far off of Merom.

[rikers_mailbox]

In the likely event Apple choses to use Cloverton Xeon core as the next Mac Pro CPU, educated speculation would indicate that Apple would elect to only use the X5355 and E5345..

http://www.MacSpeculation.com (http://www.macrumors.com) :confused:

:D

[mdntcallr]

well sounds like i need to chill out and not but the mac pro i was thinking of. perhaps i will wait till they are refreshed with this.

Hopefully the new mac pro's will also have a blu-ray drive option with HDMI HDTV option.

also, with new HDTV TV/Monitor with Speakers integrated Displays.

[sisyphus]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)
Kentsfield/Core 2 Quadro is also unlikely to see an inclusion in any current models.

Which of course leads to the missing piece! :D

We can't just go from 2 Cores on the iMac to 8 Cores on the Mac Pro without a handy dandy 4 core prosumer model in the middle. ;)

(Somebody around here has to keep the "Mac" computer around in the rumor threads). :rolleyes:

I had thought Apple was going to release a Conroe based computer, but now seeing that Intel is releasing the Kentsfield as early as Late October/Early November it would make no sense. Apple would release the machine in September, be unable to meet demand then replace it less than 2 months later? Not very Appleish (ignore the November/January iMac occurence last year ;) ).

But now that would make a hot item for the Christmas shopping season wouldn't it? This is the reason Apple didn't release a Conroe based system... too short of a time in the pipeline.

This now gives us the perfect differentiated lineup going into Christmas:

Mac Mini - Core Duo
iMac - Core 2 Duo
Mac - Core 2 Quattro
Mac Pro - Dual Cloverton (May not arrive until MWSF)

I'd buy myself a Mac Quattro for Christmas! :D

[SRSound]

So say I’m using my 8-core Mac Pro for CPU intensive digital audio recording. Would I be able to assign two cores the main program, two to virtual processing, two to auxiliary “re-wire” applications, and two to the general system? If so, I guess I need to hold out on my impending Mac Pro purchase!

[iMeowbot]

But seriously how many cores does anyone REALLY need?
Software makers are in for a rude shock here. One big thread is nearly obsolete today, and even the common one-big-lump-with-little-ancillary-threads model is going to start looking tired fast. I hope that everyone is up to the job, this is something people have been avoiding for as long as multiprocessors were still uncommon, expensive beasts.

So say I’m using my 8-core Mac Pro for CPU intensive digital audio recording. Would I be able to assign two cores the main program, two to virtual processing, two to auxiliary “re-wire” applications, and two to the general system? If so, I guess I need to hold out on my impending Mac Pro purchase!
Most likely you'll have about as much control over this as you have over memory, which is to say, not a lot. It will be up to the OS to schedule things in a smart way.

[DavidCar]

...In the likely event Apple choses to use Cloverton Xeon core as the next Mac Pro CPU, educated speculation would indicate that Apple would elect to only use the X5355 and E5345, as they are the only models that support a 1333 MHz front side bus, which is what current Mac Pros use. In such a scenario, Apple may elect to keep a Woodcrest configuration at the bottom end for customizability (currently, Apple offers 3 chip speeds in the Mac Pro). ...Why would they change the basic configuration of the Mac Pro? The two Clovertown chips will just appear as high end options as soon as they become available.

[Silentwave]

Why would they change the basic configuration of the Mac Pro? The two Clovertown chips will just appear as high end options as soon as they become available.

Look at the prices. you can get 8 cores (2.33GHz) at the same price that 4 3GHz cores cost you now. My bet is that Woodcrest will see a moderate price drop upon Clovertown's introduction.

[pseudobrit]

Where's the eight-core Memromn?

[Analog Kid]

Until they get the 45nm process up and going, I think this is going to be the top of the line. 4 cores topping out around the mid 2GHz range.

I wonder if this is Intel's long term strategy-- keep the cores relatively untouched, but double the number with each process step. That'll be entertaining for a generation or so, but they're going to have to come up with something else.

My bet? Specialized cores. You've got some that are optimized for floating point, some for application logic, some for media. This is where Cell gets it right, I think-- they're a step too far ahead for now though.

Biggest problem is getting the system to know what threads to feed to what core, and to get application writers to specialize their threads.

[Some_Big_Spoon]

What the hell am I going to do with 8 cores??? :-D

[drsmithy]

So say I’m using my 8-core Mac Pro for CPU intensive digital audio recording. Would I be able to assign two cores the main program, two to virtual processing, two to auxiliary “re-wire” applications, and two to the general system? If so, I guess I need to hold out on my impending Mac Pro purchase!

You can typically bind processes to specific cores. Some OSes have a concept of processor "pools" where you can group, say, 3 CPUs together and assign a certain group of processes to them, another 2 CPUs get a different set of processes, etc.

Most of the time though (outside of benchmarks and corner cases) you're generally better off letting the OS's scheduler shuffle tasks around CPUs as it sees fit.

OS X still has a ways to go with its multiprocessor support, however, so it might not do it as well as other platforms do yet.

[Eidorian]

Where's the eight-core Memromn?Not happening.

http://guides.macrumors.com/Merom

[grubesteak]

What incentive does anyone ever have to buy if they keep announcing new chips? I'm all for the advancement of new technology, but I'm not forking over any money just yet.

Seems like there's a new "just around the corner" press release/rumor every other week.

[ezekielrage_99]

What the hell am I going to do with 8 cores??? :-D

Play WoW and CoD...... :confused:

That's what I was thinking of ;)

[ezekielrage_99]

Until they get the 45nm process up and going, I think this is going to be the top of the line. 4 cores topping out around the mid 2GHz range.

I wonder if this is Intel's long term strategy-- keep the cores relatively untouched, but double the number with each process step. That'll be entertaining for a generation or so, but they're going to have to come up with something else.


Sounds like both Intel and AMD are going by the philosophy more cores more speed.

It looks like the programmers will be in for a fun old time.

[SRSound]

Well I'm already finding quite a lot of hesitation over this chip because it will attempt to squeeze too much power through a smaller FSB and create a huge bottleneck in system performance! If this is true, maybe it would be better to stick with the current Xeon chips until Clovertown is revised to address this issue.

See: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=25349

[SirOmega]

Anandtech already reported the 4 core chips WILL WORK in the Mac Pro.

I can definately see how this is going to work out model wise. We'll see the current $2499 model and the up and down options, plus one quad core model at $3299 or possibly less depending on the dual core price drop.

Also, 8 cores would be insane for rendering workstations. 4 cores for rendering in the background, 2 for OS, 2 for other work.

[sososowhat]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

(expected later this quarter to PC manufacturers according to Daily Tech).



That would mean sometime in the next 5 days.

[Voltes V]

start savings and look for stuff to sell.

What the hell am I going to do with 8 cores??? :-D
you can use it to browse the web.............................and all the things you thought impossible, oooops i got overboard. ;)

[spicyapple]

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

[DMann]

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

Eight cores, with hyper threading active would dramatically reduce
rendering times, making production a whole lot faster and
more efficient. This is truly something to be psyched about!

[Some_Big_Spoon]

I made a joke before about what the hell anyone would need with 8 cores, but the truth is that I've been doing so much simultaneous photo, PS/InD, video at work this past couple weeks that I'm constantly taxing the 2GHz dual G5 w/ 4.5GB of RAM.. I mean like grinding it to a halt. Same with my MacBook, and don't even get me started on my iMac G5 Rev C.

I've said this before though: Apple, and other devs, need to make use of parallel processing. A handful of apps will use 2 procs / cores, but it's a wasteland above that. All these cores are great for working with multiple apps simultaneously, but I want to use 5-6 cores on one app. Make that possible and I'm happy.

My only hope is now that multi-core systems have gone mainstream that someone (cough -M$-cough) will make multi-processor aware apps "fashionable" and extend the trend.

The Demi-Gods may be able to back me up on this, but Apple's not been great on this front despite leading (well, NEXT) the front on main stream multi-processor systems.

/rant

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

2 core OS? You runnin' Vista? :-D

Anandtech already reported the 4 core chips WILL WORK in the Mac Pro.

I can definately see how this is going to work out model wise. We'll see the current $2499 model and the up and down options, plus one quad core model at $3299 or possibly less depending on the dual core price drop.

Also, 8 cores would be insane for rendering workstations. 4 cores for rendering in the background, 2 for OS, 2 for other work.

[macman2790]

man whats next 32 cores?

[noservice2001]

so can i expect a quad core macbook pro soon?

[eXan]

Play WoW and CoD...... :confused:

And UT2007 and Q4 and render video. All at the same time :confused:

Do we need that?

[Blue Velvet]

Can I ask a question? I'm a bit non-technical when it comes to things like this.

When particular apps aren't designed to use multiple processors — let's just say randomly, oooo... Adobe Illustrator, for example — what benefit would a machine like this have? Would it run exactly the same as on single processor of the same speed?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me. :)

[generik]

Can I ask a question? I'm a bit non-technical when it comes to things like this.

When particular apps aren't designed to use multiple processors — let's just say randomly, oooo... Adobe Illustrator, for example — what benefit would a machine like this have? Would it run exactly the same as on single processor of the same speed?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me. :)

As far as that one application is concerned, no difference, but you get to do so much more in the background =)

[ChrisA]

So say I’m using my 8-core Mac Pro for CPU intensive digital audio recording. Would I be able to assign two cores the main program, two to virtual processing........

That is not the way it's done. One does not asign threads to cores. What yu do is crate threads and let the operating system shedle cores to "ready" threads

[Blue Velvet]

As far as that one application is concerned, no difference, but you get to do so much more in the background =)


Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning. :(

[ChrisA]

man whats next 32 cores?

You can buy a 32 core machine today. Sun sells them. They are not cheap. I'm waiting for the day when we see "kilo-cores" and people add them like RAM, a thousand cores at a time.

[eXan]

Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning. :(

And exporting videos to iPod format :D

[i3iz]

old news...check this webpage:http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=6

"We grabbed a pair of 2.4GHz Clovertown samples and tossed them in the system, and to our pleasure, they worked just fine. Our samples used a 1066MHz FSB, although we're expecting the final chip to use a 1333MHz FSB, but the most important part of the test is that all 8 cores were detected and functional. "

[iMeowbot]

Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning. :(
The situation with Illustrator is particularly maddening, because it's just the sort of thing that could do really well on a pile of CPUs if it was written to take advantage of them :(

[mahonmeister]

You can buy a 32 core machine today. Sun sells them. They are not cheap. I'm waiting for the day when we see "kilo-cores" and people add them like RAM, a thousand cores at a time.

Thats an interesting concept but I think someone is a bit ahead of themselves.

I've heard that processors have reached some sort of theoretical limit and I'm guessing that multiple cores is getting around this. But why aren't these chips at higher clock speeds? I really don't milti-task that much so I would be more interested in raw power rather then power in numbers. If the prices on the current processors drop I think I'd get the quad 3GHz rather then a 8 core 2.66GHz. But if they had a dual 6GHz that would be even better.;)

[2ndPath]

I wonder whether Apple will keep the two Woodcrest quad-core configuration, or whether they introduce a new single CPU quad-core one for the new low end. When Apple switched to the dual-core G5, they replaced the dual CPU lower end systems by single CPU dual-core systems, which was suspected to reduce the building cost of the system.

[Marx55]

So, first it was the number of transistors per processor, then they coupled that with higher clock speeds (MHz) and now with multi-cores inside multi-processors.

Is there a limit to such growth with the current technology?

Anything after that? The optical computer that works with light instead of electricity and thus does not heat soo much? Any roadmap?

Thanks.

[Eastend]

Thats an interesting concept but I think someone is a bit ahead of themselves.

I've heard that processors have reached some sort of theoretical limit and I'm guessing that multiple cores is getting around this. But why aren't these chips at higher clock speeds? I really don't milti-task that much so I would be more interested in raw power rather then power in numbers. If the prices on the current processors drop I think I'd get the quad 3GHz rather then a 8 core 2.66GHz. But if they had a dual 6GHz that would be even better.;)

If you look at where all the manufacturers were about 5 years ago, then you could speculate that 6GHz is within the realm of possibilities, but it could be even more than Quads or beyond ones wildest dreams?

Brian

I meant to add in the next 5 years to that post.

Brian

[generik]

I think beyond a certain level all these Cores are only going to be good for building up your ePeen, speaking of which where can I get one? :D

Nevermind they are only 1.66Ghz each, there are 8 of them!

[Macnoviz]

My bet? Specialized cores. You've got some that are optimized for floating point, some for application logic, some for media. This is where Cell gets it right, I think-- they're a step too far ahead for now though.

Biggest problem is getting the system to know what threads to feed to what core, and to get application writers to specialize their threads.

The Cell ? You mean we'll have to switch BACK to PowerPC ?:eek:

[bigandy]

this will be fantastic for rendering stuff :D

[BornAgainMac]

Running at 8 Core-a-hz

[Macnoviz]

So, first it was the number of transistors per processor, then they coupled that with higher clock speeds (MHz) and now with multi-cores inside multi-processors.

Is there a limit to such growth with the current technology?

Anything after that? The optical computer that works with light instead of electricity and thus does not heat soo much? Any roadmap?

Thanks.

How about Quantum computers?

[HiRez]

My only hope is now that multi-core systems have gone mainstream that someone (cough -M$-cough) will make multi-processor aware apps "fashionable" and extend the trend.

The Demi-Gods may be able to back me up on this, but Apple's not been great on this front despite leading (well, NEXT) the front on main stream multi-processor systems.Well, since they started selling multi-processor PowerMacs, they've been quite good about it. Final Cut Pro, Motion, iTunes, and iMovie all use multiple-processors, as does anything that uses CoreAudio. I don't know about Aperture, but I'd bet it uses multithreading/multiprocessing extensively. Plus the most important app of all is quite good at utilizing multiple processors, OS X. I don't know about other Apple apps such as Pages, Keynote, iPhoto, and iWeb, but there's probably a limited amount of things they can efficiently multithread in those apps due to the nature of work being done.

Bottom line is that if you're not doing long-form processor-intensive stuff such as 2D/3D animation rendering, video encoding, mathematical/scientific analysis, running simulations, etc. then you probably won't get much benefit from more than two cores (you'll be better off with two cores running at faster clock speeds). But if you are, eight cores will be fantastic.

[splintah]

very interesting . . . . .. .


so where are the new notebooks ?


or mac mini/macbook with a lowest end ati or geforce would be cool too
just not the shared graphics ram scheiss
gives me tons tons of errors in 3d programs

[AidenShaw]

...speculation would indicate that Apple would elect to only use the X5355 and E5345, as they are the only models that support a 1333 MHz front side bus, which is what current Mac Pros use.
Intel's 5000 chipset runs at both speeds, so nothing would have to change on the hardware to use the 1066 MHz bus.

Well I'm already finding quite a lot of hesitation over this chip because it will attempt to squeeze too much power through a smaller FSB and create a huge bottleneck in system performance!

If this is true, maybe it would be better to stick with the current Xeon chips until Clovertown is revised to address this issue.
You'd be better off with a faster Xeon 5160 for a single-threaded application (or up to 4 single-threaded apps). This is simply due to the clock speed issue - the fastest dual-core is one notch faster than the fastest Clovertown.

Running multi-threaded or lots of apps, though, the 8 core system will never be *slower* than the 4 core one at the same GHz. Dual 1333 MHz memory busses give a lot of bandwidth....

The memory bottleneck simply means that on memory-intensive apps the 8 core won't be twice as fast as the 4 core. Probably something like 50% to 75% faster would be expected at the lower end. (Remember that 8 MiB of L2 cache - cache-friendly apps may scream!)

[Tommyg117]

8 cores? That's a lot, maybe a little too much for my computing needs.

[iMikeT]

I'll be holding my Mac Pro purchase off for a while...

Now that I think about it, an 8-core system would work great when 10.5 arrives. Imagine using the "Spaces" feature in Leopard and each space running a separate application. A Mac with this much power would be perfect doing such a task.;)

[adamfilip]

im hoping that apple has optimized leopard to be able to assign certain applications to certain cores. just like what some of the other posters have said

4 cores for Cinema 4D
1 core for internet and mail
2 cores for photoshop
1 core for quicktime dvd playback

[Warbrain]

I'll be holding my Mac Pro purchase off for a while...

Why? You'll be waiting for a bit of a long time...

[ArnehWB]

I'd pay for them to try and do a low voltage Clovertown like they did Woodcrest with the 5148LV. That one had a TDP not far off of Merom.

Intel do have a LV Clovertown planned. Its a 4x1.6Ghz with 8MB L2 (2x4MB) part with a 50W TDP. See http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=671378&starttime=0&endtime=0 for more info.

-Arneh

[cgc]

My 2.66GHz MacPro doesn't use all four cores except on rare occassions (e.g. benchmarks, quicktime, handbrake, etc.) and even then it doesn't peg them all. What I'm most interested in is offloading OpenGL to a core, the GUI to another core, etc.

[SPUY767]

Software makers are the ones holding computing back in this arena. They refuse to accept that CPUs aren't going to get any faster, and that they are going to have to make their applications multi-threaded. This is especially true for games. The time has come, however, and software publishers are going to have to either make their applications massively-multithreaded, or fall to the wayside and be overtaken by an amateur application maker that is already making multi-threaded apps.

My 2.66GHz MacPro doesn't use all four cores except on rare occassions (e.g. benchmarks, quicktime, handbrake, etc.) and even then it doesn't peg them all. What I'm most interested in is offloading OpenGL to a core, the GUI to another core, etc.


Use BOINC, that will peg all four of your cores.

[Multimedia]

Anyone know the current price of each 2.66GHz Woodcrest? I just got up and am too lazy to Google yet.

At $851 seems like the 2.33GHz Clovertown is not all thaat expensive.

Thanks Umbongo.

Woodcrest:
* Xeon DP 5150: 2.66 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $690
* Xeon DP 5160: 3.00 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $851

Clovertown:
X5355 2.66GHz 1333MHz 8MB $1172
E5345 2.33GHz 1333MHz 8MB $851

Wow only $161 more than the 2.66GHz Woodcrests for each 2.33GHz Clovertown or the same price as the current 3GHz Woodcrest. Man that looks like the Dual Clovertown will only cost no more the current $3.3k 3GHz Woodcrest - maybe even a little less if Apple wants to get aggressive with like $2999. That's $700-$1k less than I was expecting. Fantastic!

So for +$642 you would gain 2.66GHz in power or one more processor's worth of crunchability. :p

Now I'm getting seriously excited. Bring 'em on!

BTW Looks like Apple is way overcharging for the 3GHz Woodcrest upgrade. Only cost them $322 more - probably less off the published price list - yet they are asking for $800. That doesn't seem fair to me. Does it to you? I would think that $500 would be a more reasonable upgrade price for something that cost them about $300.

[Umbongo]

Anyone know the current price of each 2.66GHz Woodcrest? I just got up and am too lazy to Google yet.

At $851 seems like the 2.33GHz Clovertown is not all thaat expensive.

From: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=236263

Intel Clovertown Xeon Processor

X5355 2.66GHz 1333MHz 8MB $1172
E5345 2.33GHz 1333MHz 8MB $851
E5320 1.86GHz 1066MHz 8MB $690
E5310 1.60GHz 1066MHz 8MB $455

per / 1000 cpu purchased

from
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4253

Wow.

Here is the current price of Woodcrest...
* Xeon DP 5110: 1.60 GHz, FSB1066, 4 MB L2 cache, $209
* Xeon DP 5120: 1.86 GHz, FSB1066, 4 MB L2 cache, $256
* Xeon DP 5130: 2.00 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $316
* Xeon DP 5140: 2.33 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $455
* Xeon DP 5150: 2.66 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $690
* Xeon DP 5160: 3.00 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2 cache, $851

So I guess the price of MP won't be affected by that much.

