Hardly faster than a g5 with 4 cores?? are you insane? sure for your day to day stuff it won't make much of a difference. But who buys a machine like this for surfing the web. The extra cores will drastically improve performance in apps optimized to take advantage of them, and my friend high end animation, video, data crunching apps, are all taking into consideration the expansion of the multi core market when they code their new apps. Several high end apps on the market right now utilize up to 16 cores, even though very few machines have so many. From my standpoint, this is a niche upgrade, and if you don't fit the niche that actually needs this performance stop crying because it costs money. As far as the other parts not being upgraded i wouldn't mind seeing some higher end options for graphics cards, but oh well i can upgrade later and ebay the card i have.
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8-Core Mac Pros have arrived.
- Thread starter arcsbite
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8 cores on a single clock.
Actually 3Ghz only refers to the clock speed, the multiple cores all run against the same clock.
Basically it means that each clock cycle more work can be done by the processor, INTEL will tell you that it is almost linear. What infact happens is something similar to the NUMA architecture of some large servers. The local cache is significantly quicker than off processor memory- so applications written for multi-processor (or in this case multi-core) will gain significantly while other items will only notice a modest increase (the latency to off-processor memory is SIGNIFICANTLY greater than the speed on the processor).
What will be better is multi-threading. OSX will manage the multiple cores well, so as long as you have a tasks that requires more than 4 processors (single threaded processes) you will gain.
Actually 3Ghz only refers to the clock speed, the multiple cores all run against the same clock.
Basically it means that each clock cycle more work can be done by the processor, INTEL will tell you that it is almost linear. What infact happens is something similar to the NUMA architecture of some large servers. The local cache is significantly quicker than off processor memory- so applications written for multi-processor (or in this case multi-core) will gain significantly while other items will only notice a modest increase (the latency to off-processor memory is SIGNIFICANTLY greater than the speed on the processor).
What will be better is multi-threading. OSX will manage the multiple cores well, so as long as you have a tasks that requires more than 4 processors (single threaded processes) you will gain.
Each core is 3GHz. which means a total of 24Ghz per processor...although it doesn't work quite like that - explaining it more is probably another thread...and probably for someone that understands it better than I do
Just ordered
I just ordered an 8-core mac pro. With bluetooth and airport card. That's a lot of money, but I could use the horsepower for video editing.
I just ordered an 8-core mac pro. With bluetooth and airport card. That's a lot of money, but I could use the horsepower for video editing.
4 Gigs seems to be the price sweet spot. I originally intended to buy 4 Gigs from Newegg. Which would have saved me about $400. Now it would save me about $50. But if a memory chip is bad I'd rather deal with it through my local Apple store.
Food for thought:
The original Macintosh cost $2495 back in 1984. In today's dollars, that's $4869.
That Macintosh had 128K of RAM (0.000128 gigs), a 400K floppy drive, and a 512x342 monochrome CRT monitor. Its 68000 processor ran at 8 MHz, or 0.008 GHz.
Today's machines have 32,768 times more RAM (4 gig).
1.3 million times more storage capacity (500 gig hard drive).
375,000 times faster processor (3 GHz, and that's EACH processor).
23 times more pixels (on EACH 30" display).
4.2 billion times more color fidelity (32 bit color).
And cost about the same.
We have come such a long way in just over 20 years!
The original Macintosh cost $2495 back in 1984. In today's dollars, that's $4869.
That Macintosh had 128K of RAM (0.000128 gigs), a 400K floppy drive, and a 512x342 monochrome CRT monitor. Its 68000 processor ran at 8 MHz, or 0.008 GHz.
Today's machines have 32,768 times more RAM (4 gig).
1.3 million times more storage capacity (500 gig hard drive).
375,000 times faster processor (3 GHz, and that's EACH processor).
23 times more pixels (on EACH 30" display).
4.2 billion times more color fidelity (32 bit color).
And cost about the same.
We have come such a long way in just over 20 years!
Don't know about the person you replied to, but I recently bought one of these babies from Amazon to measure power usage of all kinds of stuff around my house. You plug it into the wall and then plug the device you want to measure into it. It tells you all kinds of information, including instantaneous watts, kilowatt-hours over time, etc. It's great for identifying devices around the house that suck down a lot of power, especially if you're looking for ways to cut down your electric bill. You might be surprised at how many devices draw a little bit of power when plugged in but "off" -- putting them on a power strip and switching it off can actually help!
I found that my Power Mac G4 uses about 75 watts at idle and close to 100 watts when working hard. It also uses 5 watts when "off." That's not too bad when considering that my FreeBSD PC uses about 150W/180W. I thought about replacing them both with a Mac mini (Apple advertises 23W idle) but doing the math showed that it'd take 2-3 years to make up the purchase price with electricity savings.
Ok, back to your regularly scheduled drooling or complaining...
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Surprisingly lean consumption from a Mac Pro. What are running to test it at load? I need to get one of those Kill-a-Watt usage meters. Then again it has been in the news that a fully loaded iMac Core Duo uses ~90 watts at full load with wireless and bluetooth on.
