Intel Launching Woodcrest, Conroe and Merom Early?

[Multimedia]

Kentsfield Quads and Octs In A Year

its nice that in theory you can upgrade a mac mini etc with a Merom

I am looking to upgrade my powermac early 2007 and i am hoping for conroe or maybe woodcrest in that.

but a 17" MBP with Merom might be nice

No. You're looking at Kentsfield Quads and Octs In A Year. Conroe and Woodcrests will be old news slow by early 2007.

 

[Multimedia]

The 10 GHz PCI Express Quad PM G5 Is All New

They allready released the Intel version of Powermac to developers,intel version iMac & Mini I would expect a new design from apple rather then just throwing the developers edition on the market with a real video card. If you think about it Apple hasnt released a all new model in quite some time. Expect an all new Powermac this summer.

Believe me when I say "The Quad PM G5 Is All New". I can't think of anything that's "old" about it. Waiting for an expensive Rev A Woodcrest when you can have a 10 GHz Quad G5 now for only $3k is almost absurd to my way of thinking - especially when you consider that the entire Adobe CS3 Universal Suite won't be out until the 8 core Kentsfields come out next year.

I made the leap to Quad in early February and I have to tell you all that the Quad will change your life. The current Quad is the way to make it to the 8 core dual Kentsfields that are certainly coming out next year. This is my recommendation to anyone who needs real power NOW. I think there is little point in waiting 6 more months for the first Rev A Quad Intels when the Oct Intels are only about 12 months away from NOW.

 

[alfismoney]

negative ratings

there is a very good reason for a)intel releasing chips early and b)people rating this post with negatives.

the 'core' chips had 34 errors reported in their processing architecture within four weeks of launch. this is very, very bad, and will probably never be able to be improved on now that they are shipping. while intel was obviously unable to fix these errors before release, i am sure they want to bump the product off the shelves before consumers remember the 'pentium can't do math' problem that was all over the headlines about 15 years ago. bumping up chip releases is _very_ good for intel.

of course, if intel didn't manage to work out the kinks in the 'core' architecture when they had nothing on the market, accelerating new product development now can only mean they're not testing chips as well as they should be. unless there's a dumb stroke of luck, i would guess some of those negative ratings are due to people not wanting to buy another 'beta' chip for marked up prices. 34 errors could be nothing compared to what new, increasingly defective chips hold in store...

i, however, am hoping that merom will reach some form of 13" mac laptop before my tibook kicks the bucket (and boy is it close). thanks intel for being able to push out something when i desperately need it!

 

[angelwatt]

Hmm, indeed I wonder if the woodcrest is made from real wood, or that horrible fabricated stuff.

 

[generik]

I made the leap to Quad in early February and I have to tell you all that the Quad will change your life. The current Quad is the way to make it to the 8 core dual Kentsfields that are certainly coming out next year. This is my recommendation to anyone who needs real power NOW. I think there is little point in waiting 6 more months for the first Rev A Quad Intels when the Oct Intels are only about 12 months away from NOW.

Jesus will change your life.

A good investment plan can make a difference in your life.

A G5 Quad? Obsolete computer running obsolete code, and if it truly changes your life... then it is really sad

 

[Multimedia]

Nothing Is Obsolete About The 10 GHz G5 Quad And The Software It Runs

A G5 Quad? Obsolete computer running obsolete code, and if it truly changes your life... then it is really sad

Try recording HDTV, encoding HDTV recordings to DVD images, transcoding DVD images to archivable mp4 files while still being able to edit audio and video, write and post here as well as get mail and surf the web on anything less than a Quad and you will quickly see how pathetically slow all other Macs really are.

You want to live in the future with less than a Quad now, fine. But don't pretend that work getting done on a Quad now, that cant' be done simultaneously on anything less, is somehow "obsolete". Just two of those processes listed above use 3.25 of the 4 processors. If you have no experience with a Quad and don't need the power it delivers - very quietly I might add - then you have no idea why those of us who have one are delighted and glad.

It has truly changed my life and it is wonderful not sad.

