Mac Pro and Woodcrest: Confirmed?

[Multimedia]

All Non Quads Should Be Conroe - Woody Only For Quads

This thread is getting too funny. Apple has been so far behind on power these past few years and now we get the chance to use Conroe, and suddenly that's not good enough for the Mac snobs. Conroe is an extremely fast chip (especially compared to G5), so I don't get why some people think it's a bad choice for the pro-line up. Sure, it can't do smp, but not everyone needs or want to pay for quad processing.

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

Yes they are. I agree with you. But when I wrote that earlier in this thread, someone wrote that economies of scale dictated that Woody goes in everything Pro rather than only in the Quad. Makes no sense to me either. I think all non-quads should be Conroe.

 

[killr_b]

My point exactly...Mac Snobbery at it's finest.

Yeah mister 6" PeeCee, you must've missed where Steve Jobs said something along the lines of, "BMW and Mercedes have about a 14% market share. What's wrong with being a BMW or a Mercedes?"

This is my philosophy as well. I don't drive a Ford. I don't want XP. I don't want an HP. So suck your PC.

 

[killr_b]

Yes Mulitmedia these are the same morons with too much money and too little sense , These are the same people who are saying ..ohhh why can't Conroe go into an iMac , but i want a Woodcrest , hey I don't care if Merom is Pin compatible can't they go with Conroe for it's better perfromance ..lol

What a bunch of whiny daddy's boys , no sense at all they just obey the all mighty Stevie Jobs when he lies about how the new MacPro is THE FASTEST PEECEE IN THE WORRRRLD😛

And why are you here?????

 

[Mord]

This thread is getting too funny. Apple has been so far behind on power these past few years and now we get the chance to use Conroe, and suddenly that's not good enough for the Mac snobs. Conroe is an extremely fast chip (especially compared to G5), so I don't get why some people think it's a bad choice for the pro-line up. Sure, it can't do smp, but not everyone needs or want to pay for quad processing.

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

if you don't need all the power you can get the mac pro is not for you, apple does not do a consumer tower and most likely never will, they simply must have a quad settup and if they have two configs of them (a 3GHz and a 2.66) they may as well keep the low end option on the same platform, this has been said again and again and again, conroe is not bad it just does not make sense for apple to use it in the mac pro, conroe goes in the imac.

 

[shawnce]

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

All of the Core / Core 2 based processors support SMP (they have two cores after all) but only the Xeon class chips and related chipset supports the ability to have more then a single CPU socket.

1. Option for 1333 MT/s FSB
2. Support for two socket systems
3. Available now while Conroe is a little farther out (not much)
4. Server class chipset available (lots of RAM expansion, PCIe/X expansion, lots of SATA attachments, high-end internal RAID, error detection and correction, etc.)

In many ways it comes down to Apple wanting to maintain a quad core option in the short term or not.. and how they plan to maintain that option if they provide one in the short term...

will they standardize (fewer chipsets/packages the more efficient their costs) on Woodcrest and related chipset giving them a quad core on the high-end with low end having a single Woodcrest ...

will they standardize on Conroe and related chipset giving them only dual core capability across the range ...

will they use Woodcrest for a quad core and Conroe for dual core systems...

will they split the product space in two... using Woodcrest in workstation class system (lots of expansion capabilities) and Conroe in desktop class system (minimal expansion capabilties)...

will they start shipping Opteron based systems... =P

 

[jiggie2g]

This thread is getting too funny. Apple has been so far behind on power these past few years and now we get the chance to use Conroe, and suddenly that's not good enough for the Mac snobs. Conroe is an extremely fast chip (especially compared to G5), so I don't get why some people think it's a bad choice for the pro-line up. Sure, it can't do smp, but not everyone needs or want to pay for quad processing.

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

They are , you will not see any performance differences between Merom, Conroe and Woodcrest at equal clock speeds, unless u go SMP. They will all encode , render , transcode at the same pace. The FSB means nothis as it has yet to be saturated even a 667mhz. Tons of test and benchmarks at Xtremesystems done over the past few months have proven this.

Making the MAcPro line all Dual will be a Big Mistake and will backfire on Apple and force many pople to go right back to PC. I can Promise you , if u want a Woody in a MacPro be prepared to pay an entry fee of $2499 to join this exclusive club of idiots.

