8-Core Mac Pro (Clovertown)

[JeffDM]

As for using a Dell, sure they could've used that. Would Windows use the extra 4 cores? Highly doubtful. Microsoft has sketchy 64 bit support let alone dual core support; I'm not saying "impossible" but I haven't read jack squat about any version of Windows working well with quad cores.

Bad dual core support? Citations please. I think this is a case where a Mac fan is simply speaking out of ignorance of their "enemy" platform.

I've been using dual processor Windows computers for a few years now and it works fine, I can't imagine dual core being any different. For quad core, I think THG showed that a Kentsfield showed significant performance benefits over a Conroe for many Windows programs. The media encoders showed very nearly a 2x performance difference.

 

[JeffDM]

You are right. However, you try to tell consumers "Well we are moving to 2.4Ghz chips" after you just had 2.66Ghz and 3.0Ghz chips. It isnt going to work.

If today, Dell decided to move there whole line back to 1Ghz processors, nobody would buy. Unfortunetly the Ghz myth is a strong as its ever been. Taking a step backward is not an option.

It's already happened, just not in as a melodramatic way as you suggest (back to 1GHz? geez). AMD took a small step back, Hz wise when they introduced dual core, though it still advanced their "+" processor ratings I suppose that few noticed the actual clock reduction. Intel took a major step back Hz wise between Netburst and Core 2. The 5000 and 5100 series Xeon CPUs demonstrate this, you can get a Dell precision 690 with 3.73GHz Netburst based chips or the same 690 with 3.0GHz Core2 based chips.

So I don't think that a quad core Xeon running at 2.66GHz is going to be hurt too much in comparison to a dual core 3.0GHz, it's still a much more powerful processor.

Didn't you get the memo, PowerPC is dead. WTF does that have to do with anything? Do you just have this Pavlovian response to the word "Hyperthreading"?

PPC isn't dead, it's just not in new desktops anymore. IBM is making them (or at least co-designed them) for all the next generation game consoles and a lot of huge supercomputers.

 

[zero2dash]

Plenty of people ran NT on their desktops.

Admission of your mistakes is a good step in becoming a better person.

Key word being DESKTOPS.
MP machines were server based long before they were included in desktops. I'd like to see where people had dual Xeon based DESKTOPS 'cause I've never seen it. It's not impossible but it's also not a good cost-based answer either.

The server/desktop division with Windows - as with OS X - is one of marketing, not software. Windows "Workstation" and Windows "Server" use the same codebase.

I never said otherwise.
The hardware they run on is where it differentiates.
Most people/corporations run server-based OS on servers and workstation-based OS on desktops (or "workstations" in the business world). It's not impossible to run a server OS on a desktop or a workstation OS on a server but it is incredibly stupid.

Well, if you can't find evidence of Windows running on well on machine with >2 processors, or of the significant low-level changes Microsoft have made to ensure it does, you aren't looking very hard.

Bad dual core support? Citations please. I think this is a case where a Mac fan is simply speaking out of ignorance of their "enemy" platform.

I erronously bundled in "dual core" with "sketchy 64-bit support". Don't know why. From what I hear, 64-bit support in XP64 is sketchy because of device driver issues (and drivers not being natively 64-bit). I don't have any true 'dual core' systems myself but my P4 3.0C HT works fine in XP Pro. I apologize for lumping in "dual core" in.

Similarly, if you're one of the "Vista is just XP with a fancy skin" crowd, you've obviously not done much research. The changes in Vista are on par with the scale of changes Apple made to NeXT to get OS X.

User Account Protection is a big change. I've seen the list of "new features" and it doesn't do anything for me. UAP is nice...it's just really late. I'm sure there's changes "under the hood" like the ones implemented in XP sp2 to prevent buffer/stack overflows, etc. and I'm sure that's what you're referring to.

I think people who say stuff like that are exhibiting a syndrome common to Mac folk who've never spent any time in the PC world -- they take negative comments they remember regarding versions of Windows or the PC experience from about 5 years back and assume they apply to today. XP, for example, really was for the most part a window-dressing of Windows 2000, but that is not the case for Vista. You see similar statements regarding "blue screens of death", overall system stability, etc, which suggest they haven't seen or used a PC since the late 90s/early 00's.

