8-Core (Clovertown) Mac Pro Benchmarks

[AidenShaw]

A rumour for Mac OSX users, but not for the rest of the world

This rumor seems to be only a rumor! Its Nov 21st today, when will octos come? Next year i guess... damn it!😡

Quad-core chips (and octo-core systems) are available now from the other top tier Intel vendors. Apple not included.

 

[Multimedia]

Are They 2.33 & 2.66GHz Models?

Quad-core chips (and octo-core systems) are available now from the other top tier Intel vendors. Apple not included.

Typical. Are they 2.33 and 2.66GHz models Aiden? Got links?

SideNote: The Madonna Concert in HD on NBC tonight is groundbreaking broadcast television. One of the most amazing telecasts I have ever seen-heard. I am a huge Madonna fan though. 😀 Tony Bennett's special last night also on NBC was an amazing HD composition as well.

 

[McKellar]

Typical. Are they 2.33 and 2.66GHz models Aiden? Got links?

SideNote: The Madonna Concert in HD on NBC tonight is groundbreaking broadcast television. One of the most amazing telecasts I have ever seen-heard. I am a huge Madonna fan though. 😀 Tony Bennett's special last night also on NBC was an amazing HD composition as well.

I just had a (very) brief look, Dell seems to be offering Cloverton in their Precision workstations, but only the low-end E5320 1.86Ghz model:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=MLB1727&s=biz

I imagine that Apple probably won't use this model in the Mac Pro or Xserves, and are probably waiting on the faster versions to be available in greater quantities, as it seems that they might be in short supply if Dell's only offering the slowest version.

 

[zoran]

So when will the faster versions of clovertown be available, any rumor on that?

 

[FFTT]

I think what I said about software developers catching up has merit.

It's not just the pro applications themselves that need to catch up to
take advantage of multi-core architecture, but also all those very important
plug-ins.

This especially holds true in audio recording software with some critical plug-in developers still struggling to catch up to universal binary versions of their software.

 

[~Shard~]

SideNote: The Madonna Concert in HD on NBC tonight is groundbreaking broadcast television. One of the most amazing telecasts I have ever seen-heard.

The fact that it is in HD? I suppose so. The concert itself groundbreaking? Well, hopefully that's not what you meant or else you've obviously never seen a show across the pond... 😛 😉 😎

 

[cinder1280]

Hi,

I have to order a new workstation in the beginning of dec.
I want the Powermac in a top config with the 30" Display.
Now I wonder to wait the release of the 8core system for two reasons:

If the price will be equal to the actuall one of the quad 3Ghz: Fine, I ll buy the mac pro with clovertown

If the clovertown system will be much more expensive than the actuall 3 ghz, maybe the 3 ghz will get a little bit cheaper. So i will buy the 3 Ghz system.

Should I wait to Jan or Feb ? ( The release in November just a rumor 🙁 )
I dont know what to do. It will be my workstation for the next 4 or 5 ähm thousand years 😉

Sorry for my bad English, I m working on it 😉

Greets CindeR

 

[Multimedia]

Stoakley-Seaburg Thoughts Make Me Want To Wait For Them

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I thought the Mac mini would be Core 2 Duo by now for sure. I guess they still have quite a backlog of Core Duo units not yet sold. Maybe they're getting killer discounts from Intel on those old slow Core Duo processors.

Seems like the supply of the faster Clovertowns is probably weak enough for Apple to wait until January at least. My own thought now is that if we have to wait for January, might as well wait a little longer for the Stoakley-Seaburg (SS) chips to ship so the first 8-core Mac Pro can be a really killer machine. Then there's also the issue of Leopard shipping about the same time the full on 8-core with SS setup will be really ready in quantity so Apple can keep up with demand.

