Meanwhile all the other manufactures have been providing better systems for about 1.5 years.
If they waited till March/April to update the Mac Pro line it will be a dismal comment on how lack luster Apple's workstation solutions are.
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2007 Harpertown Stoakley-Seaburg Motherboard With New Graphics Cards 8-Core Mac Pro
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Meanwhile all the other manufactures have been providing better systems for about 1.5 years.
If they waited till March/April to update the Mac Pro line it will be a dismal comment on how lack luster Apple's workstation solutions are.
Not necessarily, but it could be in one screaming Iphone or Ipod that's completely compatible with OSX on other Intel boxes!
Silverthorne is suited for the MID/UMPC market, so if "ultra-portable" means super-lightweight with a 7-9" screen - then maybe the answer is yes.
Of course, this class of system is designed around battery life, not performance. Be prepared for an army of whiners complaining that "it doesn't have a DVD" or "it's slower than a G5 on Photoshop".
Thanks.
I'm guessing (and that's what it is, a pure unadulterated guess) with Montevina H2/2008.
Montevina is a Penryn (45nm Core 2) platform with the Contiga chipset. It's an evolution of the Crestline chip in Santa Rosa.
Silverthorne is part of a different platform - with all of the components shrunk and low power.
Quote: http://notebook-blog.net/2007/04/23/page/3/
In the first half of next year, Santa Rosa platform will be refreshed with the 45nm Hi-k Intel dual core mobile processor, code-named Penryn. Later in 2008 Intel will deliver Montevina processor technology, the successor of Santa Rosa, also with the 45nm Hi-k Intel dual core mobile processor, the Corporation?�s representatives unveiled today at Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
With approximately 40 percent smaller components, Montevina will be ideal for mini- and sub-notebooks, and will include integrated hardware decode for high-definition video, according to Intel?�s representatives.
Montevina will be Intels first Centrino processor technology for notebooks to offer the option of integrated Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless technologies. The slides from IDF also show this platform will have new ?�Cantiga?� chipset, as well as ?�Robson 2.0?� ?� the next version of disc-caching technology for faster system boot-up and application loading.
Regarding UMPC and MID devices, Intel will pull in its next-generation ultra-mobile platform ?� codenamed Menlow ?� from late 2008 to the first half of 2008.
?�Menlow will include a new processor, codenamed Silverthorne, based on a new 45nm Hi-k low power microarchitecture. The platform also includes the next-generation chipset, codenamed Poulsbo, providing a single-chip solution. Silverthorne and Poulsbo were both designed from the ground up for MID and UMPC platforms,?� Corporation announced.
We know that in H1/2008 it will be Menlow platform, Poulsbo chipset, and Silverthorne processor.
In H2/2008 comes Montevina: Montevina platform, Cantiga chipset, (unnamed Penryn) processor.
2009: Moorestown platform, ??? chipset, ??? processor.
sheesh.. and to think I'll be buying my mac pro in 2009 and my macbook in 2010... the specs are gonna' be insane!
Yes, as you say, the Mac Pro in 2009 and MacBook in 2010 will have "insane" specs.
You will probably have a 32nm process Westmere processor in your Mac Pro.
Note that Menlow does not replace or overlap with Montevina.
Montevina is the mainstream platform replacing the current Santa Rosa for full-featured laptops.
Menlow is a new line of very low power, very compact devices for PDA/UMPC applications.
Montevina will be for MB/MBP. Menlow doesn't fit into Apple's current lineup (overkill for current Iphone, too weak for MB). It's for a PDA/MID/UMPC device.
Intel sold their Xscale (ARM) business a couple of years ago. The reason - they believed that they could push full x86 architecture down to the power consumption levels of ARM, and beat ARM on performance.
Silverthorne (Menlow) is the first silicon to result from that effort. You might want Silverthorne in your future Iphone with full PDA capability, but not in your MacBook.
Harpertown Barcelona Clovertown testing
The Inquirer made some benchtests with Harpertown, Barcelona, Opteron, and Woodcrest.
It's not real helpful in that the Clovertown they tested only had a 2.33MHz speed.
However it does show Harpertown kicking Barcelona a$$.
I made a ranking of the processors on the right-hand side.
You can see it is no contest, it is all Harpertown.
With the Harpertown there are two sets of ram numbers, the first was taken with four and eight 2GB FBD-800 sticks, the last four were the same memory as the others.
At 4GB memory level, Harpertown beat Clovertown and Barcelona by approximately 15 percent.
What is interesting is Harpertown's advantage over Barcelona drops to less than 5% at 16GB memory level.
That is because Intel's FB-DIMMs suck big time.
As The Inquirer says, "FB-DIMMs are killing Intel. Any advantage they have on the CPU front is totally wasted by the memory wattage. The Valve benchmark gains absolutely zero from the added memory, a benchmark that stresses the memory subsystem more will probably narrow the gap a bit, but taking it from 10x to 5x isn't much of a thing for Intel to jump up and down about.