I remeber when my iMac G4 was starting to show it'sa age and when the time came to replace it , the minimum price for a real desktop Mac was (and still is) $1999 for a dual 2.0ghz G5. So what did i do , I said goodbye Apple and built a better machine for 1/2 the money. Till this day I have no regrets and would never go back unless i was in the market for a notebook then i'd get a macbook.

I still can't believe Apple still has the balls to charge $2000 for an outdated Desktop that gets Outperformed by an $800 PC. While still having a smaller hard drive , less ram , less usb ports , no card reader. Jobs believes you mac loyalist are stupid.

Careful. You can get banned for calling anyone here a naughty name. They will go whining to the moderators and a moderator who might not like you in the first place will lock you out of the process. So I don't disrespect anyone in writing here any more. Everyone here is beautiful and fun to be with. 🙂

Believe me Bro i've already been there.😀

 

[Mord]

jiggy:

your thinking is exactly why most pc's suck, dell ect choose components that are "good enough" or choose some unsuitable cpu because it sounds fast, woodcest makes the most sense to go into the mac pro, conroe into the imac merom into the mbp simple as.

just because something is not for you does not mean how you want it is how it should be, your a kid who likes playing with pc hardware and likes components with "big numbers" and overclockability, and while a quad would be wasted on you it'd be great for people who actually buy mac pro's/powermacs.

you give pc users a bad name it's not the other way around.

 

[storage]

23" Matteblack Conroe iMac
Matteblack Bluetooth Might Mouse
Matteblack Bluetooth Keyboard

PLEASE 😡

 

[novagamer]

Point Proven..Noobs like this are the reason why sites like \http://mac-sucks.com/ exist.

This is pretty immature.

Because unlike Apple , getting your own custom motherboard from ASUS / MSI / Gigabyte / DFI. means you have real choices , you can choose different chipsets from Intel , ATI , Nvidia , VIA. NOT JUST STOCK PARTS. I can get that 10 USB , 8 SATA , WiFi , eSATA , Dual PCIe 16x that supports Crossfire or SLI anyway i want it, Apple will never do this , even Dull gives u that much.

I've had a DFI board kill 2 CPUs, a few Abit boards that were extremely flaky, one of which won't run 4 sticks of RAM anymore, another that crashed randomly and had to be RMAd, and don't not forget about the bad caps that a lot of older Abit boards (hello KT7 series) are having right about now.

I've also had an Asus board die spontaneously when I put a (supported) higher wattage processor in it, and come on you quoted VIA. Since when has VIA been a GOOD thing. I remember swapping 4-in-1 drivers every week in order to find a stability that really wasn't ever truly there. With the earliest Via Athlon chipsets it was literally possible to install drivers in the wrong order, so that the OS would continually reboot- even in safe mode! Boy, that sure was fun.

Remember the Socket A processors and their accompanying core-crushing heatsinks? When you get heatsinks that literally have the nickname of 'corecrusher' which I believe a (Thermaltake?) Volcano did, then you've got a bit of a problem. You're using the same argument that enthusiasts use against dell, except you forget that none of those computers can legally run OSX and the accompanying programs.

I've also had a Xeon system, with an iWill workstation motherboard that actually ran without FANS for a little while and survived completely fine, and is still used by the person I sold it to right now. Stability is of utmost importance with workstation/server class hardware, and that's why you won't find a lot of problems with them. Even the original G5 dual CPU system sold in 2003 has pretty much no known issues, whereas you'll find a lot of other (cheaper) Mac hardware does. R&D on solid hardware is very expensive.

Clearly you're a hardware enthusiast from an overclocker's board, and on that note do not quote an overclocked anything if you're going on a Mac forum where people use their machines to make a living: nobody overclocks their work machine unless they're a kid making $50 to do a website for their cousin or something like that, some people's day to day lifestyle rides on the machines they use and the support that is behind it (which Apple has been pretty great, in my experience, with).

If you're comparing stock configurations, the 3GHz Woodcrest Xeon is actually faster than even the ($150 more expensive) Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition (Core 2 Duo X6800) which is going to be only 2.93GHz. Also note that Woodcrest's FSB is 1333MHz while Conroe's tops out at 1066. The slightly lower performance of the Xeons, brought by the use of FB-DIMM memory, will be handily offset by the faster FSB, and it will of course allow for an incredible amount of memory, which servers and workstations need, to be used.