 

[AidenShaw]

Pure BS....

the 'core' chips had 34 errors reported in their processing architecture within four weeks of launch. this is very, very bad, and will probably never be able to be improved on now that they are shipping.

You don't know what you're talking about....

To wit:

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=13478

By scblock (3.00) on 2006-01-29 07:01:22 UTC

Some of my mac using friends (I am a mac user as well) want to hate on Intel for some reason, and are severely against Apple's recent addition of Intel based machines to their lineup.

They posted the article about the OMG BUGS IN CORE DUO in our IRC channel and went on and on about how lazy Intel's designers must be. I went out to Freescale's website and grabbed the latest errata sheet for the processor in my Powerbook, and then went to IBM's site and grabbed the latest errata sheets for the G5s in their G5 machines. The latest PowerPC 970 had bugs in the high 20s, and the Freescale 7455 chip has, I think, 42 bugs currently, even though it has been out for years.

The long and short of the story matches up with the original article. Processors have bugs, and us they generally won't affect anyone except low-level coders such as kernel developers. This is much ado about nothing.

 

[alfismoney]

You don't know what you're talking about....

To wit:

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=13478

i'm not saying that every chip on the market is supposed to be bug free or that the core is bad for having errors, my point is that intel isn't about to sit on its laurels and let what is essentially a public beta chip sit at the head of its platform for longer than it has to. unlike ibm, intel and amd are constantly replacing their processors with newer (and hopefully better) technology. hence the G5 never appearing as a low power mobile unit and revisions of the G4 still shipping in quantity after 7 years.

my guess is that intel is ramping up production because they're unhappy with what they're shipping today, whether it's due to architecture problems or the fact that it was forced to fall back on a 32 bit solution is something i can't answer. i was simply speculating that people might be rating the post as negative because they are cutting down on their test time and might have a large bug count on the final products. personally, i think pushing up the release is a good thing.

 

[MovieCutter]

Believe me when I say "The Quad PM G5 Is All New". I can't think of anything that's "old" about it. Waiting for an expensive Rev A Woodcrest when you can have a 10 GHz Quad G5 now for only $3k is almost absurd to my way of thinking - especially when you consider that the entire Adobe CS3 Universal Suite won't be out until the 8 core Kentsfields come out next year.

I made the leap to Quad in early February and I have to tell you all that the Quad will change your life. The current Quad is the way to make it to the 8 core dual Kentsfields that are certainly coming out next year. This is my recommendation to anyone who needs real power NOW. I think there is little point in waiting 6 more months for the first Rev A Quad Intels when the Oct Intels are only about 12 months away from NOW.

Yeah...the Quad changed my life...then the MBP changed my life more...so I sold the Quad...as an atheist, I don't subscribe to Jesus . When I discovered that iPhoto, Safari, iWeb and a bunch of other apps actually were faster and snappier...and Final Cut Studio apps ran ALMOST as fast as on my Quad (with the exception of iPod video encoding which I don't much of anyway) I decided having a $5000 machine sitting under my desk to play video games was a waste...so out it went. I don't miss it actually, the only thing I DO miss about it is having a "home base" of stuff, but with my 8x500GB external drives, my MBP makes a nice temporary desktop replacement. BRING ON THE MAC PRO!!!

 

[QPlot]

Hmm, indeed I wonder if the woodcrest is made from real wood, or that horrible fabricated stuff.

That'll rock the temperature to 8000K?

 

[themacman]

Do they have any idea of the performance of conroe vs. dual core g5?

 

[azzurri000]

I hope Leopard and these new procs are ready together... that would just be perfect. I'm glad they didn't say that they would ready in October... much better for students. I know I would be pretty angry if my machine was revised only a month after its purchase.

 

[AidenShaw]

i'm not saying that every chip on the market is supposed to be bug free or that the core is bad for having errors, my point is that intel isn't about to sit on its laurels and let what is essentially a public beta chip sit at the head of its platform for longer than it has to. unlike ibm, intel and amd are constantly replacing their processors with newer (and hopefully better) technology. hence the G5 never appearing as a low power mobile unit and revisions of the G4 still shipping in quantity after 7 years.