So - are you inferring that Windows 2000 or Windows XP never blue screen? Because (if you are) that's a load of crap. I've seen blue screens in both OS's. Granted it's usually tied to hardware only, but it still happens. I've had an external USB drive blue screen in XP every time I turned it on, tried on 3 XP computers. Hardware fault, no doubt. Lately my HP Laptop dvd drive has been causing XP Pro to blue screen every other time I insert a dvd-r. Again - hardware fault.

Otherwise are both OS's stable? Damn straight. But problems do occur and I hope you're not suggesting otherwise. No OS is without its flaws.

 

[Trekkie]

The Thinkpad X40 I'm typing from Bluescreened on me no longer than three weeks ago. My crime? coming out of suspend mode.

Windows Crashes.

Believe it or not, Mac OS X can crash too. While it is prettier, it's still a crash.

Pretty funny reading the last few pages, thanks for the laughs.

 

[zero2dash]

The Thinkpad X40 I'm typing from Bluescreened on me no longer than three weeks ago. My crime? coming out of suspend mode.

Windows Crashes.

Believe it or not, Mac OS X can crash too. While it is prettier, it's still a crash.

Pretty funny reading the last few pages, thanks for the laughs.

I'll never forget at my old job (Kinkos) when our dual G4 running Panther had that system crash screen come up that is gray and basically says "your FUBAR'D" in like 8 languages...we were all stunned. Good times...never thought I'd see a bad crash like that in OSX. Or back in 2000 when our workstations were all running Windows 95b - I lost track of how many blue screens we'd get in a day. Man Win95 was garbage. Big for it's time - utter garbage now.

 

[ergle2]

Key word being DESKTOPS.
MP machines were server based long before they were included in desktops. I'd like to see where people had dual Xeon based DESKTOPS 'cause I've never seen it. It's not impossible but it's also not a good cost-based answer either.

I've known many people with multi-processor machines on their desktop, with a variety of processor families -- including Intel -- going way back over the best part of a decade. If your requirements include applications that can make use of it, it can make sense. Time is money and all that.

One market I'm aware of is the fluid dynamics market, which pretty much eats all the processor time you can throw at it.

I even had an x86 dual CPU machine at home back in 1999... I still have it, it's just not that fast any more...

Of course, these days everyone and his dog has dual-core, pretty much...

Edit: 2nd para clarified

 

[Evangelion]

Key word being DESKTOPS.

Again: NT was widely used on desktops. Maybe not by your Average Joe, but LOTS of people used it on the desktop. I used NT-workstation back when I studied, my friend used NT on his PC, lots and lots of companies ran NT, the list goes on. Hell, there were propably an order of magnitude more NT-desktops out there that there were Macs of any type!

I still don't know personally anyone who uses OS X. Does that mean that no-one uses it?

MP machines were server based long before they were included in desktops. I'd like to see where people had dual Xeon based DESKTOPS 'cause I've never seen it.

There were plenty of people running SMP-systems. I personally knew two guys who had SMP-PC's. Just because you haven't seen anyone use one, does not mean that they weren't there.

 

[padré]

quad or octo

so... after reading here for a while i got a question, its kinda stupid, i'm good at that,
first off, i was doubting between the 24" and the macpro so i disided that for my needs i should realy go with a macpro, but know that i'm hearing things about this 8 core macpro, i'm realy doubting about ordering my quad macpro this month,

has anybody got an idea of how long it would be before apple launches " a macpro octo "

thx for your time

 

[ergle2]

so... after reading here for a while i got a question, its kinda stupid, i'm good at that,
first off, i was doubting between the 24" and the macpro so i disided that for my needs i should realy go with a macpro, but know that i'm hearing things about this 8 core macpro, i'm realy doubting about ordering my quad macpro this month,

has anybody got an idea of how long it would be before apple launches " a macpro octo "

thx for your time

It's Apple. No-one has any idea when they'll do anything.

It could be as soon as January, could be a lot later -- but I seriously doubt it'd be at the same price as a quad is now. I'd figure on a fairly major premium. It wouldn't surprise me if the OEM price of processors was in the $1200-1500 range alone (current 3.0GHz 5160's are around $900) for a lower clock-speed version.

Which is fastest will very much depend upon how well your specific applications scale -- fewer, faster cores can often bear more slower cores, and scaling isn't linear -- traditional thought on SMP was that the first extra core you add adds 80-90% to the speed (for fully-threaded apps, obv.), the second adds about 60-70%, the third about 40%, and so-on... diminishing returns. This will be more so because each chip has a finite amount of bandwidth that is shared between all the cores -- more cores = more contention for the available bandwidth.

