Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Current Gen Mac Pro 3.33GHz quad is $3699
- Thread starter snouter
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
and you get a beefy 3GB of ram.
So, that new 6 core will be landing at $3999.
Jus' sayin'.
Those processors cost the same and the price of the base quad core hasn't gone up. $1200 to upgrade a $300 processor to a $1000 processor is pushing it, but $1,500?
This is Apple afterall....
In all seriousness, if the SP Hex remains at the price of the current 3.33GHz Quad, then it'll only be $200 more than the base 2010 Octad. Rather narrow separation, and they did increase the base Octad by $200. Somehow, I'd think they'd chose to push the SP Hex to the $3899 mark, as to not only make more money, but generate further separation from the Octad unit (may help to sell the Octad for those using multi-threaded applications on a tight budget; Quad too little core count, and the Dodeca's are way out of budget).
Just a though.
Many are hoping for this, but I'm not so sure that will actually be the case, given they did go up on the Octad (it doesn't appear to have gotten a ~$143 hike in costs; ~$143*1.4, as any price increase gets the margin applied to it as well).
BTW, the E5620 is only $14 more than the E5520 ($28 for the pair; @ 40%, that would only add $40 after margin). As the base Quad got the larger HDD and 5770 while remaining at the same MSRP as the base 2009 system, it seems that these two upgrades produced little to no cost increase.
So it seems the need to add that extra $200 is mostly profit motivated from what I can tell.
Is it that hard to upgrade the processor? Wouldn't it make sense to just buy the bottom end one and upgrade?
How much life does this socket have left? I could live with a slightly slower processor for a bit if I could upgrade it significantly in 6-12 months.
How much life does this socket have left? I could live with a slightly slower processor for a bit if I could upgrade it significantly in 6-12 months.
It's fairly easy on the SP systems, as the socket has the latching system attached (same as any other board using an LGA1366 socket). But the DP systems are different, as the latching mechanism is missing. It's doable, but requires a couple more steps, and more diligence to make sure the socket, coolers, and fan connectors aren't damaged.
As per cost effective, it depends on the pricing you can find (new, or used, such as eBay), and whether or not you're trying to convert an SP system to a DP system (requires a different daughterboard, different CPU series, and coolers).
Not much really, as Sandy Bridge will use an LGA1155 for the consumer parts, and the LGA2011 for the enterprise grade parts (3xxx & 5xxx Xeons).
Now I'm wondering if the quad 3.2 at ~$2999 would be a better buy than the proposed single six core 3.33 at $3600 to $3999 will be?
Being a 400MHz jump per core, the upgrade to 3.2 over the base 2.8 might make some sense.
The closer the price premium of the six core 3.33 is towards $1000 over the 3.2 quad core, the more consternation in clubland and the better the quad core at the higher speed looks, for a lot of people anyhow.
I render and compress, but enough to warrant that kind of price difference?
Being a 400MHz jump per core, the upgrade to 3.2 over the base 2.8 might make some sense.
The closer the price premium of the six core 3.33 is towards $1000 over the 3.2 quad core, the more consternation in clubland and the better the quad core at the higher speed looks, for a lot of people anyhow.
I render and compress, but enough to warrant that kind of price difference?
Only you can answer this, as you're the only person that knows how much time you spend on what application (what % of time is on multi-threaded applications that can use n cores v. other).
But if the n core capable applications aren't used much, it would make sense IMO. The faster clocks would benefit you more with single threaded or limited core multi-threaded applications such as Photoshop (still limited to 2 cores as I understand it).
It might be worth the wait for the 2010 systems to actually begin to ship, as the '09's left would be sold off in the Refurbished section of the Apple Store. The 3.33GHz Quad (W3580) may drop to a more attractive price to you.
Also depending on which benefits you more (cores vs. clock speed), you might want to closely look at the turbo boost behavior of each part before you buy. If you tend to use apps that can only use 1-2 cores, some of the parts are very aggressive with the auto-overclock in that scenario.
Man if this pricing is true, I'm going to have to try to pick up the current 2.93GHz/3.33GHz QUAD at a discount (hopefully priced at $2700 for the 3.33GHz Nehalem current model).
If the 2.93GHz/3.33GHz or rather the "higher" end current Nehalem models at the local apple store can be had with an incredible discount (maybe the same price as the new 2.8GHz model or a little bit more), I'd pick one of those up. Either way the new lower end Quads will still be the same Nehalem architecture.
Does anyone know if the new 2.8GHz/3.2GHz nehalem models will be based on the 32nm technology? The current 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz and 3.33GHz are 45nm right?
My bets are:
a) They don't show tomorrow (8/9) at all on the store
b) The 6-core is the hot spot...newest technology that everybody's going to want and therefore predator-priced at $3999. Intel's published quantity-1000 CPU prices are irrelevant, both to what Apple actually pays Intel and to the Mac Pro's list price. It's strictly what Apple's Ivy-League MBA marketing guys calculate the market will bear.
The only thing we can be sure of is that the 6-core will be less than the $4999 price of the lower, slower 12-core. And I'm not even sure of that.
TD
a) They don't show tomorrow (8/9) at all on the store
b) The 6-core is the hot spot...newest technology that everybody's going to want and therefore predator-priced at $3999. Intel's published quantity-1000 CPU prices are irrelevant, both to what Apple actually pays Intel and to the Mac Pro's list price. It's strictly what Apple's Ivy-League MBA marketing guys calculate the market will bear.
The only thing we can be sure of is that the 6-core will be less than the $4999 price of the lower, slower 12-core. And I'm not even sure of that.
TD
I just keep a tab opened on the site apple.com under "store" and just hit command + r real quick (or just click on store at the top of the page) to see if the site is down or not. Then I just go about my business and just return to the tab and repeat the step.
I was wrong.
Would you be interested in the 6 core at $3999 ?
It would be ball crusher pricing
Glad they opted not to do it...