[Rocketman]

My only hope is now that multi-core systems have gone mainstream that someone (cough -M$-cough) will make multi-processor aware apps "fashionable" and extend the trend.


Also solid state drives are needed to properly service the I/O needs. Why NOT put a solid state SATA drive in one slot on a MacPro so you can use it for a swap space? Or a PCI slot based device?

Remember, price is no object! I used to run my Mac+ in ramdrive mode and it was faster that way than my friend's IIfx for apps that would fit in the limited space. External SCSI drive for strorage in that mode.

I must be old :)

Rocketman

[SPUY767]

Also solid state drives are needed to properly service the I/O needs. Why NOT put a solid state SATA drive in one slot on a MacPro so you can use it for a swap space? Or a PCI slot based device?

Remember, price is no object! I used to run my Mac+ in ramdrive mode and it was faster that way than my friend's IIfx for apps that would fit in the limited space. External SCSI drive for strorage in that mode.

I must be old :)

Rocketman

There'a a nifty device that I use, I forget who makes it, but it's a PCIe Card that holds up to 8GB of DDR2 Ram that is recognized as a Drive, I use it for VM, Paging, and a swapfile. Makes applications start up super fast.

[ChrisA]

My 2.66GHz MacPro doesn't use all four cores except on rare occassions (e.g. benchmarks, quicktime, handbrake, etc.) and even then it doesn't peg them all. What I'm most interested in is offloading OpenGL to a core, the GUI to another core, etc.

Are you trying to say that you spent to much for a computer and should have bought an iMac? What do you do with your computer. Web and email or editing HD video?

[Multimedia]

There'a a nifty device that I use, I forget who makes it, but it's a PCIe Card that holds up to 8GB of DDR2 Ram that is recognized as a Drive, I use it for VM, Paging, and a swapfile. Makes applications start up super fast.Pardon Me But Would You Please Track Down The Link To That Card And IM Me and post it here? I need it NOW! Thanks.

I will be on this thread until the Mac Pro Clovertown option ships. :D

This is the Mac Pro I have been waiting for.

[Eidorian]

Pardon Me But Would You Please Track Down The Link To That Card And IM Me and post it here? I need it NOW! Thanks.

I will be on this thread until the Mac Pro Clovertown option ships. :D

This is the Mac Pro I have been waiting for.http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

I know they're making a PCI Express, DDR2, SATA II version though. Old news to me...

[SPUY767]

Pardon Me But Would You Please Track Down The Link To That Card And IM Me and post it here? I need it NOW! Thanks.

I will be on this thread until the Mac Pro Clovertown option ships. :D

This is the Mac Pro I have been waiting for.


This is not the one I use but the same in concept. Gigayte i-RAM (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480) This item uses PCI and not PCIe.

The one that I use doesn't work with the Macintosh, but apparently, the PCIe/SATAII version of the one that Eld is talking about will as mine uses no SATA interface for data transfer.

[Rocketman]

I will be on this thread until the Mac Pro Clovertown option ships. :D

This is the Mac Pro I have been waiting for.


http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4160
anandtech.com did a speed test too. I don't have the link.

[Multimedia]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

I know they're making a PCI Express, DDR2, SATA II version though. Old news to me...Thanks but that looks like it's only of PCs. Do you know it works in Mac G5 Quads and Mac Pros?

I went to the GIGA-BYTE TECHNOLOGY CO website and it looks like they don't even make that i-RAM card any more. The link to the above article is from July 25, 2005 more than a year ago.

[Eidorian]

Thanks but that looks like it's only of PCs. Do you know it works in Mac G5 Quads and Mac Pros?You only have PCI Express slots in those models. I don't know what kind of controller chip it uses but it should just show up as a normal hard drive to your SATA onboard.

[StudioGuy]

I originally thought that this would make a nice "best" model for the Mac Pro, but the 5160 is surely a great chip. Given the slower clock speed (although not always a good indicator) and more cores, this might be a great chip for a Server, like an updated XServe.

Not sure if the software guys are going to catch up enough in multithreading to make good use of 8 cores, but several folks on an XServe would appreciate it.

[shawnce]

My 2.66GHz MacPro doesn't use all four cores except on rare occassions (e.g. benchmarks, quicktime, handbrake, etc.) and even then it doesn't peg them all.
In other words your average work load doesn't contain enough concurrent work items that are CPU bound.

What I'm most interested in is offloading OpenGL to a core, the GUI to another core, etc. ...some what a nonsensical statement...

Threads of work are spread across available cores automatically. If a thread is ready to run and a core is idle then that thread will run on that core.

Aspects of the "UI" frameworks are multithread and will automatically utilize one or more cores (in some cases the frameworks increase the number of threads they use based on how many cores exist in the system). In other words the UI will already potentially use more then one core on a multi-core system.

The same can happen with OpenGL either now... say if the game developer for example utilizes one or more threads to calculate the game world state and a second thread to call into OpenGL to render that game world ...or by enabling the multithread OpenGL render (only available on Mac Pro systems at this time).

Of course that assumes that the tasks you run are CPU intensive enough to even begin to consume compute resources available to you in new systems... in the end you should measure overall throughput of the work load you want to do, not how utilized your individual core are when doing that work load.

[Anonymous Freak]

Therefore current Mac Pro users may be able to upgrade to 8-core machines upon availability of the new chips

Emphasis mine. Whaddaya mean 'may'? Anandtech (http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=6) confirmed that they work.

Oh, and as for quad-core laptops? Not any time soon. Sorry. We'll see quad-core Xeons this year, maybe a quad core 'Core 2 Extreme' this year, followed by a few desktop 'Core 2 Quadro's next year.

The big problem is that the early quad-core chips are really just two dual-core chips in the same package. So not only are they big (you CAN'T fit four Conroes on a Socket 775 package, so we WON'T be seeing similar eight-core chips until a die shrink,) but they draw almost exactly twice as much power as the same GHz dual-core chip. That already will already push the Xeons and Core 2s to the thermal envelope that was hit by the NetBurst based models. So we'll have to wait for a die shrink before we see quad-core in any of the 'consumer' desktop Macs or laptops. (The die shrink is scheduled for late next year.)

[avkills]

I bet I could peg all 8 cores doing a 3D render...easily.

Bring them I say. This may make me hold off on my render farm idea.

-mark

[kingtj]

I think he was probably just trying to say the same thing I've been saying about my new Mac Pro too. The OS and apps need to do some catching-up so we can fully utilize what we paid for!

Right now, the hardware is *way* ahead of the software in most respects. (We're still waiting another year for major apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop to go universal binary - much less see them coded for optimal use of a 4 or 8-core machine!)

You could argue that "I should have just bought an iMac." I suppose, but show me an iMac with a graphics card like the ATI X1900XT 512MB in it, or the ability to hold multiple internal hard drives. These are features I expect from any desktop system I use as my primary computer. I also already owned a perfectly good Dell 24" LCD panel, so didn't really want to buy a machine with the display built-in.


Are you trying to say that you spent to much for a computer and should have bought an iMac? What do you do with your computer. Web and email or editing HD video?

[Multimedia]

I bet I could peg all 8 cores doing a 3D render...easily. Bring them I say. This may make me hold off on my render farm idea. -mark
Run 4 copies of Handbrake Simultaneously
Run 4 copies of Toast Simutaneously
Run 2 copies of Toast and 2 copies of Handbrake Simultaneously
Run 1 copy of Toast and 3 copies of Handbrake Simultaneously
Run 1 copy of Handbrake and 3 copies of Toast Simultaneously
Run 1 copy of Toast and 2 copies of Handbrake Simultaneously
Run 1 copy of Handbrake and 2 copies of Toast Simultaneously

All of the above would easily and immediately HOSE the 8 Core Mac Pro NOW. I need to do all of the above a lot of the time.

I use Toast to encode and write EyeTV2 digital SD and HD Broadcast Recordings to DVD IMAGES (not DVD media) before crushing those images to excellent compact mp4 files with Handbrake. BOTH can use up to 3 cores on G5 Quads - perhaps 4 on Intel - EACH if they are allowed to run alone.

[dante@sisna.com]

Can I ask a question? I'm a bit non-technical when it comes to things like this.

When particular apps aren't designed to use multiple processors — let's just say randomly, oooo... Adobe Illustrator, for example — what benefit would a machine like this have? Would it run exactly the same as on single processor of the same speed?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me. :)


In illustrator CS2 you would notice some improvement over a single processor machine on complex tasks such as use of the 3D tool and vector based special effects such as glow or shadow -- I would guess about 15% improvement -- I use illustrator daily and have tracked these processes via activity monitor.

I would bet that CS3 and versions after that will be optimized to use these processors.

I run Illustrator on a Quad G5 now and it makes a siginificant difference over the Dual G5's.

Bottom line is that if you're not doing long-form processor-intensive stuff such as 2D/3D animation rendering, video encoding, mathematical/scientific analysis, running simulations, etc. then you probably won't get much benefit from more than two cores (you'll be better off with two cores running at faster clock speeds). But if you are, eight cores will be fantastic.

I would disagree with this: My Quad G5 destroys the Dual 2.7 in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, iMovie HD, etc. No contest. Both in single app use and especially multitasking.

I will be on this thread until the Mac Pro Clovertown option ships. :D

This is the Mac Pro I have been waiting for.


Amen! Me Too! Quad G5 is just fine for now!

[brianus]

Hey here's a question: what comes after Clovertown? The roadmap is kinda confusing after that from what I've seen. When can we reasonably expect Clovertown's successor, and what will it consist of?

I know there's a new architecture 2 years down the line, a die shrink, some multicore chips that won't be used in a Mac Pro... but can we expect any kind of real upgrade in 2007, past Clovertown, beyond mere speed bumps, or will this basically be it until '08?

[imperium]

We miss you over on the "WTF? Where's my C2D MBP?" thread! Good luck with your 8-core wait.. :p

[ChrisA]

What incentive does anyone ever have to buy if they keep announcing new chips?

What incentive? Money. If you need to get some work out to a client you need to have some kind of computer. For example we bought a new Dual Xeon system with 4GB RAM and a set of SCSI disks because the old box was "way slow" now I can do many more Build/Test/Debug cycles every day. Yes there are now even faster boxes but I've gotten much more work done that had we waited would not have gotten done. The $4500 computer paid for it self rather quickly

On the other hand if a computer is to be used as a game console and media player you can never justify the price. It's just a toy and you buy it with "disposable" income with no hope of a return on the investment

But most of these Mac Pros are sold to people who at least hope to make more money with the machine than they spent for it. So for most users waiting is simply to expensive.

Also solid state drives are needed to properly service the I/O needs. Why NOT put a solid state SATA drive in one slot on a MacPro so you can use it for a swap space?

How many "page outs" per second does your system do? If you have enough RAM not many. Even those few writes DO go into RAM. There is likey a large RAM cache built into the disk drive. As for "page ins" they mostly come from your Applcations Folder, not the swap space. Mac OSX is smart enough to know that it does not need to write RAM pages to swap space if the RAM page contains only executable code. If you want to make the system go faster you would put your applactions in the solid state SATA so as to speed up page ins. But if space is limited a better way would be to put only the applactions you are currently using in the solid state SATA but to go even faster why not skip the bottleneck of the SATA interface and put the RAM that would have gone into the solid state SATA on your system bus. This is what modern computers do. They maintain a RAM cache of the disk(s). With the data (cache of the disk) in system RAM it need not even move. The OS simply does some "magic" with mapping registers and the data appera to move without need of any physical copy. A write to a register is more than 1000 times faster then moving data off a sold state SAYA drive.

The ONLY cases where a solid state SATA disk could improve performance is (1) if you have already maxed out the computer's system RAM and need to add even more. So either your Mac Pro is at 16MB or you imac is at 3GB and you need more. or (2) You have a huge abount of dta to process and you put the data in the solid state drive. This means the drive will be hugely expensive. Cheaper to use something like a SAN storage.

[Multimedia]

Hey here's a question: what comes after Clovertown? The roadmap is kinda confusing after that from what I've seen. When can we reasonably expect Clovertown's successor, and what will it consist of?

I know there's a new architecture 2 years down the line, a die shrink, some multicore chips that won't be used in a Mac Pro... but can we expect any kind of real upgrade in 2007, past Clovertown, beyond mere speed bumps, or will this basically be it until '08?Tigerton is after Clovertown. It's 4 cores in a one dye package instead of 4 cores in two dyes in one package. But I'm not gonna wait for Tigerrton which I believe is scheduled for production in Spring 2007. Dual Clovertown is my next Mac for sure.

[brianus]

Tigerton is after Clovertown. It's 4 cores in a one dye package instead of 4 cores in two dyes in one package. But I'm not gonna wait for Tigerrton which I believe is scheduled for production in Spring 2007. Dual Clovertown is my next Mac for sure.

I'm aware of Tigerton, but I was told in another thread that it's not a true successor to Clovertown and could not possibly be used in a Mac Pro. That being the case, is Clovertown it until -- Harpertown?

[uzombie]

Since the 3.0ghz Woodcrest is now about $875 (street), I am betting it will drop another $100 when the Clovertown 4 cores are released (Those prices are for 1000 lot each, so resellers will undoubtedly charge more). Until the Woodcrest 3.0Ghz duals hit below the $450 mark, it makes more $ense to get the CPUs you need, now. (that is in the MacPro, not as self-upgrades)

It looks like you are better off buying the mac you want, than wait for CPU prices to drop enough to build on-the-cheap (getting low-end 2.0ghz, then upgrading to X1900 and dual Clovertown 2.66 4-cores). By the time the price on those CPUs is reasonable, Apple may have a new Pro and bus. And intel wil have more cores than we need. Or atleast, the hardware is far ahead of the software written to fully utilize the cores.

We welcome the bloatware overloards! ;)

[Multimedia]

Bottom line is that if you're not doing long-form processor-intensive stuff such as 2D/3D animation rendering, video encoding, mathematical/scientific analysis, running simulations, etc. then you probably won't get much benefit from more than two cores (you'll be better off with two cores running at faster clock speeds). But if you are, eight cores will be fantastic.Man are you out of touch with reality. I have a a 2GHz DC G5 PM and a 2.5GHz Quad PM and the DC PM is a DOG for even the simplest type of stuff. You obviously have ZERO experience with a Quad Mac or you would never have written such an absurd post.I would disagree with this: My Quad G5 destroys the Dual 2.7 in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, iMovie HD, etc. No contest. Both in single app use and especially multitasking.No kidding. Once you've gone Quad you will NEVER want to go back to less than 4 on the floor. :D

[ATD]

I bet I could peg all 8 cores doing a 3D render...easily.

Bring them I say. This may make me hold off on my render farm idea.

-mark


I'm already doing 6 cpu renders. Why stop at 8, I'll take 16 :D

[jsw]

...the DC PM is a DOG for even the simplest type of stuff.
Odd, since my three-year-old dual-2.0 PM still does a great job for more than just "the simplest type of stuff"... so you're saying that Apple actually made the dual-core PMs slower than their much-older dual-CPU ancestors?

[Multimedia]

I'm aware of Tigerton, but I was told in another thread that it's not a true successor to Clovertown and could not possibly be used in a Mac Pro. That being the case, is Clovertown it until -- Harpertown?If what you say is true, then yes that would be IT. Why won't Tigerton go in Summer '07 Mac Pros?

Odd, since my three-year-old dual-2.0 PM still does a great job for more than just "the simplest type of stuff"... so you're saying that Apple actually made the dual-core PMs slower than their much-older dual-CPU ancestors?No I'm saying once you get used to the speed of a Quad and you have everyday need for all those cores, then ALL the single 2GHz DC or Dual Processor Macs are LAME. I happen to have found a burning need for as many cores as I can get my hands on this past Winter so when I turn to use the single 2GHz DC G5 PM it hits the wall of power needed in nothing flat and is crawling incredibly slowly toward the finish line all the time. Even it's basic responsiveness is considerably slower than that of the Quad's.

I'm crushing video constantly. Unusual power-all-the-time need. I need to run two, three, sometimes even four multi-core enabled processes simultaneously almost all the time and each one can use up to 3 even 4 cores on the Intel Mac Pro (I tested my apps on the Mac Pro in an Apple Store). So I am not saying it's not ok for email and browsing although that would not be possible on any of the DP or DC PMs while my video crushing operations are running as well.

That's what happend to me in January. I had a 2.5 GHz DP G5 PM and suddenly, as I really got this video crushing process rolling, I hit the wall and it was like being back in 1985 with a Mac Plus. NOTHING would work beyond crushing video very slowly. It scared me to death. In a panic, I ordered a refurb Quad G5 and thank God I did 'cause that old 2.5 GHz Dual Porcessor G5 was way underpowered for what I for what I was wanting to do all the time.

I recently went into a Fry's in Campbell just after the Mac Pros were announced. They had a sign up Apple PowerMac G5 $864.26 for the 2GHz DC same generation as the Quad but the bottom $2k model from last October '05. Couldn't pass it up. But I can tell you that it is very slow with very limited processing power compared to the Quad. I am a veteran G5 PM guy. I had the original 2GHz DP G5 like you still have, two 2.5GHz DP G5's, the Quad G5 and now most recetly, at a bargain I couldn't pass up, the 2GHz DC G5. I love 'em all. But they do not provide enough cores for the type of work I do a lot.

[Rocketman]

How many "page outs" per second does your system do? If you have enough RAM not many. Even those few writes DO go into RAM. There is likey a large RAM cache built into the disk drive. As for "page ins" they mostly come from your Applcations Folder, not the swap space. Mac OSX is smart enough to know that it does not need to write RAM pages to swap space if the RAM page contains only executable code. If you want to make the system go faster you would put your applactions in the solid state SATA so as to speed up page ins. But if space is limited a better way would be to put only the applactions you are currently using in the solid state SATA but to go even faster why not skip the bottleneck of the SATA interface and put the RAM that would have gone into the solid state SATA on your system bus. This is what modern computers do. They maintain a RAM cache of the disk(s). With the data (cache of the disk) in system RAM it need not even move. The OS simply does some "magic" with mapping registers and the data appera to move without need of any physical copy. A write to a register is more than 1000 times faster then moving data off a sold state SAYA drive.

The ONLY cases where a solid state SATA disk could improve performance is (1) if you have already maxed out the computer's system RAM and need to add even more. So either your Mac Pro is at 16MB or you imac is at 3GB and you need more. or (2) You have a huge abount of dta to process and you put the data in the solid state drive. This means the drive will be hugely expensive. Cheaper to use something like a SAN storage.

I snipped nothing.

The specific examples I refer to are putting applications in RAM, wherever that ram might be (ramdisc of main memory, ram based solid state drive on the drive bus, or memory drive on the graphics bus). Some applications greatly benefit from residing in RAM, such as compilers or image manipulators. Photoshop uses alot of swap space so you would need large ramdrives to benefit. I mainly am an advocate of ramdrives and see them underused in applications that would clearly benefit. Apple could gain some marketing points by simply offering such an option then bragging about it on TV of how a Mac is 20x as fast as a (stock) Dell :)

Rocketman

[twoodcc]

well i might be getting a mac pro soon (not sure yet)

but if i do, my question is when will we see an 8-core mac pro?

[Multimedia]

well i might be getting a mac pro soon (not sure yet)

but if i do, my question is when will we see an 8-core mac pro?My GUESS is Probably November or December at the latest. It will Probably simply be a Dual Clovertown Processor option added to the current BTO page with a new processor pricing lineup. It will Probably be a silent upgrade with a press release.

