Mac Pro To Get Dual Optical Drive Slots?

[wizz0bang]

Ars technica has a good article about this issue. In a nutshell they predict the pro range to have three or four offerings, from a high end $3499 dual woodcreast, to midrange single cpu woodcrests, to a base model $1499 conroe. They have detailed arguments for sourcing and costs of components, as well as an excellent discussion of drive bays and features. A good read for everyone involved in this discussion.

I'm still hoping for a mini tower, but agree with the logic of their assessments.

 

[wizz0bang]

I miss expandability...

Evangelion gave me this idea from one of these posts...

Mock Pro Tower clicky

You rock! All that is missing is the official badge claiming "ultimate bad-ass inside!"

 

[zero2dash]

Ars technica has a good article about this issue. In a nutshell they predict the pro range to have three or four offerings, from a high end $3499 dual woodcreast, to midrange single cpu woodcrests, to a base model $1499 conroe. They have detailed arguments for sourcing and costs of components, as well as an excellent discussion of drive bays and features. A good read for everyone involved in this discussion.

I'm still hoping for a mini tower, but agree with the logic of their assessments.

Good article. So does this mean that Conroe and Woodcrest are based off the same motherboard design? I mean obviously Conroe would need a single PGA and Woodcrest would require two, but otherwise - are they the same? That could definitely save Apple some cost on the motherboard if they are.

It also makes me wonder what we'd see out of the Conroe iMacs (which will inevitably come soon enough, maybe fall-ish?) in terms of what processors/speed they'd have in them.

Aargh this waiting game sucks.

 

[G5power]

Ars technica has a good article about this issue. In a nutshell they predict the pro range to have three or four offerings, from a high end $3499 dual woodcreast, to midrange single cpu woodcrests, to a base model $1499 conroe. They have detailed arguments for sourcing and costs of components, as well as an excellent discussion of drive bays and features. A good read for everyone involved in this discussion.

I'm still hoping for a mini tower, but agree with the logic of their assessments.

That was great to see those details summarized in one article. A nice blend of specifications (facts) and speculation. Some of the details nailed down or reinforced the points that people have been trying to make here in the forums. For example Conroe is intended as a single processor.

I am very anxious to see what is announced in August.

 

[poppe]

I miss expandability...

Evangelion gave me this idea from one of these posts...

Mock Pro Tower clicky

I like the $3000 pro tower thing. And would also like a $999 tower for every other computer user on earth who we want to switch from a pc. 'Cause it ain't gonna happen without it. Stock holders hail Conroe.

Bravo. Makes me want to get a tower instead of merom MBP

 

[ART5000]

I'm excited once again. PLEASE give us 5 bay internal hotswap SATA drives.
ANyone want to buy a G52.0 4.5GB of Ram?

 

[shawnce]

Good article. So does this mean that Conroe and Woodcrest are based off the same motherboard design? I mean obviously Conroe would need a single PGA and Woodcrest would require two, but otherwise - are they the same? That could definitely save Apple some cost on the motherboard if they are.

They have different supporting chipsets and sockets.

Woodcrest - 5000x

Conroe - 975X, 955X, P965, etc.

 

[Keebler]

I'm excited once again. PLEASE give us 5 bay internal hotswap SATA drives.
ANyone want to buy a G52.0 4.5GB of Ram?

lol i'll give you $256.78 for your G5

as much as i think this would be cool, i can't see apple doing it b/c they would naturally want to push their xserve?

i have an esata tower from addonics with 2x500 GB HDs and it's sweet so something in the front of a G5 would be just awesome

 

[ART5000]

xserve could stay fibre so it won't compete
i'll be filled with just straight 5 SATA links internally

 

[woolfgang]

more importantly then dual optical is being able to support 4 hard drives then!