Basically Harpertown beats Barcelona because of Barcelona's low clock number.
But by the time AMD gets Barcelona's clock speed up to a respectable level, Intel will have more advanced processors on the table.
AMD will have a hard time catching up.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt. I found them interesting however.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqui...ore-server-powerperformance-numbers-delivered
The Inquirer made some benchtests with Harpertown, Barcelona, Opteron, and Woodcrest.
It's not real helpful in that the Clovertown they tested only had a 2.33MHz speed.
However it does show Harpertown kicking Barcelona a$$.
I made a ranking of the processors on the right-hand side.
You can see it is no contest, it is all Harpertown.
With the Harpertown there are two sets of ram numbers, the first was taken with four and eight 2GB FBD-800 sticks, the last four were the same memory as the others.
At 4GB memory level, Harpertown beat Clovertown and Barcelona by approximately 15 percent.
What is interesting is Harpertown's advantage over Barcelona drops to less than 5% at 16GB memory level.
That is because Intel's FB-DIMMs suck big time.
As The Inquirer says, "FB-DIMMs are killing Intel. Any advantage they have on the CPU front is totally wasted by the memory wattage. The Valve benchmark gains absolutely zero from the added memory, a benchmark that stresses the memory subsystem more will probably narrow the gap a bit, but taking it from 10x to 5x isn't much of a thing for Intel to jump up and down about.
Basically Harpertown beats Barcelona because of Barcelona's low clock number.
But by the time AMD gets Barcelona's clock speed up to a respectable level, Intel will have more advanced processors on the table.
AMD will have a hard time catching up.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt. I found them interesting however.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqui...ore-server-powerperformance-numbers-delivered
Remember that all of this is based off ONE benchmark utility.
It's quite worthless.
What makes the Intel system "suck" is the limited bandwidth due to the aged Front Side Bus GPL+ being used.
To be truthful I thought that would be the response I would get.
But I thought I would run it up the flagpole...
Sorry, didn't mean to sound harsh
I just hope someone will post a more comprehensive test of a SkullTrail system or better yet, of the new Mac Pro
...
I'm looking. We'll probably find something within a couple weeks.I just hope someone will post a more comprehensive test of a SkullTrail system
Pressure, if I may ask, why are you interested in SkullTrail?
SkullTrail will be strictly PC, won't it?
Harpertown vs Barcelona vs Clovertown vs Opteron
http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/arti...rver_CPUs_AMD_Barcelona_vs_Intel_Harpertown/1
This is the conclusion of article:
"Looking purely at benchmarks, we can only conclude AMD must yield to Intel. In by far most of the benchmarks the SuperMicro server with Intel Xeon E5472 Harpertown CPUs has the best scores, and with a significant margin. For an allround server, Intel would seem to be the brand of choice for the moment. Nevertheless AMD does win in a number of benchmarks, especially a number of the FP part of Spec CPU2006. For HPC applications where memory bandwidth is as important as processing performance, a quad core Opteron server may well be the best solution. However we are obviously discussing niche markets here.
Then, claims on the performance per watt. AMD is completely right about the new quad core Opteron being a very efficient CPU. During every one of our tests, the Dell server with a total of eight cores used less energy than the much slower HP server with only four cores. AMD's claim that Barcelona gives you two extra cores without having to invest in a higher energy bill is therefore well founded. In a similar vein, the Dell server with Barcelona processors is more energy efficient in all applications than the SuperMicro server with Intel Harpertown chips. That said, the average performance difference is bigger than the average power consumption difference, so we can only conclude that Intel offers the best performance per watt. Compared to Clovertown it would be an easy win for AMD, but to beat Harpertown AMD will have to show quite a bit more performance.
Finally the claims regarding the platforms. It is commendable that the new Opteron CPUs work so well with the existing Opteron servers, albeit with a BIOS upgrade. However we are skeptical if this will result in a wave of server upgrades. Using a proven platform does ensure a lot of partners can offer Barcelona based products before too long. Another benefit is the continued use of existing software installations, as the platform remains the same. If you intend to use Intel's new processors to best effect, you can't avoid buying new servers. The fast Seaburg chipset and the new DD2-800 FB-DIMM memory are an important part of the improved performance. Upgrading just isn't that good an idea here. To use the extra performance of Harpertown, you will need to invest in both a new server and a new software installation. But then, that is usually the case anyway.
What can we conclude? Firstly, AMD's Barcelona is a big step in the right direction compared to the dual core processors. Truth be told, the new server CPU is just late, too late. If it had been released at the start of the year and at higher clock frequencies, our conclusion would have been a lot more positive. Still we remain optimistic, with a new stepping and a bit of luck AMD may well be able to make a big increase in clock frequencies - and for AMD too the transition to 45 nanometer is only a matter of time. At the moment Intel has the better offer. The new quad core Xeons built on the 45 nanometer process are faster and more energy efficient than both their predecessors, as well as the competing Barcelona CPU. And that's what it is about in the end."
http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/arti...rver_CPUs_AMD_Barcelona_vs_Intel_Harpertown/1
This is the conclusion of article:
"Looking purely at benchmarks, we can only conclude AMD must yield to Intel. In by far most of the benchmarks the SuperMicro server with Intel Xeon E5472 Harpertown CPUs has the best scores, and with a significant margin. For an allround server, Intel would seem to be the brand of choice for the moment. Nevertheless AMD does win in a number of benchmarks, especially a number of the FP part of Spec CPU2006. For HPC applications where memory bandwidth is as important as processing performance, a quad core Opteron server may well be the best solution. However we are obviously discussing niche markets here.
