Intel Announces 'Sandy Bridge' Core Processors

[Hellhammer]

I was just about to buy a Mac Pro desktop:
A 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” (ATI Radeon HD 5870), which i'll be using for video editing with Avid Media Composer software.

So now my question is, will there be a Sandy Bridge quad-core Mac Pro desktop?

And is it worth me waiting for a Sandy Bridge quad-core / any ideas when it will be available?

Thanks for any replies

Yes, but maybe not in 2011. CPUs suitable for Mac Pros (i.e. Xeons) won't be available until Q4 2011 so we are looking at late 2011 or early 2012 update for Mac Pro.

 

[KnightWRX]

Yes, but maybe not in 2011. CPUs suitable for Mac Pros (i.e. Xeons) won't be available until Q4 2011 so we are looking at late 2011 or early 2012 update for Mac Pro.

What about the Xeon-E3 quad cores ? Why aren't they "suitable" ?

 

[Richard1028]

The advantages of the 13" MBP to me would be the aluminum exterior, FireWire 800, and 10 hour battery life.The MB has the plastic exterior and no FireWire, while the MBA doesn't have either FireWire or the 10 hour battery life. As it stands now, the 13" MBP is the perfect platform to throw a 240GB OWC SSD into.

Then take the 13" MBP, drop the "pro" from the name and throw it into the plain macbook category - giving 2 choices for entry level macs. Keep them separated by price only. That's pretty much where it is now but people keep trying to compare it to the 15/17 MBP's.

Again, drop the silly "Pro" designation from the name and people will stop bitching about a lackluster GPU.

 

[Hellhammer]

What about the Xeon-E3 quad cores ? Why aren't they "suitable" ?

Only quad cores and no DP versions. That means only the base Mac Pro could be updated. Not to mention that X58 that is currently used has more PCIe lanes than P67. Would be quite ridiculous update, unless Apple significantly dropped the price of Mac Pro

 

[Piggie]

So another rotten build in on-board graphics option from Intel.

The laptops that always get the most rotten scores in tests as opposed to the machines that fit a proper GPU chip from a proper company.

I guess Apple will be 1st in line to take this. Such is the shame of it

At what point in time did Apple actually decide as a company they would always be seen as the company that used low end graphics. It's ruined their chances for years and years against the PC, where if they had chosen a different path they would have been right up there at the top.

It's just a shame.

 

[asdf542]

How much of a decrease do you expect? From your post it seems you expect no decrease at all.

I think you should do some research. I said if the bottleneck if of the game is GPU speed, then a 20% decrease in GPU speed will likely decrease a similar amount in frame rate.

Check the desktop review where they review the IGP with different frequencies. There are quite a few games in there that decrease their frame rate by over 15%.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...-i5-2600k-i5-2500k-and-core-i3-2100-tested/11

You just don't get it do you dude? I'll repeat myself one more time for you, maybe you'll get it this time. A 20% drop in clock speed alone does not correlate to a 20% drop in overall performance. It doesn't. Get over it. It would be closer to something of 5% if anything. Not 20%.

Oh and thanks for the link, you just proved my point. The difference in the majority of those is miniscule.

First and foremost, "Hole" and "Whole", though one has a "W" in front of it, the two have entirely different meanings. I'd tell you to look it up, but I think I've been mean enough about it.

It's called being awake for over 24 hours, you miss things when you are proofreading. I don't even know why you're commenting on this.

Secondly, I'm digging myself out of no such HOLE. I don't know how many computers (not just Macs) that you've used with any sort of Intel based graphics. I, myself have had the pleasure (torture) of using four of them, one Intel Mac mini, one MacBook, a Toshiba Satellite, and an Asus Eee PC NetBook. For the Netbook, I can justify use of those graphics, for the other three machines, performance IS pitiful. This is why when reading this announcement cold (i.e. not looking up benchmarks) I'm skeptical that any IGP from Intel is going to be even remotely passable as an IGP. Having seen the 9400M and then 320M from NVIDIA, I'm actually confident that while still paling in comparison to a dedicated GPU, IGPs don't have to suck THAT hard. This is why I'm skeptical and still reserve final judgement until I see a Mac model with one with which to compare the difference. From the sounds of it, there is no OpenCL on the IGP half of Sandy Bridge yet, so I doubt it'll end up in a shipping Mac without a dedicated GPU ANYWAY, given Apple's vested interest in it.