So I've set my brain on March '07 now so I won't have another prematurely earger anticipation attack before then. That way if it happens sooner I'll be pleasantly surprised but still may wait for it to ship with Leopard. I will also feel a lot better spending $4k+ on an 8-core with SS inside as well. I'm thinking that may be Apple's plan too. Seems like they would not want to release their first 8-core MP crippled with bottlenecks they know will be opened up in only a few more months. It's also gonna be the most expensive Mac ever sold and I'm sure they want to give their customers their money's worth while at the same time giving their competition headaches. 😉

The fact that it is in HD? I suppose so. The concert itself groundbreaking? Well, hopefully that's not what you meant or else you've obviously never seen a show across the pond... 😛 😉 😎

Yeah I was referring to the fact that it's in HD and some of the best music concert editing I have ever seen. Just amazing Emmy Award worthy editing.

The last concert I saw across the pond was a YES concert in Genoa Italy in summer of 1972. 😀

 

[~Shard~]

Yeah I was referring to the fact that it's in HD and some of the best music concert editing I have ever seen. Just amazing Emmy Award worthy editing.

The last concert I saw across the pond was a YES concert in Genoa Italy in summer of 1972. 😀

Yep, I watched it myself last night as well - agreed, very cool. Cool about the YES concert as well. 🙂 😎

 

[foo*]

It's also gonna be the most expensive Mac ever sold and I'm sure they want to give their customers their money's worth while at the same time giving their competition headaches. 😉 😀

Certainly not the most expensive mac ever sold. The 40 Mhz II fx was shipping while the II ci sported an MSRP of over $8,000 at 25Mhz. Cheapest the ci sold for even at developer discount at the end of its amazingly long 4+ year run was over $3,300, and those were late 80's dollars.

So to my mind, a few grand on a new machine these days is dirt cheap.

 

[~Shard~]

Certainly not the most expensive mac ever sold. The 40 Mhz II fx was shipping while the II ci sported an MSRP of over $8,000 at 25Mhz. Cheapest the ci sold for even at developer discount at the end of its amazingly long 4+ year run was over $3,300, and those were late 80's dollars.

So to my mind, a few grand on a new machine these days is dirt cheap.

Couldn't agree more. After all, this used to be a bargain as well as the aforementioned machines... 😎

 

[Multimedia]

I Stand Corrected • 8-Core Mac Pro Will be Dirt Cheap

Certainly not the most expensive mac ever sold. The 1990-1992 40 Mhz II fx @ $8,970-$10,970 was shipping while the 1989-1993 II ci sported an MSRP of $8,800 at 25Mhz. Cheapest the ci sold for even at developer discount at the end of its amazingly long 4+ year run was over $3,300, and those were early 90's dollars.

So to my mind, a few grand on a new machine these days is dirt cheap.

I forgot that. You are so right. Apple marketing would be well served to use that fact by reminding 8-core customers what they had to pay back in the day for what is practically NOTHING today. Thanks for that correction. Man that was a lot of money for so little power back then. 🙁

Both could hold no more than 128MB of RAM running on a 40MHz or 25MHz bus respectively. Biggest possible HD was 160MB. Wow. Talk about a quantum leap. 😱

 

[FFTT]

Those slow old Core Duo minis put my $2700 Beige G3 tower to shame.

 

[ffakr]

Dell set the pricing

Doh.. forgive this post, my safari session flipped out and I didn't realise this posted.

 

[ffakr]

Dell set the pricing

Dell is setting the pricing. It's not about the vendor costs.. it's all about what vendors think customers will pay.

I'm shopping for one to two compution nodes right now and the Dell Quad-Core 1U servers price at a bit cheaper at 1.86GHz [quad] vs. the dual-core system at 3.0GHz. Since 1.86GHz is very near the low end of the processor line, I'd suspect that we'll see the high end quad-cores sell for much more than the high-end Dual-cores. It won't matter what the part costs are [they are much closer]. There's too much extra value to end users who really need to run a lot of threads.