If Intel fixes the problems, it becomes a different chip - so in essence your statement that they won't fix the existing chip is true - even if they fixed it!

My point is that "errata" are common, and is a standard way of dealing with minor, trivial flaws in microprocessors. IBM does it, Moto/Freescale does it, AMD does it, everybody does it.

One would never go back and make a new pass of silicon if a couple of lines of BIOS/EFI or HAL code can ensure that the erroneous situation cannot occur.

my guess is that intel is ramping up production because they're unhappy with what they're shipping today, whether it's due to architecture problems or the fact that it was forced to fall back on a 32 bit solution...

What architecture problems? There are a few errata.

Apple is the one that "fell back" to a 32-bit solution, not Intel.

Like many big companies, Intel has multiple teams developing products in parallel. The Yonah project was a relatively modest enhancement to the Pentium M line (add dual core, SSE3, minor bumps).

Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest are part of the much more ambitious Next Generation Architecture project. It's been under development for several years (note this March 2004 article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/17/intel_plots_4mb_l2_64bit/).

Look at Yonah as an "insurance policy" - had NGMA slipped, Intel would still be able to ship a dual-core chip in the notebook space in the interim. (A fairly cheap insurance policy, especially since Merom chips can be used in existing Yonah motherboards!)

...because they are cutting down on their test time and might have a large bug count on the final products. personally, i think pushing up the release is a good thing.

Even though that "large bug count" is 3/4 of the number of bugs in the PPC chip in the iBook G4 ???

The point of testing is to find and document the errata, not to continue to go back to the silicon drawing board and try to make a perfect chip. You only do that when an erratum is so serious that it cannot be worked around in low-level software (the Pentium FP bug being a good example of that).

Moving up the release is a good thing because it will get 64-bit dual-core laptops and low-power desktops here sooner. It's a good thing (for Intel) because it will give them an advantage over AMD. (I wonder what Sun's next marketing campaign will be, once Intel chips are faster and lower power than AMD. Ooops!)

Moving up the release because of a few errata is not an issue - because who's to say that Merom won't have *more* errata?

 

[Peace]

Intel iMac owners could,if they wanted to be adventurous,put a Merom CPU in their iMacs

 

[Shadows]

that really sounds delicious but unfortunately i'm not a leet haXor.

Apple techs too fast, but i that's surely for the greater good.

I guess i've decided to stick to my intel core duo imac

i can always get another mac

APPLE FOREVER!!!!

 

[ready2switch]

OK, yeah, that's cool if you have the money to spend...but for the rest of use, it means Mac machine will depreciate quicker and we will have to replace the whole machine to keep up (if you need the speed). In the PC world where professionals (and gamers) rely on the fastest machines they can get their hands on, they can upgrade their machines by swapping out the motherboard and replacing the chip. Their machines have a longer shelf life due to upgradablity. In the Intel Mac world, we might be stuck with something that is "old" within 6 months unless Apple lets us replace the motherboard and chip. Having said that, one of the reasons previous Macs have held their value so well it that they were slow on generational releases. A two year old G5 is still a pretty darn good machine, but the switch to Intel is going to change that. PC's on the other hand, are practically worthless for resale if you keep them more than a year. Most PC builders run their machines into the dust, but they can get at least 3 or 4 life cycles via upgrading components before they need to start over.

I find it funny when people assume Apple will upgrade and release new machines every few months. True Intel does upgrade their components faster than Apple has in the past, but going 2-3-4 years with NO upgrades will leave a company behind, especially in the business of technology. I think you have to step back from this year and not count it as "average". BIG changes are being made, and they are being made fast. I think once the Intel transition is over we will see a more moderate timeline for upgrades. Less than 2 years, but more than 6 months. Even though bigger and better may come out, Apple has the inside scoop on Intel, and will know when to upgrade and when to let it fall to the side.