No, in the beginning of this thread you were trying to make the claim that they were going to suck. All I did was reply with benchmarks that showed it didn't suck and you went ape **** trying to say how you were waiting for OS X benchmarks.

Regardless, the fact that the Sandy Bridge IGP only came close to beating the 320M on the medium settings of the games is rad. Though, you're still telling me that it's a step backwards, albeit a small one. You're also telling me that Sandy Bridge's IGP needed its CPU half to best the GeForce 320M running on a Core 2 Duo. I'm assuming that Sandy Bridge's IGP beats the living crap out of the GeForce 9400M (regardless of what CPU is running in tow) and if Apple had never gone with the 320M, I'd have no qualms about transitioning to this clearly better IGP and finally moving away from the already older-than-needed mobile Core 2 Duo CPUs. However, it's sounding like if I'm to have Sandy Bridge at all, it's to be on a 15" MacBook Pro where I won't have to rely on (once again) sub-par Intel graphics.

I don't really understand the mentality? Anyone who has purchased a machine with a 320M has done so in one year. Do you people honestly upgrade right after they release another revision? Anyone who should be looking to upgrade older machines that have a 9400M or worse should be looking at an improvement, and those that did have a machine with a 320M won't be looking at that much of a difference but will get the added benefits of having a better processor, longer battery life, etc. if they decide to upgrade. Even with that said no one knows what Apple will do if they remove the optical drive. They could very well fit a discrete GPU in the 13" MB/MBP if they wanted to and leave the Air with SB IGP by itself. Hell, next time they update the Air Ivy Bridge might be close to release.

Woo Hoo, they came ALMOST close to beating it on the settings that count! It should be blowing the GeForce 320M clear out of the water in every setting; it should be as radical of a jump in performance as going from the GMA X3100 to the GeForce 9400M was or as radical as the jump from the GeForce 9400M to the GeForce 320M. To Intel's credit, that is further than they've ever come before in terms of IGP performance, but that's still pitiful, I'm sorry.

No one is arguing that a new NVIDIA solution wouldn't be better. But that's not possible right now so this is good enough for Apple to use modern processors. That's all I'm saying.

 

[KnightWRX]

Only quad cores and no DP versions. That means only the base Mac Pro could be updated.

So, the "Nehalem" Mac Pros could be updated while the "Westmere" Mac Pros could stay the same or get a slight speed/spec bump. Just like what happened last summer with the new 8-core/12-core boxes.

 

[DCfilms]

Probably, the Xeon Sandy Bridge chips are coming Q1 2011 according to Wikipedia, so Apple might just update the Mac Pro, though they have unusually long cycles for it.

If only you could phone apple sales and ask them, but it's as though they've signed the official secrets act. I've no idea whether or not to wait really, since as you say, they may not introduce Sandy Bridge to Mac Pro for a very long time

 

[Hellhammer]

So, the "Nehalem" Mac Pros could be updated while the "Westmere" Mac Pros could stay the same or get a slight speed/spec bump. Just like what happened last summer with the new 8-core/12-core boxes.

In theory, yes, but IMO that's unlikely. Mac Pro was updated quite recently in August. The period between last two updates has been a year and couple of months so Q4 2011 would fit in Apple's update pattern too, and it would keep the Mac Pro as "pro" level machine by utilizing the high-end chipset and CPUs, rather than mainstream LGA 1155 parts (though performance may be the same with two similarly specced CPUs).

 

[pr5owner]

An IGP isn't designed for performance, it's designed for power efficiency, and space conservation. You could never play any high-end game on full settings with any IGP. You would need a dedicated graphics card to be able to do that, so I don't think those are reasonable expectations.

no it is reasonable.....