Of course, the Mac Pro CPUs are socketed, so you can always go Octo at a later date if you so choose...

 

[padré]

thx

thx for your reply,

i will go for the mac pro quad know (i'm updating my home computer wich is a G3, but i'm used to work on a dual G5 for my projects) and yeah i will allways be able then to update later, but how about ram, when DDR3 comes out, i read that its going to replace FB-DIMMs so will that be upgradeble too???
cause these FB-DIMMS are so F***ing expensive thx

 

[ergle2]

thx for your reply,

i will go for the mac pro quad know (i'm updating my home computer wich is a G3, but i'm used to work on a dual G5 for my projects) and yeah i will allways be able then to update later, but how about ram, when DDR3 comes out, i read that its going to replace FB-DIMMs so will that be upgradeble too???
cause these FB-DIMMS are so F***ing expensive thx

DDR and FB aren't mutually exclusive technologies. Current FB-DIMMs use DDR2 chips. Newer FB-DIMMs will use DDR3 chips but due to the way FB-DIMMs work -- the buffer and control hardware essentially sit between the memory and the MCH -- you should still be able to use them in a Mac Pro. Note, should, not will.

You won't be able to use regular DDR3 DIMMs just like you can't use regular DDR2 DIMMs tho'. That's something that'd require a major design change to the motherboard.

So, memory will still be damn' expensive compared to that found in the cheap desktops...

 

[padré]

ram

then i will have to work just a little bit harder i'm afraid

i'll start with the 1 gig ram, maybe 2, and later i will be upgrading,it can't stay expansive forever.

thx again for your reply

 

[ergle2]

then i will have to work just a little bit harder i'm afraid

i'll start with the 1 gig ram, maybe 2, and later i will be upgrading,it can't stay expansive forever.

thx again for your reply

DailyTech has a mention of the Core 2 Quadro processors.

Pricing mentioned was a little lower than I expected, but it's processors in the Conroe line rather than the Xeon. Having said that, the 3GHz Xeon is slightly cheaper than the 2.93GHz Conroe.

As expected, the highest rated speed mentioned is 2.67Ghz.

 

[technicolor]

DailyTech has a mention of the Core 2 Quadro processors.

Pricing mentioned was a little lower than I expected, but it's processors in the Conroe line rather than the Xeon. Having said that, the 3GHz Xeon is slightly cheaper than the 2.93GHz Conroe.

As expected, the highest rated speed mentioned is 2.67Ghz.

This intel crap updates far too frequently...ugh

 

[Silentwave]

well they're working through a pretty active period right now, what with the major architecture change. It'll sorta taper out a bit in a while, and so the next 'big thing' besides more cores will be 45nm, followed by the Common System Interface for the Xeons in '08.

 

[ergle2]

This intel crap updates far too frequently...ugh

Speaking personally, I don't see a problem with it.

They've always had updates roughly every 3-6 months, of one kind or another.

 

[technicolor]

Speaking personally, I don't see a problem with it.

They've always had updates roughly every 3-6 months, of one kind or another.

Yeah and they werent in Macs, so I didnt care.

 

[ergle2]

Yeah and they werent in Macs, so I didnt care.

Why do you care?

 

[technicolor]

Why do you care?

Why shouldnt I?

 

[ergle2]

Why shouldnt I?

Why should it bother you that new processors come out?

 

[technicolor]

Why should it bother you that new processors come out?

why shouldnt it?

 

[ergle2]

why shouldnt it?

Ah, a mature, intelligent, well reasoned reply.

 

[THX1139]

Ah, a mature, intelligent, well reasoned reply.

What did you expect? Didn't you look at his avatar? Cool, Homer is a member of Macrumors.

 

[ksz]

What did you expect? Didn't you look at his avatar? Cool, Homer is a member of Macrumors.

...except that he's a she...a demi-goddess. Frequent updates are a good thing. I would not want to stop the march of progress just so I could personally feel better about a little money I spent.

 

[technicolor]

Ah, a mature, intelligent, well reasoned reply.

No, one that just ignores you and your inquiries because it was already clear where you were coming from..thus I feel no obligation to engage you in my thought process and your self important questioning. Has nothing to do with my maturity, and everything to do with my lack of caring about you or your opinion.