Apple Announces Penryn Mac Pros and Xserve

[Wild-Bill]

I don't get it....

I don't get why so many people are going bananas about the lack of a BlueRay and / or HDDVD BTO option.

Apple is notorious for charging insanely high prices for BTO options, and this updated Mac Pro's BTO options are no exception.

1. Put the hi-def drive of your choice in yourself.
2. Relax.
3. Profit. $

 

[darwinian]

I'm sure it's been said before but ...

It's kind of funny that on one hand you have people who want a mid-tower presumably to customize unlike the iMac, and then you have people who think that the lack of options offered on the Mac Pro is appalling. While gripe 1 still stands in regard to an inexpensive customizable tower (I had to change my thinking on hardware in 2000 when I switched to Mac after 15 years), there are plenty of solutions for the Mac Pro - it's limited only by the technical ability of the community to step up. Almost anything is possible, and that should make the tinkerers happy, not upset.

I also agree with comments that Apple can't or probably doesn't want to be in the business of dealing with the crazy fluctuating prices of hardware like memory.

Anyway, memory is available via 3rd party for great prices, blu-ray burners will become more widely available soon, and the only thing that really remains is the graphics cards confusion, which I, too, share ....

 

[GangsterTalk]

1st post

I decided to hold off on joining the fray until the new Pros were available.

I've had my PowerMac G4 for close to 5 years now so it was definitely time for an upgrade.

Here's what I got today:

* Processor 065-7534 Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo
* Memory 065-7176 4GB (4x1GB)
* Graphics Card 065-7537 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
* Hard Drive Bay1 065-7189 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Hard Drive Bay2 065-7195 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Hard Drive Bay3 065-7197 None
* Hard Drive Bay4 065-7200 None
* Optical Drive 065-7203 One 16x SuperDrive
* Wireless Option 065-7206 AirPort Extreme Card (Wi-Fi)
* Mouse from AOS 065-7693 APPLE MIGHTY MOUSE
* Mac OS Language for AOS 065-7707 WIRED KYBRD/MAC OS X
* Mac SVR OS Language 065-7539 None

I priced out a similar HP workstation (xw8600) (ATI FireGL V5600 instead of NVIDIA GeForce 8800, 250GB 1st drive instead of 320 GB, with same processors and memory - it came out to $7073 for the HP as opposed to ~ $4700 for the MacPro. That's a no brainer to me.

 

[Kallikinos]

If you buy memory from Apple you're either insane or really stupid.

As for no Blu-Ray on the Mac Pro, I don't really care...I'm still getting DVDs at the moment. It's nice to see a new Mac Pro out, nothing new on the outside but the insides got a nice overhaul. I still like the design, I was hoping for something new but it wouldn't make much sense for Apple to do so anyway. I'm cool with everything about the new Mac Pro, except the 8800GT gfx card should come in the base model.

The price is appropriate, I haven't found any other towers with the same specs as the Mac Pro for less.

 

[mac-er]

There is something just so satisfying about seeing actual Mac hardware on the main Apple.com page and being so prominent on the Store page.

 

[GoKyu]

Well this is it, the new Mac Pros are out - a week before expected

Added the wi-fi and wireless mighty mouse options, and my new (and FIRST)
Mac will be on its way very soon

Can't wait!

-Bryan

 

[Artofilm]

Same here!

Ordered a new MacPro, the standard model, I wanted to order the 8800 graphics card but it bumped up the ship date from "1 - 2 business days" to "2 - 5 weeks", so I just chose to put it in later. I can't stand this PC anymore.

MacPro, here I come!

 

[CWallace]

Forum member jnc noted that the 2.8GHz single E5462 2.8GHz Xeon CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD is only $100 more then the 24" iMac with the X7900 2.8GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD.

Yes, you need to add a 23" ACD for $899 and you could add the AirPort for another $50. But the Mac Pro is going to be faster thanks to having two more CPU cores as well as just a better chipset. And it's fully expandable.

So Apple has released the "cheaper tower" even if it is not the $1799 (or less) folks want to pay (to offset the 23" ACD).

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/411021/.

 

[Jade Cambell]

Maybe Apple is teasing us, and the REAL Mac Pro upgrade will come at MWSF.

 

[AidenShaw]

My mother spanked me when I said "shut up" to anyone

Gamers, please, shut up. You are lame. Wow you can run Quake 4 at 300 fps? Nobody cares. The human brain can't distinguish frame rates that high anyway.