[cwe]

November or December at the latest. It will simply be a Dual Clovertown Processor option added to the current BTO page with a new processor pricing lineup. It will be a silent upgrade.


You're kidding, right? Here we are sitting around waiting on the C2D and you're saying that in about two months we'll have the option to buy a QUAD? Please say your kidding. PLEASE.

[bokdol]

You're kidding, right? Here we are sitting around waiting on the C2D and you're saying that in about two months we'll have the option to buy a QUAD? Please say your kidding. PLEASE.


not mac book pro...


mac pro

[brianus]

If what you say is true, then yes that would be IT. Why won't Tigerton go in Summer '07 Mac Pros?

This was epitaphic's explanation:

Intel has two lines of Xeon processors:

* The 5000 series is DP (dual processor, like Woodcrest, Clovertown)
* The 7000 series MP (multi processor - eg 4+ processors)

Tigerton is supposed to be an MP version of Clovertown. Meaning, you can have as many chips as the motherboard supports, and just like Clovertown its an MCM (two processors in one package). 7000's are also about 5-10x the price of 5000's.

So unless the specs for Tigerton severely change, no point even considering it on a Mac Pro (high end xserve is plausible).

(gotta love that arbitrary terminology, huh? -- 2 processors apparently isn't "multiple").

[mdntcallr]

I don't know what apple would plan with this

easy answer would be:
1-New mid & high end mac pro. with 2 quad core cpu's

also, new mid range tower. PLEASE!! a smaller tower, less hard drive bays.
something with more desktop power than imac or mac mini, less than mac pro.

and while i hear what brian said. i hope apple can get excellent volume pricing, and get to use this in the workstations.

also maybe the core 2 extreme in the model which could be better than macmini and imac and less expensive than the mac pro.

give us a mid range upgradable mac.

[DrGruv1]

Quad-core Clovertown server CPUs to appear on November 16

Intel will announce two-way quad-core server Clovertown processors, which will be marketed under the Xeon 5300-series name, on November 16, according to Taiwan-based motherboard makers. The quad-core Clovertown processors contain two dual-core Woodcrest chips housed in a single package.

The Xeon 5300 CPU family will debut with the Xeon X5355 (2.66GHz/1333MHz FSB/8MB L2 cache), E5345 (2.33GHz/1333MHz FSB/8MB L2 cache), E5320 (1.86GHz/1066MHz FSB/8MB L2 cache) and E5310 (1.60GHz/1066MHz FSB/8MB L2 cache), with unit prices ranging from US$455 to US$1,172, indicated the sources.

In addition, Intel is scheduled to launch one-way quad-core Kentsfield processors under the Xeon 3200 lineup in January 2007, the makers said. By the third quarter of next year, Intel will launch its four-way quad-core Tigerton CPUs, the makers added.

Rival AMD will announce its first dual-core server processors manufactured using 65-nanometer (65nm) process technology by the first quarter of 2007, according to the makers.

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20060925A5022.html

[AidenShaw]

im hoping that apple has optimized leopard to be able to assign certain applications to certain cores. just like what some of the other posters have said

4 cores for Cinema 4D
1 core for internet and mail
2 cores for photoshop
1 core for quicktime dvd playback
Unless you're doing realtime work with strict QoS demands, it's almost always better to let the OS schedule all threads across all CPUs.

In the situation you describe, your browser would slow down when mail woke up to do something - even if QT or photoshop were idle.

[HiRez]

Man are you out of touch with reality. I have a a 2GHz DC G5 PM and a 2.5GHz Quad PM and the DC PM is a DOG for even the simplest type of stuff. You obviously have ZERO experience with a Quad Mac or you would never have written such an absurd post.No kidding. Once you've gone Quad you will NEVER want to go back to less than 4 on the floor. :DYou're wrong: I use a quad at work every day, and I have a dual (G5) at home. Unless I'm actually rendering something, I cannot detect the difference in speed. I use Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and Cinema4D extensively. You people who think that a quad is helping you fly through Illustrator are full of crap, sorry. Nice delusion to have, but it's all in your head.

EDIT: I should note that if you're doing heavy multitasking (like renders in the background), then yes, it could help. I've also played WoW while doing 3D renders in the background, and the quad is pretty nice for that (although the dual does a surprisingly good job with that situation as well -- WoW is still very playable).

[ender78]

Intel has a prototype CPU with 80 [yes Eighty] cores that they claim will be in production systems in 5 years (eighty cores each at 3.16 GHz)

http://news.com.com/Intel+pledges+80+cores+in+five+years/2100-1006_3-6119618.html?tag=nefd.lede

[ATD]

Intel has a prototype CPU with 80 [yes Eighty] cores that they claim will be in production systems in 5 years (eighty cores each at 3.16 GHz)

http://news.com.com/Intel+pledges+80+cores+in+five+years/2100-1006_3-6119618.html?tag=nefd.lede


:D Now that's a render farm!!

[ender78]

:D Now that's a render farm!!




2nd Story: Pixar announces that it is increasing its movie release schedule from one movie every two years to a movie every two days :)

[ATD]

2nd Story: Pixar announces that it is increasing its movie release schedule from one movie every two years to a movie every two days :)


I'm sure the studios are drooling for a 80 core model, it would make rendering a lot faster. I heard that Monsters Inc had single frames that took up to 90 hours to render. :eek:

[Hodapp]

8-Core Mac Pro? Can't wait to upgrade. :cool:

[JackAxe]

This coming year is going to be great. A MacPro with 8 cores along with UB versions of the software packages I use daily. What more could a peep like me ask for... Well, Pixar could offer mult-threading support for Renderman Maya plug-in, that would be nice. :o

Good things come to those who wait. :)

<]=)

[ATD]

This coming year is going to be great. A MacPro with 8 cores along with UB versions of the software packages I use daily. What more could a peep like me ask for... Well, Pixar could offer mult-threading support for Renderman Maya plug-in, that would be nice. :o

Good things come to those who wait. :)

<]=)

I didn't know the Renderman Maya plug-in was not mult-threaded. I was thinking of getting it, are you saying it's only a one cpu renderer?

[Multimedia]

You're kidding, right? Here we are sitting around waiting on the C2D and you're saying that in about two months we'll have the option to buy a QUAD? Please say your kidding. PLEASE.No I am not kidding. What option to buy a Quad? Clovertowns are Quads used in pairs to make 8-core OctoMacs not Quads. Clovertowns are scheduled to begin shipping in November. This is not news. It's been known for at least 3 months. Did you not see that thread?

[Hodapp]

And you can swap 'em right in. If Apple doesn't release a Mac Pro upgrade with some other goodies (I'm personally hoping for DDR2, as the 8GB of goofy RAM in my Mac Pro cost me an arm and a leg.) I'm just going to buy a couple quad core chips and toss them in my machine.

[Multimedia]

You're wrong: I use a quad at work every day, and I have a dual (G5) at home. Unless I'm actually rendering something, I cannot detect the difference in speed. I use Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and Cinema4D extensively. You people who think that a quad is helping you fly through Illustrator are full of crap, sorry. Nice delusion to have, but it's all in your head.

EDIT: I should note that if you're doing heavy multitasking (like renders in the background), then yes, it could help. I've also played WoW while doing 3D renders in the background, and the quad is pretty nice for that (although the dual does a surprisingly good job with that situation as well -- WoW is still very playable).It's not placebo. I am rendering video most of the time. Glad to hear you also use a Quad. You just have a different frame of reference than I. Not trying to be right and calling you wrong - just sharing my experience as I see it. We're both right from our different points of view. I don't use the Adobe suite much at all - mainly only ImageReady. So we don't share experience with a common set of applications.

I'm just trying to explain how my workflow keeps me from enjoying a DC or DP PMs any more. Maybe that will change when I go C2D Intel someday on a 2.33GHz Merom MBP for example. But meanwhile I need more cores more than I need mobility.What I meant is that you're wrong that I have no experience using a quad-core Mac...not so much on your opinion...My bad. I misunderstood your meaning. Sorry for jumping to that conclusion.Sorry if I reacted strongly...yes, it really does depend on each individual situation. All else being equal, sure, more cores are better. I'm just saying a lot of people, probably the majority of people, don't need and will rarely put to use more than two of them.This multicore stuff is very individualized experience. I think it depends on the unique set of applications and the way you use those applications in what order that can determine if you will benefit from a lot of cores or not. I also think a lot of younger people will learn to take advantage of a lot of cores through the clever planning of multitasking that older people may never imagine.

While I agree many may never feel the need for more than two, I also think it will be a seriously large minority that will feel the need for at least four and a smaller but still large group that will need 8 or more.

[JackAxe]

I didn't know the Renderman Maya plug-in was not mult-threaded. I was thinking of getting it, are you saying it's only a one cpu renderer?





Yep. :( I know of a peep on the OS X Maya forum that ended up buying the full version. I don't have the money for that sort of thing, so I'm not going to buy until the RenderMan Plug-in supports whatever 64-bit version of Maya is released in the future. Then I'll also be upgrading Maya. :)

***
You can download the eval copy to try it out.

<]=)

[HiRez]

It's not placebo. I am rendering video most of the time. So I'm not wrong.

What I meant is that you're wrong that I have no experience using a quad-core Mac...not so much on your opinion...

You just have a different frame of reference than I. Not trying to be right and calling you wrong - just sharing my experience as I see it. We're both right from our different points of view. I don't use the Adobe suite much at all - mainly only ImageReady. So we don't share experience with a common set of applications.Sorry if I reacted strongly...yes, it really does depend on each individual situation. All else being equal, sure, more cores are better. I'm just saying a lot of people, probably the majority of people, don't need and will rarely put to use more than two of them.

[ATD]

Yep. :( I know of a peep on the OS X Maya forum that ended up buying the full version. I don't have the money for that sort of thing, so I'm not going to buy until the RenderMan Plug-in supports whatever 64-bit version of Maya is released in the future. Then I'll also be upgrading Maya. :)

***
You can download the eval copy to try it out.

<]=)

Glad I didn't shell out the money thinking it was. 64 bit Maya is going to be nice, I'm think its coming when OSX 10.5 hits. I got Maya 8 but have not loaded it yet.

BTW, I go to the OSX Maya forum once in while and have seen your name there. Is DD the one that got the full version?

[pianodude123]

And the wait for 8 Core Mac Pros and Merom MacBook Pros/MaBook is on ;)

Waiting for speed bumps means no one buys a dang thing :cool:

at least the educated do not....

Well...it's amazing that now every dual core computer is obsolete, and every single core computer is like an Apple II compared to this.

[Multimedia]

And the wait for 8 Core Mac Pros and Merom MacBook Pros/MaBook is on. Waiting for speed bumps means no one buys a dang thing.It's also not just speed bumps. I want a MBP redesign that includes a better cooling system and an easy access HD Bay like in the MB. Lots of good reasons to be waiting. It's the IN thing to do right now. We're the IN Crowd. :Dat least the educated do not.... Well... it's amazing that now every dual core computer is obsolete, and every single core computer is like an Apple II compared to this.Yes but that 2.7GHz DP G5 of yours is a keeper. The fastest last classic G5 DP on the planet. Kudos to you for hanging on to it. If I were you I would NEVER sell it. Should become a family heirloom. Wish I had one.

[iGary]

November or December at the latest. It will simply be a Dual Clovertown Processor option added to the current BTO page with a new processor pricing lineup. It will be a silent upgrade.

How do you know this for a fact? :confused:

[Multimedia]

well i might be getting a mac pro soon (not sure yet)

but if i do, my question is when will we see an 8-core mac pro?Revised semantic perfection:Probably November or December at the latest. It will Probably simply be a Dual Clovertown Processor option added to the current BTO page with a new processor pricing lineup. It will Probably be a silent upgrade with a press release.How do you know this for a fact? :confused:I don't. But since they ship in November, I imagine Apple will roll them into the line in December since it's simply a matter of installing a different pair of processors into the same motherboard without even a firmware update. I could be wrong. Went back to the original post and revised it.

[JackAxe]

Glad I didn't shell out the money thinking it was. 64 bit Maya is going to be nice, I'm think its coming when OSX 10.5 hits. I got Maya 8 but have not loaded it yet.

BTW, I go to the OSX Maya forum once in while and have seen your name there. Is DD the one that got the full version?




Nope, Bernard of course. :D

DD has helped me out a few times with other things.

That's what I was thinking about with leapard. I'm glad Apple is finally offering 64-bit gui support. I really didn't see a need for it, but now that these 3D apps are giving OS X the shaft, I'm eagerly awaiting it.

I would like to try out some of 8's new modeling tools. I'm going to have to wait though, since it's practically full price for an ugprade and I'll be moving to Intel this coming year. I wish Autodesklias had a more affordable upgrade path for small shops. This coming year is going to be expensive and probably buggy.

<]=)

[Abulia]

I think beyond a certain level all these Cores are only going to be good for building up your ePeen, speaking of which where can I get one? :D

Nevermind they are only 1.66Ghz each, there are 8 of them!
It's not the speed of your cores that makes you a man, it's how many you have! :D

[ATD]

Nope, Bernard of course. :D

DD has helped me out a few times with other things.

That's what I was thinking about with leapard. I'm glad Apple is finally offering 64-bit gui support. I really didn't see a need for it, but now that these 3D apps are giving OS X the shaft, I'm eagerly awaiting it.

I would like to try out some of 8's new modeling tools. I'm going to have to wait though, since it's practically full price for an ugprade and I'll be moving to Intel this coming year. I wish Autodesklias had a more affordable upgrade path for small shops. This coming year is going to be expensive and probably buggy.

<]=)


Bernard was going to be my 2nd guess. :rolleyes:


I'm Platinum Member, it's seems with all the upgrades it's cheaper in the end. I'm going to have to slow down and take a look at 8.

[chatin]

Apple should put much needed development into the notebooks. The current crop of Mac Pros are perfect.

Let software catch up!

[JackAxe]

Bernard was going to be my 2nd guess. :rolleyes:


I'm Platinum Member, it's seems with all the upgrades it's cheaper in the end. I'm going to have to slow down and take a look at 8.




*LOL* :D

If 3D were my primary income, I would invest in their maintance plan, but as is, that's money I need for other upgrades. Maybe in the future.

Hope all goes well with 8. I won't be there for probably a year.

<]=)

Apple should put much needed development into the notebooks. The current crop of Mac Pros are perfect.

Let software catch up!

Speak for yourself. ;)

I certainly hope Apple is working on a pen book for this fall. A version with an upgraded Wacom digitizer that at least supports tilt. Preferably a version with full Intuous 3 specs. The PC versions are all stuck in the Artz II days.

<]=)

[drsmithy]

I snipped nothing.

The specific examples I refer to are putting applications in RAM, wherever that ram might be (ramdisc of main memory, ram based solid state drive on the drive bus, or memory drive on the graphics bus). Some applications greatly benefit from residing in RAM, such as compilers or image manipulators. Photoshop uses alot of swap space so you would need large ramdrives to benefit. I mainly am an advocate of ramdrives and see them underused in applications that would clearly benefit. Apple could gain some marketing points by simply offering such an option then bragging about it on TV of how a Mac is 20x as fast as a (stock) Dell :)

Rocketman

On modern platforms, the OS will "cache" (in reality it's a bit more complicated, but the effect is the same) the executable(s) and library(/ies) necessary for an application to execute at runtime and keep them in RAM unless the system is memory starved. As such, the only thing a RAM drive should speed up on a modern system is initial program load times.

RAM drives are (outside of corner cases like, say, for something like DB rollback logs) a crutch for systems with either insufficient real RAM (in which you should get more and let every aspect of the system benefit) or broken VM systems (in which case you should upgrade your OS and let every application benefit). Many of the methods you might have used to make your Mac II running System 7 faster don't really apply to modern OSes - RAM drives are one of them.

[usasalazar]

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060926corp.htm

[drsmithy]

I've said this before though: Apple, and other devs, need to make use of parallel processing. A handful of apps will use 2 procs / cores, but it's a wasteland above that. All these cores are great for working with multiple apps simultaneously, but I want to use 5-6 cores on one app. Make that possible and I'm happy.

My only hope is now that multi-core systems have gone mainstream that someone (cough -M$-cough) will make multi-processor aware apps "fashionable" and extend the trend.

/rant

The problem isn't making applications more "multiprocessor aware" (although that is an extremely difficult thing to do well), the problem is simply that the vast majority of applications spend 95% of their time idling. So, no matter how "aware" your app is, it won't make it do nothing any faster ;).

Added to that, not all problems have parrallelisable solutions.

[ezekielrage_99]

And UT2007 and Q4 and render video. All at the same time :confused:

Do we need that?

Sounds kind of fun :cool:

I'm sure the studios are drooling for a 80 core model, it would make rendering a lot faster. I heard that Monsters Inc had single frames that took up to 90 hours to render. :eek:



Got to love Renderman, Global Illumination and Raytraced Shadows.....

The rendertime is a bitch but it looks totally sweet.

[AidenShaw]

No I am not kidding. What option to buy a Quad? Clovertowns are Quads used in pairs to make 8-core OctoMacs not Quads. Clovertowns are scheduled to begin shipping in November. This is not news. It's been known for at least 3 months. Did you not see that thread?
Yes, Intel will be shipping Clovertowns then - but when will Apple get around to putting them in systems? (November - well, that can wait for The Lord God Jobs' keynote in January, for sure.)

Most vendors are putting Merom systems in their customers' hands, but Apple is still shipping Yonahs in the MacIntelBooks.

I'm at IDF at Moscone, and most of the booths have Kentsfield or Clovertown systems running. (Apple isn't in the hall.)

I think that you're being very brave in assuming that Apple will ship quads in systems when Intel releases them...

[Multimedia]

Yes, Intel will be shipping Clovertowns then - but when will Apple get around to putting them in systems? (November - well, that can wait for The Lord God Jobs' keynote in January, for sure.)

Most vendors are putting Merom systems in their customers' hands, but Apple is still shipping Yonahs in the MacIntelBooks.

I'm at IDF at Moscone, and most of the booths have Kentsfield or Clovertown systems running. (Apple isn't in the hall.)

I think that you're being very brave in assuming that Apple will ship quads in systems when Intel releases them...Maybe I'm just naive and overly optimistic or just plain dumb. I always think of MacWorld as a consumer event so I thought Steve wouldn't care to present the Dual Clovertown Mac Pro there. But I guess you're probably right. Nevertheless, I feel there is good reason to feel optimistic and happy about the prospect of 8-core computing in 2007.

[drsmithy]

Plus the most important app of all is quite good at utilizing multiple processors, OS X.

Well, no, unfortunately, it's not. OS X still needs a lot of improvement to make it work *well* with multiple CPUs. Right now it's about on par with Windows NT 4.0, Linux 2.2 and FreeBSD 4.x, but the next release should see some big improvements, especially now that multi-CPU machines (and pseudo-multi-CPU machines, ie: Hyperthreading) are so much more common than they were back in the mid-late '90s.

[brianus]

Yes, Intel will be shipping Clovertowns then - but when will Apple get around to putting them in systems? (November - well, that can wait for The Lord God Jobs' keynote in January, for sure.)

Most vendors are putting Merom systems in their customers' hands, but Apple is still shipping Yonahs in the MacIntelBooks.

I'm at IDF at Moscone, and most of the booths have Kentsfield or Clovertown systems running. (Apple isn't in the hall.)

I think that you're being very brave in assuming that Apple will ship quads in systems when Intel releases them...

Not to mention the fact that they waited a month and a half after Woodcrest was released to announce the Mac Pro and Intel XServes -- based not on Intel processor release schedules but on Mac conference schedules. Then again, this is just a "core bump", rather than a truly new product or chip; IIRC the Quad G5 followed fairly soon after the dual-core G5 processors were announced. Then again AGAIN, the XServes won't even be available 'till October; would they really update them again one or two months later?

