Mac Pro Update - July 20th

[Roman23]

I know..

I made a mistake.. I am human u know... or am I?

I still hold Ukrainian citizenship though I also have US Citizenship, so I am a dualie

Ahem... a) Germany is not in Eastern Europe... and b) swimming fully clothed is just as unusual in Germany as it is anyplace else. Except in Iran... perhaps... or in the 19th century...

 

[Roman23]

Wait a minute..

How can an i7-970 or w3570 be a gulftown or westmere?? I thought those started at i7-980x?

For the last couple of years the stock they are clearing is iPods !! Not Macs. In part, that's because it is fairly widely known that new iPods will arrive in Sept/Oct time frame ahead of the Christmas season.

That's the downside of locking in a very narrow fixed time to do updates every year. What tends to happen is that it gets used as leverage to reduce prices.

The bundled free iPod is also being used to offset the generally higher than average Windows PC selling price in the lower half of the pricing spectrum for education folks whose budgets probably don't have much give. If dropping $2000+ on a school computer the delta of an iPod isn't going to a big difference. iPod's are to get folks to stretch over $1000, not $2000, for a box.

Sadly no Xeon 3600 updates from Intel today. A new ECC-less, i7 970 introduced, but it dropped at $899, so perhaps in some movement later in the single quad core package offering. Intel retired a pretty big chunk of the Xeon 5400 line up. Not sure if that frees up more resources to finish flushing out the 3600 series or not. There is still nothing but older 3500s to roll out a full line up for the lower half of the Mac Pro product matrix. Apple still isn't likely to pull the trigger. If Apple is skipping waiting a couple of months for new Sandy Bridge updates for the iMac, looks more likely an update for it would drop tomorrow then Mac Pro. Or Apple a wait for better updates for both for a while longer.

 

[deconstruct60]

How can an i7-970 or w3570 be a gulftown or westmere?? I thought those started at i7-980x?

http://infoworld.com/d/hardware/intel-cuts-prices-it-ships-new-six-core-core-i7-chip-853

The company announced the Core i7-970 processor, which will run at 3.2GHz and have 12MB of L3 cache. This is the second six-core desktop chip launched by Intel after the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, which was launched in March.

How can it not be Westmere/Gulftown tech? 6 cores. 12MB L3 Cache. What does it sound like?

The root problem with Gulftown/Westmere i7/3600 series is that it has not been a series. It has consistent of exactly one offering. It has been incomplete. Going from one to two isn't saying a whole lot. Not sure the i7 970 is going to get tagged "extreme" so there would be one in the i7 desktop bucket, one in the i7 extreme bucket, and one in the Xeon 3600 bucket. All basically the same chip running at approximately same speed for approximately the same price. There is no series there.

AMD must of gotten their 6 core samples out awfully late and missed a ton of design window closures for Intel to be dribbling the 6 core offerings out so slowly. It will ease up soon if only because AMD wasn't that slow. As long as only above $900+ works, Intel will pocket the money.

Over time there probably be some $500 price range 6 core offerings from Intel. One of them will probably be a 3640. At that point probably will also get a 3620 and ..... ta da ... a Mac Pro update. The price cut on the i7-870 out of the $500 price range is a good prelude indication to that perhaps happening in next month or so.

 

[Roman23]

Oh, that explains it.

at first it didn't seem right as I have the w3580 or i7-975 extreme equivalent. Ok.

What do you think? Say the 2010 mac pro was out and firmware restoration cd 1.9 was out.. is it then possible to launch that on the 2009 and "TRICK" the computer into installing the firmware on top of the original 2009 firmware? ACCORDING to Nano, he says that the board is exactly the same.. nothing new would be added and if this is true, then once the 1.9 restoration cd comes out then I think we can use this to flash it back to the 2009 - immediately allowing the use of the Westmere and Gulftown on our 09 systems.. Sounds too easy, though I am sure there has to be a way to bypass the processor check to enable the overwrite of the existing 2009 firmware.

http://infoworld.com/d/hardware/intel-cuts-prices-it-ships-new-six-core-core-i7-chip-853


How can it not be Westmere/Gulftown tech? 6 cores. 12MB L3 Cache. What does it sound like?

