Mac OS X Hacked Onto Intel's Sandy Bridge Platform

[MacRumors]

Earlier this week, Intel officially unveiled its next-generation "Sandy Bridge" processor architecture, marking a significant performance improvement, especially for notebook computers. Apple is expected to utilize Sandy Bridge in upcoming revisions of a number of its Mac computers.

Unwilling to wait for Apple to make the move to Sandy Bridge, Hackintosh fans have already managed to successfully install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on systems with Sandy Bridge hardware. By using a patched Darwin kernel, users are able to bring Mac OS X to Sandy Bridge, although the technique is obviously officially unsupported and may result in system instability.

The good news is, we've already successfully installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard!

The bad news is, until Apple uses these CPUs, it's a bit of a science experiment, as you'll need to use a "patched" non-standard Darwin kernel in order to boot the system.

A report from early last month indicated that Apple is preparing to initially make the leap to Sandy Bridge on some of its smaller notebook computers, opting to use the all-in-one platform with much-improved graphics performance compared to the company earlier offerings. Unsatisfied with Intel's earlier offerings, Apple has continued to use older Core 2 Duo chips paired with custom NVIDIA integrated graphics in its smaller form factors where discrete graphics have not been an option due to space constraints.

Article Link: Mac OS X Hacked Onto Intel's Sandy Bridge Platform

 

[Yamcha]

Already knew this , I've got a Hackintosh myself.. Sold my iMac.. But I don't think we will see native support for the Sandybridge anytime soon.. At least thats my prediction, Apple is usually very slow to jump to new technologies...

The really cool thing is the new Sandybridge's entry level processor (Quad Core) outperforms all the current Core i7 series and its only priced at $184..

 

[Santabean2000]

Gotta think these new processors will be pretty darn good.

Please Apple, please, make sure they're supported with discrete graphics in ALL models...

 

[Carlson-online]

why is this using DDR2 RAM and not DDR3 ?

 

[w00t951]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Apple has been really diligent in adopting new Intel processor technologies...

 

[coder12]

Regardless of how fast it is ... I still can't get over the name..

 

[N10248]

why is this using DDR2 RAM and not DDR3 ?

Probably just an error, it would have been DDR3 that was used.

I doubt there are any Socket 1155 boards with DDR2 slots.

 

[hscottm]

Since the OP didn't say it, and I wondered, I am posting this here. This is an amazing preliminary geekbench score. The list of recents for mac is at:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

In short, this performance would be near the low-end of 4-core MacPros in terms of performance, and would rival the 27" imac. It would be far above (50%?) any existing Macbook pros.

 

[Dr.Pants]

Not surprised, but its good news anyways.

 

[GroundLoop]

Since the OP didn't say it, and I wondered, I am posting this here. This is an amazing preliminary geekbench score. The list of recents for mac is at:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

In short, this performance would be near the low-end of 4-core MacPros in terms of performance, and would rival the 27" imac. It would be far above (50%?) any existing Macbook pros.

The i5-2500K is a desktop processor that would potentially be used in the iMac, not a notebook.

GL

 

[Yamcha]

Probably just an error, it would have been DDR3 that was used.

I doubt there are any Socket 1155 boards with DDR2 slots.

Yup thats an error, 1155 socket only supports DDR3

 

[Hellhammer]

why is this using DDR2 RAM and not DDR3 ?

That's a common error with Hackintoshes. OS X sees the RAM as DDR2 or the CPU clock speeds are reported wrong etc. Can be fixed with a plist editing IIRC

The i5-2500K is a desktop processor that would potentially be used in the iMac, not a notebook.

GL

Likely just the normal i5-2500, no reason for Apple to pay for unlocked CPU since you can't OC it anyway

 

[AC705]

Will these new processors make it into the next MacBook Pro updates due March/April 2011? What do you think?

 

[0815]

This will come soon to an official Apple Hardware near you ... until than I don't care. From the few people I know that tried Hackintoshes, they were not running as stable as on the Apple Hardware - And one of the reasons I use mac/apple is to have a stable system where I don't have to hunt around for drivers to make things work. Great news for people of have the time and fun to do that - I wait for the official support.

 

[GroundLoop]

Likely just the normal i5-2500, no reason for Apple to pay for unlocked CPU since you can't OC it anyway

Which would also mean that you get the HD2000 graphics vs the HD3000 with the 2500K (not sure there is much of a difference though since there would be a discrete chip in there too).