[Multimedia]

Surprised to see this thread come to a grinding hault after only 145 posts. I pledge right here and now to be one of the first to buy a NEW 8-core Dual Clovertown Mac Pro as soon as it becomes available. I will not wait for them to go refrub although I will probably wait for them to come with iLife '07 if they are added to the BTO page before the January 9th SteveNote.

I turn 60 on January 12th. :) Happy Birthday to me it will be. :eek: :D

[dante@sisna.com]

Surprised to see this thread come to a grinding hault after only 145 posts. I pledge right here and now to be one of the first to buy a NEW 8-core Dual Clovertown Mac Pro as soon as it becomes available. I will not wait for them to go refrub although I will probably wait for them to come with iLife '07 if they are added to the BTO page before the January 9th SteveNote.

I turn 60 on January 12th. :) Happy Birthday to me it will be. :eek: :D


Okay, I will jump onboard and be the second.

Clovertown Power -- bring it on.

Dante

[Multimedia]

Anyone notice that Apple also released Logic Express & Pro 7.2.3 updates both now supporting 4 cores Wednesday as well as iTunes update 7.0.1?

Apple releases Logic Pro, Logic Express updates (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2089)

"Apple also noted that Logic Pro 7.2.3 is optimized for PowerPC G4, G5 and Intel based Macs with up to 2 dual-core processors." Same is true for Logic Express.

This is a very big evolutionary multicore support step for the Logic gang. Finally gives me incentive to want to buy Logic Pro.I find it was posted here on page 2 yesterday.Thanks for the heads up.

[bankshot]

2nd Story: Pixar announces that it is increasing its movie release schedule from one movie every two years to a movie every two days :)

Sure, because script writing, voice acting, scene generation, and character animation only take an hour or two per movie... :rolleyes: ;)

[DavidCar]

Anyone notice that Apple also released Logic Express & Pro 7.2.3 updates both now supporting 4 cores Wednesday as well as iTunes update 7.0.1?

Apple releases Logic Pro, Logic Express updates (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2089)

"Apple also noted that Logic Pro 7.2.3 is optimized for PowerPC G4, G5 and Intel based Macs with up to 2 dual-core processors." Same is true for Logic Express.

This is a very big evolutionary multicore support step for the Logic gang. Finally gives me incentive to want to buy Logic Pro.

Moderators: Looks Like MacRumors dropped the ball on this one - eclipsed by the ever omnipresent 7.0.1 iTunes update. :rolleyes:I find it was posted here on page 2 yesterday.

[tteerts]

Is there any advantage or disadvantage (other than future expandability) to getting to 4GB of memory by using 8x512MB versus using 4x1GB?

[Multimedia]

Is there any advantage or disadvantage (other than future expandability) to getting to 4GB of memory by using 8x512MB versus using 4x1GB?Aparently the answer is "technically yes". See below. I did not know that. But from what they say and a practical point of view the answer is still no.

[jhande]

FWIW Tom Yager at InfoWorld had an interesting point (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/27/40OPcurve_1.html) re the looming Core Wars (aside: I loved to play that :) and its still going on) that I fully agree with.

"If I had a vote, I’d have both vendors stop at four cores and focus on fat and fast busses that give those cores something to fill instead of something to wait for. AMD and Intel both face bus bottlenecks, and that’s the bane of multi-core. " - Tom

[MacsAttack]

Is there any advantage or disadvantage (other than future expandability) to getting to 4GB of memory by using 8x512MB versus using 4x1GB?

Yes. Latency on memory access can be slightly longer because the memory is organised in serial and not parallel for slots 5-8.

Think the numbers are in the region of 3-4% longer on memory benchmarks.

Real world impact is minimal as other elemiments like the large cache on the Core 2 Duo and improved fetch and pre-fetch logic that intel has been refining in the Core processors goes a long way to offset it in "real life"

[Chris here]

No.

Oh. Great. Cool answer.

[AidenShaw]

Oh. Great. Cool answer.
But the wrong answer, unfortunately.

MacsAttack's post about slightly higher latency as you add FB-DIMMs is correct.

One FB-DIMM per channel is fastest, two per channel is slower, three per channel is even slower, and four per channel is slowest. The FB-DIMMs on a chain are in kind of a daisy-chain.

The effect is small, as MacsAttack notes, and not important most of the time. You need a carefully crafted memory benchmark to see the effect clearly.

[tteerts]

Thanks for the info folks. I would definitely not have picked up on that subtelty otherwise.

[Abulia]

No.
Not helpful and wrong.

The most efficent use of the riser slots are dual rank FB-DIMMs and 4 of them. So 4 1GB sticks or 4 2GB sticks.

Four FB-DIMMs is the sweet spot between memory bandwidth and latency, based on tests.

[Multimedia]

Since the 2.33GHz Clovertown processors are priced the same as the 3GHz Woodcrests - $851, I think it's fair to say the current 3GHz Quad Core Mac Pro costs about $825 per core while the 8-core 2.33GHz Dual Clovertown Mac Pros will cost only about $412.50 per core. That looks like real progress to me. On the GHz front, the current one running @ 12GHz is about $275 per GHz of power while the 8-core running @ 18.64GHz is about $177 per GHz of power. That looks like real progress as well. :)

[brianus]

Not helpful and wrong.

The most efficent use of the riser slots are dual rank FB-DIMMs and 4 of them. So 4 1GB sticks or 4 2GB sticks.

Four FB-DIMMs is the sweet spot between memory bandwidth and latency, based on tests.

Hey just curious about your sig, how is your 1TB RAID set up in the Mac Pro?

[BJNY]

Does anyone know how much power a Cloverton 2.33GHz will draw compared to the current Woodcrest 3GHz? I hope Apple's power supply is adequate for Cloverton, 4 SATA hard drives, 2 optical drives, and better PCIe graphics card.

[Anonymous Freak]

Does anyone know how much power a Cloverton 2.33GHz will draw compared to the current Woodcrest 3GHz? I hope Apple's power supply is adequate for Cloverton, 4 SATA hard drives, 2 optical drives, and better PCIe graphics card.

Woodcrest 3.0 is rated at 80W per processor. Clovertown is claimed to be 'about the same.' Anandtech measured an early Clovertown sample at about 130W, though. Even at that, they had no issues in a Mac Pro.

It would have been silly of Apple to design a 'high end workstation' system without at least 100W of leeway in the power. I mean, they sell it with two optical drives, four hard drives, and up to four video cards. There *HAS* to be enough power in there.

[tteerts]

Aparently the answer is "technically yes". See below. I did not know that. But from what they say and a practical point of view the answer is still no.

No worries... but it was a subtlety like that which I was thinking about. I agree that I would likely never know the difference.

[ffakr]

I must love punishment because I scanned this whole tread. We need some sort system to gather the correct info into one location. :-)

Multimedia, you're so far out of mainstream that your comments make no sense to all but .01 % of computer users.
Seriously.. Most people don't rip 4 videos to h264 while they are creating 4 disk images and browsing the web.

I work at a wealthy research university, I set up a new mac every week (and too many PCs). A 1st Gen dual 2.0 G5 is plenty fast for nearly all users. I'm still surprised how nice ours runs considering it's 3 years old. In my experience the dual cores are more responsive (UI latency) but a slightly faster dual proc will run intensive tasks faster.

The reality is, a dual core system.. any current dual core system.. is a fantastic machine for 95% of computer users. The Core2 Duo (Merom) iMacs are extermely fast. The 24" iMac with 2GB ram runs nearly everything instantaneously.
The dual dual-core systems are rediculously fast. Iv'e set up several 2.66GHz models and I had to invent tasks to slow the thing down. Ripping DVD to h264 does take some time with handbrake (half playback speed ((that's ripping 1hour of DVD in 30 minutes) but the machine is still very responsive while you're doing that, installing software, and having Mathematica calculate Pi to 100,000 places. During normal use (Office, web, mail, chats...) it's unusual to see any of the cpu cores bump up past 20%.

I'm sure Apple will have 4 core cpus eventually but I don't expect it will happen immediately. Maybe they'll have one top end version but it'd certainly be a mistake to move the line to all quad cores.

Here's the reality...
- fewer cores running faster will be much better for most people
- there are relatively few tasks that really lend themselves to massively parallelizaton well. Video and Image editing are obvious because there are a number of ways to slice jobs up (render multiple frames.. break images into sections, modify in parallel, reassemble...).
- though multimedia is an Apple core market.. not everyone runs a full video shop or rending farm off of one desktop computer. Seriously guys, we don't.
- Games are especially difficult to thread for SMP systems. Even games that do support SMP like Quake and UT do it fairly poorly. UT only splits off audio work on to the 2nd cpu. The real time nature of games means you can't have 7 or 8 independent threads on an 8 core systems without running into issues were the game hangs up on a lagging thread. They simply work better in a more serial paradigm.
- The first quad core chips will be much hotter than current Core2 chips. Most people.. even people who want the power of towers.. don't want a desktop machine that actually pulls 600W from the wall because of the two 120-130W cpus inside. also, goodby silent MacPros in this config.
- The systems will be far too I/O bound in an 8 core system. The memory system does have lots of bandwith but the benchmarks indicate it will be bus and memory constrained. It'll certainly be hard to feed data from the SATA drives unless you've got gobs of memory and your not working on large streams of data (like video).
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/10/four_cores_on_the_rampage/

Finally, Apple's all about the perception. Apple has held back cpu releases because they wouldn't let a lower end cpu clock higher than a higher end chip. They did it with PPC 603&604 and I think they did it with G3 & G4.
It's against everything Apple's ever done to have 3.0 GHz dual dual-core towers in the mid range and 2.33GHz quad-core cpus in the high end.
I see some options here..
Maybe we'll get the dual 2.66 quad cores in one high end system. The price will go up.
Alternately.. this could finally be a rumored Mac Station.. or.. Apple has yet to announce a cluster node version of the intel XServe.

Geez.. almost forgot.
For most people... the Core2 desktop systems bench better than the 4core systems or even the dual Core2 Xeon systems because the DDR2 is lower latency than the FBDIMMs. To all the gamers.. you don't want slower clocked quad core chips.. not even on the desktop. You want a speed bump of the Core2 Duo.

[McKellar]

Finally, Apple's all about the perception. Apple has held back cpu releases because they wouldn't let a lower end cpu clock higher than a higher end chip. They did it with PPC 603&604 and I think they did it with G3 & G4.
It's against everything Apple's ever done to have 3.0 GHz dual dual-core towers in the mid range and 2.33GHz quad-core cpus in the high end.
I see some options here..
Maybe we'll get the dual 2.66 quad cores in one high end system. The price will go up.

Just a small point, but I think back in 2002? Apple's top end Quicksilver G4 towers were configured like this:

Fast 733Mhz, Faster 867Mhz, Fastest Dual 800Mhz

So I could see them having an octo 2.66 above a quad 3.0.

[Multimedia]

Just a small point, but I think back in 2002? Apple's top end Quicksilver G4 towers were configured like this:

Fast 733Mhz, Faster 867Mhz, Fastest Dual 800Mhz

So I could see them having an octo 2.66 above a quad 3.0.I think they will offer a Dual 2.33GHz Clovertown because each Clovertown is priced the same as each 3GHz Woody - $851. If they did offer the 2.66GHz Clovertowns, the premium would be more than $642 more as they each cost $321 more than the 2.33GHz models - $1172. That's almost 40% more money for an 8% 330MHz bump in speed - hardly an amount any logical person would pay extra for.

I think Apple won't want to sell a $4,000 Mac Pro when they can sell a lot more $3,300 ones. At 2.33GHz, the Clovertown OctoMacs are still going to be able to process a total of almost 19GHz or more than 50% more crunching power than the 3GHz Quads. This is all about who needs more cores vs. who needs more power. Different workflows call for different choices. Some need 4 high powered cores while others, like myself, need more cores totalling more power that we know we can use simultaneously since our workflow applications can use 3-4 cores each.
Finally, Apple's all about the perception. Apple has held back cpu releases because they wouldn't let a lower end cpu clock higher than a higher end chip. They did it with PPC 603&604 and I think they did it with G3 & G4.
It's against everything Apple's ever done to have 3.0 GHz dual dual-core towers in the mid range and 2.33GHz quad-core cpus in the high end.One will not be priced higher than the other. Both options will be +$800. Where did you get the idea that the 2.33GHz Octo would be priced above the 3GHz Quad? Both pairs of processors sell from Intel to Apple for exactly the same amount of money. Did you overlook that fact? Or do you think Apple is going to gouge us?

All that's going to happen is one added line in the processor section of the BTO page which will look like this:

Two 2.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $800]

Mac Pro buyers need to do their homework so they know which way to go. The 8-core Mac is not a replacement for the current line. It's not "better" for many users. It is only "better" for a certain class of users who know the applications they use can take advantage of several cores at once or that they can imagine a workflow of running multiple applications that could use more cores simultaneously. So it's evolutionary not revolutionary.

There is no reason to believe that any of the three existing lines in the processor section of the "Configure Now" page will be deleted, only that the above line will be added with little fanfare - probably a press release is about all. And perhaps Steve will mention it in his January 9 SteveNote.

I still think the 2.66GHz Quad for $2499 will remain most popular among the vast majority of Mac Pro buyers. Those of us who are hungry for more cores are a rare breed of users who have figured out how to keep all those cores busy most of the time. :pMultimedia, you're so far out of mainstream that your comments make no sense to all but .01 % of computer users.
Seriously.. Most people don't rip 4 videos to h264 while they are creating 4 disk images and browsing the web.Neither do I and I think your characterization of what I do and how I do it is completely a fabricaiton of your imagination. I never use h.264 EVER. And I certainly never encode 4 videos at once - even with the Clovertown I won't be able to do that without compromizing the speed of each encode. You are trying to trivialize what I do by exagerating and mocking a real workflow situation because you have made up your mind that 4 cores are enough. Why do you think it's just fine to MOCK a fellow Mac user because you don't do the same work as he or she does?

Is Intel putting Clovertowns on the market because no one has any use for them?

You are way exagerating how I need more cores for what. You are totally underestimating how many cores ONE application can use. Toast 7.1 will use almost 4 cores of an Intel Mac to create ONE DVD image. Handbrake will use almost 3 to rip one mp4 file from one of those images and it hasn't been optimized for the Mac Pro yet although it is UB. I think you are way out of line to say that it will be highly uncommon for many users to hose an 8-core Mac easily. There are numerous ways to do so in nothing flat. Seems like your imagination is weak.

I have one of those 2GHz Dual Core (DC) G5's here and it is making my life a lot easier because I can continue to record video on the Quad while off-loading just recorded video for editing over there via the GB Ethernet. Then I rip the images back on the Quad via the GB Ethernet conection because ripping them on the DC is much slower. Even ripping two DVD Images simultaneously is faster running both on the Quad than one on the DC and the other on the Quad.

So I don't agree with you that a 2GHz DC G5 Mac is great for most unless everyone is still only doing one thing at a time. While I agree I am in a very small group of compression fanatics, I submit to you that there are plenty of other different kinds of small groups out there who can also use 8 cores all day and all night long. And the sum total of all of us equals a significant market that Apple can serve by simply ordering a thousand Clovertowns and adding that line above to the "Configure Now" page of the current Mac Pro offering.

[orak]

What I really would like to know is when the eight-core Mac will be available.

Does anyone remember how much lag there was between the availability of the Woodcrest chips and the time the Mac Pros came out?

The new Quad core chips are expected to be out in mid-November. Considering that the new chips work with the current Mac Pros, so long as Apple doesn't plan on having big changes to the motherboard, they could theoretically update the product line pretty quickly.

I've asked someone who needs to purchase large quantities of professional machines from Apple for a company, and he couldn't get info from tight-lipped Apple about this.

So I just wanted to hear some educated guesses to help with my impatience. :)

[Multimedia]

What I really would like to know is when the eight-core Mac will be available.

Does anyone remember how much lag there was between the availability of the Woodcrest chips and the time the Mac Pros came out?Right away. Same for the C2D iMacs. But now we're waiting way past the time we thought the mobiles would get Meroms.The new Quad core chips are expected to be out in mid-November. Considering that the new chips work with the current Mac Pros, so long as Apple doesn't plan on having big changes to the motherboard, they could theoretically update the product line pretty quickly.

I've asked someone who needs to purchase large quantities of professional machines from Apple for a company, and he couldn't get info from tight-lipped Apple about this.

So I just wanted to hear some educated guesses to help with my impatience. :)Sorry to say there is no way to predict how soon nor even if Apple will certainly offer the Clovertown option. As you can read above, there is considerable disagreement about how much the market wants and needs 8-core Mac Pros.

We can pray for December and hope for January is my best random and unsubstantiated pure guess. Technically I agree with you completely and it should happen in December or even November as I explain above with the simple addition of one line on the "Configure Now" page:

Two 2.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $800]

But Steve may want to hold back the offering for dramatic purposes so he can present it as "new" in his January 9 SteveNote at MacWorld San Francisco. I hope not, although I may wait until then anyway so I can get a copy of iLife '07 with it for no extra charge. :p

[orak]

OK, it seems like Woodcrest was officially unveiled by Intel on July 27 and the new Mac Pros were available for purchase (same day they were announced) on August 7.

So if it goes like that, we could see these things as early as late November, right? Just doing some wishful thinking! :)

Ugh, it's gonna be hard waiting until December or January. I just hope the price won't be so much higher than what we see now.

[Multimedia]

OK, it seems like Woodcrest was officially unveiled by Intel on July 27 and the new Mac Pros were available for purchase (same day they were announced) on August 7.

So if it goes like that, we could see these things as early as late November, right? Just doing some wishful thinking! :)

Ugh, it's gonna be hard waiting until December or January. I just hope the price won't be so much higher than what we see now.Yeah if it happens in November I will buy right away. I agree with you it SHOULD happen in November.

Price should be same as the 3GHz Woodie Quad because the published price for the 2.33GHz Clovertowns is exactly the same as the published price for the 3GHz Woodies - $851 each. Anything higher would be price gouging and all of Apple's customers should know that. So it would be shockingly unexpected if price is any higher at all.

[AppliedVisual]

OK, it seems like Woodcrest was officially unveiled by Intel on July 27 and the new Mac Pros were available for purchase (same day they were announced) on August 7.

So if it goes like that, we could see these things as early as late November, right? Just doing some wishful thinking! :)

Ugh, it's gonna be hard waiting until December or January. I just hope the price won't be so much higher than what we see now.

It's difficult to say. Intel has been making engineering samples of Cloverton available to companies like Apple and Dell and motherboard makers for a while now. From the time Intel formally announces availability to the time we can buy a Cloverton Mac Pro should be a matter of days, maybe a week or two. Now, if there are problems with cooling or voltage or BIOS/ROM incompatibilities/bugs to work out, then it could be longer. I'm pretty confident that it won't be a delay anywhere near as long as the Merom Macbook[Pro] delay.

2.66GHz (or 3GHz? maybe?) Cloverton Mac Pro for me... :D Hopefully they have a better graphics card offering than the current choices too.

[Roy]

2.66GHz (or 3GHz? maybe?) Cloverton Mac Pro for me... :D Hopefully they have a better graphics card offering than the current choices too.

And what would be your choice of graphic cards, considering that money doesn't grow on trees and price would be a factor?:)

[Anonymous Freak]

It's difficult to say. Intel has been making engineering samples of Cloverton available to companies like Apple and Dell and motherboard makers for a while now. From the time Intel formally announces availability to the time we can buy a Cloverton Mac Pro should be a matter of days, maybe a week or two. Now, if there are problems with cooling or voltage or BIOS/ROM incompatibilities/bugs to work out, then it could be longer. I'm pretty confident that it won't be a delay anywhere near as long as the Merom Macbook[Pro] delay.