The root problem with Gulftown/Westmere i7/3600 series is that it has not been a series. It has consistent of exactly one offering. It has been incomplete. Going from one to two isn't saying a whole lot. Not sure the i7 970 is going to get tagged "extreme" so there would be one in the i7 desktop bucket, one in the i7 extreme bucket, and one in the Xeon 3600 bucket. All basically the same chip running at approximately same speed for approximately the same price. There is no series there.

AMD must of gotten their 6 core samples out awfully late and missed a ton of design window closures for Intel to be dribbling the 6 core offerings out so slowly. It will ease up soon if only because AMD wasn't that slow. As long as only above $900+ works, Intel will pocket the money.

Over time there probably be some $500 price range 6 core offerings from Intel. One of them will probably be a 3640. At that point probably will also get a 3620 and ..... ta da ... a Mac Pro update. The price cut on the i7-870 out of the $500 price range is a good prelude indication to that perhaps happening in next month or so.

 

[deconstruct60]

at first it didn't seem right as I have the w3580 or i7-975 extreme equivalent. Ok.

You can't really look solely at the numbers. Earlier today Intel hadn't updated the ark site but it has an entry now.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47933&processor=i7-970&spec-codes=SLBVF

It is in the "i7 Desktop" bucket. They have locked the multiplier and set it lower hence the $100 price differential, but essentially same chip which comes in at slightly higher yields with the restrictions.

What do you think?

If Intel dribbles this line up flushing out till September and next years Xeon update won't come out to July/Aug/Sept of 2011 then I would put a board update on the table.

Two reasons. From March to September is a 6 month delay. That is half of the "extra year" was conceptually going to run with this "two year" design. If stay completely frozen will actually go 2.5 years on exactly the same board. That seems a tad long.

Second, the Mac Pro board comes in two pieces. Just a minor tweak to the mainboard PCB should require zero changes on the CPU's board.
The rationale that the CPU socket didn't change so can't do anything rings extremely hallow when the CPU socket isn't even on the PCB board being talked about.


Not guaranteed that they are making an update, but if Intel give them a 18 month heads up on this sloth update cycle while they adjust to a new part of the calendar year, then this is a window of opportunity to either do catch up with competitors SATA III or get a headstart USB 3.0. Yeah it is work but may be a way to still run the mainboard for 2 years but roll out a new a daughter board update out next year.

If the heads up wasn't long enough or Apple can't decouple the main/daughter board updates.... or is just want to suck as much money as possible.... then no update on board design.

 

[chedda]

Road Map

Could it be the Intel road map is not what it was thought to be ? The longer this continues the more speculation abounds. Personally i'm for a 24 core AMD version POWER/PRICE Efficiency.

 

[ValSalva]

It's about 5:30 AM EST and the Apple online store is still up. So it looks like July 20th isn't going to be that Tuesday

 

[Hellhammer]

Could it be the Intel road map is not what it was thought to be ? The longer this continues the more speculation abounds. Personally i'm for a 24 core AMD version POWER/PRICE Efficiency.

Apple knows exactly when Intel is releasing and what. Apple gets engineering samples etc but they have to wait for the chips to be released.

I'm guessing that Apple is waiting for cheaper W36xx CPUs to arrive but there isn't much news about them. Several CPUs were released this week but there was no cheaper W36xx included

Offering AMD as well would be great as AMD offers CPUs with reasonable price tag, even CPUs that support quad CPU configs are reasonable. Imagine quad 12-core in Mac Pro, 48 real cores... *drool*

 

[DoFoT9]

Offering AMD as well would be great as AMD offers CPUs with reasonable price tag, even CPUs that support quad CPU configs are reasonable. Imagine quad 12-core in Mac Pro, 48 real cores... *drool*

no thankyou! as performance would be crap

all the software support over the years would dissapear too.

 

[xgman]

no thankyou! as performance would be crap

all the software support over the years would dissapear too.

+1. Amd=stinkaroozer!

 

[you39]

I made a mistake.. I am human u know... or am I?

I still hold Ukrainian citizenship though I also have US Citizenship, so I am a dualie

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/MermaidsAtBrighton.jpg

 

[Hellhammer]

no thankyou! as performance would be crap

all the software support over the years would dissapear too.

How would it be crap? Yes, Intel does have better core for core, clock for clock performance but AMD offers CPUs that have reasonable price tag. Fusion looks very promising, I wouldn't mind having an option for AMD. If many cores are needed, AMD offers better solution for that, although the clock speeds are rather low. AMD sells you 8-core for less than 300 bucks and 750$ gets you 12-core. People who need the cores for rendering would be glad if Apple offered AMD as well. You could get 4x8-core for fairly cheap price (~1200$ for CPUs), less than current 2.66GHz octo is.

