Mac Pro To Continue Quad-Core Tradition? Woodcrest?

[iGary]

Those of you without a Quad should know that it is DEAD SILENT all the time. Only my Cubes are quieter. Seriously.

About twice as quiet as the model it replaced.

 

[SPUY767]

The iMac is a laptop on a stand. It's highly unlikely we'll see one with a Conroe. Remember Steve hates fan noise and the iMac would need upgraded (louder) cooling to handle a Conroe.

Whether Steve likes it or not kids have an enormous say in which computer mom or dad buys. I worked in Mac retail in the mid 90's and then again in the G5 days. What I saw in the store was not what Apple could possibly have wanted. Often when a family with kids over the age of 6 came in, the parents were shopping for themselves. The majority of iMac G5 buyers had an iMac G3 that the kids had abandoned within months of it being brand new. Their endless whining about not being able to play the games their friends had led to the purchase of one or more PCs.

Apple has tried to address the no games problem with the move to Intel, but they still don't get it. Mom and dad honestly believe the Mac will last 5 years. The kids, however, know that the video card in that iMac isn't good enough for today's most demanding games and will be next to useless within 18 months. Therefore the kids will continue to demand XBox 360s and/or new PCs so they can play multiplayer games with their friends.

It isn't only kids Apple has a problem with. Advertisers have realized that 18-34 year old males don't watch much TV these days because they'd rather play games on their computers. This demographic is very knowledgeable and have the highest PC ownership of any group, driven mainly by multiplayer games.

I propose Apple go after some of these people and fill the gaping $1099 hole between the high end iMac and low end PowerMac (with equal 20" screen) with a larger version of the Mac mini. It would contain a Conroe, a 3.5" HD, upgradeable video card and (to stop the inevitable whining) a single PCI-e slot. Price it so the total cost (with 20" Cinema) falls midway between the iMac and MacPro.

The current PowerMac is an embarrasing joke. The Quad can't even run Aperture without a video card upgrade. It certainly isn't worthy of the term Pro when it can only hold two HDs. I sure hope the MacPro fixes those problems.

An interesting point. I am of the opinion that the 360, and even moreso, the PS3 are on their way to making Gaming PCs obsolete. It's just a fact, that there is a great deal of overhead associated with running games on a PC, to an extreme extent with that PC runs Windows. On a console, highly specialized code runs many times as fast, which is why a console that is slow when compared to a PC still produces good graphics. While there will always be the fanboy whose parents have too much money and are hellbent on yuppifying their brood, in the almost immediate future, the demand for high-end gaming PCs will drop.

 

[Multimedia]

I Will Miss The PM G5 Design Unless Next Is Only An Evolutionary Look With Expansion

Who the heck needs a case redesign anyway. Thinkpads have looked exactly the same, except for playing hopscotch with the IO, for about 7 years. Naturally, I'm kidding, but the G5 towers are brilliant industrial design. That case needs to go into a museum.

The top-end G5 had an advanced airflow design with a full liquid cooling system. I build XEON servers right now that are happy to run in tight quarters with air cooling. The laptops, yes, those are a little warmer now, but also much, much faster. The top-end Pro towers won't even come close to being as warm as they were on the G5. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the TDP on the Woodcrest should come in at right around 80W under load, about the same as a single-core G5. The Intel chip should run substantially cooler at 80W as I have a Dempsey that draws nearly 140W and is quite friendly on air cooling.

" I have a Dempsey that draws nearly 140W"

This is what you get for reading a profusion of computer articles at 6am on 3 hours sleep. I do not have a Dempsey as I believe they have just been released. I have a Paxville-based system. It doesn't generate a terrible amount of heat, but it is dissappointingly slow as its based on Netburst and at 2.8Ghz I know children who can do math faster. The new crop of Chips, Dempsey, Woodcrest, and Clovertown, should be much, much snappier as they are moving away from the achilles heel that is the Netburst Architecture. not to mention that the aforementioned trio will have higher clock speeds. Sadly, these models will no feature HT, no 8 Simultaneous threads. . . However, they will have VT (virtualization) which chould make quite a splash as far as boot-camp is concerned in the high end models. Go figure. . .