Fast i5 cpu (with intel IGP on CPU)
nVidia GT425 with 1 or 2GB of video ram
5+ hour battery life (some last even longer)
all for under $999

nvidia optimus gives it good battery life and decent for the money gaming performance

 

[gkarris]

Aren't people reading the fact that it beat nVidia in the LOW graphics mode...



I think with inflation going to be the big thing in 2011, Apple will need to maintain margins without raising already premium prices. So, to keep the MacBook at $999 and Mini at $699, a processor with Intel Graphics "good enough" for iLife and Quicktime 720p (ha, ha, no Blu-ray so why 1080?) will work just fine...

flame on...

 

[gkarris]

no it is reasonable.....

Fast i5 cpu (with intel IGP on CPU)
nVidia GT425 with 1 or 2GB of video ram
5+ hour battery life (some last even longer)
all for under $999

nvidia optimus gives it good battery life and decent for the money gaming performance

above will be fine - but no nVidia discreete graphics - not for Apple's $999...

 

[pr5owner]

above will be fine - but no nVidia discreete graphics - not for Apple's $999...

lol apple will never do something like that, but just saying for $999 its a reasonable thing to ask, the HW doesnt nearly cost that much, im sure you can get laptops with the GT425 and an i7 CPU for less than $899

Aren't people reading the fact that it beat nVidia in the LOW graphics mode...



I think with inflation going to be the big thing in 2011, Apple will need to maintain margins without raising already premium prices. So, to keep the MacBook at $999 and Mini at $699, a processor with Intel Graphics "good enough" for iLife and Quicktime 720p (ha, ha, no Blu-ray so why 1080?) will work just fine...

flame on...

the intel can still do any type of 1080p (netflix and BD rips) so thats not actually an issue. intel could do 1080p like 2 years ago, anything that says HD in it has enough power to decode any type of content in 1080p

 

[Yebubbleman]

It's called being awake for over 24 hours, you miss things when you are proofreading. I don't even know why you're commenting on this.

Meh, because it's the Internet and I can. In the meantime, get some sleep man! You can argue with us on silly things like IGPs later.

No, in the beginning of this thread you were trying to make the claim that they were going to suck. All I did was reply with benchmarks that showed it didn't suck and you went ape **** trying to say how you were waiting for OS X benchmarks.

I was claiming skepticism and merely arguing against you taking the Anandtech article as gospel without seeing the damn thing in a Mac (which would be the basis of any logical comparison to any other Mac, might I remind you) You must've been sleep-deprived to take that as me going ape ****.

As for OS X benchmarks, I am certainly not running Sandy Bridge's IGP on my PC tower, and it is a Mac forum, so obviously, reserving any kind of judgement on ANY forthcoming part until it is in a shipping Mac makes some kind of sense. I'm perfectly open to being proven wrong, but so far I've yet to be save on specs that show me that Intel still can't do what they should be doing. They're not falling as short as they have been, I'll grant them that. And it looks like, as you said, customers upgrading from a GeForce 9400M based Mac to one of these won't be at all disappointed. Rad.

I don't really understand the mentality? Anyone who has purchased a machine with a 320M has done so in one year. Do you people honestly upgrade right after they release another revision? Anyone who should be looking to upgrade older machines that have a 9400M or worse should be looking at an improvement, and those that did have a machine with a 320M won't be looking at that much of a difference but will get the added benefits of having a better processor, longer battery life, etc. if they decide to upgrade. Even with that said no one knows what Apple will do if they remove the optical drive. They could very well fit a discrete GPU in the 13" MB/MBP if they wanted to and leave the Air with SB IGP by itself. Hell, next time they update the Air Ivy Bridge might be close to release.