2.66GHz (or 3GHz? maybe?) Cloverton Mac Pro for me... :D Hopefully they have a better graphics card offering than the current choices too.

Nope, 2.66 is the official fastest Intel has announced. (And the nice thing about Intel, from a corporate point of view, is that they announce EVERYTHING ahead of time. So we know there won't be a surprise 3 GHz release.)

[AppliedVisual]

And what would be your choice of graphic cards, considering that money doesn't grow on trees and price would be a factor?:)

At this moment, an nVidia 7950GX2oc would be just dandy. Or the ATI X1950XTI. I'd also take the current FX4500 if they would get with the program and knock $500 off the price tag. I can buy the PNY FX4500 for a PC right now in oem whitebox packaging for $1349. Apple wants $1650 as an upgrade price. Ouch... And while it has extra features like stencil buffers and multiple overlay planes, it's stuff that isn't really used except by very specialized visualization software. Even my 3D apps - Lightwave, Maya, Modo don't use those features. So, not worth the money since it barely outperforms the X1900XT option for most everything else.

Ultimately, I'd like to see some support for multiple cards working in parallel like SLI. Dual 7950GX2s would be great and I'd buy in an instant. ...Dell has that very config as an option and it's cheaper than what Apple wants for that FX4500, c'mon Apple, let's go!

[AppliedVisual]

Nope, 2.66 is the official fastest Intel has announced. (And the nice thing about Intel, from a corporate point of view, is that they announce EVERYTHING ahead of time. So we know there won't be a surprise 3 GHz release.)

Yeah for now... But I'm sure we'll see 3GHz and faster as they increase production. All depends on when I finally decide to make my purchase. But the 2.66GHz is probably it... I may go with the 2.33GHz if the price on the 2.66 is to far out of line, but we'll see. Right now, the current 3GHz Mac Pro is $800 more, but to me that would be worth it for that extra edge on my renderings.

[Multimedia]

Yeah for now... But I'm sure we'll see 3GHz and faster as they increase production. All depends on when I finally decide to make my purchase. But the 2.66GHz is probably it... I may go with the 2.33GHz if the price on the 2.66 is to far out of line, but we'll see. Right now, the current 3GHz Mac Pro is $800 more, but to me that would be worth it for that extra edge on my renderings.As I've explained in detail above AV, the 2.33GHz Clovertowns are the most likely candidate as they cost Apple the same $851 as the 3GHz Woodies. So Apple can give customers a clear choice of fast 4 or slower 8 for the same +$800 total $3,300.

If Apple offers the 2.66GHz Clovertowns, they will have to charge an additional $700 just to cover their additional cost - or very little more than. While the first 8 processors will cost a little over $400 each, that additional $700 will only buy you another 2.64GHz of power or one more processor at a $300 premium. But perhaps it will be worth it to some. I just hope we get the option. I'd rather not spend that last $700 on a little faster and buy RAM instead.

[AidenShaw]

As I've explained in detail above AV, the 2.33GHz Clovertowns are the most likely candidate as they cost Apple the same $851 as the 3GHz Woodies. So Apple can give customers a clear choice of fast 4 or slower 8 for the same +$800 total $3,300.
The slower Clovertowns also match the Woodie for TDP - you can get more power (for multi-threaded workflows) at the same power consumption (and heat production) with the quad.

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah for now... But I'm sure we'll see 3GHz and faster as they increase production. All depends on when I finally decide to make my purchase. But the 2.66GHz is probably it... I may go with the 2.33GHz if the price on the 2.66 is to far out of line, but we'll see. Right now, the current 3GHz Mac Pro is $800 more, but to me that would be worth it for that extra edge on my renderings.

Yeah, from what I've seen, it's very likely that Woodcrest (dual-core) and Clovertown (quad-core) could easily make it to the mid 3 GHz range on the current production process; and might even see 4 GHz. (Although 4 GHz would be toward the end of next year at the earliest.) With 45 nm production, we'll see bigger L2 caches, four cores as 'standard' on workstation/server chips, (four fully integrated cores, the way Woodcrest is two fully integrated cores now.)

But I in raw GHz, we'll be stuck at about 4 GHz as the max for quite a while. Remember, "Moore's Law" didn't predict GHz, it predicted 'number of transistors or cost per transistor'. As long as we're doublling the number of cores each 1.5-2 years, we're keeping up with Moore's Law.

[Multimedia]

The slower Clovertowns also match the Woodie for TDP - you can get more power (for multi-threaded workflows) at the same power consumption (and heat production) with the quad.By Quad you mean each slower Clovertown or a pair of faster Woodies?

[AidenShaw]

By Quad you mean each slower Clovertown or a pair of faster Woodies?
I meant quad-core package (socket) - be it Clovertown/Woodcrest or Kentsfield/Conroe.

On a multi-threaded workflow, twice as many somewhat slower threads are better than half as many somewhat faster threads.

Of course, many desktop applications can't use four cores (or 8), and many feel "snappier" with fewer, faster cores.
_______________

In one demo at IDF, Intel showed a dual Woodie against the top Opteron.

The Woody was about 60% faster, using 80% of the power.

On stage, they swapped the Woodies with low-voltage Clovertowns which matched the power envelope of the Woodies that they removed. I think they said that the Clovertowns were 800 MHz slower than the Woodies.

With the Clovertowns, the system was 20% faster than the Woodies (even at 800 MHz slower per core), at almost exactly the same wattage (1 or 2 watts more). This made it 95% faster than the Opterons, still at 80% of the power draw.

You can see the demo at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2006/webcast.htm - look for Gelsinger's keynote the second day.

[amin]

...With the Clovertowns, the system was 20% faster than the Woodies (even at 800 MHz slower per core), at almost exactly the same wattage (1 or 2 watts more)...

Faster at what? I'm too lazy to find the part in the keynote where they showed this. Was it 20% faster at something designed to use all 8 cores?

[AidenShaw]

Faster at what? I'm too lazy to find the part in the keynote where they showed this. Was it 20% faster at something designed to use all 8 cores?
The task was a multi-threaded matrix multiplication that easily scales to multiple cores.

This is representative of many HPC and rendering apps, but not as realistic for most desktop apps (unless, of course, you're like MultiMedia and run several separate instances of the desktop apps simulataneously).

The sections in the video are at 11:50 to 15:00, and 26:30 to 28:00. (The gap is while the engineer is swapping CPUs and rebooting.)

My earlier numbers were a bit off - rewatching the video the Woodie system was 40% faster than the Opteron, at 17% less power. The Clovertowns were low-voltage parts "about 900MHz" slower than the Woodies. The octo (dual quads) was about 60% faster than the Opteron at 17% less power. (I'd like to have seen them put in faster Clovertowns, and show what the octo Clovertown would do when matching the power draw of the Opteron.)

At about 25:00 minutes in, Gelsinger says that the "two woodies in one socket" is the "right way to do quad-core at 65nm", due to manufacturing and yield issues.

[Multimedia]

I meant quad-core package (socket) - be it Clovertown/Woodcrest or Kentsfield/Conroe.

On a multi-threaded workflow, twice as many somewhat slower threads are better than half as many somewhat faster threads.

Of course, many desktop applications can't use four cores (or 8), and many feel "snappier" with fewer, faster cores.
_______________

In one demo at IDF, Intel showed a dual Woodie against the top Opteron.

The Woody was about 60% faster, using 80% of the power.

On stage, they swapped the Woodies with low-voltage Clovertowns which matched the power envelope of the Woodies that they removed. I think they said that the Clovertowns were 800 MHz slower than the Woodies.

With the Clovertowns, the system was 20% faster than the Woodies (even at 800 MHz slower per core), at almost exactly the same wattage (1 or 2 watts more). This made it 95% faster than the Opterons, still at 80% of the power draw.

You can see the demo at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2006/webcast.htm - look for Gelsinger's keynote the second day.I thought so. This is the first time I have seen the term "Multi-Threaded Workflow" and I thank you for that. In the Gelsinger Keynote he calls it "Multi-Threaded Workloads".

I'm glad to see you confirm my suspicion that the 2.33GHz Dual Clovertown Mac Pro will in fact be faster than the 2.66 or 3GHz Dual Woodie when someone knows how they work simultaneously with a set of applications that can use all those cores a lot of the time. Very exciting.

Also thanks for the link to all those sessions from the IDF. Fantastic to be able to "attend" all of them. I'm stoked and looking forward to watching them ALL. I love all the new Intel self-promotional videos. Intel is happening and hip!

And no premium for that "ninth" processor when you buy a 2.66GHz Dual Clovertown after all bringing the total cost to $3,699 plus ram. So now I hope there will be TWO new lines in the Processor section of the Customize Your Mac page of the online Store:

Two 2.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $800]
Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $1200]

I now think I will opt for the 2.66GHz 8-core for $3,699 if Apple will offer it for sale.

The first 8 being a little over $400 each. With the 2.66 you get 2.64GHz more total power so it's like getting a ninth processor for +$400 IOW for no premium. Maybe Apple will only offer the 2.66GHz Clovertown so as not to confuse the buyers.

Wonder if the 2.66GHz Clovertown introduces heat issues under the hood.

[AidenShaw]

I thought so. This is the first time I have seen the term "Multi-Threaded Workflow" and I thank you for that.
Yes, I was thinking of your workflow when I said that. :D


I'm glad to see you confirm my suspicion that the 2.33GHz Dual Clovertown Mac Pro will in fact be faster than the 2.66 or 3GHz Dual Woodie when someone knows how they work simultaneously with a set of applications that can use all those cores a lot of the time.
IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene) is fundamentally based on the fact that for parallel tasks you can essentially add all of the "MHz" together, and that lots and lots of slower CPUs will beat a much smaller number of much faster CPUs.

In the case of the current dual and quad core chips, you double the number of cores - but the cores aren't that much slower than the earlier chips. It's a win for lots of workloads, and not much of a loss for a completely single-threaded task.

[Multimedia]

I meant quad-core package (socket) - be it Clovertown/Woodcrest or Kentsfield/Conroe.

On a multi-threaded workflow, twice as many somewhat slower threads are better than half as many somewhat faster threads.

Of course, many desktop applications can't use four cores (or 8), and many feel "snappier" with fewer, faster cores.
_______________

In one demo at IDF, Intel showed a dual Woodie against the top Opteron.

The Woody was about 60% faster, using 80% of the power.

On stage, they swapped the Woodies with low-voltage Clovertowns which matched the power envelope of the Woodies that they removed. I think they said that the Clovertowns were 800 MHz slower than the Woodies.

With the Clovertowns, the system was 20% faster than the Woodies (even at 800 MHz slower per core), at almost exactly the same wattage (1 or 2 watts more). This made it 95% faster than the Opterons, still at 80% of the power draw.

You can see the demo at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2006/webcast.htm - look for Gelsinger's keynote the second day.After watching that video I am more hyped up about getting the 8-core Mac Pro than before for my Multi-Threaded Workload. I also watched the Otellini Keynote (http://mfile.akamai.com/28603/wmv/intelstudio.download.akamai.com/10670//idf/event3/092606_pso/pso_high.wmv) and was struck by Phil Schiller's appearance where he REFUSED to utter the phrase "Core 2 Duo" with regard to the 24" iMac on stage. I was shocked and appalled that he made no mention it is Core 2 Duo. He called it a Core Duo iMac. Blows me away he forgot to say the "2" part.

I can't tell if that was intentional on his part or not. :eek:

[rxse7en]

Morning all,

Two things. Guesstimates on release of quad-core Mac Pros (time to upgrade here). And MultiMedia, how do you like the Dell 24" LCDs?

B

[Multimedia]

Morning all,

Two things. Guesstimates on release of quad-core Mac Pros (time to upgrade here). And MultiMedia, how do you like the Dell 24" LCDs?

BIf Apple wants to be aggressive, it will happen next month. But if they don't, it could be as late as January. I am sitting on a large pile of cash to buy one the day they are added to the configure page. Love the Dell Screens. They have refurbished 30" models for $1349 now. :eek: :)

I know no one here likes to read my stories of inadequate power, but even with the Quad G5 and that cheap 2GHz Dual Core G5 I picked up at Fry's, I still have to put my Multi-Threaded Workload into a Queue that all runs much slower than it will with 8 cores. I am very excited about the Dual Clovertown Mac Pro.

[rxse7en]

If Apple wants to be aggressive, it will happen next month. But if they don't, it could be as late as January. I am sitting on a large pile of cash to buy one the day they are added to the configure page. Love the Dell Screens. They have refurbished 30" models for $1349 now. :eek: :)

I know no one here likes to read my stories of inadequate power, but even with the Quad G5 and that cheap 2GHz Dual Core G5 I picked up at Fry's, I still have to put my Multi-Threaded Workload into a Queue that all runs much slower than it will with 8 cores. I am very excited about the Dual Clovertown Mac Pro.
I was one click away from buying a refurb 2.66 Mac Pro last evening and decided to wait until next month to see what Apple brings to the table. I've sold off my Quicksilver, Pismo, G4 AL 'book, and G4 Mini and picked up a MBP and MB now all I need is a new tower and my Intel transition is complete. Aside from the lack of UB CS2 apps it's been a great transition.

Now I have to get rid of two 21" Viewsonic CRTs and upgrade my displays. I was able to check out the Dell 24" display and it's pretty sweet, but on Friday Costco will have the Viewsonic 22" LCDs on sale for $300 each. For the less than the price of a 24" I could pick up two 22" LCDs. Granted they are lower resolution, but I think the extra monitor makes up for that missing real estate. Any feedback on this is appreciated.

B

[Multimedia]

I was one click away from buying a refurb 2.66 Mac Pro last evening and decided to wait until next month to see what Apple brings to the table. I've sold off my Quicksilver, Pismo, G4 AL 'book, and G4 Mini and picked up a MBP and MB now all I need is a new tower and my Intel transition is complete. Aside from the lack of UB CS2 apps it's been a great transition.

Now I have to get rid of two 21" Viewsonic CRTs and upgrade my displays. I was able to check out the Dell 24" display and it's pretty sweet, but on Friday Costco will have the Viewsonic 22" LCDs on sale for $300 each. For the less than the price of a 24" I could pick up two 22" LCDs. Granted they are lower resolution, but I think the extra monitor makes up for that missing real estate. Any feedback on this is appreciated.Wow. I can't beleive they are in refurb after only two months and also the one month old C2D iMacs are all there as well. But I'm holding out for the 8-core no matter what. They should be priced same as the 3GHz Quad Xeon according to published price lists.

Please explain more about what will be for sale Friday at Costco for $300. Link, model number and resolution please? I'm not currently a member but could join if worth it. Is it the VX2235wm 1680x1050 (http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/xseries/vx2235wm/)? That's a far cry from 1920 x 1200 for around $700 from Dell. While you may save money at Costco, you get what you pay for. Native HD resolution capable is one of my priorities.

[rxse7en]

Wow. I can't beleive they are in refurb after only two months and also the one month old C2D iMacs are all there as well. But I'm holding out for the 8-core no matter what. They should be priced same as the 3GHz Quad Xeon according to published price lists.

Please explain more about what will be for sale Friday at Costco for $300. Link, model number and resolution please? I'm not currently a member but could join if worth it. Is it the VX2235wm 1680x1050 (http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/xseries/vx2235wm/)? That's a far cry from 1920 x 1200 for around $700 from Dell. While you may save money at Costco, you get what you pay for. Native HD resolution capable is one of my priorities.

Costco Deal (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11163877&search=viewsonic&Sp=S&Mo=3&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=viewsonic&Ntt=viewsonic&No=2&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1) You are correct in the resolution, BUT with two of them at less than the cost of one 24"er from Dell it does make up for the real estate--+10 on dual monitor cool factor :D

I sent in my Macbook on Monday to get the random shutdown issue repaired. Shipped back to me today--and for some unknown reason was delivered to the Apple Store here in Jax. While I had them on the phone I asked about the Mac Pros they had in stock and I was told they are "out of stock." Take it for what it is, BUT, I'm wondering if it could mean an EOL on the current line.

EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it, ya think the 1050 height will allow for a 100% 8.5X11 page view?

EDIT TWO: If your a member of the Dell Forums, you can receive a $350 coupon off the price of the 30"--very tempting.

B

[Multimedia]

Costco Deal (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11163877&search=viewsonic&Sp=S&Mo=3&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=viewsonic&Ntt=viewsonic&No=2&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1) You are correct in the resolution, BUT with two of them at less than the cost of one 24"er from Dell it does make up for the real estate--+10 on dual monitor cool factor :DI have the 24 left of the 20. Way cooler for a total of 3520 x 1200.I sent in my Macbook on Monday to get the random shutdown issue repaired. Shipped back to me today--and for some unknown reason was delivered to the Apple Store here in Jax. While I had them on the phone I asked about the Mac Pros they had in stock and I was told they are "out of stock." Take it for what it is, BUT, I'm wondering if it could mean an EOL on the current line.No. I think the line will stay the way it is adding 2.33GHz + $800 and 2.66GHz + $1500 Clovertown options in the Processor section on the configure page. That way according to your type of workload style you can choose between 4 faster cores if you do less multi-threaded work vs 8 slower cores if you are all about a Multi-Threaded Workload.Now that I'm thinking about it, ya think the 1050 height will allow for a 100% 8.5X11 page view?I can't stand less than 1200 high. You know Dell monitors rotate too and rotation is supported with ATI Video cards but not NVIDEA.If your a member of the Dell Forums, you can receive a $350 coupon off the price of the 30"--very tempting.Link please? Never mind I found it with Google.

[AppliedVisual]

I can't stand less than 1200 high. You know Dell monitors rotate too and rotation is supported with ATI Video cards but not NVIDEA.

Er... No rotation with nVidia? nVidia supports rotation on Windows, haven't tried it on Mac. I don't see any option for it on my G5, but I just assumed it was a limitation of the 30" Dell I'm using (doesn't rotate). Actually that's a dumb assumption. Weird... Wonder why.

Link please?

I'd like the link to that coupon as well too... Although it probably doesn't work with the current 15% off (which expires today, doesn't it?).

[rxse7en]

Er... No rotation with nVidia? nVidia supports rotation on Windows, haven't tried it on Mac. I don't see any option for it on my G5, but I just assumed it was a limitation of the 30" Dell I'm using (doesn't rotate). Actually that's a dumb assumption. Weird... Wonder why.



I'd like the link to that coupon as well too... Although it probably doesn't work with the current 15% off (which expires today, doesn't it?).

Here ya go: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=creativecontest&message.id=143&l=en&s=dhs

[rxse7en]

I have the 24 left of the 20. Way cooler for a total of 3520 x 1200.No. I think the line will stay the way it is adding 2.33GHz + 800 and 2.66GHz + $1500 Clovertown options in the Processor section on the configure page. That way according to your type of workload style you can choose between 4 faster cores if you do less multi-threaded work vs 8 slower cores if you are all about a Multi-Threaded Workload.I can't stand less than 1200 high. You know Dell monitors rotate too and rotation is supported with ATI Video cards but not NVIDEA.Link please? Never mind I found it with Google.

I can only hope that CS3 will be processor aware. I'm dying out here with CS2 under Rosetta. Has Intel announced a speed bump on Woodcrest yet?

B

[rxse7en]

Got my coupon and tested it. It doesn't stack...total price is $1349.00


B

[Multimedia]

Got my coupon and tested it. It doesn't stack...total price is $1349.00Thanks for the update. Still as cheap as the refurbs. I think that's cheap enough for me.

the 30" is 4,096k pixels = $1349
the 24" x2 is 4,608k pixels = $1420

30" = 512k pixels smaller but one big canvas.