The fact is there are a lot of people in these forums who have used a Mac for their entire lives, and have never dealt with anything on the enthusiast side of the hardware spectrum, so they buy anything people tell them, which can make it tedious to read some of the nonsense that appears infrequently, as well as the hilarious zealot like posting of the few people who DO know something that try to come across as knowing EVERYTHING. You don't really fall into that category, but I think that you're probably at the wrong message board.

Go check out xtremesystems and have a blast, if you're comfortable running windows then it is quite fun being an enthusiast and getting the most bang for your buck, but you really can't advise or look down on people here that literally depend on their Macs to make a living. Have a great week though and try to relax a bit.

 

[kingcrowing]

well they will all have the same mobo, so conroe on the low end and woodcrest on the high ends isnt an option, its one or the other. But Im assuming its going to be woodcrest and the low end one will have only 1 dual core processor, but it'll have an open ZIF slot so you can drop in a 2nd processor aftermarket (but this would never be supported by apple because unlike RAM, you need to also install a heatsink and thermal paste) due to that face the low end might just have 4 much slower processors like 4x2.32ghz on the low and then liuke 4x3.4ghz on the high end. I personally would rather have 4 slower processors than 2 slightly faster processors because Ido more multi tasking than super intensive programs.

Jiggy- They are right, the reason people pay $3200+ for a quad G5 is because they use their computer for a living, doing serious video editing, music editing, anything like that- more processors are never a liability and if you spend everyday on that coputer then its worth the extra few hundred dollars (even $1k) to someone who really needs the power

 

[macidiot]

Dude, take a chill-pill. Why does it matter so much to you if he uses XP?

I don't really care if he uses xp. I've loaded boot camp on my mbp. If xp better suits your needs, go for it.

The point was that pretty much everything he said was bogus and flame bait. Sadly, I took the bait.

 

[jiggie2g]

jiggy:

your thinking is exactly why most pc's suck, dell ect choose components that are "good enough" or choose some unsuitable cpu because it sounds fast, woodcest makes the most sense to go into the mac pro, conroe into the imac merom into the mbp simple as.

just because something is not for you does not mean how you want it is how it should be, your a kid who likes playing with pc hardware and likes components with "big numbers" and overclockability, and while a quad would be wasted on you it'd be great for people who actually buy mac pro's/powermacs.

you give pc users a bad name it's not the other way around.

Oh and Apple dosen't go to Samsung and Micron for it's ram like everyone else , or Pioneer/Toshiba/Matsushita for the DVD Burner , how bout Maxtor/Seagate for the Hard drives , Apple dosen't go to Samsung/LGPhillips for it's LCD Panels just like Dell and HP. now Intel for it's CPU/NorthBridge chipsets. c'mon it called a con they all shop at the same store dude. Newegg..lol

the only thing Apple about ur mac will be the Pretty case and OSX. Other then that it's just another PEECEE.

 

[shawnce]

Merom, Conroe and Woodcrest at equal clock speeds

Merom will underperform a Conroe under equal high loads because of thermal constraints (in unmodified systems).

--edit--

Also forgot to point out that Merom top out with 667 MT/s FSB... so several classes of tasks will be slower on a Merom then equally clocked Conroe.

 

[Mikael]

I find this whole discussion slightly amusing, mostly because of the apparent need to draw a distinction between "professional" and "consumer" based on slight clock frequency differences. To me, a professional platform is defined by its configurability and flexibility. A professional platform is simply one that can be configured to fit the customers every need. Although CPU performance is important, it's hardly what I'd call the defining factor of wether a system is to be regarded as "pro" or not.

I don't see any reason why a cheaper Mac Pro with a single 2.4GHz Conroe couldn't remain a machine aimed at professionals. Or does it have to have an outrageous price tag to qualify?

The whole concept of drawing a line between pro machines and machines for mere mortals seems a little "old". There's nothing really special about a PowerMac or Mac Pro anyway. Put a mid range CPU in the machine and it fits the regular consumer just as well as a professional not demanding the absolute top end CPU performance.

Maybe I've been damaged by the PC worlds lack of "pro-obsession", but I think it's a healthier approach.