Apple's marketing tends to compare the new product to the one it is immediately replacing. How do you sell "slightly less graphics"? For MacBook, Mac mini, and MacBook Air customers, they probably won't care. For 13" MacBook Pro customers? Apple already had to defend the decision to stick with a Core 2 Duo on that model in favor of the 320M and that reason was for better graphics. Clearly they care more about the lower-end machines having better graphics than CPU. Toward that end, I won't argue against the notion that Sandy Bridge wouldn't be absolutely acceptible for the white MacBook, MacBook Air, or Mac mini; I'm sure it'd be fine (assuming Apple's need for OpenCL was satisfied), but I can assure you, that kind of performance isn't gonna fly on the 13" MacBook Pro, and if it does, Apple won't hear the end of it.

No one is arguing that a new NVIDIA solution wouldn't be better. But that's not possible right now so this is good enough for Apple to use modern processors. That's all I'm saying.

Good enough on every low-end Mac save for the 13" MacBook Pro. Otherwise, I agree with you; though I'd think they'd almost be better off switching to AMD. At least their IGPs are consistently decent.

 

[thunng8]

You just don't get it do you dude? I'll repeat myself one more time for you, maybe you'll get it this time. A 20% drop in clock speed alone does not correlate to a 20% drop in overall performance. It doesn't. Get over it. It would be closer to something of 5% if anything. Not 20%.

Oh and thanks for the link, you just proved my point. The difference in the majority of those is miniscule.

Did you even read the link? Half the games lost around 15% of the frame rate. I don't know what your motive is, but you are flat out wrong. If you take the average, it is 10%. Not nothing or less than 5%.

 

[asdf542]

Apple's marketing tends to compare the new product to the one it is immediately replacing. How do you sell "slightly less graphics"? For MacBook, Mac mini, and MacBook Air customers, they probably won't care. For 13" MacBook Pro customers? Apple already had to defend the decision to stick with a Core 2 Duo on that model in favor of the 320M and that reason was for better graphics. Clearly they care more about the lower-end machines having better graphics than CPU. Toward that end, I won't argue against the notion that Sandy Bridge wouldn't be absolutely acceptible for the white MacBook, MacBook Air, or Mac mini; I'm sure it'd be fine (assuming Apple's need for OpenCL was satisfied), but I can assure you, that kind of performance isn't gonna fly on the 13" MacBook Pro, and if it does, Apple won't hear the end of it.

Simple, they do the same thing they did last time only swap the position the processor was in with the graphics. Put the emphasis on the processor and the battery life like they did last refresh by putting the emphasis on the graphics and the battery life.

Again, as for the 13" Pro, Apple has multiple options open to them. They can either remove the optical drive and fit a discrete GPU in there or they can replace the 13" MB with the 13" Pro and leave the MacBook Pro line with what it used to be, the 15" and 17". Many people argued that they should've removed the Pro name last refresh for sticking with Core 2 Duo. The next refresh likely won't be any different only the hate will be put on the graphics instead of processor.

Did you even read the link? Half the games lost more than 15% of the frame rate. I don't know what your motive is, but you are flat out wrong.

Uhh, did you read the link? The 20% difference in turbo boost clock speed proved that the performance was not 20% worse. Again, we are talking on clock speed alone here. How many times do I have to repeat myself?

 

[alent1234]

Aren't people reading the fact that it beat nVidia in the LOW graphics mode...



I think with inflation going to be the big thing in 2011, Apple will need to maintain margins without raising already premium prices. So, to keep the MacBook at $999 and Mini at $699, a processor with Intel Graphics "good enough" for iLife and Quicktime 720p (ha, ha, no Blu-ray so why 1080?) will work just fine...

flame on...

intel graphics on SB will beat blu ray and 1080p video playback on any nvidia or AMD GPU

 

[thunng8]

Uhh, did you read the link? The 20% difference in turbo boost clock speed proved that the performance was not 20% worse. Again, we are talking on clock speed alone here. How many times do I have to repeat myself?

No, I never said 20%. I said the loss would be similar to 20%. And for half the games there it is right. About 15% loss.

You said there would be no loss. That is flat out wrong.

Given that the high end Intel GPU is already behind the 320M at medium settings (6%), the lower end intel one would fall even further behind.