 

[Multimedia]

Great To Hear MBP Is Almost As Fast As The "Obsolete" Quad

Yeah...the Quad changed my life...then the MBP changed my life more...so I sold the Quad...as an atheist, I don't subscribe to Jesus . When I discovered that iPhoto, Safari, iWeb and a bunch of other apps actually were faster and snappier...and Final Cut Studio apps ran ALMOST as fast as on my Quad (with the exception of iPod video encoding which I don't much of anyway) I decided having a $5000 machine sitting under my desk to play video games was a waste...so out it went. I don't miss it actually, the only thing I DO miss about it is having a "home base" of stuff, but with my 8x500GB external drives, my MBP makes a nice temporary desktop replacement. BRING ON THE MAC PRO!!!

That's great to know. I guess you don't miss looking at a pair of 1920 x 1200 monitors. I am doing iPod mp4 encoding every few hours so my needs are completely different than yours. And I didn't pay $5k for this Quad either. I would way rather split up chores among 4 cores than 2 no matter what small speed advantage there might be running Safari & iLife apps - which I don't use much at all. I use Firefox a lot of the time anyway.

For long term insurance, I would rather wait for Merom inside a 17" mobile MacIntel. My pokey 15" PB G4 is ok for the time being. Glad to hear you're successfully booking on the 15" MBP. Not enough screen space for me in the first place.

Except the fact that it's hooked up to my formerly-paired-with-Quad 30" Cinema Display I paid $3k for my Quad as well...it was WORTH $5k (in its configuration), which is what I sold it for...he he he.

Way to go on the resale. That 30" must rock. That's still not wide enough for me. I'm looking at 3520 wide by 1200 high. Like I said b4, need 4 cores. But congrats. I'm really happy for you. You are our Alpha site for Quad to MBP FCS migration.

One more question: How can you run that all in only 2 GB of RAM? I have 6 and think it might not be enough.

 

[milo]

its nice that in theory you can upgrade a mac mini etc with a Merom

It's not just a theory. Somebody already got their hands on an early Merom and confirmed that it runs in the mini.

OK, yeah, that's cool if you have the money to spend...but for the rest of use, it means Mac machine will depreciate quicker and we will have to replace the whole machine to keep up (if you need the speed). In the PC world where professionals (and gamers) rely on the fastest machines they can get their hands on, they can upgrade their machines by swapping out the motherboard and replacing the chip. Their machines have a longer shelf life due to upgradablity. In the Intel Mac world, we might be stuck with something that is "old" within 6 months unless Apple lets us replace the motherboard and chip. Having said that, one of the reasons previous Macs have held their value so well it that they were slow on generational releases. A two year old G5 is still a pretty darn good machine, but the switch to Intel is going to change that. PC's on the other hand, are practically worthless for resale if you keep them more than a year. Most PC builders run their machines into the dust, but they can get at least 3 or 4 life cycles via upgrading components before they need to start over.

All computers depreciate extremely quickly, you should buy based on what it can let you get done, not what it will be worth in a few months. Best to just assume that once you buy a machine it's worth practically nothing.

With the imac and the mini, you CAN replace the chip. It's nice to be on the same ground as the PC for a change.

The switch to intel will make no difference in whether a two year old machine is good or not. That machine may be further from the latest release, but it will still run very well and do what you bought it for. At this point 2 year old G5's are being challenged in performance by intel macs that are much cheaper.

It would have to be a 17" Merom, ExpressCard/54 and FW800 and/or an external SATA port before they could get a rise out of me.

FW800? I'll bet we NEVER see it in an apple laptop again. What other laptops include it?

Believe me when I say "The Quad PM G5 Is All New". I can't think of anything that's "old" about it. Waiting for an expensive Rev A Woodcrest when you can have a 10 GHz Quad G5 now for only $3k is almost absurd to my way of thinking - especially when you consider that the entire Adobe CS3 Universal Suite won't be out until the 8 core Kentsfields come out next year.

The only real downside is that there are still apps that ignore the third and fourth processors, such as Logic.

 

[Dr.Gargoyle]

They allready released the Intel version of Powermac to developers,intel version iMac & Mini I would expect a new design from apple rather then just throwing the developers edition on the market with a real video card. If you think about it Apple hasnt released a all new model in quite some time. Expect an all new Powermac this summer.