GL

 

[Hellhammer]

Which would also mean that you get the HD2000 graphics vs the HD3000 with the 2500K (not sure there is much of a difference though since there would be a discrete card in there too).

GL

Yeah, there would be no difference. I still don't get it why Intel included HD 3000 in K-series because only H67 chipset supports Intel IGP but it does not support CPU overclocking so buyers of K-series CPUs have to get mobo with P67 chipset where they cannot use the IGP. Why include something that will never be used? Z68 will support both, OCing and Intel IGP though

 

[azentropy]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Apple has been really diligent in adopting new Intel processor technologies...

Are you being sarcastic or did you mean delinquent?

 

[Consultant]

Maybe Steve will announce new Macs in a few weeks?

Already knew this , I've got a Hackintosh myself.. Sold my iMac.. But I don't think we will see native support for the Sandybridge anytime soon.. At least thats my prediction, Apple is usually very slow to jump to new technologies...

The really cool thing is the new Sandybridge's entry level processor (Quad Core) outperforms all the current Core i7 series and its only priced at $184..

Wrong. Apple had some of the fastest Xeon for Mac Pro FIRST.

Apple had USB, Wifi, Firewire, and many other new technology first. (And Magsafe, a large trackpad that works well, etc. are exclusively Apple)

 

[MaxBurn]

That's neat, I kind of want to get into the whole hckintosh scene.

 

[nxent]

Since the OP didn't say it, and I wondered, I am posting this here. This is an amazing preliminary geekbench score. The list of recents for mac is at:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

In short, this performance would be near the low-end of 4-core MacPros in terms of performance, and would rival the 27" imac. It would be far above (50%?) any existing Macbook pros.

interesting link. as far as power, it seems like laptops are historically about 3 years behind desktops. yet for the last year or two, the laptop/desktop gap has increased. this processor update for the mbp's would restore the three year performance gap.

 

[Small White Car]

Wrong. Apple had some of the fastest Xeon for Mac Pro FIRST.

Apple had USB, Wifi, Firewire, and many other new technology first. (And Magsafe, a large trackpad that works well, etc. are exclusively Apple)

In fact, weren't most of the Core Duo chips in Macs before most anybody else got them? Or, at least, before they were widespread.

 

[pr5owner]

Maybe Steve will announce new Macs in a few weeks?



Wrong. Apple had some of the fastest Xeon for Mac Pro FIRST.

Apple had USB, Wifi, Firewire, and many other new technology first. (And Magsafe, a large trackpad that works well, etc. are exclusively Apple)

yeah that was waaaaaaaay back when?

now they are missing

quad core i7s in laptops
12 core in work stations
DDR3 ram that runs at DDR3 speeds not DDR2 (1066 is not DDR3 speeds)
BD anything
USB 3
eSATA / eSATAp
SATA 6GB
HD video cams
bluetooth 3
WiDi
anything related to video performance, no 6xxx ati or 5xx nvidia video cards
and a bunch of others

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

Would love a MacBook Air with one of those in it.

 

[gorjan]

yeah that was waaaaaaaay back when?

now they are missing

quad core i7s in laptops
12 core in work stations
DDR3 ram that runs at DDR3 speeds not DDR2 (1066 is not DDR3 speeds)
BD anything
USB 3
eSATA / eSATAp
SATA 6GB
HD video cams
bluetooth 3
WiDi
anything related to video performance, no 6xxx ati or 5xx nvidia video cards
and a bunch of others

It feels like they're far behind hardware wise at least.

Apple had USB, Wifi, Firewire, and many other new technology first. (And Magsafe, a large trackpad that works well, etc. are exclusively Apple)

Maybe that's the clue? But anyway, my early 2008 nVidiaTimeBomb(tm) MBP still runs great *knock on wood* and so far is the best computer I've ever had. (The supercool-newestofthenewest hardware chase gets old pretty fast and after a while you just want a computer that does what it's supposed to do.)

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

yeah that was waaaaaaaay back when?

now they are missing

quad core i7s in laptops
12 core in work stations
DDR3 ram that runs at DDR3 speeds not DDR2 (1066 is not DDR3 speeds)
BD anything
USB 3
eSATA / eSATAp
SATA 6GB
HD video cams
bluetooth 3
WiDi
anything related to video performance, no 6xxx ati or 5xx nvidia video cards
and a bunch of others

Would your average user take advantage of any of that? Is their a necessity for i7 laptops? That's like saying all cars should come with v12 engines.