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.
First Intel Penryn Based PCs Arrive... Apple to Follow?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
About 1.2 million Xeon dual socket servers are sold per quarter. How many Mac Pros + Xserves?
20K? 50K? (Apple does not disclose these numbers)
The Mac Pro is a noise item on Intel's Xeon financial statement.
Not so, Barcelona beats Woodcrest/Clovertown in many areas, and is neck-and-neck with Wolfdale/Harpertown in many. Intel's latest is more-or-less better than AMD - the term "vastly superior" seldom applies to microprocessors in general.
Intel was arrogant for a while, and AMD had a couple of lucky (or good engineering) breaks - and 18 months ago AMD was flying and Intel was hurting. Today Intel is flying and AMD is hurting.
The tables will turn, and there will be times when AMD stuff is better than any Intel stuff. And then the tables will turn again, and Intel is the top frog. "Leapfrogging" is the norm in this business.
You'll probably see AMD CPUs in Apples someday, and then a year or two later - all Intel again.
But, most people won't care - because you can't tell if the CPU is an AMD or an Intel without checking the profiler.
That's what I'm getting at. How many penyrns might Intel possibly have available? 500,000? 1 million? Since Apple has such a small number of the total market, if they could get their hands on only 10% or 5% of those available, wouldn't they be able to fill their needs?
Thanks, for the informative reply, Aiden. At least the older 65 nm quad-core parts are a direct drop-in (and will probably be cheaper).
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=3
Intel usually allocates shipments based on the confirmed orders.
If Intel has hard orders for 2.4 million chips, and only has 240,000 - then Intel sends each buyer 10% of what they ordered.
If Apple ordered 40,000 - they'd get 4,000. If HP ordered a million, they'd get 100,000. Intel wouldn't give Apple 36,000 from HP's allotment.
Perhaps, however, Intel has set price tiers by delivery date. If that's the case, then it's possible that Apple could "outbid" the other vendors for early shipments. That's a "fair" way for Apple to ship early.
Note that Intel really has to treat similar customers the same - especially with the anti-trust issues that they face due to an overwhelming marketshare. It would not only be bad business to favor some customers, it could be illegal.
Very good point. For a period of time after the new Harpertown quads are introduced, the old Clovertown quads will be available at a much lower price.
That's a great time to upgrade an older dual-dual system to dual-quads.
Don't wait too long, though. The Clovertown supply will dry up before too long, and you won't be able to find them at a reasonable price.
I wonder why the original Conroe components are still holding their value after the E4xx Series has caught up in clock speed and the E6x20/E6x50 are cheaper with more cache or the 1333 MHz FSB.
I don't see the original Conroes on this price list:
http://www.centralcomputers.com/com...B?sort=3&category_id=1082&czuid=1194714534953
That illustrates my point before, that there's a short window when the last generation is available cheaply.
The online and discount stores that cater to DIY system builders want to get rid of the old stock quickly. After several months, the only people who want the old CPUs are those who need one to replace a CPU in a particular motherboard or system - and they'll pay whatever the price is at that point in time.
For at least the last 10 years I've watched Intel, and whenever they've made my current CPU obsolete (new design, new socket, different memory,...) I look to buy the last, fastest model of the older generation in my system.
the 8800 GT would be the best price performance wise
clearly better than the GTS: cheaper, less power hungry and not as loud while being more than 15-20% faster and really close to the GTX up the 95% of the GTX performance at half the cost ... which means you can build a GT SLI combo for the price of 1 GTX .. only shortcoming of the GT is the 512 mb vram which limits on AA and AF on high resolutions (beating all ati cards though
)in customer cards the obvious performance king is still the 8800 ultra (GTS and GTX are pointless since the GT release)
also ati has new cards coming out next 2 weeks or so going to compete with the 8800 GT
for the lower end (customers not caring about 3d) we might be more looking at 8600 stuff.. i doubt apple will go for cards elss than that sicne that would make the base imac models with the 2600 better than the Pro
just hope that they don't go with the x2900 from ATI as top customer solution ... it wasn't a performance monster to begin with and already outperformed today
...cross fingers
The 8800GT is an amazing card for the price, (think: UT3 demo 1600x1200 fully cranked at 60fps solid on an old Opteron 165)
I can only imagine what this card could do with 8 cores of mac prownage
My guess is one of the 2600 series Pro or XT only the full size Video card version for base machines. A 8800GT would be a nice option....cross fingers
the 8800 GT would be the best price performance wise
clearly better than the GTS: cheaper, less power hungry and not as loud while being more than 15-20% faster and really close to the GTX up the 95% of the GTX performance at half the cost ... which means you can build a GT SLI combo for the price of 1 GTX .. only shortcoming of the GT is the 512 mb vram which limits on AA and AF on high resolutions (beating all ati cards though
in customer cards the obvious performance king is still the 8800 ultra (GTS and GTX are pointless since the GT release)
also ati has new cards coming out next 2 weeks or so going to compete with the 8800 GT
for the lower end (customers not caring about 3d) we might be more looking at 8600 stuff.. i doubt apple will go for cards elss than that sicne that would make the base imac models with the 2600 better than the Pro
just hope that they don't go with the x2900 from ATI as top customer solution ... it wasn't a performance monster to begin with and already outperformed today
That is odd, from what I have read so far is that the GT has to be sli'ed to reach GTX +some performance levels. All depending on what resolution you are using, to drive a 30" ACD at native rez requires at least a GTX. But the price performance level is crazy good.
If they change the case too, i'm ok with waiting until january...
thew wouldn't update now and then change the case in january, would they?!
I have indicated the above ^ to Apple through the Mac Pro feedback section. The link is in my signature. Click it. Tell them what you think!
thew wouldn't update now and then change the case in january, would they?!
No, no they wouldn't...
Of course, they *could* update the Mac Pro now, and introduce a new single socket mini-tower in January, with a single dual-core or quad core CPU.
Look at the Intel BoneTrail motherboard to get an idea of what a cool machine that could be....
Just add room for two disks and a second optical, in a case half the size of the Mac Pro maxi-tower. Sweet.
In one of steve's speaches he did talk about how they invested a lot of time in desktops (pre imac alum). So it would be great to finally address the mini tower issue - especially with the imac heat problem...
You know I've always been totally on-board with you and the hope for a mini-tower Aiden - I'd love to see it become a reality!
The mini-tower is my dream. I'd sell a kidney to get one the day they shipped. 8GB of Fast non-ECC FBDIMM RAM max (half that of the mac Pro), 2 PCIe slots, 2 hard drive bays, one optical drive bay - all easily accessible. external power supply.
$1499 - no display included.
That wouldn't compete with the Mac Pro, would offer great power to universities who need power for FCS but can't afford Mac Pros. Also, people would clamor for it.
$1499 - no display included.
That wouldn't compete with the Mac Pro, would offer great power to universities who need power for FCS but can't afford Mac Pros. Also, people would clamor for it.
You know I've always been totally on-board with you and the hope for a mini-tower Aiden - I'd love to see it become a reality!
who wouldn't be on board with an additional mac with desktop components & midi sized case
Two points to mention...
1. The X38 chipset can use DDR3 or DDR2 (in some mobos) ECC or non-ECC. It does not use the FB-DIMM memory of the Seaburg and Greencreek chipsets.
2. ECC memory is valuable when you have many GiB - it's so much nicer to have a kernel panic with the message "uncorrected memory error" than random crashes, hangs and data corruptions. Aiden always chooses ECC memory for his systems (except, unfortunately, it's not available for laptops).