One card can drive a 30" + a 24" for a total of 7,400k pixels.

Going up from my current level of 4,224k or + 3,176k pixels.

Got my coupon and I'm good to go with my balance available on Friday to get this deal for $1460 including tax.

Thanks for the coupon tip rxse7en. I got one that lasts thru Monday. Going to buy it. I know it may still get cheaper, but it's cheap enough now to go for it - esp cause I have credit with Dell.

[AppliedVisual]

Hmph... I haven't been to the Dell forums in a while or I probably wouldv'e seen that. Oh, well. Already ordered my other 30" display the other day, I'm not going to complain. :cool:

[rxse7en]

Thanks for the update. Still as cheap as the refurbs. I think that's cheap enough for me.

the 30" is 4,096k pixels = $1349
the 24" x2 is 4,608k pixels = $1420

30" = 512k pixels smaller but one big canvas.

One card can drive a 30" + a 24" for a total of 7,400k pixels.

Going up from my current level of 4,224k or + 3,176k pixels.

Got my coupon and I'm good to go with my balance available on Friday to get this deal for $1460 including tax.

You're welcome.

You take the plunge? I'm torn between the 30" or two 24" monitors. I'm thinking I may buy one 24" now, then pick up another monitor on Black Friday--hopefully after I've purchased a new Mac Pro.

B

[Multimedia]

Hmph... I haven't been to the Dell forums in a while or I probably wouldv'e seen that. Oh, well. Already ordered my other 30" display the other day, I'm not going to complain. :cool:Did you just get the 2007 model? If so how do you like it? Can't you lobby sales to give you the credit? You bought while the coupon was in effect - just overlooked it. It's another $96 off man. Worth asking about. Get one first then call sales.

[Multimedia]

You're welcome. You take the plunge? I'm torn between the 30" or two 24" monitors. I'm thinking I may buy one 24" now, then pick up another monitor on Black Friday--hopefully after I've purchased a new Mac Pro.You think Dell will sell them for even less on Black Friday? - November 24 for you unfamiliar with the term.

Yeah I hope Apple decides to pull the trigger on the Clovertown option as soon as they can get product. That would be so cool if they do.

Definitely not 2 x 24" I think. I have the 24" and it's native HD which I use all the time as my primary television set with EyeTV2 and an EyeTV 500 - now EyeTV Hybrid. But I think the idea of having the 30" with the 24" is kind of ultimate - in a stock video card withtout a fan kind of way.

I almost did buy a second 24" in August. Then I decided that I would wait, pay down my Dell credit some more, then get the 30" which is what I'm doing now thanks in part to your coupon deal although I was prepared to pay $1444. The coupon saved me another $104 including tax. Very excited. Should arrive next week sometime.

Another reason to have a 30" is to wed it to a MacBook Pro as the ultimate mobile home base second screen. But I think the next screen I buy will be another 24 for my Mac Pro 8-core so I can leave this one on the Quad G5 that I am not selling. I think the combo of the 24" + 20" is the best budget way to go - total just over $1k. But if you're going to spend more it might as well be a little over $2k for the 24" + 30" I think.

So I'm going to wind up with:

24" + 20" on both the 2GHz Dual Core (got at Fry's for $864.26 in August) and Quad G5s

24" + 30" on the 8-Core Mac Pro.

I like the idea of having a 24" on everything because it is capable of displaying HD in its native resolution - not bigger not smaller.

But if Dell starts selling the 30" for $999 then all bets are off. :D

Having never spent any length of time with a 30", it is probably too soon to tell how much I will want two. My hunch is: a lot. :p

[AppliedVisual]

Did you just get the 2007 model? If so how do you like it? Can't you lobby sales to give you the credit? You bought while the coupon was in effect - just overlooked it. It's another $96 off man. Worth asking about. Get one first then call sales.

The one I ordered the other day shipped yesterday and I'm expecting delivery on monday. I requested the forum coupon and will see if they will credit me. But I don't know. i'm not planning on going through the brain damage of ordering another monitor with the coupon and sending one back just to save ~$100.

I currently have a 30" Dell that I bought last year when Dell first introduced them. I love the thing... My only gripe is 1 stuck pixel, but Dell requires like 7 or more to replace and I didn't swap the monitor within my 30-day window because the pixel didn't show up until after nearly 3 months. :(

I have an Apple 30" on my other G5 quad and I've never had the two side by side, but I think I like the Dell one better. I use a Gefen 4x1 DVI-DL switcher and have the G5 and two PC systems connected to the Dell with an extra cable for my MBP or whatnot if I want to connect that. I ordered the second 30" because I'm going to expand my desktop to dual 30" displays. :D I had to order another Gefen switcher for the second monitor too since the G5 and one of my PC boxes both support dual-link DVI out of both DVI ports as will the Mac Pro I'm planning to buy in the near future.

[Multimedia]

The one I ordered the other day shipped yesterday and I'm expecting delivery on monday. I requested the forum coupon and will see if they will credit me. But I don't know. i'm not planning on going through the brain damage of ordering another monitor with the coupon and sending one back just to save ~$100.

I currently have a 30" Dell that I bought last year when Dell first introduced them. I love the thing... My only gripe is 1 stuck pixel, but Dell requires like 7 or more to replace and I didn't swap the monitor within my 30-day window because the pixel didn't show up until after nearly 3 months. :(

I have an Apple 30" on my other G5 quad and I've never had the two side by side, but I think I like the Dell one better. I use a Gefen 4x1 DVI-DL switcher and have the G5 and two PC systems connected to the Dell with an extra cable for my MBP or whatnot if I want to connect that. I ordered the second 30" because I'm going to expand my desktop to dual 30" displays. :D I had to order another Gefen switcher for the second monitor too since the G5 and one of my PC boxes both support dual-link DVI out of both DVI ports as will the Mac Pro I'm planning to buy in the near future.Wow I didn't even know such an accessory existed:

Gefen 4x1 DVI DL Switcher (Parallel Control) $899 (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3499)

But the price is almost that of another screen! Holy Moly. You have a better place to buy it for less with link please?

So you gonna go with the ATI Dual Dual Link DVI Card on your Mac Pro? What card do you have in your Quad. I bought mine refurb and Apple doesn't sell a Dual Dual Link video card for it for post-purchase upgrade that I know of. Do you? Could just buy another cheap NVIDEA GeForce 6600 card that is missing the noisy fan. Don't do 3-D or games.

[Multimedia]

Forgot they are removing the cost of the pair of 2.66GHz Woodies. So the configure Processor lines should probably be only:

Two 2.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $800]
Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $1200]

[shyataroo]

I say screw the 8 core intel...lets get a dual-8 core G5 @ 4.2Ghz! with a seperate processor that dictates what operations goto what core to prevent the need for inter-processor communication! oh and make it a 128 bit processor with a built in Nvidia 7950 GX2 OC have it cooled by liquid nitrogen and have 1TB of DDR4 Quad-Channel Ram!

[rxse7en]

Dammit! Dell just dropped the price of the 24" LCD today to $679. That's a hell of a deal for a 24", I think I may have to pull the trigger on one tonight as I really need some screen real estate to work in--this is getting ridiculous working on mags on 15" MBP and a craptastic 17" LCD I stole from my wife. Then, if they drop the prices on the 24s and 30s on Black Friday I'll buy another one.

Regarding the Mac Pro, unless the mobos are going to change dramatically and they intend on adding some other voodoo hardware, I think I may just buy the 2.66 quad now and upgrade the processors when necessary.

B

[AppliedVisual]

Wow I didn't even know such an accessory existed:

Gefen 4x1 DVI DL Switcher (Parallel Control) $899 (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3499)

But the price is almost that of another screen! Holy Moly. You have a better place to buy it for less with link please?

Unfortunately, I don't. :( You should try www.copperbox.com or www.ramelectronics.net - they may be able to quote you a better price, but I don't know how much better.

So you gonna go with the ATI Dual Dual Link DVI Card on your Mac Pro? What card do you have in your Quad. I bought mine refurb and Apple doesn't sell a Dual Dual Link video card for it for post-purchase upgrade that I know of. Do you? Could just buy another cheap NVIDEA GeForce 6600 card that is missing the noisy fan. Don't do 3-D or games.

I have the nVidia 7800GT card in both my G5 quads. It and the Quadro FX4000 were Apple's first offerings with 2xdual-link ports that I'm aware of. They went to the ATI X1900XT with the Mac Pro and replaced the the FX4000 with the FX4500 sometime last spring. Anyway, I think all the G5 quads are PCI-E x16 capable so you should be able to drop in any Mac EFI compliant PCI-E video card that has the dual-link connectors, but I'm not positive on this. The x1900xt sops up an adjacent card slot, which isn't an issue on the Mac Pro, but could cause problems on a G5 depending on what you may have installed. But I'm willing to bet that the current 7300GT card for $149 (1x dual-link, 1x single-link) will work just fine. I'm sure someone knows for sure.

And yeah, I will buy the Mac pro with the x1900xt unless something better comes along before I click the buy button.

[ksz]

Here ya go: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=creativecontest&message.id=143&l=en&s=dhs
This is a really good deal. Ordered mine a few minutes ago for $1350+tax. Will use it with my home-built PC (nVidia 7800 GTX with dual-link DVI) until the next-gen Mac Pro is released.

[rxse7en]

I went ahead and ordered the 24" LCD from Dell. Pretty cool that they use PayPal--I try to pay with everything with cash. Anyway, I have that coupon code for the 30", if anyone wants it just PM me.

B

[THX1139]

You think Dell will sell them for even less on Black Friday? - November 24 for you unfamiliar with the term.

...

So I'm going to wind up with:

24" + 20" on both the 2GHz Dual Core (got at Fry's for $864.26 in August) and Quad G5s

24" + 30" on the 8-Core Mac Pro.

I like the idea of having a 24" on everything because it is capable of displaying HD in its native resolution - not bigger not smaller.

But if Dell starts selling the 30" for $999 then all bets are off. :D

Having never spent any length of time with a 30", it is probably too soon to tell how much I will want two. My hunch is: a lot. :p

All that and just to jack videos off the cable TV. I would think a combination tivo and digital DVD recorder would be the cheaper solution. ... Whew! Still not sure how you can financially justify all that hardware without some kind of return. Must be an expensive hobby?? :rolleyes:

[Erasmus]

OK, does anyone know how well Matlab (7.1 I suppose) is threaded?

Have run some batch files linking 90 simulations in total, which took a few days of continuous running to complete. This is on a 2.x Ghz (Can't remember exactly) P4 at Uni. Could anyone tell me how much better a Kentsfield or dual Clovertowns would run Matlab? (only one application open at once, else its cheating) Would this change between running Matlab under OSX or XP?

Thanks in advance.

[Multimedia]

I have the nVidia 7800GT card in both my G5 quads. It and the Quadro FX4000 were Apple's first offerings with 2xdual-link ports that I'm aware of. They went to the ATI X1900XT with the Mac Pro and replaced the the FX4000 with the FX4500 sometime last spring. Anyway, I think all the G5 quads are PCI-E x16 capable so you should be able to drop in any Mac EFI compliant PCI-E video card that has the dual-link connectors, but I'm not positive on this. The x1900xt sops up an adjacent card slot, which isn't an issue on the Mac Pro, but could cause problems on a G5 depending on what you may have installed. But I'm willing to bet that the current 7300GT card for $149 (1x dual-link, 1x single-link) will work just fine. I'm sure someone knows for sure.

And yeah, I will buy the Mac pro with the x1900xt unless something better comes along before I click the buy button.According to Apple none of the Mac Pro cards work in the Quad G5s and vice versa. Read rumor ATI is developing a 2xDual Link PCIe retail card that will work in Quads but haven't seen anything to reveal when it will finally ship. I guess that's a topic for discussion with ATI at MacWorld Expo.

[Multimedia]

Costco Deal (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11163877&search=viewsonic&Sp=S&Mo=3&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=viewsonic&Ntt=viewsonic&No=2&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1) You are correct in the resolution, BUT with two of them at less than the cost of one 24"er from Dell it does make up for the real estate--+10 on dual monitor cool factor :D

I sent in my Macbook on Monday to get the random shutdown issue repaired. Shipped back to me today--and for some unknown reason was delivered to the Apple Store here in Jax. While I had them on the phone I asked about the Mac Pros they had in stock and I was told they are "out of stock." Take it for what it is, BUT, I'm wondering if it could mean an EOL on the current line.

EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it, ya think the 1050 height will allow for a 100% 8.5X11 page view?

EDIT TWO: If your a member of the Dell Forums, you can receive a $350 coupon off the price of the 30"--very tempting.

BHere's the link to the $350 Coupon: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=creativecontest&message.id=143&l=en&s=dhsThank you very much for that tip and link. You saved me all but $11 in sales tax. So it was like getting the $1444 deal without tax. $1349 plus tax. I pulled the trigger this morning and hope to receive it next week.I went ahead and ordered the 24" LCD from Dell. Pretty cool that they use PayPal--I try to pay with everything with cash. Anyway, I have that coupon code for the 30", if anyone wants it just PM me.Looking forward to maximum desktop in one screen. Long story is I ordered the 24" about 6 weeks ago then realized I wanted the 30" when it went on sale for like $1600 + tax so canceled the next day. But Dell screwed up my credit for 6 weeks so I couldn't even order the 30 until today and you came up with the coupon just in the nick of time to save me even more than I expected to save - like another $250. Total bill came to only $1468.32. Amazing luck for me.

[rxse7en]

Thank you very much for that tip and link. You saved me all but $11 in sales tax. So it was like getting the $1444 deal without tax. $1349 plus tax. I pulled the trigger this morning and hope to receive it next week.Looking forward to maximum desktop in one screen. Long story is I ordered the 24" about 6 weeks ago then realized I wanted the 30" when it went on sale for like $1600 + tax so canceled the next day. But Dell screwed up my credit for 6 weeks so I couldn't even order the 30 until today and you came up with the coupon just in the nick of time to save me even more than I expected to save - like another $250. Total bill came to only $1468.32. Amazing luck for me.

Glad I can help out. I've become addicted to Craigslist--where I bought my 2GHZ MBP with 2gb ram and 100gb HD for $1250, and FatWallet.com where I find just about everything else. Dealmac.com is good, but the members at Fatwallet are HARDCORE savers. Definitely worth checking out.

I went ahead and ordered a 24" LCD from Dell and it will be here Monday. If figure I can work with that and MBP until either the Mac Pros get a nice bump or Adobe releases CS3 UB.

Have a good weekend all.

B

[elbirth]

Dealmac.com is good, but the members at Fatwallet are HARDCORE savers. Definitely worth checking out.


Just a quick comment about this:
I completely agree that you can get some great deals from Fatwallet forumers. My only problem with quite a number of their deals is that they require you to jump through so many loops to get them- i.e, buy at one store with a coupon via Fatwallet to get some money back via FatCash, then take it to a store to price match, send in 4 rebates, sacrifice a goat, and pray to the deal gods that it all goes through in 6-8 weeks.

dealmac focuses on finding straight-forward deals that don't require a lot of hassle and has at *least* 1 writer and 1 editor investigate any given deal before it gets posted on the front page to ensure that it's valid. Of course mistakes take place and prices change... But I'm not the type to want to try reaching out on a limb to get a good deal and risk breaking my neck (read: my finances). For the people that are willing to do it, more power to you.

[AppliedVisual]

came up with the coupon just in the nick of time to save me even more than I expected to save - like another $250. Total bill came to only $1468.32. Amazing luck for me.

Yeah, rxse7en -- you da man!

I had been considering getting another one of these 30" Dell monitors since I love the one I've got and as big as it is, when working on compositing images from two or three 1080p sources, doubling my desktop space would be a dream. I pulled the trigger on one the other day with the recent price drop plus Dell's 15% off. Then this coupon came along. I called up Dell and they refused to apply the coupon at first so I just threw at them, well how about I cancel my order, refuse shipment and order another monitor with the coupon. ;) The guy thought about it for a bit and then decided to adjust my order.

It should be here monday, but I still have to get a sales tax issue cleared up... They charged me too much tax to begin with and then also didn't adjust it when altering my invoice. So I live in an area where I'm supposed to pay a max of 4.6% yet I'm getting charged nearly 8% of the pre-adjusted amount. Ouch. :mad:

[Multimedia]

Hmph... I haven't been to the Dell forums in a while or I probably wouldv'e seen that. Oh, well. Already ordered my other 30" display the other day, I'm not going to complain. :cool:The one I ordered the other day shipped yesterday and I'm expecting delivery on monday. I requested the forum coupon and will see if they will credit me. But I don't know. i'm not planning on going through the brain damage of ordering another monitor with the coupon and sending one back just to save ~$100.I currently have a 30" Dell that I bought last year when Dell first introduced them. I love the thing... My only gripe is 1 stuck pixel, but Dell requires like 7 or more to replace and I didn't swap the monitor within my 30-day window because the pixel didn't show up until after nearly 3 months. :(

I have an Apple 30" on my other G5 quad and I've never had the two side by side, but I think I like the Dell one better. I use a Gefen 4x1 DVI DL Switcher (Parallel Control) $899 (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3499) and have the G5 and two PC systems connected to the Dell with an extra cable for my MBP or whatnot if I want to connect that. I ordered the second 30" because I'm going to expand my desktop to dual 30" displays. :D I had to order another Gefen switcher for the second monitor too since the G5 and one of my PC boxes both support dual-link DVI out of both DVI ports as will the Mac Pro I'm planning to buy in the near future.Yeah, rxse7en -- you da man!

I had been considering getting another one of these 30" Dell monitors since I love the one I've got and as big as it is, when working on compositing images from two or three 1080p sources, doubling my desktop space would be a dream. I pulled the trigger on one the other day with the recent price drop plus Dell's 15% off. Then this coupon came along. I called up Dell and they refused to apply the coupon at first so I just threw at them, well how about I cancel my order, refuse shipment and order another monitor with the coupon. ;) The guy thought about it for a bit and then decided to adjust my order.

It should be here monday, but I still have to get a sales tax issue cleared up... They charged me too much tax to begin with and then also didn't adjust it when altering my invoice. So I live in an area where I'm supposed to pay a max of 4.6% yet I'm getting charged nearly 8% of the pre-adjusted amount. Ouch. :mad:I am so glad you tried and succeeded in getting that discount. That's great. Hope you didn't suffer too much brain damage ripping on that sales rep. Wish I could have heard that. lol. :p

Want to have a contest to see who can have their 8-Core Mac Pro delivered first? I will have to drive to Santa Clara 35 miles to buy an Apple gift card so I can complete my online purchase so you might be able to beat me.

Please share with us what config you will buy and why. I plan on buying only the 1GB model and buying my RAM from Omni Optival - only 2 more GB. So far it looks like my multi-threaded apps do not use much ram at all while using up to 4 cores EACH. So they're RAM stingy and Core HOGS. I am not getting this for Photoshop but for compressing video in 2 to 4 simultaneous applications.

[AppliedVisual]

I am so glad you tried and succeeded in getting that discount. That's great. Hope you didn't suffer too much brain damage ripping on that sales rep. Wish I could have heard that. lol. :p

Actually, I just played it pretty cool. I just told him that I overlooked the coupon and asked if they could apply it, since it would save me about $100. He started with the "I'm sorry, sir. But we can't apply coupons to prior purchases..." So I just went into the "OK, no problem then, I would like to cancel my current order and refuse shipment on it" Which they allow in their return policy. "...And I would like to place a new order for the 30" using this coupon." He kinda paused and made some sort of groaning noise and instinctually started to tell me I couldn't do that. But then he put me on hold for about two minutes, came back and agreed to apply the coupon. I think I realized that he couldn't stop me from doing the cancel and re-order routine and it was a waste of time for both of us and didn't help them out any. He probably needed a manager approval to apply the coupon or something.