 

[thunng8]

Uhh, did you read the link? The 20% difference in turbo boost clock speed proved that the performance was not 20% worse. Again, we are talking on clock speed alone here. How many times do I have to repeat myself?

No, I never said 20%. I said the loss would be similar to 20%. And for half the games there it is right. About 15% loss.

You said there would be no loss. That is flat out wrong.

Given that the high end Intel GPU is already behind the 320M at medium settings (6%), the lower end intel one would fall even further behind as likely clock speed would be more dominant at medium settings..

 

[asdf542]

No, I never said 20%. I said the loss would be similar to 20%. And for half the games there it is right. About 15% loss.

You said there would be no loss. That is flat out wrong.

Given that the high end Intel GPU is already behind the 320M at medium settings (6%), the lower end intel one would fall even further behind.

Oh, you didn't?

a 20% decrease in GPU speed will likely decrease a similar amount in frame rate

Therefore a drop of 20% in GPU frequency will likely drop frame rates by a similar amount.

The difference between the 2500K and the 2600K in the majority of those games was not 15%, buddy.

 

[Hellhammer]

The difference between the 2500K and the 2600K in the majority of those games was not 15%, buddy.

Quite obvious because the IGP in both runs at 850MHz. i7 has higher Turbo but remember that the stated Turbo is theoretical maximum, it may never reach that. It's rather unlikely that it will reach that stated clock speed from what I've heard about the CPU Turbo.

In most cases, they will both likely run at around the same clock speed, making the difference between them negligible.

 

[asdf542]

Quite obvious because the IGP in both runs at 850MHz. i7 has higher Turbo but remember that the stated Turbo is theoretical maximum, it may never reach that. It's rather unlikely that it will reach that stated clock speed from what I've heard about the CPU Turbo.

In most cases, they will both likely run at around the same clock speed, making the difference between them negligible.

At the same token the higher clocked i7 quad core IGP used in the original anandtech benchmarks may never reach its max turbo either meaning the performance can also be negligible there.

 

[rneglia]

Then take the 13" MBP, drop the "pro" from the name and throw it into the plain macbook category - giving 2 choices for entry level macs. Keep them separated by price only. That's pretty much where it is now but people keep trying to compare it to the 15/17 MBP's.

Again, drop the silly "Pro" designation from the name and people will stop bitching about a lackluster GPU.

But I still want a 13" pro machine.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Simple, they do the same thing they did last time only swap the position the processor was in with the graphics. Put the emphasis on the processor and the battery life like they did last refresh by putting the emphasis on the graphics and the battery life.

I don't think they'll have it go down quite like that. Apple cares more about graphics than they do CPU. The vast majority of Apple's white MacBook, MacBook Air, and Mac mini customers will care just as little about Sandy Bridge's IGP as they would about the continued use of Core 2 Duos. It's for the customers of the 13" Pro that use of the Core 2 Duo becomes problematic.

Again, as for the 13" Pro, Apple has multiple options open to them. They can either remove the optical drive and fit a discrete GPU in there or they can replace the 13" MB with the 13" Pro and leave the MacBook Pro line with what it used to be, the 15" and 17". Many people argued that they should've removed the Pro name last refresh for sticking with Core 2 Duo. The next refresh likely won't be any different only the hate will be put on the graphics instead of processor.

They will probably nix the 13" Pro altogether. They could (a) Switch to AMD for both processors and IGPs, but that'd be too drastic to solve just one model's problems (unless they have larger plans with AMD), or (b) nix the 2.5" Hard Drive bay and use the MacBook Air's SSDs, using the reclaimed room for the GPU (that's all they'd need); too many "Pro" customers still, believe it or not, have use for the optical drive. But if they don't do either, then there's no reason to keep it in the line.

intel graphics on SB will beat blu ray and 1080p video playback on any nvidia or AMD GPU

You can't be serious!

 

[Yebubbleman]

But I still want a 13" pro machine.

It's an oxymoron as the 13" Pro is essentially the same computer as the white MacBook.