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8-Core Mac Pros have arrived.
- Thread starter arcsbite
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You are wrong in the good way my friend. The Intel chips handle more processes than the PowerPC chips. So the Ghz may be six times that of the G5, but the processor is actuall doing much more work with less power, FASTER than the PowerPC. So it is actually faster than what you have calculated. With the right amount of ram you could probably get your rendering done in less than half an hour or if your program can handle it, in real time.
I posted about a year ago or more that processor speeds have caught up to typical consumer applications. Gone are the days of nearly constant clock cursors. It became primarily a form factor and software diversity purchase, not a speed purchase.
If it becomes true that "typical" renders become real-time or even very near real-time, low-end-pro applications will see this amazing experience as well, where the hardware and software have finally caught up to "typical uses" with no appreciable user interface glitches or delays.
This opens up a new question. Just how low a duty cycle are we now running to achieve that surge performance ability?
Rocketman
I hope you're not serious.
If you are then .....
What right do you believe the EU has to set prices for anything? If Adobe wanted to they could sell acrobat reader (which is free) for a Million dollars. No country or flimzy union has the right to dictate price to a non government organization. If Adobe wanted to they could chose not to sell their product in EU countries (not they would do that) and there would be nothing that the EU could do.
OR if one of the G5 processors in your Dual 2G G5 blew up again and you are running on one, waiting for it to blow up too...
I have to say the pricing is a little misleading. Afterall, you could upgrade to 8 cores with a gig of ram but what does that really get you? Surely you're better off adding $1500 in Ram vs. 8 cores with the same ram.
more likely, they're overclocking the 2.66 GHz part
It would be most unusual for Intel to send Apple chips that are scheduled to be announced in cyQ3.
Any speculation, though, will end as soon as someone runs one of the many Windows CPUID utilities on these octo-cores.
It would be most unusual for Intel to send Apple chips that are scheduled to be announced in cyQ3.
Any speculation, though, will end as soon as someone runs one of the many Windows CPUID utilities on these octo-cores.
Wouldn't happen to have a link would you? (not doubting you just trying to get more info)
FWIW, 8 core MacPros have arrived, but that's O.K, my quad core arrived yesterday and boy am
I glad I didn't wait.
I saw someplace a statement about July 2007 for that (basically start of summer). It may be Intel was able to beat that date (they did that once already with the Core 2 based family).
Ah I think this is what I saw... Intel Readies New Xeons and Price Cuts
Yup...some drop.
Looks like the 1 GB option stays the same at $300
The 2 GB option dropped from $700 to $500 (still overpriced)
The 4 GB option is $1200 now....not sure what it was before.
All listed to ship in 4 weeks.
-Kevin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust#Consumer_protection
hope i dind't miss MM post, while I was hunting this article...
Headless iMac? MacMini, my friend.
So the Macmini now has a Core 2 Duo up to 2.4Ghz, has 3.5 internal drives up to 750GB, supports more than 2GB RAM and has a decent video card? I must have missed that update...
It is very possible that Intel will show Apple favoritism. Apple is not a high volume vendor, but they can generate enough volume in the short term that it will be worth it for Intel to give Apple dibs on 3.0 GHz Quad Xeons.
I do hope that they drop the price.
In my experience, I'd rather give up a few seconds/minutes of my time to have more harddrive space. If I really need speed, I can RAID-0 or RAID-10 4 large harddrives, and get speed and capacity. I am more likely to run out of harddrive space than notice the load times of software. And if I am working on huge files, there's always RAID-0 or RAID-10, which is perfect for large files.
I would buy memory from www.crucial.com . They're not the cheapest but they're cheaper than Apple. 2GB (2 x 1GB) is 293 dollars. Also they have the appropiate heat spreaders for the current Mac Pros.
I too am waiting for the Stoakley-Seaburg platform. However Apple always had the chance to do a minor update for the quadcores since November. It seems like they were waiting for Intel to get 3Ghz parts out in volume for their needs.
As for the speed of the octo-core 3.0 ghz Xeon, expect it to be slower than a 3.0 ghz Woodcrest for single threaded applications. That's because there's some overhead to talk amongst the processors.
However, for 3d rendering, and video rendering, it should be a lot faster, and some Photoshop functions can be faster.
In reality it's even more than that. The $1500 apple charges is an upgrade over 2.66Ghz quad. So unless you can get 2.66Ghz quad Xeon for nothing, we're probably talking at least $700 pure profit that Apple is making for giving the few suckers who buy the new 3.Ghz octos the satisfction of having the fasted processor available. More power to Apple!
S-S may not be a huge upgrade, but the MCH promised 25% improvement in sustained memory throughput. With 4 cores running on each of two memory buses, the system will suffer from memory I/O bottlenecks. AnandTech ran into these constraints in their earlier tests with quad core processors. Seaburg also supports upcoming Penryn processors.
I was expecting:
1. Hardware RAID
2. Improved memory I/O with S-S
3. External SATA ports
Lack of new video cards does not matter much to me because video cards can be replaced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust#Consumer_protection
hope i dind't miss MM post, while I was hunting this article...
But it would not be an issue of Antitrust.
There are alternatives to CS and by raising their prices or choosing not serve a particular market actually promotes competition. How, if there was a software void that needed to be filled then someone would create the software and sell it to fill that void. If no one did, then it would indicate that there wasn't a void and/or everyone is happy. Simple supply and demand.
Well Stoakley adds more PCIe capability (more lanes and PCIe v2) on top of that process shrink. It should allow for 2 16x lane slots using PCIe v2. Also while Seaburg still caps at 667Mhz it has several other compelling enhancements some targeted specifically at quad-core chips.
Also a chance exists that the FSB upper limit could be 1600 Mhz (data rate) for Stoakley.
Anyway I think we would see a difference in the PCIe capabilities noted on Apple site at a minimum. In other words I don't think the 8 core BTO option uses a different chipset.
Well, yeah, I know, but I always tend to bend down performance into the negative. If I see more than 6x speed improvement, I'll be highly surprised. The software really has to take advantage of the 8 cores. My guess is that the average speedbump by improved memory, improved motherboard, improved Graphics,.. are only a marginal 25% in raw processing power in 3D rendering! I have yet have to see all 8 cores work at 100% When running good software, maybe they run at an average of 85 to 90%.
Photoshop CS 2 is a bad example, but with an 8 core Mac Pro, only 1 or 2 processors are doing stuff while the other 6 are playing ping pong with their fingers in their nose...