I've got 5 drives in my G5. The G5 jive. Very cool. The Xeons can't be right. I use both a suped up G5 and Dual Xeon at a place I work sometimes, for similar actions, and would like the new processors. I wasn't planning on selling my G5 and get a MacPro. But I definitely wouldn't do it with current Xeons, my current G5 is faster.

 

[Silentwave]

I've got 5 drives in my G5. The G5 jive. Very cool. The Xeons can't be right. I use both a suped up G5 and Dual Xeon at a place I work sometimes, for similar actions, and would like the new processors. I wasn't planning on selling my G5 and get a MacPro. But I definitely wouldn't do it with current Xeons, my current G5 is faster.

You probably aren't up on the latest technology yet. the Xeons up until this point have been using NetBurst microarchitecture. The dual-core 5100 series "Woodcrest" xeons use the Intel Core microarchitecture, which has bested literally everything on the market. the Core 2 Duo chips, which are slightly toned down versions of the same thing (slower FSB, other minor things) have taken the desktop peformance crown by a confortable margin.

Don't confuse this with the 5000 series Xeons, which still use Netburst (Dempsey) going up to 3.73GHz. These are practically identical to the Pentium D/ Extreme Edition dual core Presler cores: the new Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz absolutely stock matched the fastest Pentium D dual coreExtreme Edition 3.73GHz chip in most tests.

The new Xeons are the best chips out there.

 

[Silentwave]

They have different supporting chipsets and sockets.

Woodcrest - 5000x

Conroe - 975X, 955X, P965, etc.

And RAM and....never mind shawnce and I got most of it.

 

[wizz0bang]

Good article. So does this mean that Conroe and Woodcrest are based off the same motherboard design? I mean obviously Conroe would need a single PGA and Woodcrest would require two, but otherwise - are they the same? That could definitely save Apple some cost on the motherboard if they are.

I don't see how they could use the same board design to accomplish this. Woodcrest and Conroe are different platforms: memory, chipsets, bus speed, sockets are different. When reading the article, this was the only sticking point for the economy of scale argument. It doesn't make sense to have a different board and only offer one base configuration for that board. Although Apple has done this in the past with the low end G5s.

To my mind, if you were to have Conroe, it would make more sense to have two configs... either low end Mac Pro or a "Mac" line, possibly with a separate tower (mini tower). Though I admit, it would be cheaper to use the same case and power-supply for economics.

 

[AidenShaw]

Please justify your economics

To my mind, if you were to have Conroe, it would make more sense to have two configs... either low end Mac Pro or a "Mac" line, possibly with a separate tower (mini tower).

Though I admit, it would be cheaper to use the same case and power-supply for economics.

The only thing guaranteed to be "cheaper" about one case is the fixed design cost - and with sufficient volume even the design costs are quickly amortized if the smaller case is cheaper to build (or buy - Apple most likely contracts the metal-bending out to another company with case-building experience).

The power supply is again something that Apple would buy - so saving a few dollars per supply on a smaller supply for the New Form-Factor 64-bit Dual-Core Conroe Mini-Tower/Pizza-Box would quickly cover any minor costs in contracting for a different size supply. (And perhaps the reason for the move to top-mount PSU is to use a standard ATX-12V power supply, in which case Apple will save a bundle on each supply, and be able to pick the right size for each model with zero engineering cost.)

The same economic model would go for the motherboard as well - since Apple basically is using Intel reference designs with few or no custom chips, a new mobo for a new model isn't the huge design expense that it would be for a pure Apple design.

 

[zero2dash]

They have different supporting chipsets and sockets.

Woodcrest - 5000x

Conroe - 975X, 955X, P965, etc.

And RAM and....never mind shawnce and I got most of it.

Thanks for answering that one for me, guys.

I wonder why then (hypothetically) they'd only use 1 Conroe setup and 3 Woodcrests; they'd probably be better off/save more by doing at least 2 Conroe versions. I mean this is all rumor/speculation anyway (the Ars article), but still.