I agree with you. All the more reason to keep the current design. My Quad is incredibly quiet. If Mac Pro must look different for the sake of different I am one who will miss the PowerMac G5 design enough to keep my Quad G5 instead of rolling it over. I think it will be hard for any deisgn to trump it unless it is only a variation that allows for more internal HDs and a second external bay.

 

[SPUY767]

First, a mini tower is probably the easiest box to make

Funny you call it a box, because that's exactly what it would be, and it woul lead to the commoditization of Apple. With a 4% market-share and a 15-17% install base, Apple absolutely cannot afford to commoditize its product line. They do that, they become Dell, and I promise you that Apple cannot compete with Dell in the Razor-thin margin game. Anyone remember standard oil? Standard oil undercut all the other oil suppliers for a seemingly endless time until they had driven them all out of business, or at the very lease, into hiding. Dell di exactly the same thing to all the other commodity box manufacturers, and there's nothing to stop them from doing it to Apple if they try to play in Dell's field.

 

[SPUY767]

All the more reason to keep the current design. My Quad is incredibly quiet. If Mac Pro must look different for the sake of different I am one who will miss the PowerMac G5 design enough to keep my Quad G5 instead of rolling it over. I think it will be hard for any deisgn to trump it unless it is only a variation that allows for more internal HDs and a second external bay.

Are you agreeing with my, it's hard to tell reading out of one Drunken-Bloodshot eye.

I love my G5 case so much, I'd be the bastard who tried to shoehorn the internals from whatever new system apple released into my old case.

 

[kukito]

Intel Advanced Liquid Cooling Technology

People out there seem to have this thought that the new Mac Pro won't have any heat issues. I think IBM really got us screwed up and gun shy about heat.

Intel has a new liquid cooling technology which could be used.

 

[Platform]

Some people like to read from one & write to another drive. Some people do not want to use their best drive just to read a CD for program installation. Maybe it may just be personal choice. Maybe just for no good reason. In any case everyone that uses a computer do not have the same needs, wants & desires.

I have 2 optical drives in my MDD PowerMac G4 & like it better that way. I'm sure that I would have trouble justifying it. The same goes for the 3-4 internal hard drives. I also have 4-6 external drives hooked up at all times. I generally use only 1 or 2 of them at a time, but I have have had them all running many times. In fact at the present time I'm using a 60 GB, 7200 rpm, 2.5" drive to boot from & a 500 GB SATA drive to store my data including my mirror of my 60GB iPod & a partition with OS 10.4.6 on it. Both of the above mentioned drives are connected to my MDD PowerMac by FW800 connections.

Multiple external accessable drives are very nice & very necessary for many. I'm in the process of placing my harddrives into trays. That way they can easilly be changed between computers without the added cost of all of those cases.

Bill the TaxMan

I guess you have a point, I just don't see the price vs use justification..well thats me

 

[SPUY767]

Bored and trolling for articles this morning I ran across an article that showed a MBP 2.16 absolutely trouncing a PM DP 2.0 in all but a few tests running FCS Pro Apps. In light of this, l shudder to think of the positivel ass-reaming performance that a Quad Woodcrest configuration could deliver in the same apps. This is especially true since FCS's apps have been being optomized fir the PPC for 5 years and this is their first release on Intel.

 

[mcnaugha]

We're getting a Mac Pro... so why not a "Mac"

Apologies, I know you've all been debating this a thousand times but:

We got the MacBook Pro, and then the MacBook...

We know they've trademarked "Mac Pro". Now the rumours say Apple will go Intel Workstation and use Woodcrest Xeons. The Power Mac G5 doubled as your Mac Workstation and Desktop (for those who could afford it). The iMac doesn't really count as a desktop platform since it's using mobile platform technology. Doesn't that open up the possibility for a new product line... the "Desktop" Mac... using Core 2 Duo processors? They already have the trademark for "Mac". The PC world has these two separate platforms. Apple has tried to enter this space before and it didn't really workout. Now seems the ultimate opportunity to give it another go. They could have a Mac with a series of Core 2 Duo choices, including the Core 2 Extreme for the rich enthusiast. They could even Viiv it up! It'd be like the more powerful big brother to the Mac mini. I could get very excited about that. Bring it out at the right price point and they'd be onto a winner. I see it coming in a white or black exterior with the iPod-like sheen. An iPod dock built-in? There is totally a gap in the market because the Mac mini's GPU is just embarrassing. The Mac Pro line could be a mix of Core 2 Duo and Xeon 51xx but that would be a shame.