Then, claims on the performance per watt. AMD is completely right about the new quad core Opteron being a very efficient CPU. During every one of our tests, the Dell server with a total of eight cores used less energy than the much slower HP server with only four cores. AMD's claim that Barcelona gives you two extra cores without having to invest in a higher energy bill is therefore well founded. In a similar vein, the Dell server with Barcelona processors is more energy efficient in all applications than the SuperMicro server with Intel Harpertown chips. That said, the average performance difference is bigger than the average power consumption difference, so we can only conclude that Intel offers the best performance per watt. Compared to Clovertown it would be an easy win for AMD, but to beat Harpertown AMD will have to show quite a bit more performance.
Finally the claims regarding the platforms. It is commendable that the new Opteron CPUs work so well with the existing Opteron servers, albeit with a BIOS upgrade. However we are skeptical if this will result in a wave of server upgrades. Using a proven platform does ensure a lot of partners can offer Barcelona based products before too long. Another benefit is the continued use of existing software installations, as the platform remains the same. If you intend to use Intel's new processors to best effect, you can't avoid buying new servers. The fast Seaburg chipset and the new DD2-800 FB-DIMM memory are an important part of the improved performance. Upgrading just isn't that good an idea here. To use the extra performance of Harpertown, you will need to invest in both a new server and a new software installation. But then, that is usually the case anyway.
What can we conclude? Firstly, AMD's Barcelona is a big step in the right direction compared to the dual core processors. Truth be told, the new server CPU is just late, too late. If it had been released at the start of the year and at higher clock frequencies, our conclusion would have been a lot more positive. Still we remain optimistic, with a new stepping and a bit of luck AMD may well be able to make a big increase in clock frequencies - and for AMD too the transition to 45 nanometer is only a matter of time. At the moment Intel has the better offer. The new quad core Xeons built on the 45 nanometer process are faster and more energy efficient than both their predecessors, as well as the competing Barcelona CPU. And that's what it is about in the end."
Maybe but everything I read says it's an expensive rig for gaming.
Intel set that baby up at IDF with TWO GeForce 8800 GTX cards.
They show it as having 8 cpu cores and four gpu slots.
This is what X-bit lab says:
"Intel Corp. has demonstrated its ultra high-performance gaming platform code-named Skulltrail during the ongoing Intel Developer Forum trade-show. The company seems to be serious about offering an alternative to AMD’s dual-socket enthusiast platform FASN8 and will commercially release the product late this year.
Intel’s Skulltrail platform for gamers based on code-named Seaburg chipset resembles Stoakley platform for high-end dual-processor workstations, but in addition to features like support for two quad-core Intel Xeon microprocessor with up to 1600MHz processor system bus, up to 128GB of FB-DIMM memory, Intel virtualization technology and other capabilities, the Skulltrail offers four PCI Express x16 slots for graphics cards, something that high-end gamers may require.
The new platform for no compromise gamers will let end-users without limits of budget to obtain eight processing engines as well as four graphics processing units for ultimate performance. Still, Intel will have to ensure that ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia Corp. enable driver support for 4-way CrossFire or SLI multi-GPU configurations."
This is what AnandTech says:
"We're not particularly sold on SkullTrail or any of these enthusiast-class dual socket systems (e.g. QuadFX, Intel V8), the performance is there but we're not sure the usage models are. They may be perfect for workstation users who also want to game on their machines, but other than that specific market we don't see much of a need for even the most demanding enthusiasts. Stressing four cores is tough enough most of the time, making the argument for eight at the sacrifice of price, power and noise is a difficult one."
I will not complain if SkullTrail makes it to the Mac Pro but I don't think it is going to happen.
Isn't it a perfect description of all those (incl. myself) waiting for an upgrade of the Mac Pro's video card?
Isn't it a perfect description of all those (incl. myself) waiting for an upgrade of the Mac Pro's video card?
I am in absolute agreement. But I don't think we will get Skulltrail though.
I desperately want a 8800 GTX or 8800 GTS 640MB card.
Good luck to us all!
I agree. I don't think we'll see Skulltrail either, and I hope we see an 8800GTX or GTS 640 meg card. I'm submitting my Mac Pro feedback twice a week now instead of once a week. Who knows, maybe someone will actually listen.
I stopped the feedback, sorry, but I figure the cards are a done deal by this time.
It will never happen in a million years but I would gladly pay the extra money for the 8800 Ultra also.
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