 

[woolfgang]

You probably aren't up on the latest technology yet. the Xeons up until this point have been using NetBurst microarchitecture. The dual-core 5100 series "Woodcrest" xeons use the Intel Core microarchitecture, which has bested literally everything on the market. the Core 2 Duo chips, which are slightly toned down versions of the same thing (slower FSB, other minor things) have taken the desktop peformance crown by a confortable margin.

Don't confuse this with the 5000 series Xeons, which still use Netburst (Dempsey) going up to 3.73GHz. These are practically identical to the Pentium D/ Extreme Edition dual core Presler cores: the new Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz absolutely stock matched the fastest Pentium D dual coreExtreme Edition 3.73GHz chip in most tests.

The new Xeons are the best chips out there.

Thanks. I knew of Woodcrest, of course, but didn't know they were the Xeon family. It makes more sense now. I was thinking, why the hell would they be replacing with slower chips.

 

[AidenShaw]

Woodcrest is Xeon in name only...

Thanks. I knew of Woodcrest, of course, but didn't know they were the Xeon family. It makes more sense now. I was thinking, why the hell would they be replacing with slower chips.

Woodcrests are Core 2 family chips, but they are marketed under the server name "Xeon".

As said before, they aren't in the Xeon netburst family. Intel Xeon chips are usually very similar to the desktop chips, but with multi-socket capability and performance/reliability features.

 

[zero2dash]

Woodcrests are Core 2 family chips, but they are marketed under the server name "Xeon".

As said before, they aren't in the Xeon netburst family. Intel Xeon chips are usually very similar to the desktop chips, but with multi-socket capability and performance/reliability features.

(Just to add)
The primary attracting points of Woodcrest is the 2 physical cpu capability (Conroe cannot be run in a multiprocessor environment) and the higher FSB (1333mhz vs 1066 for Conroe). This of course means Woodcrest requires faster DDR2 ram but it gains a performance edge over Conroe.

Otherwise, they are identical cpus.

 

[Mikael]

As discussed previously, a less expensive tower model would be perfect. There's just no way that I'm paying that much money for the Mac Pro, if the rumored specs prove to be more or less correct. Let's just take the rumored middle machine as an example:

Dual-Core 2.33GHz Intel Xeon, 1GB DDR2 667, ATI Radeon X1800 Pro, 320GB Hard Drive, $2499

I just put together the following PC for what should translate into roughly ~1400USD:

Antec P150 case (with 430W quiet Antec PSU)
Asus P5B Deluxe (2xPCIe x16, 7 SATA 3Gbps ports, 1 eSata port, built-in SATA Raid, built-in WiFi, Dual gigabit LAN, 8-channel HD Audio, 2 Firewire ports)
Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, Conroe, 4MB L2)
Scythe Ninja + low speed 120mm fan
2GB TwinMOS DDR2-667
XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB
2x160GB Western Digital Caviar SE SATA 3Gbps with 8MB cache (used in RAID0 or RAID1)
NEC ND-3551 DVD writer
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Music

This machine has a CPU that performs the same, twice the RAM, loads of space for additional PCIe/PCI cards, loads of space for harddrives and optical drives, faster graphics card, etc.

There are two things that speak against this system, compared to the Mac Pro:

- There's no OS included in the price
- It comes in parts and therefore needs to be built

I know enough about computers to build and configure a system like that in less than two hours and even if I didn't, it would be pretty cheap to have someone else do it. The OS is also pretty cheap, if you haven't already got one.

I don't know... It just seems as if the Mac is horribly overpriced (again, if the rumors prove to be somewhat correct). No matter how I look at it, the PC above comes out atleast 800 dollars cheaper, while being a better computer. Or does the Mac Pro/PowerMac series offer anything that would make them worth substantially more than the PC? OSX? Sure, it's a great OS, but what about the people that actually manage to do meaningful work on WinXP without much hassle? I'm one of them and I refuse to pay 800 bucks (actually closer to 1000 dollars in my case) for the OSX experience. It's simply not acceptable.