A few have suggested a Core 2 Duo for desktop will appear in a notebook form factor... that's going to take some serious cooling. Although I suppose I have seen really thick PC mobile computer that could probably do it. The Core 2 Duo desktop processors are likely to come with the same thermal solution as the current Pentium D 900 series as it's still a LGA775 processor with 65nm technology.

 

[mcnaugha]

50 Gigaflops???

Bored and trolling for articles this morning I ran across an article that showed a MBP 2.16 absolutely trouncing a PM DP 2.0 in all but a few tests running FCS Pro Apps. In light of this, l shudder to think of the positivel ass-reaming performance that a Quad Woodcrest configuration could deliver in the same apps. This is especially true since FCS's apps have been being optomized fir the PPC for 5 years and this is their first release on Intel.

I benchmarked my MBP 17-inch... it clocked up nearly 18,000 MIPS... so did my Pentium Extreme Edition 840 at 3.2GHz. I was kind of shocked to find that this Mobile Core Duo processor was delivering performance, in a variety of benchmarking tests, equating to that of last year's top of the line Extreme Edition Dual Core Pentium.

IBM state the PowerPC G5 970MP as coming in at 9,250 MIPS. So that kind of suggests that, at least in terms of MIPS, the MacBook Pro 2.1GHz can perform close to the Quad Core G5 doesn't it? :-S

My new Pentium D 960 clock in at just under 20,000 MIPS. The Woodcrest Xeons will certainly exceed this and if Apple sticks two in the high-end Mac Pro systems then it could be too much for people to handle! This is a very exciting time for Mac performance.

 

[milo]

Hundreds?

Conroe E6700 (2.67GHz, 1066MHz, 4MB) - $530
Xeon 5150 (2.67GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB) - $690

While I agree it is a fair bit more. It wouldn't look right having a Conroe, which could be found in cheap computers in what was once the "World's Most Powerful Personal Computer" (according to Apple anyway ).

That's $160 more just for the CPU. Woodcrest also requires a more expensive mobo, plus I believe ram that costs more. So yes, hundreds. If anyone has specific numbers on those, a post of them would be appreciated.

"World's Most Powerful Personal Computer" only applies to the highest model. If you're only going to have two cores, it won't come anywhere close to the fastest model. You're already at half the speed of the top of the line tower, why go with the more expensive chip on the "budget" version of the tower just for a slight increase in bus speed?

I think people are WAY too worried about What Looks Right and are ignoring real world cost and performance. I swear, some people on here seem like they have their tape measure in hand, ready to drop their pants at any moment.

So you're finally giving up on the idea of a mid-range, mini-tower Mac..? Good!

I don't think any of us ever thought it was likely...but even if it probably won't happen, that doesn't change the fact that apple SHOULD do it, it still is a good idea.

WTF?!!

Drive bays. Any machine that honking gigantic that only holds two hard drives IS a disaster.

 

[milo]

OK, this is getting well off topic but...

Market share does not equal PROFITS. Everyone is so worried about Apple's market share in the PC market. Guess what, there were two computer manufacturers that were profitable in 2004 and 2005. Dell and Apple. All those other PC makers with a larger market share than Apple--HP, IBM, etc. None of them could make a profit from selling PCs.

Jobs has said it many times--why is no one question BMW on there market share?

You either need to squeeze every dollar through manufacturing process and supply chain (Dell) or you need to charge a premium for something different (Apple).

Apple answers to it's shareholders. It needs to turn a profit for them. Apple doesn't answer to its fans who want to move ahead of 3% or 5% market share for bragging rights.

And as for the mini....you made my point exactly. Its a computer that you take out of a small box , plug in 3 or 4 cables and go. Can you swap the video card, add a hard drive? No. Again, Steve and Apple have decided that this is the machine that you should have. If you are a mini customer, you are to trust Apple that this is all you need. Heck, now it comes with bluetooth and AE built in. It's a toaster--it's the farthest thing from a mini tower with expansion.

One of the biggest advantages for apple of making a mini tower is that it would be very cheap to build and could be just as profitable as any other mac. I'm not saying to increase market share by cutting profits, I'm saying increase market share AND profits.