Merom will underperform a Conroe under equal high loads because of thermal constraints (in unmodified systems).

It will? Do you have any source for this info? An Intel rep has said that Merom and Conroe are identical, except for a few differences having to do with p-states. This is unlikely to hinder performance at full load, so where did you get this contradicting info?

Also, the largest part of the power savings between Merom and Conroe are likely to come from reduced core voltage. You will probably be able to come very close to Merom power levels by simply reducing the core voltage of a similarly clocked Conroe.

 

[jiggie2g]

Merom will underperform a Conroe under equal high loads because of thermal constraints (in unmodified systems).

prove it. links , otherwise this is FUD.

 

[Mord]

Oh and Apple dosen't go to Samsung and Micron for it's ram like everyone else , or Pioneer/Toshiba/Matsushita for the DVD Burner , how bout Maxtor/Seagate for the Hard drives , Apple dosen't go to Samsung/LGPhillips for it's LCD Panels just like Dell and HP. now Intel for it's CPU/NorthBridge chipsets. c'mon it called a con they all shop at the same store dude. Newegg..lol

the only thing Apple about ur mac will be the Pretty case and OSX. Other then that it's just another PEECEE.

those things make no functional difference, you completely missed the point which was totally about motherboard design, which other than the case and sometimes the cpu is always unique on macs no matter if they are ppc or intel

 

[jiggie2g]

those things make no functional difference, you completely missed the point which was totally about motherboard design, which other than the case and sometimes the cpu is always unique on macs no matter if they are ppc or intel

This is no longer the case Hector , same CPU , same stupid Intel Chipset , a custom design Mac Mobo is no different from an Asus / DFI / MSI board , in a sense they are all customized however all derived from the same chipset. So this make no difference other then small tweaks apple might make , just like the other vendors make thiers through bios updates. Apple is not going to get a custom Core 2 /Xenon , aside from the case / mainboard / OSX , there is nothing in a mac i can't buy on newegg.

 

[Mord]

This is no longer the case Hector , same CPU , same stupid Intel Chipset , a custom design Mac Mobo is no different from an Asus / DFI / MSI board , in a sense they are all customized however all derived from the same chipset. So this make no difference other then small tweaks apple might make , just like the other vendors make thiers through bios updates. Apple is not going to get a custom Core 2 /Xenon , aside from the case / mainboard / OSX , there is nothing in a mac i can't buy on newegg.

each motherboard uses it's own caps, chips, fets, IO controllers, port config, firmware ect, if you think asus ect just magically get a design from intel and print them off your patently wrong, allot of work goes into designing a motherboard all intel does is provide a north and southbridge. i'm not saying apple is all that different with their choice of parts (though they do tend to make more educated choices) it's more the fact that they have to choose parts and design the boards which will end up vasty different if they have both a conroe and woodcrest mac pro.

go take courses in electronics/computer science/cisco certs/apple certs/buissness then come back when you actually know anything rather than making stupid assumptions.

do you even think at all when you post, you spurt BS to prove a point i was not contesting.

we start out argueing weather mac users are acting snooty about conroe, now your talking about how you can buy the same parts that will go in a mac pro and to that i say "whoppty do"


anyway to get back OT, the point is that conroe makes no sense for apple to use in the mac pro, woodcrest is only slightly more expensive and even cheaper when you consider the 3GHz version compared to the extreme edition conroe, though i'd like an all quad line they will probably have a single dual core tower but it still makes sense to keep it using woodcrest due to economies of scale, that 50 bucks to so saved is more than made back up on logic board design, support, education of technicians and the costs of having separate production lines.

 

[boncellis]

Knock On Wood

The upcomming WWDC has everything to be the coolest, most agressive WWDC ever. If Apple is up to it, we are set to see the strongest Apple line up ever. And thats saying a bit, since the current lineup is already mighty all by itself

I hope so, maybe we'll even see a slight MBP upgrade/speed bump. If not, I anticipate Apple referring to some new features of Leopard as well and that should get this crowd excited.

Even if it turns out to just be the Mac Pro unveiled, that should tide folks over until MWSF--assuming the Paris Expo doesn't see anything new.

