Funny that you mentioned that as the recent iMac GPU trouble only proved that Apple doesn't have a clue when it comes to GPU. Freezing issuses, poor choice (wth, even MBP has better GPU) and MP......... insane. They should either fire somebody there or hire someone more qualified.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2007 Harpertown Stoakley-Seaburg Motherboard With New Graphics Cards 8-Core Mac Pro
- Thread starter Multimedia
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
Funny that you mentioned that as the recent iMac GPU trouble only proved that Apple doesn't have a clue when it comes to GPU. Freezing issuses, poor choice (wth, even MBP has better GPU) and MP......... insane. They should either fire somebody there or hire someone more qualified.
Leopard ATI + NVIDEA PCIe Drivers For Last G5 Reconciled Tiger Conflicts
It's clear to me we are captives of Apple's very limited video driver-card options. I guess that's the price we have to pay for sticking with the world's best operating system.
Driver conflicts I had with Tiger and "old" late 2006 ATI drivers that shipped with their last gen G5 specific PCIe Radeon X1900GT installed in Slot-1 with the stock NVIDEA GeForce 6600 in Slot-3 are resolved in Leopard. Both cards now peacefully coexhist albiet only not allowing the NVIDEA card to play QuickTime movies at native frame rates. But while the QT files are sluggish there, all four ports can play EyeTV files flawlessly on any of 4 screens I've hooked to the Quad G5.
I agree. The stock Mac Pro card is awfully weak and the ATI 1900 upgrade is very expensive. I'm looking forward to a quantum leap in video options for the Harpertown models. God knows they've had plenty of time to get it advanced and right for the Penryn Mac Pro. I hate the thought that Apple is going to continue to make video cards an afterthought in their most advanced systems - sort of an Achilles heel isn't it?
It's clear to me we are captives of Apple's very limited video driver-card options. I guess that's the price we have to pay for sticking with the world's best operating system.
Well, thats also true. I think that Apple will either realise that POWERPC time is over and they have to get on with it or they will challenge our patience and will potentially lose customers as more people will get fed up with the waiting or limited options. (especially if they stick with ATI)
It's clear to me we are captives of Apple's very limited video driver-card options. I guess that's the price we have to pay for sticking with the world's best operating system.
It's a shame, really. Now that they are on Intel hardware this shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately for us it IS.
There are people using hackintoshes with both Tiger and Leopard and many of them were able to make the 8800GT work with full support. If a hackintosh person can do it, so can Apple.
I don't buy the "drivers are expensive" nonsense. Having the limited video card options is making life easier for some lazy Apple developers. Nothing more.
How do I know they're lazy??? Well, when was the last time the Mac Pro was updated?? Exactly.
It's a shame, really. Now that they are on Intel hardware this shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately for us it IS.
There are people using hackintoshes with both Tiger and Leopard and many of them were able to make the 8800GT work with full support. If a hackintosh person can do it, so can Apple.
I don't buy the "drivers are expensive" nonsense. Having the limited video card options is making life easier for some lazy Apple developers. Nothing more.
How do I know they're lazy??? Well, when was the last time the Mac Pro was updated?? Exactly.
Totally agree. 15th January better be extra good for this waiting otherwise hackintosh will become a serious option here.
It's a shame, really. Now that they are on Intel hardware this shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately for us it IS.
There are people using hackintoshes with both Tiger and Leopard and many of them were able to make the 8800GT work with full support. If a hackintosh person can do it, so can Apple.
I don't buy the "drivers are expensive" nonsense. Having the limited video card options is making life easier for some lazy Apple developers. Nothing more.
How do I know they're lazy??? Well, when was the last time the Mac Pro was updated?? Exactly.
Apple have alot more riding on such things than someone hacking their mac. To offer other graphics cards there will be a cost for Apple. As we have no real data on sales or driver development costs we can't really say if that cost is prohibative and to what degree or if Apple just don't care (or are lazy). Even without the actual figures I can easily imagine that there was no point where it made sense to offer new cards mid cycle, due to cost, demand, hardware release timings, performance improvements, Apple's idea of product image and the transition from Tiger to Leopard (which I am assuming required some driver development for existing graphics cards).