Hmm, you might be correct. However, Apple has so far not made any design changes in the macs that have made the PPC->x86 transition. (I don't see the design difference between PB and MBP) But then again, the casing of the PM hasn't changed in a while.

 

[MovieCutter]

That's great to know. I guess you don't miss looking at a pair of 1920 x 1200 monitors. I am doing iPod mp4 encoding every few hours so my needs are completely different than yours. And I didn't pay $5k for this Quad either. I would way rather split up chores among 4 cores than 2 no matter what small speed advantage there might be running Safari & iLife apps - which I don't use much at all. I use Firefox a lot of the time anyway.

For long term insurance, I would rather wait for Merom inside a 17" mobile MacIntel. My pokey 15" PB G4 is ok for the time being. Glad to hear you're successfully booking on the 15" MBP. Not enough screen space for me in the first place.

Except the fact that it's hooked up to my formerly-paired-with-Quad 30" Cinema Display I paid $3k for my Quad as well...it was WORTH $5k (in its configuration), which is what I sold it for...he he he.

 

[jaxstate]

my .02

I don't think apple is going to make it easy for people to swap out chips. They want you to upgrade as often as possible. Remember they are a hardware company, and letting people upgrade chips would most def. cut into their sales.

 

[alfismoney]

Moving up the release because of a few errata is not an issue - because who's to say that Merom won't have *more* errata?

so true. thanks for outlining the argument a bit more thoroughly, it's nice to have someone respond intelligently to my ponderings with some good points to back it up. seeing 40 posts about why it would be really cool to have woodcrest processors carved into a piece of maple or playing games on an 8 core powermac just doesn't seem that relevant to a discussion about intel pushing their release sooner.

i would imagine that intel only pushed the release because they feel that they have adequately developed and documented what we are about to see on the market. not being a developer, i am certainly excited to see the merom push the core duo to the side so that whatever laptop i happen to buy will use less power and inspire Apple to start taking advantage of 64 bit chips with its pro software.

 

[dr_lha]

I don't think apple is going to make it easy for people to swap out chips. They want you to upgrade as often as possible. Remember they are a hardware company, and letting people upgrade chips would most def. cut into their sales.

99.9% of computer users wouldn't be comfortable swapping out a chip even if it was "easy", most people just buy a new computer if their old one is slow.

That said Apple do tend to make their computers (at least the new iMac) totally impossible to get open, making replacing the CPU extremely difficult.

 

[lightsout]

That's tosh if ever I read it. AMD can't even afford to fully transition their fabs right now to the latest process. By the time they do (get to 65nm) Intel will be looking at 45nm

Potentially this could be talking about the AM2 platform, whenever that comes out. Unlike the current generation though AMD may not beat Intel (and conroe) in the high performance stakes this time round, or it will be close.

I think Intel just want to get something new out sooner to help with sales.

There is more to this than which process you are using. AMD holds the performance lead, and is taking market share from Intel. This is especially true in the enterprise env which commands a much larger margin.

Did you not see AMD's results? They are making money, I'm sure they can afford to move to 65nm (they will have to anyway to stay competitive, even if it costs them money).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/12/amd_q1/

AMD will go 65nm this year. Intel is shipping 65nm, but not all of their fabs are converted either.

Conroe should get Intel onto performance terms with AMD at least. You have to consider, that it isn't out yet so AMD still holds the performance crown. Even more so in SMP systems, as AMD's architecture here is better.

 

[Stella]

Hmm, you might be correct. However, Apple has so far not made any design changes in the macs that have made the PPC->x86 transition. (I don't see the design difference between PB and MBP) But then again, the casing of the PM hasn't changed in a while.

I get the feeling the initial batch of Intel Macs were interim - get them in the current Mac housings. Later, complete the designs for the new Intel's. This is similar to what they did with the PPC transitions, isn't it? The first PPC machines looked like the predecessors, and then Apple made the cosmetic changes not too far down the road.