Maybe you should take a look and understand what the game benchmarks actually show....

The FPS listed is "average FPS". During difficult to render scenes, the frame rate might be an order of magnitude lower than the average.

So, your "fluid" 60 FPS card might be doing 6 to 10 FPS during complex scenes - something any human brain would see as less than "fluid".

It would be nice if the benchmarks reported "minimum FPS" as well as average, though.

 

[AidenShaw]

powermac: awesome machine not only in power but also price and power usage

Don't forget that it's also HUMONGOUS.

 

[ingenious]

I was just floored by the fact you can attach EIGHT 30" Apple Displays!

 

[Decrepit]

I was just floored by the fact you can attach EIGHT 30" Apple Displays!

It's even more wild to see what people do with eight 30" displays.

Some of the simulation and visualization of data is just incredible. 3D imaging of a cross-section of the surface of Earth, where the data was collected with a radar system and a shotgun.

I was working with people 2 years ago that had 32GB of memory in their system and it wasn't enough. They loved the 32 because it reduced the calculation time from 12 days to 8 before they could see the result and begin to do the actual work. Pretty amazing stuff. And these guys had 2-4 30" displays.

To badly paraphrase a great movie...

"We're going to need a bigger desk."

 

[uNext]

It appears you need the RAID card for SAS to work. Might want to look in to that.

Holy **** i missed that part was too excited for the update lol
thanks for the headsup.....

 

[genoco]

Why does anyone really need a case redesign?

If that's all you were waiting for, you shouldn't be buying a Mac Pro.

These are workstation computers, and an extra curve here, or an angle there isn't going to make a difference to your workflow or creativity. You are obviously just a material idiot, for whom this machine is not aimed at.

I think this is a very acceptable upgrade, as it reflects what is available today.

When Apple releases a new product/updates, it is both exciting and frustrating, certainly when you have a forum full of braggers or wannabes who just completely miss the boat.

Yeah, new case design will be nice. The current case is about 5 years old now. It is not about adding extra curve here and there, is more about how they rethink what a workstation is. Apple is a leader in design innovation, so I guess a lot of people are expecting the next great design from Apple.

 

[Choppaface]

Can the new Mac Pro *really* support eight 30 in cinema displays? The bandwidth for 8 screens would seem to be something like:
(2560*1600 pixels) (48 bit/pixel color) (8 screens) (30 frames/sec) = 43.9 gigabits/sec = 5.49 gigabytes/sec

I don't know how much the graphics card takes over the screen drawing, etc etc, but this seems like it would be a significant chunk of the system bus' bandwidth.

 

[CWallace]

Yeah, new case design will be nice. The current case is about 5 years old now. It is not about adding extra curve here and there, is more about how they rethink what a workstation is. Apple is a leader in design innovation, so I guess a lot of people are expecting the next great design from Apple.

I have to say that the inside of the Mac Pro is about the best-designed I have seen since the IBM PS/2. All the SATA cables I have to run around the inside of my HP workstations make me long for the backplane design Apple uses for the HDDs.

 

[CWallace]

Can the new Mac Pro *really* support eight 30 in cinema displays? The bandwidth for 8 screens would seem to be something like:
(2560*1600 pixels) (48 bit/pixel color) (8 screens) (30 frames/sec) = 43.9 gigabits/sec = 5.49 gigabytes/sec

I don't know how much the graphics card takes over the screen drawing, etc etc, but this seems like it would be a significant chunk of the system bus' bandwidth.

Most of that would be in the GPU and on-card memory, would it not?

 

[onicon]

the displays are 24bit not 48.
that makes only half the bandwith you stated. plus the mentioned fact that a lot of calculations occur within the graphicscard itself. but shure, there would not me much space let on the bus for say, raid5 plus fibrechannel (not that ther were the slots available).

 

[ruftytufty]

That was fast! See memory for new MP's at:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Se...hed+Pair&Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&N=7318

I would imagine not that long. There are manufacturers already producing PC2-6400 FBDIMMs (800MHz), including Netlist, which is OWC's supplier of "Apple Certified" memory. And, they already have the Apple-approved heat spreaders in their supply chain, so getting supply of the new memory should be pretty quick.

