I have been a PC man starting on DOS. Two close friends have twisted my arms put me under mind control and convinced me I need to convert to MAC. One went so far as bringing an old G4 to my house and set it up and left it. Now I want one. I realize PC people work on their computers. Mac people get work out of their computers. I plan on getting a Mac Pro. Does anyone think the quad cores will be released at Mac World? I am not computerless unless owning 5 PC's counts as computerless. Should I wait or order now?
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Going to the Dark Side
- Thread starter NiteGeek
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The mac pro already has quad cores. an octo-core version is likely in the works, but the versions Apple is most likely to choose would be dual 4x2.33GHz versions and dual 4x2.66GHz versions, for which the processor costs are identical for the 2.33GHz version to the 3.0GHz dual core xeon in the mac pro now, and the 2.66GHz version is $300 more expensive per chip than that.
yeah, so in other words, it depends on how much money you got. if you can afford the 8-core mac, then wait. if not, then buy now
No one knows for sure, as apply is a pretty mysterious company....
It'll probably be a big event so it would be released in january (highly doubt it) or in Aug '07, but (probably?) not even by then... It's pretty safe to say that the earliest we'd possibly see Oct-Core Mac Pro's will be in AUG '07.....
Even when those get released hardly any (if none at all) applications will be able to utilize 8 cores, currently there are'nt too many that can utilize 4 cores..... Most Processor intensive apps are just getting into using the ability to use two processors....
Id go ahead and bye the Mac Pro now, deffinatly dont wait untill 8 cores....
4 cores will still be WAAYYY faster than the single core systems your using...
(Why is switching to the mac "going to the dark side" I thought you were switching to windoes when i first read it, and wondered why, especially on a mac site, the "dark side" would be windows.......
Also, ever since I switched in 2004, one of the things i LOVE is that you dont need to worry about viruses, theres no critical updates, or auto restarts, heck, i have no anti-virus software, and my firewall turned off, never gotten a virus, and i cant say i've been to some of the most "virus-free" sites either.... Anyway, the lack of viruses is a big plus your gunna like... Plus the ability to boot to windows if needed.
It'll probably be a big event so it would be released in january (highly doubt it) or in Aug '07, but (probably?) not even by then... It's pretty safe to say that the earliest we'd possibly see Oct-Core Mac Pro's will be in AUG '07.....
Even when those get released hardly any (if none at all) applications will be able to utilize 8 cores, currently there are'nt too many that can utilize 4 cores..... Most Processor intensive apps are just getting into using the ability to use two processors....
Id go ahead and bye the Mac Pro now, deffinatly dont wait untill 8 cores....
4 cores will still be WAAYYY faster than the single core systems your using...
(Why is switching to the mac "going to the dark side" I thought you were switching to windoes when i first read it, and wondered why, especially on a mac site, the "dark side" would be windows.......
Also, ever since I switched in 2004, one of the things i LOVE is that you dont need to worry about viruses, theres no critical updates, or auto restarts, heck, i have no anti-virus software, and my firewall turned off, never gotten a virus, and i cant say i've been to some of the most "virus-free" sites either.... Anyway, the lack of viruses is a big plus your gunna like... Plus the ability to boot to windows if needed.
Hard to say, Apple doesn't like to talk about their upcoming products until they are near release. MacWorld (Jan 8) is a likely time to see new products announced, good chance the Mac Pro is going to 8 processors around then, at the latest Spring.
From my understanding (correct where necessary): Mac OS X has the ability to juggle single-threaded applications between processors. As in, while running multiple single processor apps, they will run on different cores. However, contrary to what marioman38 says, a lot more apps are multi-threaded than you would think, and Mac OS X has the ability to juggle threads between different processors, in fact I would go so far as to say most Mac apps are.
If you go to Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor, that program will to reveal to you how many threads each program you are currently running has. You'll find few that are single threaded.
Now, granted, most apps do not need to run on several processors, so Mac OS X will not in most cases unless it is absolutely necessary for some reason, because it would have to share information between processors, and that be slower than running them in one, in some cases.
According to this document, Mac OS X implements POSIX threads using true kernel threads (the kind that can be distributed amongst several cores) rather than user threads, so each thread can be scheduled independently for maximum efficiency.
I'm not sure what the story on Windows is.