Details of Core i7-980X (Gulftown) Mac Pro Processors Leaked

[Digital Skunk]

3 months later.. no news.

Tomorrow it's exaclty 1 year ago till the last release.. Cmon Intel & Apple.. im waiting for over 5 months already!

If you've been waiting 5 months for a Mac Pro then you should be used to it.

I joke!

Sure they're not the same animals but.. for 1/3 the cost and expandable to 16GB the new big iMacs makes more and more sense to me... And they're not far behind on processors ither...

True, and a I know a lot of users pro and average joe that are grabbing that iMac. They just need the power and not the expansion.

whereas the MP would give me a playable box, opportunity to put in better/newer graphics, larger/more HD's, FW3200 and/or LightWire and/or USB 3.0 [when it FINALLY is released], and so on.

I agree, and it's the only reason the Mac Pro is the only choice for me. I need that expansion and PCI.

USB3.0 PCI cards have been out for a few months already, and it's Light PEAK

 

[MorphingDragon]

what exactly is the point of all these cores on a desktop machine with a crappy graphics card that won't be used for heavy video work?

i'll probably get an imac next year, but the way apple configures their computers is exactly the opposite of what the home builders do.

Maya uses CPU rendering as they hate how OpenGL is implemented on GPUs.

Video encoding.

Supprisingly, a decent graphics card is only really needed for CAD work.

 

[thermodynamic]

what exactly is the point of all these cores on a desktop machine with a crappy graphics card that won't be used for heavy video work?

i'll probably get an imac next year, but the way apple configures their computers is exactly the opposite of what the home builders do.

With luck the ATi 5870 will be out.

And proper drivers, which is sad because everyone says OS X works better with ATi (a statement I don't disbelieve despite it all).

I still don't know if my periodic Flash problem is due to my 4870 being bad in some way or if it's the driver. The Nvidia 285 isn't that much better, poorer in a couple of ways, but I've had no problems with Flash on my MacBook Pro (mid-2009 17").

 

[MorphingDragon]

With luck the ATi 5870 will be out.

And proper drivers, which is sad because everyone says OS X works better with ATi (a statement I don't disbelieve despite it all).

I still don't know if my periodic Flash problem is due to my 4870 being bad in some way or if it's the driver. The Nvidia 285 isn't that much better, poorer in a couple of ways, but I've had no problems with Flash on my MacBook Pro (mid-2009 17").

Try downloading Beta 3

 

[nrajack]

Granted this thread is talking about the 6 core Gulftowns, but another forum I participate in (Cakewalk Sonar) someone asked about the upcoming 8 core Intel chips. Anybody think Apple's going to skip the 6 core and go right for the 8 core? The Cakewalk Sonar forum link is: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=1965612&mpage=1#1966102 And the direct link (which is in post #4 on Cake's site) to the info is: http://hothardware.com/News/Buckle-Up-Intel-Preps-8Core-NehalemEX-Chips-for-March-Launch/

 

[AidenShaw]

Granted this thread is talking about the 6 core Gulftowns, but another forum I participate in (Cakewalk Sonar) someone asked about the upcoming 8 core Intel chips. Anybody think Apple's going to skip the 6 core and go right for the 8 core? The Cakewalk Sonar forum link is: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=1965612&mpage=1#1966102 And the direct link (which is in post #4 on Cake's site) to the info is: http://hothardware.com/News/Buckle-Up-Intel-Preps-8Core-NehalemEX-Chips-for-March-Launch/

In my opinion there's next to zero chance that Apple will jump
to 8 cores.

The 8-core is the high end server CPU, for up to 8 socket machines
(total of 64 cores, 128 threads). These are the Xeon 7000 series
chips in Intel numbering.

The Mac Pro has used the Xeon 5000 series, with a max of two
sockets. The Xeon 7000 use a different socket, so the motherboard
would need to be redesigned - even to fit two 8-core CPUs.

Newegg lists the Xeon x7460 2.66 GHz 6-core for $3000
at discount.

Apple won't be using these.