Ohh, and before anyone points it out: Yes, the PC above has a Conroe CPU and the rumored Mac Pro has a Woodcrest. This is, however, not something that needs to be taken into account. The CPUs perform almost identical. The Conroe CPU will be faster at some things (due to faster core frequency) and Woodcrest will be faster at some things due to the faster FSB. Either way, it's still just +- a few percent in each direction. It would be stupid to build a Xeon equipped PC for price comparison, just because Apple choose not to use the cheaper Conroe platform for the single CPU machines. If they do that they should expect being compared to cheaper Conroe machines that are just as capable.

EDIT: Another way to look at all this:

If I drop the expensive cooler and use the Intel stock one and also drop the SoundBlaster and use the integrated HD audio, I could buy two of those PCs instead of one Mac Pro. Now, that's value. Granted, I'd still need to build them and have operating systems to put on them, but it's an interesting point of comparison just the same. It's also interesting to note that the PC config is made solely out of quality parts and still ends up pretty cheap.

I expect complaints about the Mac Pro being a machine for "professionals", while the machine above is for grandpa. Well, if you bring that up, then please don't forget to explain exactly why this machine would be less "pro" than the Mac Pro.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

(Just to add)
The primary attracting points of Woodcrest is the 2 physical cpu capability (Conroe cannot be run in a multiprocessor environment) and the higher FSB (1333mhz vs 1066 for Conroe). This of course means Woodcrest requires faster DDR2 ram but it gains a performance edge over Conroe.

Otherwise, they are identical cpus.

Minor nitpick. The Xeon 5100 series will use the 5000 chipset, which uses new FB-DIMM memory. FB-DIMM is DDR2 chips connected to a new serial interface. Basically, instead of using DDR2's 64-bit interface, it puts a chip on the DIMM to convert that into a 16-bit interface that runs at 4x the speed. This means fewer circuit lines ('traces') per DIMM. It means that instead of 'dual-channel' memory, we can see quad-channel, or even eight-channel memory (on high end systems with 8 sockets.) It's a lot more technical than that, but that's what it boils down to.

edit: I forgot to mention that because of this multi-channel RAM arrangement, the 5000 chipset will also only support DDR2 667, not DDR2 800 like the desktop P965 chipset will support. But 5000 will support more than two channels of DDR 667, while P965 will only support two channels. In more-than-two channel arrangements, 5000 should be faster. (Especially since dual-channel DDR2 667 is the same speed as the Xeon 5100 series' 1333 MHz bus; and Core 2 Duo's 1067 MHz bus only needs dual-channel DDR2 533 to be 'even', so DDR 2 800 won't provide a huge performance boost. (I saw Ars wonderful comparison of Core 2 at 1067 vs. 1333, and I wish they would have also done a memory speed comparison. Most memory speed comparisons show moving from 667 to 800 only provides a 1-2% speed boost. Moving to more-than-2-channels should be a decent boost, especially on two-socket systems.)

 

[zero2dash]

Minor nitpick. The Xeon 5100 series will use the 5000 chipset, which uses new FB-DIMM memory. FB-DIMM is DDR2 chips connected to a new serial interface. Basically, instead of using DDR2's 64-bit interface, it puts a chip on the DIMM to convert that into a 16-bit interface that runs at 4x the speed. This means fewer circuit lines ('traces') per DIMM. It means that instead of 'dual-channel' memory, we can see quad-channel, or even eight-channel memory (on high end systems with 8 sockets.) It's a lot more technical than that, but that's what it boils down to.

Oh I agree; Anandtech's (crude) benchmark said that the fsb increase gave a minor increase of about 2% across the board. (They didn't do this on Woodcrest per se, they used the unlocked multiplier on the Core 2 Extreme to try out the faster fsb.)