Want to have a contest to see who can have their 8-Core Mac Pro delivered first? I will have to drive to Santa Clara 35 miles to buy an Apple gift card so I can complete my online purchase so you might be able to beat me.

Like I posted in the other thread, sure. :) I don't know how it will play out on this end either. I'm ready to buy today, but I'm also starting a fairly large project in about 2 weeks or so. Depending on that and budget restrictions I may buy once the 8-core systems arrive or I may wait. ...Not that I want to wait.

Please share with us what config you will buy and why. I plan on buying only the 1GB model and buying my RAM from Omni Optival - only 2 more GB. So far it looks like my multi-threaded apps do not use much ram at all while using up to 4 cores EACH. So they're RAM stingy and Core HOGS. I am not getting this for Photoshop but for compressing video in 2 to 4 simultaneous applications.

My 3D rendering is all over the place in terms of RAM requirements. However it tends to top out at about 2 to 4 GB for the most demanding scenes. Primarily I use Lightwave3D and a companion render plug-in called FPrime to do most of my rendering. FPrime is still limited to dual-threads or two cores under practicality and also is still a 32bit app. But on my quad-cores I run three instances of it at once and it seems to work out well. Two instances of it doesn't use all my RAM and seems to leave a CPU or two idle about 30% of the time. Hmmmm... As for Lightwave, it's also still a 32bit app with 32bit render node software that is very poorly multithreaded with most plug-ins for the renderer being single-threaded. So I tend to set up dedicated render nodes for each CPU core and dedicate 1GB to each. Works fairly well... I haven't found a real solid way to actually set CPU affinity for individual applications in OSX or at least not automatically when loading up the apps. I wrote a small utility on the PC that works in every version of Windows from NT4 up to Vista that assigns any combination of affinity to an app when launching it. I let people download it for free starting a couple years ago... Dumb move, it's been downloaded over 100,000 times. Should've charged $1.00 per download seeing how i write the thing in 10 minutes and it has a bug in the command line parser that I've never fixed.

Anyway, to answer the question, I'm planning to buy the 2.66GHz model - possibly the 2.33GHz depending on the price difference. If it looks like what you have figured, then I think the 2.66GHz will be worth it for me. I will buy the base RAM configuration and replace it with aftermarket RAM from whoever looks to have the best price/quality on their modules when the time comes. I'll get the x1900xt video card unless they offer something better in about the same price range. Bluetooth module, fiber channel card and I will upgrade the included HDD to the 500GB model. I'll probably pick up a second 500GB on my own and set the two up in a RAID-0 stripe to install the system on. It will connect to my Dell 30" (soon to be dual 30" hahaha) displays via the Gefen switchers. That way I can still switch between my Quad and my other PC and my MBP if I want to plug it in.

Oh, I'm planning on putting the included RAM on ebay since it will run at slower speed most likely. The 512MB FB-DIMMs don't run at the full bandwidth due to how the buffering works only 1GB and 2GB modules do. I plan to install 8GB RAM via 4x2GB modules.

[AppliedVisual]

Just one tidbit of information if anyone is considerng a DVI-DL switch for their 30" (Dell or Apple) displays...

DO NOT buy the Gefen 2x1 switcher. It's based on a previous chipset that requires the user to disassemble the unit to adjust an internal sync knob! Additionally, it requires the use of two external dials (one for each input) to try and synchronize the signal!!! There isn't enough adjustment in all three dials to make much difference and while I could sync either my PC or my G5 quad just fine, I couldn't get them both to sync at all.

The 4x1 switcher is new hardware that auto syncs as it should and it works great.

These switchers come with DVI-DL cables, but if you need longer ones, buy cables from www.monoprice.com -- great cables, they work wonderfully and they have the best prices by far. Sorry for the shameless plug, but I can't stand overpaying for cables and I'm not affiliated with that store in any way. Also a gread source for cables if you just want to run your monitor farther away from your computer because it only comes with a 2M cable.

Oh, and you must have a DVI-DL source to connect to both the Dell and the Apple 30". If your system only has regular DVI, it will not work, you will get a garbage signal. Even if you run at a lower resolution that standard DVI supports, these two displays only accept a DVI-DL connection. It's a bunch of crap that it works that way, but just thought I'd give everyone a heads-up who may not have experience with them. When Apple and Dell say it needs a DVI-DL interface, it's not that they want you to buy a new video card, it's that these displays truly do require one.

[BJNY]

HP to announced quad-core workstations on Nov. 13th

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/10/13/quadcore/index.php

[Thomas2006]

BTW Looks like Apple is way overcharging for the 3GHz Woodcrest upgrade. Only cost them $322 more - probably less off the published price list - yet they are asking for $800. That doesn't seem fair to me. Does it to you? I would think that $500 would be a more reasonable upgrade price for something that cost them about $300.
Maybe it is so when the quad-core systems come out Apple can keep the same price for the top-end while lowering the price on dual-core systems and still make a profit. The people that wait for the quad-cores will be happy they did and the people that don't care can get a Mac Pro for less because they waited.

[Multimedia]

BTW Looks like Apple is way overcharging for the 3GHz Woodcrest upgrade. Only cost them $322 more - probably less off the published price list - yet they are asking for $800. That doesn't seem fair to me. Does it to you? I would think that $500 would be a more reasonable upgrade price for something that cost them about $300.I may have jumped the gun. Maybe it's not too much more. When I look at the published price of each 3GHz Woodcrest $851 and each 2.33GHz Clovertown $851, I can live with +$800 for either upgrade. ;)Maybe it is so when the quad-core systems come out Apple can keep the same price for the top-end while lowering the price on dual-core systems and still make a profit. The people that wait for the quad-cores will be happy they did and the people that don't care can get a Mac Pro for less because they waited. And each 2.66GHz Clovertown is published as $1172 so I'm surmising a + $1100 - $3599 - could be expected for top of the line Fall '06 8-Core Mac Pro - only $300 more than last year's Quad G5. :eek:

Plus once Clovertown ships, seems like Intel would begin lowering the price of Woodcrest to their customers as well. So I think you may be right. Wouldn't hurt. :p

Ain't technological progress astounding and fun? :D

[ReanimationLP]

Wow, the Quad Xeon is the Pentium D all over again!

The Quad Xeon is two Dual Xeons glued together, and the Pentium D was two Pentium 4s glued together.

Its still faster than the Dual Xeons, but it isnt as good as it can be.

[AppliedVisual]

Wow, the Quad Xeon is the Pentium D all over again!

The Quad Xeon is two Dual Xeons glued together, and the Pentium D was two Pentium 4s glued together.

Its still faster than the Dual Xeons, but it isnt as good as it can be.

Yeah... Kinda disappointing. Although, my 3D rendering work will benefit just fine from them as while it's CPU intensive, it's not bandwidth hungry and the software itself isn't all that great for thread scheduling, so it's better to run multiple software instances for each CPU/core. I'm curious to see how the Clovertowns compare to the upcoming AMD quad-core chips, which have full 4-way shared data pipe and L2 cache. I think it's going to be just like the AMD X2 vs. the Pentium-D all over again. AMD will hold the quad-core performance title until Intel releases their 45nm process chips with all 4 cores being fully linked. But such is the way it's been for the last few years, AMD and Intel continue to play leap-frog. Which is great for the consumer as it drives CPU tech ahead so fast... Too bad my wallet can't keep up. :(

[ReanimationLP]

Yeah... Kinda disappointing. Although, my 3D rendering work will benefit just fine from them as while it's CPU intensive, it's not bandwidth hungry and the software itself isn't all that great for thread scheduling, so it's better to run multiple software instances for each CPU/core. I'm curious to see how the Clovertowns compare to the upcoming AMD quad-core chips, which have full 4-way shared data pipe and L2 cache. I think it's going to be just like the AMD X2 vs. the Pentium-D all over again. AMD will hold the quad-core performance title until Intel releases their 45nm process chips with all 4 cores being fully linked. But such is the way it's been for the last few years, AMD and Intel continue to play leap-frog. Which is great for the consumer as it drives CPU tech ahead so fast... Too bad my wallet can't keep up. :(

Seconded, hell, my Mac is an OLD Digital Audio G4, and my PC is Northwood Pentium 4 HT processor. :o :o

[Multimedia]

Yeah... Kinda disappointing. Although, my 3D rendering work will benefit just fine from them as while it's CPU intensive, it's not bandwidth hungry and the software itself isn't all that great for thread scheduling, so it's better to run multiple software instances for each CPU/core. I'm curious to see how the Clovertowns compare to the upcoming AMD quad-core chips, which have full 4-way shared data pipe and L2 cache. I think it's going to be just like the AMD X2 vs. the Pentium-D all over again. AMD will hold the quad-core performance title until Intel releases their 45nm process chips with all 4 cores being fully linked. But such is the way it's been for the last few years, AMD and Intel continue to play leap-frog. Which is great for the consumer as it drives CPU tech ahead so fast... Too bad my wallet can't keep up. :(I wonder if one of the Leopard "Top Secrets" is Core Control so we may assign how many cores for each applicaiton we know can use more than one.

This product may be one of the most anticipated by me in my entire 22 years with Mac. I really can't wait for it to ship. Going from Two to Four then Eight Cores in less than one year, and not just for show but for really finding a need and honestly needing all that additional horsepower, - only since February '06 for me - is a pretty amazing technological leaping experience. :)

My 30" Dell arrives tomorrow, Friday October 20. Whoopie! Mac Pro 8-Core Ready, Willing & Able. Retiring my 27" Sony KV-27XBR45 CRT made in July 1997 from the office today. One less tube down. Can see the end of CRTs in the distance now. Only one 20" SONY CRT TV left in the office. Using EyeTV Hybrids to replace all TVs in the house.

[AppliedVisual]

I wonder if one of the Leopard "Top Secrets" is Core Control so we may assign how many cores for each applicaiton we know can use more than one.

That would be nice. Although, I don't think it would be too difficult to write such an app that could be controlled via a dashboard widget. I haven't dug that deep into OSX programming and XCode, but it will definitely be something I'll have to look into doing if Leopard doesn't have the ability and I've got 8 cores to manage.

This product may be one of the most anticipated by me in my entire 22 years with Mac. I really can't wait for it to ship. Going from Two to Four Then Eight Cores in less than one year, and not just for show but for really finding a need and really needing all that additional horsepower, - only since February '06 for me - is a pretty amazing technological leaping experience. :)

Same here. Only 6 years ago, I had to have a Pentium workstation with 10 separate systems for rendering. Over the years, those numbers have fluxuated, but now we've come to a whole new way of working. A single Mac Pro with 8GB and the lowest video and HDD option (with the dual-core Woodcrest) can replace 3 of the systems on my render farm and still provide a performance increase. I'm really looking into XServe, but they're rather expensive. The preliminary reviews are making me drool, but that's a lot of money for render nodes. I'm so tempted though - 8-core XServe w/16GB RAM looks like a winner. 4 of those in my rack would render all my 3D faster than I can model and set up the scenes. ...It's only money, right? :D

My 30" Dell arrives tomorrow, Friday October 20. Whoopie! Mac Pro 8-Core Ready, Willing & Able.

Congrats! Hope you have better luck than me.. I had to refuse mine on monday because the box was mangled and crushed. Dell is shipping a new one, but I don't have tracking/delivery info yet. :( But like I said before, I have one already and love the the thing.

[AppliedVisual]

Congrats! Hope you have better luck than me.. I had to refuse mine on monday because the box was mangled and crushed. Dell is shipping a new one, but I don't have tracking/delivery info yet. :( But like I said before, I have one already and love the the thing.

And now for the update... Dell re-shipped via UPS next-day. Still took until yesterday apparently to actually ship from Dell. But it's here. I just plugged it in and everything looks just fine. No dead/stuck pixels I can see. But then again, that's the way my first one was I bought nearly a year ago. After about 3 months, *POP!* one blue stuck pixel. Hehe, these two screens look maaaavolous together. :D Would it be gloating too much if I posted a pic? Heheheh... Maybe I'll bust out the camera after I clean off my desk. ;)

[Multimedia]

Now to pre-arrange for the 8-core Mac Pro's arrival next month. :)

I'm now working with

Two 20" - 1600 x 1200 Dells
One 24" - 1920 x 1200 Dell
One 30" - 2560 x 1600 Dell
Two 15" - 1024 x 768 Original 15" Analog Bondai Blue Apple Studio Displays

2 PowerMac G5's Quad, 2GHz Dual Core + 1 Old 1.25GHz PowerBook G4
2 G4 Cubes

for a total of 9 cores totaling 16.2GHz. :p

Original retail cost of all of the above about $13,000

New 8-Core Mac Pro @ 2.66GHz each totaling 21.28GHz for about $4,000

[rxse7en]

My 24" came in earlier this week. Using it as my main monitor and the MBP screen is my tools monitor now. Very happy overall and the SD and CF ports are a bonus.

B

[dpaanlka]

So the high end will no longer be at 3ghz?

How hard can an extra 333mhz be to attain? Especially with these cool-running Intel chips.

[AppliedVisual]

So the high end will no longer be at 3ghz?

How hard can an extra 333mhz be to attain? Especially with these cool-running Intel chips.

It will come, just not with the initial production models. With the quad-core chips, Intel is already running into FSB bandwidth issues as it is. The Clovertowns are essentially dual Woodcrest CPUs stuck on the same die, sharing the same FSB and communication between the first duo-core CPU and the second duo-core CPU on that die must travel onto the FSB and into the other CPU. Between the two cores that are linked directly, data sharing can be handled through the L1 cache. So, depending on your application, the 8-core may be no better than a 4-core system -- if what your'e doing is already maxing out your CPU bus bandwidth. Somwhere down the road as Intel shifts to its 45nm production process and fully integrates all 4 cores on a single CPU (and later, 8 cores on die), we will see massive improvements in inter-core bandwidth. They will have to step-up on the FSB bandwidth though... Possibly by increasing the MHz, but more than likely we'll see some of that combined with increasing the width of the data path and possibly using multiple parallel FSB designs. ...Going to be interesting, that's for sure. And with Intel's new process and the plans for continuously jamming more cores onto a die at higher speeds, I think we're in for a real ride over the next 5 years or so.

[Multimedia]

My 24" came in earlier this week. Using it as my main monitor and the MBP screen is my tools monitor now. Very happy overall and the SD and CF ports are a bonus.

BI'm Speechless. All I can think of is "Wow!"

Makes 20" 1600 x 1200 look puny and the 24" 1920 x 1200 modest.

How do I look for dead pixels AppliedVisual? Yes I want two. :)

The 30" makes such a huge difference in managing windows of different applications simultaneously. I can see why you wanted 2 AV. Tell me, is there a significant improvement inthe design of your 3007 vs the 3005 model? I notice mine has no moving parts touch sensitive controls that are so stealth. I really love the black or dark brown matt finish way more than the shiny aluminum Apple finish. In the dark, this matt dark brown disappears so only the screens are floating there.

______________________

High Definition TV Was 23" on the 24" now 29" on the 30 - up 126%.

Interpolates up 133% wonderfully to 2560 Wide x 1440 High.

While the High Def programming looks great, it really makes the standard def programming look quite a bit worse than it does on the native res 24".

I envy you kids who won't have to live with analog and standard def digital TV very many more years. For old folks like me who have been anticipating and waiting for High-Def TV for many years - and I can assure you we are very few, it can't happen too soon 'cause we will be dead very soon after the transition is complete. :(

[b0tt094]

yeah, this will be great if we want to run a small country with.

lmao and just to add, DAMN that is alot of cores

[Multimedia]

lmao and just to add, DAMN that is alot of coresNot if you use applications that are Core Hogs. Compressing video with Toast uses up to 4 cores per instance. Compressing video with Handbrake uses up to 3 cores per instance. So, no, it's not a lot of cores at all and I will be buying a 16 core then a 32 core Mac Pro the day they ship as well. :eek:

[Multimedia]

Big news. 2GB Mac Pro sticks now cost same as 1GB sticks per GB.

1GB sticks are $175 each. 2GB sticks are now $350 each. This is HUGE.

So now a 4GB kit (2GBx2) is only $699 at 1-800-4MEMORY via this Ramseeker.com link (http://www.ramseeker.com/scripts/counter.php?http://www.18004memory.com/ramseeker/default.asp?itemid=502459).

Fantastic! I don't know about you, but I believe this represents a sea change in the pricing of 2GB modules. I don't know how long ago these prices reached parity, but I have been looking for this time for quite a while.

[elbirth]

Big news. 2GB Mac Pro sticks now cost same as 1GB sticks per GB.

1GB sticks are $175 each. 2GB sticks are now $350 each. This is HUGE.

So now a 4GB kit (2GBx2) is only $699 at 1-800-4MEMORY via this Ramseeker.com link (http://www.ramseeker.com/scripts/counter.php?http://www.18004memory.com/ramseeker/default.asp?itemid=502459).

Fantastic! I don't know about you, but I believe this represents a sea change in the pricing of 2GB modules. I don't know how long ago these prices reached parity, but I have been looking for this time for quite a while.


That's great! I want to put 4GB in my 8-core Mac Pro anyway, so I hope the price lingers there (or maybe even falls a little by the time I can get an octo core). I'd buy now, but I'd rather hold out on the chance that it'll drop a little more, or even on the longshot that they'd change what kind of modules the new machines use.

[AppliedVisual]

That's great! I want to put 4GB in my 8-core Mac Pro anyway, so I hope the price lingers there (or maybe even falls a little by the time I can get an octo core). I'd buy now, but I'd rather hold out on the chance that it'll drop a little more, or even on the longshot that they'd change what kind of modules the new machines use.

I doubt anything with the Mac Pro will change (other than the CPUs) when the 8-core models ship. Intel originally was very committed to using the FB-DIMM type RAM in their systems for the next couple years. However, they have since backtracked on that and said that they will continue to explore other options. Who knows what that means... I thik it means that we'll probably see DDR3 on mid-range systems in '07, probably in notebooks as well at some point mid to late year. But I would guess that for the foreseeable future, FB-DIMM is the standard for Xeon workstations and servers, so Mac Pro and XServer should continue with this type of RAM for a while. When Intel finally shifts to the new 45nm process sometime mid/late next year, then all bets are off as they will need to increase bandwidth for both the RAM and FSB to keep in step with CPU growth.

[Roy]

Anyone know anything about these suppliers, other than Crucial Technology?

[AppliedVisual]

I'm Speechless. All I can think of is "Wow!"

Makes 20" 1600 x 1200 look puny and the 24" 1920 x 1200 modest.

Yep. Now that I've gone with the 30", I feel so cramped on anything smaller. The dual 30" config is awesome... More than enough space to leave all kinds of stuff accessible - it's insanely wonderfully cool.

...Which brings up my little learning experience over the past couple days. I fired up my 30" as the second display on may G5 quad and all was well. But I was starting to have second thoughts about crowding my desk at home. I packed it back up and took it to the office, plugged it in. Came right up, but I couldn't set the resolution on it to anything higher than 1280x800. Hmmm.... Both had the same video card, (or so I thought), both were the same system, the one at the office was manufactured 12/05, the one at home was 10/05. So I try some different software re-installs and whatnot can't figure it out. so I jump online and research until I'm blue... The 7800GT only has a single dual-link DVI port. Weird, I thought it had two? So I packed the monitor back up, took it home to see what was up... Before plugging it into my quad at home, I started to move the system to open it up and noticed the extra fan openign next to the DVI connectors and the round mini-din style connector. WTF! So I popped the lid real quick to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. This system has the FX4500 and I never even noticed until now. I guess I never checked. :o I had to dig out my invoice, it was a refurbished system I bought from a local dealer -- system was a lease return that made it back to them after only 3 months. It supposedly had the 7800GT in it, but nope - FX4500.