Clearly, because nobody else has a machine with quad-core processors, now. Nor do they have such smoking fast video cards included, like the beast that is the 7300GT -- let's not mention the all-but-unattainable DDR2-667 RAM... with heat-spreaders!
Give me a break. I was stoked to order me a new MP, not necessary an "8-core" model because I don't need it (nor do very many people need much beyond 1 fast CPU core), but was hoping for something of an update that would keep them at least in the playing field with hardware options available from just about any other computer manufacturer worth their salt. Apple has a leg up with processors at this stage, but that's it. Unfortunately, it's not enough to get my money -- it's still a computer with dated parts that demand a false premium at this point. Give it a worthwhile update and that may change.
No goof - Apple clearly hates us.
(See the ACD price reductions for further proof.)
(See the more than twice the price difference between the UK and US Adobe CS3 Suites.)
Woohoo! Any Apple update is a good thing. 8 cores is insane... I probably can't even take advantage of 4.
8 cores is insane... I probably can't even take advantage of 4. 
No Blu-Ray or HD Option?
I'm kind of shocked. This makes me think we aren't going to see any real upgrades to the video and DVD software with the new iLife. I wonder when I will be able to actually burn a 1080i or 1080p iMovie.
Nothin like watchin' grandma blow out her candles for her 98th birthday in Hi-Def!
I'm kind of shocked. This makes me think we aren't going to see any real upgrades to the video and DVD software with the new iLife. I wonder when I will be able to actually burn a 1080i or 1080p iMovie.
Nothin like watchin' grandma blow out her candles for her 98th birthday in Hi-Def!
This is why...
This is the argument against Apple moving to Intel chips. When it was a totally different chip architecture you couldn't make these kinds of comparisons to Alienware, Asus, or Dell.
I for one say you still can't, not until you can run OS X on that new Alienware machine.
I'm certainly sympathetic to the UK pricing plight, but I still don't see it as apples-to-apples.
This is the argument against Apple moving to Intel chips. When it was a totally different chip architecture you couldn't make these kinds of comparisons to Alienware, Asus, or Dell.
I for one say you still can't, not until you can run OS X on that new Alienware machine.
I'm certainly sympathetic to the UK pricing plight, but I still don't see it as apples-to-apples.
Dated parts? The only thing that is "dated" are the video adapters Apple provides as BTO.
The rest are inline with current parts (at the moment nobody else has 3GHz Quad-Core Xeon) and if you don't like Apple's prices you can purchase those from third-parties (RAM, hard-drives, optical drives, etc.).
I hope Apple makes available additional video adapter options soon... if I had to guess Apple is waiting on Leopard to bring out some of the latest video adapters (drivers for them linked to enhancements in Leopard, etc.).
The only thing I really wise Apple would do is provide BTO options to NOT include RAM or a hard-drive.
Ya'll are crazy saying its too expensive! $699USD to DOUBLE your cores? That seems like a pretty damn good deal to me!
Anyway, where are the CS3 benchmarks?! Will this even make a difference?
And I don't know if i'm allowed to ask this, but, I know Multimedia has been waiting for this for a while, why is he in time out? That sucks!
Anyway, where are the CS3 benchmarks?! Will this even make a difference?
And I don't know if i'm allowed to ask this, but, I know Multimedia has been waiting for this for a while, why is he in time out? That sucks!
Dated video cards, No HD optical option, limited memory in base model. (Which is fine, I would rather they just had it empty and I buy my own ram)
I personally would like to see a MBP with a Core 2 Duo Extreme.
Or how about this a Mac Mini Pro that has built in graphics card, and Core 2 Duo with a top of the line Core 2 Duo Extreme for 1k.
Or how about this a Mac Mini Pro that has built in graphics card, and Core 2 Duo with a top of the line Core 2 Duo Extreme for 1k.
Even then, it's pretty clear that MS is on its way to oblivion...who's gonna buy a crappy PC when we have a cheap 8-core MacPro? GO APPLE!
Considering the cheapest Core 2 Extreme is still barely under $1,000 I doubt it'll happen.
I don't think a MacBook Pro with a specialty Merom processor would be that affordable either.
I'm not sure why this would be considered a new release of the Mac Pro either. It's a new option but nothing of the old systems has been upgraded. If you need 8-Core, buy buy buy! But if not it's still better to wait. I'm going to wait until WWDC to see if there are any more updates. If there aren't then I have no idea what I'm going to do since there won't be any Macs that fit what I want. Keep hoping for the Mac Mini Pro I guess.
Would be a nice machine at $2999. It is insane what they are charging for the MacPros. Been out 8 months without a price cut. $1999 for a 2Ghz machine that is only slighlty faster than the 2Ghz G5 from 4 years ago. No thanks.
What exactly are you looking for in a video card?...
The ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) seems to be all that anyone would need unless you are doing video editing..
And I did a search at some vendors, and there aren't many other cards that have 512MB, dual-DVI and OSX drivers.
If anything Apple needs to get more 3rd party stuff available.