For most people, one Core2 Duo is plenty of horsepower for a long, long time. I'm typing on my new MacBookPro Core2 right now. One downside with the Core2Duo.. the thermal envelope IS higher than the Yonah CoreDuo processors. This thing gets pretty loud when the cpu [and the fans] spin up. It is wicked fast though [15" model with 2.33GHz]
This is one reason why I don't suspect we'll see a Core2Duo in a Mini any time soon. First off, the cpu is way too fast for a system with Integrated grpahics (unless you want a mini computation node). Unfortunately, Apple hasn't listened to me for the last few years so they haven't built in X-Grid support into all their consumer apps. If they had, your Mac MediaCenter could invisibly speed up the rendering of your iMovie project that you do on your iMac or Macbook. ;-) [as I always tell Apple, I hold no IP on potentially good ideas I provide publicly to Apple, go take them]

For most people, the towers are way too fast. I've set up a few dual-dual 2.66GHz machines and they are wicked fast. It really is difficult to slow them down even when you go out of your way to try (like Mathematica, HandBrake, a fork-bomb, and several other apps).

For me at home, the only reason I'd want a Tower would be for the X1900 video option. The Core2Duo iMac is more than powerful enough in every other way (even the occasional video work). I don't loose money when I'm waiting on a computational cycle though (like some of the people here)

At work, it's a different story. I'm looking for a very small computational cluster or One large computational node and 4 CPU cores may not be enough for multiple users.
Quad Dual-Core Opterons are too expensive so the Dual Quad-Core Intel systems would be perfect. The only problem is, at 1.66 and 1.83GHz, I'd likely be better off with 2 dual-core Core2Xeons running at 3.0GHz because they'd retire threads much faster and they run cooler (our chiller is over 20 years old so heat is a big issue). The Quad-Core Xeon chips run back up into the thermal range of the old P4 family chips. My whole excuse for new funding is to replace cluster of 22 single processor cluster nodes (ranging from 750MHz to 1GHz Athlons).

BTW.. it was some stupid ffakr who predicted in the last thread on this topic that we wouldn't see quad-core mac towers at this time. 🙂
I still suspect we'll see Quad-Core chips in one or two high end Tower models only and that will happen at MWSF at the earliest. I also think that it is no coincidence that Apple hasn't replaced the old PPC XServe Cluster Node yet. 🙂 Considering the relatively low part cost if moving from dual to quad cores.. I suspect that Apple will return the XServe Cluster Node and it may be Dual quad-core only.

ffakr

 

[AppliedVisual]

I also think that it is no coincidence that Apple hasn't replaced the old PPC XServe Cluster Node yet. 🙂 Considering the relatively low part cost if moving from dual to quad cores.. I suspect that Apple will return the XServe Cluster Node and it may be Dual quad-core only.

ffakr

The quad core CPUs in Xserve definitely make sense. However, I'm not sure what you're saying.. Apple started shipping Xserve on Nov. 1st with the dual-core Xeon CPUs and they're currently listed with 24hour shipping times.

 

[ffakr]

The quad core CPUs in Xserve definitely make sense. However, I'm not sure what you're saying.. Apple started shipping Xserve on Nov. 1st with the dual-core Xeon CPUs and they're currently listed with 24hour shipping times.

They shipped the XServe but there is no longer an XServe Cluster node model. Apple used to ship a stipped down XServe with only one drive. You used to be able to get dual processors in the Cluster Node for the price of a single Proc XServe [proper].
The Cluster nodes had better price/performance but they weren't designed for running real 24x7 server tasks.

ffakr.

 

[AppliedVisual]

They shipped the XServe but there is no longer an XServe Cluster node model. Apple used to ship a stipped down XServe with only one drive. You used to be able to get dual processors in the Cluster Node for the price of a single Proc XServe [proper].
The Cluster nodes had better price/performance but they weren't designed for running real 24x7 server tasks.

ffakr.

Ah, I see... But then again, you have more config options if you talk to one of Apple's business consultants and you can configure an Xserve with no drives if you'd like. Not sure what else the prior cluster node configurations had though, I guess I was unaware of their existence -- never saw them on the site, but I didn't really look.

 

[ffakr]

cluster nodes

Ah, I see... But then again, you have more config options if you talk to one of Apple's business consultants and you can configure an Xserve with no drives if you'd like. Not sure what else the prior cluster node configurations had though, I guess I was unaware of their existence -- never saw them on the site, but I didn't really look.