Don't get me wrong, I think Apple should have a bigger, modern, updated range of graphics cards for the MP, but I can easily see why they don't and I don't think most potential buyers are that fussed.
Insert standard "where's the Yorkfield Mini-Tower" pitch
If Apple had a more modestly priced offering with an upgradeable graphics card, then there would be more units to spread driver costs among...
If Apple had a more modestly priced offering with an upgradeable graphics card, then there would be more units to spread driver costs among...
Apple could always ask Nvidia/AMD to actually make the drivers. They come out with updates/improvements much faster than Apple does.
They could also release a Mac based on the X38 chipset...
Instead of creating a new thread, as many of the uninformed populace have, I will post my musings here where they belong. Onward!
What does the Mac Pro community think of the feasibility of this configuration for the Penryns?
Processors: E5410, E5430, X5482 (2.33, 2.83, 3.2) with 2.83 standard
RAM: 2GB 800Mhz FB-DIMMs MINIMUM. It's a professional workstation, after all.
HDD: 320 or 500GB standard with 750 and terabyte upgrades
PCIe: Assuming minimal changes to the case (no redesign), two double-wide 16x PCIe 2.0 slots and three others
Power: probably a kilowatt supply again, or a 1200 if they want to be crazy
Optical: two bays, SuperDrive standard, Blu-Ray option (pay out the ear)
Ports: probably the same, maybe with SATA in/out
Graphics: (here comes the flaming...)
Low-end: Umm... I've really no idea. Probably a G90 8800 GTS or even a 8600 so that we still have a year-old card to complain about (Apple's considerate like that)
Middle: Radeon HD 3850 or 3870
High-end: Probably a Quadro FX 5600, since it's supposed to be professional
The above is my interpretation of reality. Below is what I'd like to see:
With two 16x slots, Apple offers SLI and CrossFire support, even setting it up for you as a BTO for a premium (read: insane monies)
More ports, but who wouldn't?
A case redesign. Just a small one. I love the cheese grater, but it's been June of '03 since we've seen anything different. Please, Apple?
There you have it. Discuss and interpret, meaning tell me what I'm being an idiot about.
What does the Mac Pro community think of the feasibility of this configuration for the Penryns?
Processors: E5410, E5430, X5482 (2.33, 2.83, 3.2) with 2.83 standard
RAM: 2GB 800Mhz FB-DIMMs MINIMUM. It's a professional workstation, after all.
HDD: 320 or 500GB standard with 750 and terabyte upgrades
PCIe: Assuming minimal changes to the case (no redesign), two double-wide 16x PCIe 2.0 slots and three others
Power: probably a kilowatt supply again, or a 1200 if they want to be crazy
Optical: two bays, SuperDrive standard, Blu-Ray option (pay out the ear)
Ports: probably the same, maybe with SATA in/out
Graphics: (here comes the flaming...
)Low-end: Umm... I've really no idea. Probably a G90 8800 GTS or even a 8600 so that we still have a year-old card to complain about (Apple's considerate like that)
Middle: Radeon HD 3850 or 3870
High-end: Probably a Quadro FX 5600, since it's supposed to be professional
The above is my interpretation of reality. Below is what I'd like to see:
With two 16x slots, Apple offers SLI and CrossFire support, even setting it up for you as a BTO for a premium (read: insane monies)
More ports, but who wouldn't?
A case redesign. Just a small one. I love the cheese grater, but it's been June of '03 since we've seen anything different. Please, Apple?
There you have it. Discuss and interpret, meaning tell me what I'm being an idiot about.
I assume that you mean eSATA here.
Not sure what you mean by "in/out". eSATA ports are normally for connecting external drives to the system (out?).
Would "in" mean that you'd want to access the internal disks from another system - like an "eSATA target disk mode"?