Also, Transcend already lists a "DDR2 800 FB-DIMM for Mac Pro" - http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/memstd.asp?Cid=102 - $90 per 2GB DIMM, though I haven't tried to verify whether this is really the right stuff (proper heat spreaders), since I'm not really in the market right now.

 

[BTW]

Finally eh? Should make a lot of people very happy

Yep, and the simple thing like USB on the front of the Xserve is nice too. Too bad the Xserves only go to 3GHz CPUs. Quad core is good enough though.

 

[ddavid]

I am mostly waiting for a redesign. The current design of it although very nice, is very tired.

I heard a rumor that they were coming out with fabulous new colors!

 

[JGowan]

Help Me with my VIDEO CARD options!

Question for you guys… I will be getting a new Mac Pro with TWO 30" displays, but I also want to use my existing 23" Display -- what graphics card do I get. I am confused at all of the different ones. I suppose I should use option "2 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT", which I'm guessing would be two cards, one for a 30" and a 23" and the other for the other 30", leaving one DVI ports open for another monitor if I decided to spend more money. But I've been reading negative things about this card in this thread, but there's not an option to get TWO NVIDIA cards…

What to do?

 

[bigwig]

I was working with people 2 years ago that had 32GB of memory in their system and it wasn't enough. They loved the 32 because it reduced the calculation time from 12 days to 8 before they could see the result and begin to do the actual work.

Unless you really like having very expensive engineers twiddling their thumbs, why not use big iron instead of a Mac? An SGI Altix 4700 maxes out at 1024 cores, 128 TB of memory, and thousands of TB of disk. I bet it won't take 8 days.

 

[Analog Kid]

Holds its own? Didn't you just say the new MP almost doubles what the quad G5 did? Or is your point that a hypothetical nonexistent 8 core G5 with faster clock rate would keep up with the xeons?

Yes, I did say that. Let me say it again: after 2 years and two process shrinks, Intel still has to use twice as much silicon, 4 times as many transistors, and boost their clock 30% to double the speed of the G5. I'd say the G5 is holding its own.

One 970MP has the same performance as one Penryn die. The 8 core Mac Pro uses 4 dual core dice, just like the hypothetical nonexistent 8 core PowerMac G5 would have 2 years ago. The difference is that Intel had to go through two process shrinks to get here. Those 820 million transistors in a 4 core Harpertown could be rewired into 8 G5s with more than enough left to wire up an onchip memory controller and maybe a GPU to boot.

There's a lesson to be learned here-- if the only way to improve performance is by increasing the amount of silicon linearly, or the transistor count quadratically, we've hit the wall and someone has to find a new approach.

A few points:

1. The G5 was at close to it's performance limit.
2. Intel has traded raw clock-speed for better efficiency. Like the PowerPC, Netburst-based P4s needed more and more exotic cooling to keep them from melting so there was a limit to how far they could be pushed and the performance that could be extracted from them. We would not have P4s or G5s twice as powerful today.
3. More cores and faster speeds will continue to improve performance.
4. As multi-threading and multi-core applications become more common, performance will improve without any need for a speed increase. Just as Native OS-X binaries run faster on Intel Macs then PowerPC binaries with no additional hardware changes.
5. Today's Mac Pro is still twice as fast as yesterday's G5 Power Mac.

I think you're missing my point which was simply to clear all the transistor count pixie dust out of my eyes, get beyond just admiring the sheer colossal effort put forth and look at what's been accomplished and I'm realizing that it's not a whole lot.

• Harpertown 3.2GHz is close to its performance limit too. Intel wouldn't ship it otherwise.
• Efficiency is nice for laptops, but their top end workstation CPU isn't any faster than it was two years ago which has to annoy people with work to do on their stations. Intel let go of the clock speed insanity, but they haven't (and perhaps can't) made the necessary changes in architecture to reap performance without it.
• I understand that more and faster horses will get me to town more quickly. I'm just commenting that while we have more horses than we used to, they're fat, ugly and no faster than the horses we used to have.
• Multithreading and multicore isn't going to get most of us much further than we are now unless we rethink our core designs. We don't need 32 SSE engines-- Cell's on the right track with more and slimmer cores. You lost me on the binaries and hardware changes thing.
• Today's Mac Pro is also only twice as fast as the PowerMac of 2 years ago, which was kind of my point-- faster but with no real apparent technology dividend.

I'm really not trying to start a brawl here, just add perspective...