 

[alent1234]

the 7000 series CPU's are usually found only in 5U servers and higher. the upcoming 7000 CPU's that will be released soon also have features that used to be only in the Itanium CPU which aren't needed in the 5000 or 3000 series of Xeons.

 

[alent1234]

With luck the ATi 5870 will be out.

And proper drivers, which is sad because everyone says OS X works better with ATi (a statement I don't disbelieve despite it all).

I still don't know if my periodic Flash problem is due to my 4870 being bad in some way or if it's the driver. The Nvidia 285 isn't that much better, poorer in a couple of ways, but I've had no problems with Flash on my MacBook Pro (mid-2009 17").

i doubt we'll see the 5870 in the iMac

all the new chips usually need big PCB's and the memory takes up a lot of room. Samsung is starting to produce 40nm RAM this year so it won't be until next year when we'll see big RAM jumps in graphics memory on iMac's and MBP's.

Later this year RAM sticks with 32GB RAM will come to market. bad news for Amazon EC2

 

[AidenShaw]

Later this year RAM sticks with 32GB RAM will come to market. bad news for Amazon EC2

I hope that means that 4 GiB DIMMs will become more reasonably
priced - my i7 is waiting for that 24 GiB upgrade!

ps: Do you have any links to 32 GiB DIMM info? I wonder why
8 GiB and 16 GiB are being skipped. Kind of a moot point, though
since many current chipsets can't use big DIMMs.

 

[Eljay451]

And what is the Power7 up to now, 5 Ghz?

4.14 GHz.

Once again Apple must be rueing the day they ever switched to these sluggish Intel processors.

And to get a "quad" Power7, which would have 128 threads, at 3.8 GHz, would cost around $34,000/CPU x 4 CPU = $136,000.

Let's pretend the economies of scale would divide that high price by 10.

But even at an imaginary $13,600 for the two modules which have two CPUs each which have 4 cores per CPU which support 8 threads per core (128 concurrent threads, total)... that's a far cry more expensive than Intel Xeon X5680 $1,663 x 2 CPU = $3,326 (for just the two CPUs at 3.33 GHz having 24 thread total; not including price of case, power supply, cooling, mainboard, RAM, HDD, ODD, keyboard, mouse, OS X).

I expect a single CPU Mac Pro will use the Core i7-980X, which will be a much less expensive $999. (Unlike the Xeon X5680, the Core i7-980X is single CPU only.)

 

[alent1234]

I hope that means that 4 GiB DIMMs will become more reasonably
priced - my i7 is waiting for that 24 GiB upgrade!

ps: Do you have any links to 32 GiB DIMM info? I wonder why
8 GiB and 16 GiB are being skipped. Kind of a moot point, though
since many current chipsets can't use big DIMMs.

http://www.google.com/#q=40nm+samsu...&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQsQQwAA&fp=a2bb30ecf4f91972

http://www.i4u.com/article32412.html

8GB and 16GB RAM modules have been around for a while. Just configured a few HP servers we're looking at buying and they all have the 8GB and 16GB options. but they are expensive and the new 32GB modules are on a smaller process tech and will be a lot cheaper to implement.

 

[AidenShaw]

http://www.google.com/#q=40nm+samsu...&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQsQQwAA&fp=a2bb30ecf4f91972

http://www.i4u.com/article32412.html

8GB and 16GB RAM modules have been around for a while. Just configured a few HP servers we're looking at buying and they all have the 8GB and 16GB options. but they are expensive and the new 32GB modules are on a smaller process tech and will be a lot cheaper to implement.

Thanks - I didn't think to look at server memory - I want big DIMMs for my Core i7 systems. 4 GiB DIMMs would be OK, just waiting to find 24 GiB for significantly less than $1K.

 

[alent1234]

i don't think they are selling it without ECC yet. the current HP servers max out at 192GB of RAM and the next BIOS update will increase that to 256GB or so. once the 32GB modules hit the market I think it will be close to 500GB of RAM for a 2U server

32GB using all 4GB modules will cost around $1500 right now