Another MP Future Proofing Thread

[omegasyn]

So my question is this, would the newer editions of Mac Pro's i7 core make a significant performance gain against the current generation of Harpertown processors?

Because I am in a current dilemma of either selling my current MP setup and using my unibody MBP as my main machine linked to an 24 NEC until the new announcement or keep everything and ride it until it bleeds mercury.

BTW, these are the current line of applications I use on a daily basis:
Photoshop, Coda, Textmate, Transmute, Things, CSS Edit, Excel, Word, Safari, Firefox.

I also forgot to mention that selling my current MP is going to be tedious in this harsh economy.

 

[irishgrizzly]

If you can get by on your MBP and afford the financial hit of the trade up, why not.

 

[liquid stereo]

Incremental performance

In my opinion, its very unlikely that typical performance gains are more than 25%, if that much.
I'm sure that Apple will advertise some Motion/PS/Final Cut process that increases by 75% or some such thing but... it will be a one-off type thing.

Additional cores are not the way to get better performance. Its a true shame that Intel has little competition.

So my question is this, would the newer editions of Mac Pro's i7 core make a significant performance gain against the current generation of Harpertown processors?

Because I am in a current dilemma of either selling my current MP setup and using my unibody MBP as my main machine linked to an 24 NEC until the new announcement or keep everything and ride it until it bleeds mercury.

BTW, these are the current line of applications I use on a daily basis:
Photoshop, Coda, Textmate, Transmute, Things, CSS Edit, Excel, Word, Safari, Firefox.

I also forgot to mention that selling my current MP is going to be tedious in this harsh economy.

 

[frimple]

I'm in a different position as I don't currently have the MP. I've been debating if I should purchase one of the current models (after the new ones are announced and prices drop) or wait and spend more on one of the new ones. This will be my primary workstation, I'm hoping for years to come, so I've put a lot of thought in my choice to wait for the new ones.

There are a lot of things that people miss when they're talking about what the pros/cons are. First off you have to understand that not only is it a new processor architecture but it's a new socket as well. In 2 years they won't be making any more new LGA 771 processors that you can pop in your mac pro, but I'm betting there will be a new LGA 1366 procs coming out for quite a while.

Second is memory. The current MP uses the FB-DIMM modules which are fine, but they're also fast becoming an outdated technology that vendors will support but not develop new products for. The new processors will not only have the on-board memory controller (no more northbridge!) but also it will be DDR3 which is on the roadmap of those said vendors. Also, due to a limitation (I believe with the hardware) the memory limit is 32 GB. That may seem excessive now but I also remember in '92 4 MB of memory being outrageous.

Third is hard drive bays (supported, I'm not talking about the extra 2 SATA ports that are available). 4 drives was great a few years ago, but that too is quickly becoming suspicious (especially if you're looking to use a pair of SSD drives in RAID 0 and an internal storage solution in addition to NAS). And a new RAID card?? Maybe that's asking for too much.

Everyone's right I think when they say that the new boxes won't be that much faster. I think there will be a difference, but come on, current Mac Pros are incredible! It's these other reasons that I've decided to wait and my suggestion to you is sell. Especially if you can live with your MBP in the meantime (knowing it could be > 5 months). Plus you'll get rid of it before bargain hunters start flying around you like a bunch of vultures (j/k I doubt re-sell prices will drop much more than 10%).