 

[Multimedia]

Paris May Be When The Merom MacBook Pro Is Introduced

I hope so, maybe we'll even see a slight MBP upgrade/speed bump. If not, I anticipate Apple referring to some new features of Leopard as well and that should get this crowd excited.

Even if it turns out to just be the Mac Pro unveiled, that should tide folks over until MWSF--assuming the Paris Expo doesn't see anything new.

I'm thinking Paris may be the time for the new Merom MacBook Pro intro. 🙂

 

[Silentwave]

Yes they are. I agree with you. But when I wrote that earlier in this thread, someone wrote that economies of scale dictated that Woody goes in everything Pro rather than only in the Quad. Makes no sense to me either. I think all non-quads should be Conroe.

Why?
it means:
different LB (not such a big deal, but still there- and wouldn't it be nice if they could (i dont know if its possible) use a dual socket LB even with single processor versions, and you could add a second one later for more performance? farfetched for sure but hey a guy can dream 😉 )
Different CPUs
Different RAM
slower FSB

Why do that when you could buy larger amounts of the same RAM and same processors, just use different numbers? I think we all know that XServe will use Woodcrest, but the more computers that use the same processors the better.
Same goes for the RAM. FB-DIMM memory is expensive. the more Apple can get, the easier it is on us.
cheaper for apple means cheaper for us means more profit means higher stock prices means those of us with apple stock get rich 😉

 

[milozauckerman]

Yeah mister 6" PeeCee, you must've missed where Steve Jobs said something along the lines of, "BMW and Mercedes have about a 14% market share. What's wrong with being a BMW or a Mercedes?"

This is my philosophy as well. I don't drive a Ford. I don't want XP. I don't want an HP. So suck your PC.

There's some irony about your penis envy reference and the rest of this post.

Just sayin'.

 

[FFTT]

Just got Tom's Hardware Guide's publication today about Project Keifer.

Intel's projected 32 Core processor. 😀

"Intel has been studying Sun's UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara) to come up with a radical processor redesign for 2010 that could perform 16 times faster than Woodcrest. This is no marketing blurb, guys; this is technical intelligence from within the Borg collective."

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/10/project_keifer_32_core/index.html

 

[Demoman]

They are , you will not see any performance differences between Merom, Conroe and Woodcrest at equal clock speeds, unless u go SMP. They will all encode , render , transcode at the same pace. The FSB means nothis as it has yet to be saturated even a 667mhz. Tons of test and benchmarks at Xtremesystems done over the past few months have proven this.

Making the MAcPro line all Dual will be a Big Mistake and will backfire on Apple and force many pople to go right back to PC. I can Promise you , if u want a Woody in a MacPro be prepared to pay an entry fee of $2499 to join this exclusive club of idiots.

I remeber when my iMac G4 was starting to show it'sa age and when the time came to replace it , the minimum price for a real desktop Mac was (and still is) $1999 for a dual 2.0ghz G5. So what did i do , I said goodbye Apple and built a better machine for 1/2 the money. Till this day I have no regrets and would never go back unless i was in the market for a notebook then i'd get a macbook.

I still can't believe Apple still has the balls to charge $2000 for an outdated Desktop that gets Outperformed by an $800 PC. While still having a smaller hard drive , less ram , less usb ports , no card reader. Jobs believes you mac loyalist are stupid.



Believe me Bro i've already been there.😀

Does not sound like you have been anywhere. Whether the entire line of PM's need to be SMP is a question for someone close to the sales data. I find your assuming everyone want to use a computer like you very arrogant and simple-minded. Why are you even on this website? If you hold Apple in such distain, why not go find a place where you can bond with other folk who have only achieved the same level of computer knowledge and manners as you.

 

[Demoman]

This thread is getting too funny. Apple has been so far behind on power these past few years and now we get the chance to use Conroe, and suddenly that's not good enough for the Mac snobs. Conroe is an extremely fast chip (especially compared to G5), so I don't get why some people think it's a bad choice for the pro-line up. Sure, it can't do smp, but not everyone needs or want to pay for quad processing.

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

SW engineers usually optimize their systems with expectations of the environment they will run in. Pro-level applications often run much better in systems that use SMP, but not all. Sometimes it is better to pipeline a few processes at high speed, rather than do a lot of task swapping. Most of Apples core customer's application seem to benefit from SMP. So, that is what they are going to expect from Pro-level hardware.