New Dell Xeon E5-2667 Review - Mac Pro Soon?

24Frames said:

AnandTech Review here http://www.anandtech.com/show/5769/dell-precision-t3600-review-dells-new-enterprise

Price is 4450 USD for a single 6-Core CPU with NVidia Quadro 4000 GPU.

For 3D rendering you get a CINEBENCH 11.5 score of around 9, about the same as the current single processor Mac Pro with the BTO X3680 6-Core option. By comparison a 27-inch iMac with the 3.4GHz BTO option has a CINEBENCH score of 6.7, but costs around half the price, add an Mac Mini Server...

It will be very interesting to see what Apple have to offer.

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Bare in mind that price is because it uses a $1,600 processor which no one wanting a single workstation for themselves would use when the $600 E5-1650 is a much better option. Dell also charge $850 currently to upgrade from their cheapest graphics card to a Quadro 4000. Currently you can get 6-core T3500s for $1,700 with minimal RAM, storage and graphics. I expect them to be $800-$1200 cheaper than Apple's options just as they have been in the past with UP workstations and similar in price, if not more, on the DP models.

Interesting they aren't available until May. Obviously there is a limitation in the supply of E5 Xeons and chipsets.

Why is the e5 1650 much better?

theSeb said:

Why is the e5 1650 much better?

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Because at 3.2GHz it is clocked 10% faster for $1,000 less.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/64601,64589

24Frames said:

It is hard to understand the price difference between the E5-1650 and E5-1660, the tech specs on Intel's website look identical!

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What are you talking about?

http://ark.intel.com/products/series/63197

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1660 (15M Cache, 3.30 GHz, 0.0 GT/s Intel® QPI)
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1650 (10M Cache, 3.20 GHz, 0.0 GT/s Intel® QPI )

Last I checked 3.30 is not equal to 3.20. There is a gap in the Turbo mode also ( 3.8 versus 3.9 ). Likewise 15MB is not equal to 10MB .

Unfortunately there is no E5-16xx 8-Core, which would have made a nice replacement for the Mac Pro Quad-Core BTO X3680 (6-Core)...

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6 core would most likely be a replacement for a 6 core unless you want to throw away GHz. Far more single package users tend to be core capped and chasing after GHz.

Sandy Bridge is a "tock" arch move. Not a tick where more transistors appear because of the shrink.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple make the base single processor model a Hex-Core E5-1650 to differentiate the lower end of the Mac Pro line from the top end of the iMac line.

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I'd be deeply surprised because the 1650 is $200-300 more expensve then the entry model it would be replacing. As a price point the 1620 is a much better fit. It has the higher clock rate which most of the core limited folks want at a better price.

The Mac Pro entry price needs to move closer to $2,000 not farther away. That's a death spiral to move the other way toward approximately $3K being an entry point.

The 1620 has 40 PCI-e lanes. The Core i7 has 16. It is about much more than just synthetic L3 cache sized benchmarks that is the substantive difference. Besides the 1620 can turbo in a larger thermal envelope that the i7 in an iMac will.

The Mac Pro entry price needs to move closer to $2,000 not farther away. That's a death spiral to move the other way toward approximately $3K being an entry point.

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Agreed. When 3500 series Xeons were still current, the entry-level Mac Pro was a $2,000 machine at best (closer to $1,800 though, if you ask me). The W3530 is a sub-$300 CPU.

The last reasonably priced base Mac Pro was the 2008 8-core. It was a lot of computer for $2,799. At the time it was new, it had $1,400 worth of CPUs in it.

CaptainChunk said:

Agreed. When 3500 series Xeons were still current, the entry-level Mac Pro was a $2,000 machine at best (closer to $1,800 though, if you ask me). The W3530 is a sub-$300 CPU.

The last reasonably priced base Mac Pro was the 2008 8-core. It was a lot of computer for $2,799. At the time it was new, it had $1,400 worth of CPUs in it.

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What I paid for the hex was 125.00 cheaper than HP and Dell in 2010 when it was current. So I didn't feel like it was too un-reasonably priced. I know what Xeon's/ X58 cost. The Pro's are fairly competitive at time of release. It is 6 months later that they start loosing value.

derbothaus said:

What I paid for the hex was 125.00 cheaper than HP and Dell in 2010 when it was current. So I didn't feel like it was too un-reasonably priced. I know what Xeon's/ X58 cost. The Pro's are fairly competitive at time of release. It is 6 months later that they start loosing value.

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Right, but there was a much larger margin on the base quad-core, even at release. It wasn't until you got to the SP hex and and dual-processor machines that they achieved relative price parity with similar workstations from HP and Dell.

CaptainChunk said:

Right, but there was a much larger margin on the base quad-core, even at release. It wasn't until you got to the SP hex and and dual-processor machines that they achieved relative price parity with similar workstations from HP and Dell.

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Fully.

24Frames said:

HP and Dell both have 3 years parts, 3 years labor, and 3 years onsite service (3/3/3) standard warranty. Even with Apple Care you don't get that.

Apple are no doubt using Mac Pros for their developers workstations, and given the size of Apple they could probably keep producing them just for their internal use!

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Actually, AppleCare will cover on-site repairs on desktop computers. They did for me a couple years ago. But I did have to call a 3rd-party AASP (Apple referred me to one) to get one out to my office because I don't think the retail store "Geniuses" actually make house calls.

You just don't get 3/3/3 for free with Apple.