I came back to this thread after Multimedia posted in a recent thread on the current Mac Pro being overpriced. I hasten to add Multimedias post was purely pointing back to this thread
I'm a firm believer in technology moving forward but not everything is as big as it is made out to be. Santa Rosa is a prime example. I bought a new MB Pro after the updates but if you take out the GPU update and the LED screen the differences are practically none existent. Searching old threads you see huge claims about how Robson Caching (or what ever it is called today) will add hours to battery life and will be a huge performance boost. People waited and waited and sure enough Apple never used it. Fact is, it has become a white elephant. It isn't that fast and battery life isn't hugely extended. Cost is also prohibitive.
Seaburg and other architectural changes will no doubt see the Mac Pro move to the next level but anyone thinking this is going to be like the move from Netburst to Core is dreaming. Until Intel adopts on chip memory controllers like AMD sometime in 2008 memory bottlenecks will handicap 8 core or higher systems. The move away from fully buffered memory is good both from cost and latency perspectives though but also might not be used at this stage.
The new machines will be great for rendering but for daily tasks I just cannot see the huge speed increases people are expecting. New GPUs are a must but they will not be PCI-E 2.0 so older Mac Pro's can utilise them as well. This is an evolutionary not revolutionary step. Another huge stumbling block is software, even if 10.5 has better thread managements other apps will not necessarily. Photoshop CS3 is a good example, by the time CS4 arrives the next gen Macs will be history. Apple software is as bad, even on a Quad core machine Compressor never fully utilises the machine until you incorporate Qmaster which most people don't know how to do. Qmaster is also very unreliable.
Cost complaints are unwarranted in my view. Markets change but the Mac Pro is far from uncompetitive and is on a par price wise with Dell etc. Macs are just a platform for OS X regardless of what chip is powering it, as such there is no need to price match. I remember when 1GHz Powerbooks cost over £2800 and apart from physical design and OS X there speed was woeful compared to the x86 world.
The new MP's will be great I have no doubt about that and will pack an 8 core wallop for a much better price. Once they are out a new thread will appear awaiting the new Intel chipset for 2008 and asking why Apple are over charging to outdated 2007 technology. This is just another incremental update. In 2009 we might have 32 core pro workstations which will make even 8 cores look woeful.
The problem we have now is not one of small MHz upgrades but large architectural and core updates. For users wanting to stay at the cutting edge it could be argued that the traditional 3 year life span for a machine at peak usage is out of the window. We are waiting for the technology to gel properly, that means losing the FSB between memory and CPU and getting software which is far more capable then anything than the current or next gen will offer.
Roll on 2009 with 16+ core Mac Pro's utilising on chip memory controllers, DDR3 memory and state of the art multicore GPU's all working in harmony to run 10.6 and associated software!
