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Can't wait to buy a Mac Pro!!

M

Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
I'm gonna wait until they update their current lineup before I make the purchase, but what do you guys think about the 27" Cinema Display? My hope is that it gets thunderbolt ports.

My plan is to buy the base line 8 core stock with GPU being the only upgrade I do through Apple. I plan on buying a 600GB Raptor drive and using that as my primary drive (Time Machine backups will be done to my 2TB WD RAID array in case of raptor drive death) and in the other three HD slots I will load my 3TB Hitachi's that I have media on. A total of 9.6TBs on the Mac Pro itself! What do you guys think?

I hope the new Mac Pro motherboard can do SATA 6GB/s so I can take advantage of that from the Hitachi's.
 
Mufasa804 said:
I was afraid of that. I'm hoping for a Q4 2011 release.
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That's when the newer Sandy Bridge parts are slated to release, and then system vendors will require time to get their hands on them, build systems, do any last second validation testing (make sure what comes off of the assy. line works), and ship. This typically takes 13 weeks at a minimum (aka lead time), so actually getting your hands on a new model this year is extremely slim (could happen if Apple were to get parts early, but it doesn't appear they've preferential availability deals with Intel on the Xeons any longer).

This is why 2012 is far more likely before new systems actually ship.
 
nanofrog said:
That's when the newer Sandy Bridge parts are slated to release, and then system vendors will require time to get their hands on them, build systems, do any last second validation testing (make sure what comes off of the assy. line works), and ship. This typically takes 13 weeks at a minimum (aka lead time), so actually getting your hands on a new model this year is extremely slim (could happen if Apple were to get parts early, but it doesn't appear they've preferential availability deals with Intel on the Xeons any longer).

This is why 2012 is far more likely before new systems actually ship.
Click to expand...

As you say, Apple has a history of releasing systems before CPU's are available for general consumption. However, I'm with you in not anticipating anything new until Jan.
 
This is slightly promising, last year when the Mac Pro got updated in August the big deal was the upgrade going into "Nehelem" processors. Nehelem didn't release until Q1 yet Apple got their hands on them almost 5 months ahead of time. Could the same happen this year? I certainly hope so!!
 
Mufasa804 said:
This is slightly promising, last year when the Mac Pro got updated in August the big deal was the upgrade going into "Nehelem" processors. Nehelem didn't release until Q1 yet Apple got their hands on them almost 5 months ahead of time. Could the same happen this year? I certainly hope so!!
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In terms of Nehalem, users began getting their hands on systems in early March 2009 (one member had one on the 9th), and the official release wasn't until March 29, 2009. But PC vendors had systems in the hands of users in April, so it wasn't much of a lead (announced/vendor having parts isn't the same as shipped systems).

Unfortunately, this did not happen with the Westmeres (2010's), and Apple was late getting systems shipped vs. other vendors (same exact Xeon CPU P/N's in all cases). So it's reasonable to expect that the deal that existed between Apple and Intel is no longer in effect (I suspect the shift to Foxconn for boards had something to do with this, as the boards are where the greatest profits are, and Intel was doing it previously <2006 - 2008 systems>).
 
I see, well that makes sense. It's just so sad to see the Mac Pro get man handled by the iMac. Plus I really want to buy one!!
 
Man handled? Half the Mac Pro fleet still dominate the iMac. It's the lower end models that don't fare so well.
 
I'd go with an SSD for boot over the Raptor. I had a Raptor for boot previously, now on Intel SSD, Night and Day. Things launch and open lighting fast. I can't imagine ever going back to spinning drives for boot.
 
iMac and Mac Pro is like comparing a heavy duty truck and a sports car. They may both have 400hp engines and the sports car is faster 0-60 but you can throw 15,000 pounds behind the truck and it still performs because it has better suspension, cooling, brakes, etc.

Some benches will show the iMac is faster but the Mac Pro is built workstation class from the ground up.
 
jonnymo5 said:
iMac and Mac Pro is like comparing a heavy duty truck and a sports car. They may both have 400hp engines and the sports car is faster 0-60 but you can throw 15,000 pounds behind the truck and it still performs because it has better suspension, cooling, brakes, etc.

Some benches will show the iMac is faster but the Mac Pro is built workstation class from the ground up.
Click to expand...

If you're talking about the Macworld benchmark, then, well...

I think that benchmark was pretty much a joke and there was not really a reason to put the Mac Pro in there because, like you were saying, they are in totally different classes.

Also, they were comparing a brand new CPU with a faster clock speed to a way older CPU with a slower clock speed. They were only testing with single-threaded apps as well, so whichever has the faster clock speed will win. And when testing app loading and boot times, all they were doing was comparing an SSD against a mechanical drive, and we all already know which is faster.
 
I just saw the details of that "test". Kind of misleading. Like when they said a Macbook Air is faster than a MBPro. Most of the test are actually import and export dependent.
And the others are single threaded. The After Effects one is closer to reality.
 
strausd said:
If you're talking about the Macworld benchmark, then, well...

I think that benchmark was pretty much a joke and there was not really a reason to put the Mac Pro in there because, like you were saying, they are in totally different classes.

Also, they were comparing a brand new CPU with a faster clock speed to a way older CPU with a slower clock speed. They were only testing with single-threaded apps as well, so whichever has the faster clock speed will win. And when testing app loading and boot times, all they were doing was comparing an SSD against a mechanical drive, and we all already know which is faster.
Click to expand...

So, are you using your 12 core for gaming only or are you doing any serious work on it which you need 12 cores.. Nano and I warned you about that.
 
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