I don't think Apple will want to mix 667Mhz and 800MHz FSB and memory speeds. I don't think it fits with their product image tendancies. Infact I'm not even sure if you can mix and match them in the same system, something I read on (I think it was supermicro's) a website suggested it wasn't possible, and I could understand if this is something Intel perhaps prevents for stability.
I'd guess at a base of 2.80Ghz and upgrades of 3.00GHz an 3.20GHz with 800MHz FB-DIMMs or 2.83GHz and 3.16GHz while continuing to use 667MHz memory (maybe they would put 3GHz in there too). I'd think the first line is more what Apple would want. The downside of course being no slower 1600MHz FSB processor to offer as a downgrade. The cost of the 2.80GHz might also be stretching the $2500 base price, but that may not matter.
As far as a downgrade choice goes the price of two 2.33Ghz processors is ~$500 retail, a big difference from close to $1400-$1600 worth that many expect to make up that $2500 price, if Apple could offer that we could have much cheaper Mac Pros. So maybe they'd go for 2.5GHz (same price as 2Ghz woodcrest) to keep prices futher away from iMacs.
320GB standard, they can still make money on 500GB upgrades and 500GB isn't standard. Hopefully they have 73GB, 146GB and 300GB 15k RPM SAS drives too.
There will be two full slots, not sure about 3 others, I think they will still go with 4 total, infact I think Apple were one of the only ones with 4 previously.
Graphics: (here comes the flaming...
Low-end: Umm... I've really no idea. Probably a G90 8800 GTS or even a 8600 so that we still have a year-old card to complain about (Apple's considerate like that)
Middle: Radeon HD 3850 or 3870
High-end: Probably a Quadro FX 5600, since it's supposed to be professional
Low end base card will likely be a cheap consumer card, at the most an 8600GT. I would think Apple would be looking for low cost, proven hardware, can be passively cooled, powerful enough to drive 30" displays more than anything.
3870 sure I guess why not, I'm sure people really want the 512mb 8800GT though, I expect big dissapointment on the choice for this part though. I wouldn't expext anything more than either of those though.
High end will most likely be the FX 4600, the 5600 is too expensive if Apple are only going with three card choices.
SLI is out of the question really and I assume crossfire is too, I haven't heard if there is crossfire support for non-skulltrail dual socket boards, but I doubt there is and with rumours of skulltrail itself looking like it might be canned I don't think such technologies will be comming to OSX anytime soon.
I'd rather see the E5472 as an option. A chip with only 80 watts TDP and at 1600 FSB is the way to go, IMHO.
As for the video card options, I'd rather not speculate, as I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that they'll screw up the video card options.
As for the video card options, I'd rather not speculate, as I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that they'll screw up the video card options.
As for the video card options, I'd rather not speculate, as I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that they'll screw up the video card options.
So do I, as a matter of fact, so do I... And not even a two-card CrossFire/SLI dealio? Tanj, there goes that. Apple needs to write an implementation that would allow multiple cards to drive the same monitor of their own, then. A proprietary option would be better than nothing.
And yes, I meant eSATA, and yes, I did mean in/out. I just forgot how to describe it. Thanks for all the input; this is what these threads are for: intellectual input reviewed by peers who in turn provide their own comments.
Not: "WHI NOU MAK PROZ?!!!!!11111onesadface"
Hmm... Wino Mac Pros... 12oz. jar of olives with each purchase...
MacRoom, the style of all your posts seems very familiar somehow. Are you sure it wasn't you who started this thread?
You are not thinking that his multi-personality answers are related to any media skills he might possess!
That wasn't very subtle
But the 5 posts by MacRoom are somewhat lacking in prolixity.
I've suspected him for some time. "T Minus 20 Days And Counting . . ." has removed any doubt. You'd think he would be more careful and vary his phrases a little, but no - same old shtick.
I don't know how you came to that conclusion....
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?p=1188817#post1188817
Hi Multi. You should at least change your post style before you pretend to be a new user.
- Status