Sorry, but I think the mini supports my point more than yours. Before the mini, people used your exact argument to insist there never would be a mini. Steve decided you should have an imac, so a cheap headless box would never happen. The argument was wrong then, and I think you're wrong for the same reasons.

The mini IS far from a mini tower. Which is exactly the reason apple should make a mini tower, the mini is a poor fit for that segment of the market.

You're forgetting the other salient point mentioned earlier, that the way Apple works, it's all about what they decide you need. They figure that at this point, the only people interested in expandability, the "enthusiasts" and "pro's", can probably afford to shell out a little extra, so they're not going to bother releasing something like that that could cut into sales of their designated "consumer" product.

$1999 is only "a little extra"? Wow. I wish I had your bankroll. That sort of attitude would help explain why apple's marketshare is so tiny.

I realize that the G5 cant hold as many drives as a g4, but I guess I dont understand, with the options I've presented, why it is a big deal to only be able to have 2.25 terabytes of storage. What kind of stuff are you doing that you really need 5.625Tb of Storage at your fingertips?

2.25 is with third party add-ons, without it you only get 1.5. A node machine isn't going to give you extra hard drive space, at least not space that can be directly accessed by the main machine. And more drives give you more flexibility, generally the biggest drives aren't the cheapest per gig, it's nice to have the options of more smaller drives and save some money, not to mention the potential speed gains and raid possibilities from splitting your data.

Sadly I can't see any reason to why Apple would release an Mid Range Tower. There might be a market place for like Dell, but not really Apple. You can claim numbers and all but unless Apple is gonna make money by the bucket loads they won't release it.

And you haven't given any reason why a mini tower couldn't make money by the bucket load for apple. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't other than "but apple just wouldn't do that..." Which also applied to the ipod and the mini...and turned out to be wrong.

 

[AidenShaw]

I benchmarked my MBP 17-inch... it clocked up 17 Gigaflops... so did my Pentium Extreme Edition 840 at 3.2GHz.

Do you have a link to the GFLOP benchmark that you used, I could run it on one of my dual-dual Woodies right now.

Just for grins, of course, since these silly GFLOP toys that fit in cache aren't very useful for predicting performance on any other task

 

[BenRoethig]

An interesting point. I am of the opinion that the 360, and even moreso, the PS3 are on their way to making Gaming PCs obsolete. It's just a fact, that there is a great deal of overhead associated with running games on a PC, to an extreme extent with that PC runs Windows. On a console, highly specialized code runs many times as fast, which is why a console that is slow when compared to a PC still produces good graphics. While there will always be the fanboy whose parents have too much money and are hellbent on yuppifying their brood, in the almost immediate future, the demand for high-end gaming PCs will drop.

Despite what outsiders may think, PC and console gaming are not the same thing. Each tends to be better with different genres. Anyone who has tried playing a first person shooter or a RTS on a console will know what I'm talking about.

 

[Lone Deranger]

However, they will have VT (virtualization) which chould make quite a splash as far as boot-camp is concerned in the high end models. Go figure. . .

Could someone please explain to me what exactly the advantage is of having Vitualization techology built into the CPU as opposed to using Parallels Virtualizations software? Or boot-camp for that matter...
It all sounds terribly exciting.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

That's $160 more just for the CPU. Woodcrest also requires a more expensive mobo, plus I believe ram that costs more. So yes, hundreds. If anyone has specific numbers on those, a post of them would be appreciated.

"World's Most Powerful Personal Computer" only applies to the highest model. If you're only going to have two cores, it won't come anywhere close to the fastest model. You're already at half the speed of the top of the line tower, why go with the more expensive chip on the "budget" version of the tower just for a slight increase in bus speed?

I think people are WAY too worried about What Looks Right and are ignoring real world cost and performance. I swear, some people on here seem like they have their tape measure in hand, ready to drop their pants at any moment.


I don't think any of us ever thought it was likely...but even if it probably won't happen, that doesn't change the fact that apple SHOULD do it, it still is a good idea.


Drive bays. Any machine that honking gigantic that only holds two hard drives IS a disaster.

Wait a second. It was only a suggestion and you're throwing a tantrum over a product that doesn't even exist yet?

 

[AidenShaw]

(I know that you know that I was using sarcasm)

So you're finally giving up on the idea of a mid-range, mini-tower Mac..? Good!

Actually, I've recruited a whole team to help argue for a New Form-Factor 64-bit Dual-Core Conroe Mini-Tower™ - just read this thread.