I wasn't aware you could buy an XServe with no drives. It's odd for vendors to ship devices that can't be bench tested as is (unless Apple remote boots them on the line).
One of my big complaints with the XServe is that you don't get empty drive sleds if you don't order Apple drives. Apple ships covers for the un-used drives and you don't get the drive sleds unless you buy an expensive module from Apple.
Another complaint, Apple uses SMART but they don't support SMART on drives other than those that ship in XServes. The drives have to have Apple approved firmware. We bought 80GB modules and upgraded to nicer 300GB models (cheaper OEM even with a spare on the shelf compared to Apple's 250s) and the XServe won't read the SMART data from the drives.

The whole point of the XServe Cluster Node was to leave the frills out, like the drive bays and drives, so that you can get the most bang for the lowest buck. If Apple does go back to a cluster node, they'd likely drop the dual PowerSupplies also since a cluster node can go off line without pulling down a cluster.
A few bucks doesn't seem like much until you start pricing 40 or 100 or even 1000 compute nodes and then $300ish per machine becomes real money. I've got a group that has funds for a $300,000 cluster next year (and no money for additional IT ;-). Even if you dropped $250,000 on compute nodes and the rest on infrastructure you're looking at 50 nice compute nodes (at 5K apeace). Drop $300 per node and you've got another free $15,000. On a tight IT budget, that's a lot of money. Hell, my most metrics that's a lot of money.

I'm actually not looking to buy an Apple server for the small project I mentioned earlier. I need something with guaranteed Debian Linux support (or SuSe at the very least). I do want to go Core2Duo or Core2Quatro since we have tight thermal requirements and price/performance is a huge issue.

 

[AidenShaw]

Hey MultiMedia - get ready for 16-core !!

http://news.com.com/Intel+completes+design+of+Penryn+chip/2100-1006_3-6139487.html

Intel has taped out--or completed the design of--Penryn, a 45-nanometer chip that will be out toward the end of next year.

The company is also in the midst of making its first Penryn samples.

"They aren't out of the fab yet, but they are in the fab," said Mark Bohr, director of process technology at Intel, referring to chip factories, known as "fabs."

Intel showed off a memory chip made on the 45-nanometer process earlier this year.

The Penryn news underscores Intel's expertise in manufacturing. The company has introduced new manufacturing processes every two years. Meanwhile, competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices have had to space out these jumps. Intel started shipping chips made on the 65-nanometer process in October 2005. AMD won't ship its first 65-nano chips until next month.​

______________________________________________

Disclaimer: The preceding headline exhibits excessive exuberance. In truth,

"No official details concerning the Penryn chip design were announced this time, however, according to previously published news-stories, the chip code-named Penryn is a 45nm incarnation of the dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor for mobile computers (code-named Merom) with SSE4 technology..."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20061127154338.html​

But, since Intel has stated that two dual-core dies in a package is the right way to do quad-core at 65nm, which implies that 45 nm is the right way to do quad-core per die, and two quad-cord dies in a package at 45 nm is the right way to do octo-core at 45nm - obviously we'll have a PowerBook G5 next Tuesday.

 

[ffakr]

http://news.com.com/Intel+completes+design+of+Penryn+chip/2100-1006_3-6139487.html

But, since Intel has stated that two dual-core dies in a package is the right way to do quad-core at 65nm, which implies that 45 nm is the right way to do quad-core per die, and two quad-cord dies in a package at 45 nm is the right way to do octo-core at 45nm - obviously we'll have a PowerBook G5 next Tuesday.

Whatever. Apple's pushed Universal apps because they are totally ready to die shrink IBM plants to .65nm and that can only mean one thing.. Power5 POWERBooks. Yes, that's "POWERBooks" not "PowerBooks".

BooYaa.

It's the master plan.. we move to a new architecture every 18 months. Apple's totally working on their own MIPS chip since the ISA went open a while back. The Developer copies of XCode now cross compile for 5 architectures but I'd have to kill you if I listed all the Instruction sets currently supported. The new build of Stuffit Expander 11 UNIVERSAL is now 427 MB. ROCK ON Obese-Binaries.

😱