And how would software support disappear?

 

[416049]

And how would software support disappear?

I guess that he meant that Developers would slowly stop developing for Intel and Switch to AMD as well as the requirements would raise so the core 2 duo might not be supported anymore only quads and above?

 

[Hellhammer]

I guess that he meant that Developers would slowly stop developing for Intel and Switch to AMD as well as the requirements would raise so the core 2 duo might not be supported anymore only quads and above?

I think there isn't much difference, look at PC software, it's all for Intel and AMD so I doubt there has to be much magic done in order to get software work on AMD as well. There are AMD hacks that work fine. I'm not an expert in software so maybe someone with more knowledge can tell us what's the situation

 

[xgman]

If you want to build a performance pc, you go intel, period. Amd is for budget systems. Mac pro is said to be a performance system, not a budget system, so I don't see apple skimping down to amd anytime soon.

 

[Hellhammer]

I don't see apple skimping down to amd anytime soon.

Me neither but I would still like to see it in Macs. It wouldn't hurt anything, not at all. If AMD was used in Mac Pro, you could get 8-core for the price of current quad. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Apple would use AMD in the future but it's okay, Intel is still the king but their price tags are just horrible

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Mac pro is said to be a performance system, not a budget system, so I don't see apple skimping down to amd anytime soon.

I can definitely see Apple switching to AMD for the lower end MacPro while still pocketing ridiculous profit on the machines. Instead of a mini tower, Apple could make an AMD 6-core tower and keep Intel for the dual high end (8-12 cores).

Still starting at $2499 for what is essentially an $1100 system, or course.

 

[dgookin]

I haven't called my friend who works at the Towson Apple Store as a Genius and store manager...

I was just at that store last month! Very busy place. I picked up an iPad and laughed at it.

 

[nanofrog]

I can definitely see Apple switching to AMD for the lower end MacPro while still pocketing ridiculous profit on the machines. Instead of a mini tower, Apple could make an AMD 6-core tower and keep Intel for the dual high end (8-12 cores).

Still starting at $2499 for what is essentially an $1100 system, or course.

I don't see them doing this (both AMD and Intel processors simultaneously), as it makes more work in OS development (i.e. chipset drivers and optimization for both architectures), and support training is more complicated (i.e. expensive).

 

[TennisandMusic]

I don't see them doing this (both AMD and Intel processors simultaneously), as it makes more work in OS development (i.e. chipset drivers and optimization for both architectures), and support training is more complicated (i.e. expensive).

The chips use X86 architecture. They could do it easily if they wanted, and support shouldn't be more expensive really. Apple has the resources to do way more in their OS than they already do.

Aren't there a bunch of hackintoshes using AMD already?

 

[manhattanboy]

Another Tuesday, another letdown.

 

[nanofrog]

The chips use X86 architecture. They could do it easily if they wanted, and support shouldn't be more expensive really. Apple has the resources to do way more in their OS than they already do.

Aren't there a bunch of hackintoshes using AMD already?

Yes, they both run on the same instruction set (Intel actually licensed the 64 bit instruction set from AMD), but that's not the same as optimized operation (i.e. works, but it's not as efficient as possible when running code designed for another architecture). This can be true even within the same part maker.

Keep in mind, I'm only reffering to a split in the MP line. If Apple's really considering going to AMD for any of their other products, then it makes more sense (more systems to divide the costs over).

 

[Vylen]

there are some differences between amd64 and intel64... While compilers (under windows and linux for example) generally create binaries compatible with both implementations of the x86_64 specification, theres nothing to indicate that current OSX software has gone under similar treatment.

I would like to hope that apple would use essentially the standard gcc so the binaries are expected to be compatible but we would need to hear that from them and that isnt particularly likely...

 

[Sean Dempsey]

I can't believe it wasn't annouced today.

They probably needed just 1 more week to get it ready. Next tuesday is a lock, I heard his story - it checks out.

 

[Roman23]

I AM calling for a wager..

Lets bet next tuesday... $50.00 that the mac pro 2010 doesn't come out.. if I win, I will paypal someone the prize.. if not, then they will have to pay me.

Who is on? Who wants to bet?

Another Tuesday, another letdown.