Lucky me. :D My resale value on this system just went way up. ;)

How do I look for dead pixels AppliedVisual? Yes I want two. :)

Two kinds of bad pixels usually show on LCD monitors. Dead pixels are pixels that are black and won't do anything, somewhat rare, really. Stuck pixels are pixels where one of the R, G or B elements is "stuck" at a certain color value and won't change. Typically stuck pixels are stuck full-on and will stand out against dark backgrounds. The best way to check for them is to run a full-screen game or program that can show a black background, other color backgrounds can be helful at times too. Stuck pixels will be visible pixels in these situations. Usually, you'll see them when they show up as they do tend to stand out against contrasting backgrounds. Other types of anomalies on these displays are white pixels or sparkles, which can either be static like a dead/stuck pixel or they can move or come and go. These are usually caused by a poor video signal or too much power over the video interface. Sometimes can even be a faulty GPU. Multi-component pixels - where more than just one R, G or B component is stuck on at the same pixel location are often a faulty GPU. But sparkels and multi-component pixels can still be a defective display... I ordered a Dell notebook for an employee a couple years ago and it arrived with hundreds of stuck/multicomp. pixels all around the screen edges. Dell swapped it out, but I know it was caused by the system sitting on a loading dock or in a truck overnight when it got to -25F here. The LCD screen literally froze all around the edges causing irrepairable damage!

The 30" makes such a huge difference in managing windows of different applications simultaneously. I can see why you wanted 2 AV. Tell me, is there a significant improvement inthe design of your 3007 vs the 3005

AFAIK, there never was a 3005 model, only the 3007. Dell didn't announce their 30" display until last December. I ordered mine on Christmas Eve last year and received it the first week of January. It's a 3007 model as well, Rev.A00. The new one is Rev.A02. Both are identical except I find the old one to have a slight tint to the whites. I had to tweak the color profile for the old one a bit to match the new one, but now it's fine. I don't know if it's a difference in revisions or just normal variation between models or what. The difference is slight, and is only noticeable when the two are side by side, which they are. :D On the bright side, with that Dell forum coupon, my new one was nearly $1K cheaper than the first one.

[SMM]

It will come, just not with the initial production models. With the quad-core chips, Intel is already running into FSB bandwidth issues as it is. The Clovertowns are essentially dual Woodcrest CPUs stuck on the same die, sharing the same FSB and communication between the first duo-core CPU and the second duo-core CPU on that die must travel onto the FSB and into the other CPU. Between the two cores that are linked directly, data sharing can be handled through the L1 cache. So, depending on your application, the 8-core may be no better than a 4-core system -- if what your'e doing is already maxing out your CPU bus bandwidth. Somwhere down the road as Intel shifts to its 45nm production process and fully integrates all 4 cores on a single CPU (and later, 8 cores on die), we will see massive improvements in inter-core bandwidth. They will have to step-up on the FSB bandwidth though... Possibly by increasing the MHz, but more than likely we'll see some of that combined with increasing the width of the data path and possibly using multiple parallel FSB designs. ...Going to be interesting, that's for sure. And with Intel's new process and the plans for continuously jamming more cores onto a die at higher speeds, I think we're in for a real ride over the next 5 years or so.

Absolutely agree. It must be exciting to be an EE working on this stuff right now. So many options to explore. How would you design a memory bus which would be dynamic enough to adjust for a doubling of processors? If you had a fixed, known number of processors, the design is straight-forward. But, the new multi-core design is not something they have had to deal with before. I wonder how they will do it?

[Multimedia]

That's great! I want to put 4GB in my 8-core Mac Pro anyway, so I hope the price lingers there (or maybe even falls a little by the time I can get an octo core). I'd buy now, but I'd rather hold out on the chance that it'll drop a little more, or even on the longshot that they'd change what kind of modules the new machines use.I doubt anything with the Mac Pro will change (other than the CPUs) when the 8-core models ship. Intel originally was very committed to using the FB-DIMM type RAM in their systems for the next couple years. However, they have since backtracked on that and said that they will continue to explore other options. Who knows what that means... I thik it means that we'll probably see DDR3 on mid-range systems in '07, probably in notebooks as well at some point mid to late year. But I would guess that for the foreseeable future, FB-DIMM is the standard for Xeon workstations and servers, so Mac Pro and XServer should continue with this type of RAM for a while. When Intel finally shifts to the new 45nm process sometime mid/late next year, then all bets are off as they will need to increase bandwidth for both the RAM and FSB to keep in step with CPU growth.Zactly. Waiting for prices to change is probably an act of futility other than waiting for an 8-core refurb. The 3GHz Woody Mac Pro Refurb is $3299 which would compare to the 2.33GHz Clovertown. So there isn't going to be a lot of "savings" waiting for the refurbs which probably won't show up until late January at the soonest. Can you afford to be without all that power in the meantime? I can't wait.

[Multimedia]

Anyone know anything about these suppliers, other than Crucial Technology?I know Omni and 1-800-4MEMORY are both suppliers of good ram for less money.

I've never understood why anyone buys RAM from the more expensive Crucial. Can only be marketing 'cause I have no reason to pay more for RAM from just another supplier of the same thing. :rolleyes:

[AppliedVisual]

I've never understood why anyone buys RAM from the more expensive Crucial. Can only be marketing 'cause I have no reason to pay more for RAM from just another supplier of the same thing. :rolleyes:

Crucial makes great stuff (usually). The trick is to not buy direct from Crucial!!! But vendors like newegg and zipzoomfly sell Crucial memory at prices close to all the other "cheap" memory like OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, Kingston -- or all the other makers that make some pretty darn good stuff (usually). Right now, FB-DIMMs are pretty scarce... Most vendors for Mac Pro RAM are shipping the same Samsung modules that Apple is, they are just using different OEM heat spreaders. The price just keeps falling as the Mac Pro and other PC systems use more of this stuff and demand increases. I definitely see an 8-core Mac Pro w/8GB (4x2GB) in my near future. :) I think I'm going to sell one of my G5 Quads though, the resale value on these is really holding strong -- they're going on eBay for just about what I paid for them! May jump on it now or as soon as the 8-core Pro is released because I fear that as soon as Adobe CS3 hits along with a few other universal binary updates people are waiting on, the value of these G5 Quads is going to go in the crapper.

[elbirth]

Anyone know anything about these suppliers, other than Crucial Technology?

Several co-workers of mine have used 18004memory and Datamem and rave about how good they are. Pretty low prices compared to other places and they seem to be fairly reliable.

I bought a 1GB stick from 18004memory for my MacBook Pro but it makes it reboot once every few days or so (once I take it out, it'll go weeks without randomly rebooting). I need to RMA it, but I think it was just bad luck on my part.

[elbirth]

Zactly. Waiting for prices to change is probably an act of futility other than waiting for an 8-core refurb. The 3GHz Woody Mac Pro Refurb is $3299 which would compare to the 2.33GHz Clovertown. So there isn't going to be a lot of "savings" waiting for the refurbs which probably won't show up until late January at the soonest. Can you afford to be without all that power in the meantime? I can't wait.

Well, I'm waiting until around January to buy a new 8-core, not a refurb. I'm just seeing if I could perhaps save a couple bucks on the RAM because every little bit would help. I've been planning for a couple months now to wait until Macworld SF in January because initially I assumed that would be when the 8-core systems would be out. However, if they're out this year, even better- if any big issues pop up hopefully they can have them worked out. In that case I *may* get a refurb if they have them that soon- otherwise I'm just saving my money and had planned it out to have what I think should be enough (or close) by mid-January.

Luckily I can afford to wait (and my bank account thanks me for doing so). While I'm not in need of that kind of processing power, I believe I could definitely put it to use. My 2GHz MacBook Pro is my primary machine right now and I regularly get it to the point where it's starting to crawl and becomes painfully slow at times.

[Multimedia]

And now for the update... Dell re-shipped via UPS next-day. Still took until yesterday apparently to actually ship from Dell. But it's here. I just plugged it in and everything looks just fine. No dead/stuck pixels I can see. But then again, that's the way my first one was I bought nearly a year ago. After about 3 months, *POP!* one blue stuck pixel. Hehe, these two screens look maaaavolous together. :D Would it be gloating too much if I posted a pic? Heheheh... Maybe I'll bust out the camera after I clean off my desk. ;)Holy Molly now 30" Dells are only $1279.20 (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productlisting.aspx?c=us&category_id=6198&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs). They just lowered the list to $1599.

Any chance we can get a price adjustment?

We paid $1349 last week. That's another $75.60 less including tax. Man I could of had an iPod Shuffle for that. :(

10.24.06 - New C2D MacBookPro's announced.

AV-I phoned Dell this morning and got a $70 credit toward my 30". Wouldn't give me the $5.60 sales tax but got $70 instead of the usual $50 they said. Me so happy. That means I got the Dell 30" including sales tax for $1398.32. :D :p :)

[doctor pangloss]

In three years they will have something much better, might as well wait!:p

[AppliedVisual]

In three years they will have something much better, might as well wait!:p

Yeah, I'm not buying until the 32" 4K resolution monitors hit $1599. :rolleyes:

[RichP]

Damn multimedia, you are making me want that Dell! I just went to the Apple store to check out the 30" (pulled a stool up to the machine from the genius bar and tried to see if I could handle all that real estate). I am usually a sucker for Apple stuff and having matching componentry...but that dell is so CHEAP!

AV/multimedia, how far do you sit from your screen?

[Multimedia]

Damn multimedia, you are making me want that Dell! I just went to the Apple store to check out the 30" (pulled a stool up to the machine from the genius bar and tried to see if I could handle all that real estate). I am usually a sucker for Apple stuff and having matching componentry...but that dell is so CHEAP!

AV/multimedia, how far do you sit from your screen?Mine are up against the wall at the back of 3 foot deep tables. I have an L table setup with a 6x3 and 8x3 for a total of 9x8 so I'm usually about 3-4 feet away.

Yes the Dells are low priced (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productlisting.aspx?c=us&category_id=6198&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs) but they do not look nor feel cheap in any way. I really prefer the black or dark brown frames Dell uses. In the dark the screens float in the dark and the frames do not reflect anything from the screens like the Apple Aluminum frames must. Plus they all have 4-port USB 2 hubs in them and 9-type memory card readers. And they all have elevators so you can adjust the height which Apple's do not. I love the new x07 model Dell Stands which differ from the x05 model stands. And they are all VESA mount compatible as well. I'm gonna get another Dell 30" next Spring or as soon as they hit $999 which ever comes first - watch out Black Friday - November 24. :p

The popularity of 30" monitors has got to be going through the roof right now with these ever rapidly lowering prices happening. I can really see the end of all CRTs now.

[AppliedVisual]

AV/multimedia, how far do you sit from your screen?

I sit about 35 to 40" from my 30" display. Seems to be about the ideal distance. I keep the height adjusted so my eyes looking straight ahead are about 1/4 of the way down from the top of the screen. My primary display is centered straight ahead and the secondary display is on my left on an angle. Works very well. Took some getting used to as I've always had my secondary monitor on the right, but with the room layout, it worked better on the left at my new place. Ah, it's late, but I'll post a picture tomorrow tomorrow night so you can get a feel for what we're talking about. These Dell 30-inchers are just plain cool.

Other than that, I second everything Multimedia said... Although, I already bought my second Dell 30" when it broke the $1400 mark. it's just too cool having 2 of these side by side. It's almost surreal having this kind of desktop real estate. Just be aware that with the G5 Macs, you need an FX4000 of FX4500 video card to use two of these. With the Mac Pro, the FX4500 again, or the ATI X1900xt will run dual 30" displays as well and is a bargain at $240 upgrade when ordering.

[RichP]

Well, to bring this back on topic, and talk more about screens; I have a G5 right now that can run one 30"; I am going to get a Macpro once Adobe goes universal, and at that time, we should have a revisionB Macpro, perhaps with more cores. Macpro, for the performance, once it was loaded with memory, just wasnt a good deal compared to a used G5 2.7 I found on ebay (6GB of RAM!)

I run 2 20"s right now, and really like dual screen. Reason being is one display is hooked to my G5, the other is hooked to a KVM that goes between the G5 and my PC. I use the PC only for CAD, and with programs like Alias, there is so much screen real estate taken with menus, it would be nice to have a little more space. I would just go with 2 apple 23" screens, but their color is just horrible, and my experience is tainted from them. If I get a 30", then I need to also get an expensive dualink DVI KVM, but the dell is so less expensive, getting that over the apple would completely offset the cost of the switch.

Thanks for the info guys, I was trying to figure out how I should have the screen setup; you dont want to sit so close to it that you need to move your eyes around alot to see things, that can be very fatiguing.

[AppliedVisual]

If I get a 30", then I need to also get an expensive dualink DVI KVM, but the dell is so less expensive, getting that over the apple would completely offset the cost of the switch.

Just thought I'd put in my piece of advice about DVI-DL KVM switches. I'm only aware of three of them on the market, the two most common are from Gefen (www.gefen.com). I'm using the 4x1 Gefen and it works perfectly switching my primary display between my G5 quad, two PCs and my MBP. I know the quad switch is double the price, but DO NOT BUY THE 2x1 DVI-DL SWITCH from Gefen!!! It is using an older design and internal chipset and requires you to disassemble it to tweak an internal control dial. Then use two fine-tuning dials on the front (one for each input) to stabilize the picture. Unfortunately, unless all your devices are using identical video chipsets and putting out identical (or as close as possible) signals, you will never get both displays synchronized. Gefen knows about the problem but remains silent about the issue. They swapped my 2x1 switch for a 4x1 switch and gave me a decent discount after I went through two 2x1s with the same issue. Finally one of their senior tech guys admitted to the problem... So if you're connecting two G5's with the same video card, go for it. but if you have different hardware, then steer well away. The 4x1 switch has no compensation dials and does it's own on the fly signal tuning for each input, just as DVI is supposed to.

Sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to vent on this and maybe share someone else the frustration. Besides, dealing with Gefen is a total PITA! It's been two months of me calling them every other day trying to get a refund for something I returned long ago.

The other DVI-DL switch I know of is a matrix switch costing close to $6K. If you want the details I'll fill you in, but it's a commercial A/V electronic patching matrix suitable for running a mix of high-res or HD res displays and video walls in sports bars and/or shopping malls. :D

[Multimedia]

Just noticed Apple has added 750GB HDs to the Mac Pro configure page recently. Only a few weeks left 'til the Dual Clovertown Mac Pros ship.

2.33GHz C2D MacBook Pros announced yesterday shipping today. Only MacBook & mini left to complete the Core 2 Duo transition. Should be all in place by Thanksgiving including 8-core Mac Pro. Very exciting. :)

[elbirth]

Just noticed Apple has added 750GB HDs to the Mac Pro configure page recently. Only a few weeks left 'til the Dual Clovertown Mac Pros ship.

2.33GHz C2D MacBook Pros announced yesterday shipping today. Only MacBook & mini left to complete the Core 2 Duo transition. Should be all in place by Thanksgiving including 8-core Mac Pro. Very exciting. :)

Yeah, I saw someone talking earlier about the addition of the 750GB drives... this gives me a new dilemma of deciding between 2 drives. I suppose price will be my deciding factor overall... I just want my 8 cores!

[RichP]

Just thought I'd put in my piece of advice about DVI-DL KVM switches. I'm only aware of three of them on the market, the two most common are from Gefen (www.gefen.com). I'm using the 4x1 Gefen and it works perfectly switching my primary display between my G5 quad, two PCs and my MBP. I know the quad switch is double the price, but DO NOT BUY THE 2x1 DVI-DL SWITCH from Gefen!!!


Darn it! That is just stupid. I have a gefen DVI switch now, its sad to hear that the 2x1 is junk. Its not worth it to me for the 4x1, either 900 for a switch, for for 1280, (a few hundred more) I get ANOTHER 30"!

I wish the apple 23s just had the quality of the 20 and 30. :mad:

[Elfear]

Sorry for the noob question, but does anyone know how well Maya 7 will scale with 8 cores? My buddy is debating whether to buy a single Kentsfield or step up to dual Clovertons. He has a freelance business in which he uses Maya 7 quite a bit. Thanks.

[AppliedVisual]

Sorry for the noob question, but does anyone know how well Maya 7 will scale with 8 cores? My buddy is debating whether to buy a single Kentsfield or step up to dual Clovertons. He has a freelance business in which he uses Maya 7 quite a bit. Thanks.

Well the Maya application itself won't benefit anymore from 8 cores than it would from 2 or 4. But 8-cores will help immensely with rendering, especially if he uses MentalRay and has enough licenses. Currently Maya Complete has 2 licenses and Maya Unlimited has 8. I'm not sure how the Maya licenses will apply to quad-core CPUs just yet.

[Elfear]

Well the Maya application itself won't benefit anymore from 8 cores than it would from 2 or 4. But 8-cores will help immensely with rendering, especially if he uses MentalRay and has enough licenses. Currently Maya Complete has 2 licenses and Maya Unlimited has 8. I'm not sure how the Maya licenses will apply to quad-core CPUs just yet.

Sweet. That's what we needed to know. I believe he has Maya Unlimited so he should be good for the 8 cores no matter how they decide to license it.

Is the ability to render using more than 2 cores a feature of both Maya 7 and Maya 8?

[ATG]

The problem is that Appkit isn't thread safe, and until it is you aren't going to see much on the multithreading side. It's fine for a renderer but for your run of the mill GUI app like keynote or pages or iLife there isn't much point.

[ATD]

Sweet. That's what we needed to know. I believe he has Maya Unlimited so he should be good for the 8 cores no matter how they decide to license it.

Is the ability to render using more than 2 cores a feature of both Maya 7 and Maya 8?

I have Maya Unlimited and I render (mental ray) to 6 cores (a quad and a dual). This works in Maya 7 and 8. It's a pain to setup, easy for 1 computer, a pain for network setups.

Edit, it just so happens that I started hooking up my mental ray satellite as I wrote this post. As expected it was a pain so I had to contact Atuodesk to get help. I noticed that in the setup info it suggested Maya Unlimited 8 gives you 8 additional render licenses on top of the 4 that are standard. I asked the rep if that was correct and he said yes. So that's 12 all together. :D :D :D

[Elfear]

I have Maya Unlimited and I render (mental ray) to 6 cores (a quad and a dual). This works in Maya 7 and 8. It's a pain to setup, easy for 1 computer, a pain network setups.

Edit, it just so happens that I started hooking up my mental ray satellite as I wrote this post. As expected it was a pain so I had to contact Atuodesk to get help. I noticed that in the setup info it suggested Maya Unlimited 8 gives you 8 additional render licenses on top of the 4 that are standard. I asked the rep if that was correct and he said yes. So that's 12 all together. :D :D :D



How well does Maya scale when you use 2, 4, and 6 threads?

[ATD]

How well does Maya scale when you use 2, 4, and 6 threads?

I'm not sure how the app (Maya) itself scales but the rendering in Mental Ray scales perfectly. 4 cpus render twice as fast as 2, 6 cpus render 3 times as fast as 2. That's if all the cpus are the same of course.

Is that what you were asking?

[Elfear]

I'm not sure how the app (Maya) itself scales but the rendering in Mental Ray scales perfectly. 4 cpus render twice as fast as 2, 6 cpus render 3 times as fast as 2. That's if all the cpus are the same of course.

Is that what you were asking?



Yup. That was exactly what I needed to know. I just didn't want to recommend that my buddy buy two quadcores unless it was going to help out his render times. Thanks again.