I am surprised that so many people are turning against the big aluminum maxi-tower - two-thirds of the people in the poll have voted to replace it. Even many of the people who like the maxi-tower are asking for more internal and external drive slots, realizing that for all that size you really don't get much expandability.

Apple is like General Motors - trying to sell a big expensive SUV of a case when the customers are looking for something more practical.

 

[AidenShaw]

Could someone please explain to me what exactly the advantage is of having Vitualization techology built into the CPU as opposed to using Parallels Virtualizations software? Or boot-camp for that matter...
It all sounds terribly exciting.

VT in the CPU is like hardware acceleration for virtual machines.

It can help make the virtual machines like Parallels or VMware or Virtual PC much faster. It isn't a replacement for Parallels at this point, it's a speed booster.

In the future, VT will allow a new generation of virtual machines to have expanded capabilities and features.

 

[SciTeach]

Woodcrest: June 26

This may have already been posted, but did anyone notice that Intel released a statement that the Woodcrest chips is going to be released June 26th.


EDIT:: Looks like puckhead beat me to it.

In any case, it appears we will see what Apple will do with the new chips (hopefully) at WWDC.

 

[Multimedia]

MBP 2.16GHz Beats PM DP 2GHz In Most FCS Benchmarks

Post #233 - Bored and trolling for articles this morning I ran across an article that showed a MBP 2.16 absolutely trouncing a PM DP 2.0 in all but a few tests running FCS Pro Apps. In light of this, l shudder to think of the positivel ass-reaming performance that a Quad Woodcrest configuration could deliver in the same apps. This is especially true since FCS's apps have been being optomized fir the PPC for 5 years and this is their first release on Intel.

Yes, the Quad Woddie will be a lot faster than the Quad G5 is.

Condescension was not intended. I was misunderstood. Please accept my sincere apology.

 

[Lone Deranger]

VT in the CPU is like hardware acceleration for virtual machines.

It can help make the virtual machines like Parallels or VMware or Virtual PC much faster. It isn't a replacement for Parallels at this point, it's a speed booster.

In the future, VT will allow a new generation of virtual machines to have expanded capabilities and features.

Thanks for that AidenShaw. That's just the answer I was hoping to hear.

 

[mcnaugha]

Oops... MIPS not GFLOPs

Do you have a link to the GFLOP benchmark that you used, I could run it on one of my dual-dual Woodies right now.

Just for grins, of course, since these silly GFLOP toys that fit in cache aren't very useful for predicting performance on any other task

Oops... I'm a fool I tell ya! I confused GFLOPs with Thousands of MIPS.

I have edited my post with the more accurate terminology.

Yes, it's true these kinds of benchmarks don't reflect real world usage. Instructions aren't all the same length in the real world so this test proves little... but for a single same-sized instruction this gives a reasonable way to distinguish between different processors... at least at an amateur and cost-free level.

I simply used PC Wizard 2006 from http://www.cpuid.com/. It's a sweet little tool and I fully appreciate it ain't industry standard. Would be delighted to here your Woodie results with this tool. Go to the benchmark tab and run the Processor benchmark. The Dhrystone result is the one I've been looking at.

 

[SPUY767]

Despite what outsiders may think, PC and console gaming are not the same thing. Each tends to be better with different genres. Anyone who has tried playing a first person shooter or a RTS on a console will know what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about computational performance, you're talking about a control scheme. Give us a Console that you could both use a contorller with, and strap a keyboard and mouse to. . .

 

[SPUY767]

http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=38816

Please don't mention an article without providing a link to it. Please edit your post, highlight "an article that showed a MBP 2.16 absolutely trouncing a PM DP 2.0 in all but a few tests running FCS Pro Apps", press the GLOBE-LINK button above and paste the link to that article you copy from your browser so we can all go read it. Thank you in advance for your help.

Stop Whining

And don't treat me like i'm an idiot. I know how to post links, I just don't care.

 

[SPUY767]

Thanks for that AidenShaw. That's just the answer I was hoping to hear.

Some guy bout 2 years ago hacked his G5 such that each of the procs, having its own FSB could run 2 OSes at once. He ran linux an X for effect, but I presume that anything would work. I do not have a link for that, it's been a long time since I read it, and I can't seem to find it on google.