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=6

Although all desktop Core 2 processors currently feature a 1066MHz FSB, Intel's first Woodcrest processors (the server version of Conroe) offer 1333MHz FSB support. Intel doesn't currently have a desktop chipset with support for the 1333MHz FSB, but the question we wanted answered was whether or not the faster FSB made a difference.

We took our unlocked Core 2 Extreme X6800 and ran it at 2.66GHz using two different settings: 266MHz x 10 and 333MHz x 8; the former corresponds to a 1066MHz FSB and is the same setting that the E6700 runs at, while the latter uses a 1333MHz FSB. The 1333MHz setting used a slightly faster memory bus (DDR2-811 vs. DDR2-800) but given that the processor is not memory bandwidth limited even at DDR2-667 the difference between memory speeds is negligible.

/snip

On average at 2.66GHz, the 1333MHz FSB increases performance by 2.4%, but some applications can see an even larger increase in performance. Under DivX, the performance boost was almost as high as going from a 2MB L2 to a 4MB L2. Also remember that as clock speed goes up, the dependence on a faster FSB will also go up.

Thanks to the shared L2 cache, core to core traffic is no longer benefitted by a faster FSB so the improvements we're seeing here are simply due to how data hungry the new architecture is. With its wider front end and more aggressive pre-fetchers, it's no surprise that the Core 2 processors benefit from the 1333MHz FSB. The benefit will increase even more as the first quad core desktop CPUs are introduced. The only question that remains is how long before we see CPUs and motherboards with official 1333MHz FSB support?

If Apple does indeed use a 1333MHz Woodcrest for its new line of Intel based Macs, running Windows it may be the first time that an Apple system will be faster out of the box than an equivalently configured, non-overclocked PC. There's an interesting marketing angle.

 

[milo]

I don't know... It just seems as if the Mac is horribly overpriced (again, if the rumors prove to be somewhat correct). No matter how I look at it, the PC above comes out atleast 800 dollars cheaper, while being a better computer.

It's not that this hypothetical mac is overpriced, it's that woodcrest in a single configuration is WAY overpriced compared to conroe. This rumor is a load of bull, we'll definitely see macs with conroe.

 

[Silentwave]

Thanks for answering that one for me, guys.

I wonder why then (hypothetically) they'd only use 1 Conroe setup and 3 Woodcrests; they'd probably be better off/save more by doing at least 2 Conroe versions. I mean this is all rumor/speculation anyway (the Ars article), but still.

Well, probably the sheer volume of the Conroe box would make up for its single model status.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

I am very anxious to see what is announced in August.

Me too, this is my wish list:

1) Mac Pro (hopefully with a Xeon)
2) New iPods
3) Death to those G5 PowerBooks next tueday rumors

 

[wizz0bang]

It's not that this hypothetical mac is overpriced, it's that woodcrest in a single configuration is WAY overpriced compared to conroe. This rumor is a load of bull, we'll definitely see macs with conroe.

I totally agree. When the Intel transition was announced, some of the hype was over the quicker product cycles, lower costs and more options having Intel platforms would bring.

If Apple wants to grow it's market share, that means capturing PC users. While undercutting Dell shouldn't be a goal, being competitive should be. This means a $999 - $1299 - $1499 tower configuration that high-end (not pro) PC users expect. Conroe is a perfect product for this range. It would only make sense (to me) for Apple to make use of it.

Apple's core market/user base is accustomed to paying a high price for quality and a premium for using OSX. For a Pro who needs high-end software to do their job, Apple's quad systems are indeed a bargain. But Apple needs to grow that user base to include other users traditionally in the mid-range PC world. For the university student, enthusiast, gamer crowd, as well as non-computer oriented professionals (accountants, lawyers, doctors, etc...) a "mid-range" tower setup is a favorite form factor/price range. Sure an iMac is a wonderful choice for many in this category, but not ideal or desirable for all (read this thread for many good posts on this topic).

It will be exciting to see what WWDC brings!