Mac Pro Update Now Possible with New Xeon E5 Chips Next Week

[kalsta]

Just as I said, someone who thinks their purchase ages ago entitles them to something from Apple and who think iPod users owe them some gratitude. Guess you'll have to get your validation somewhere else. You're not as important or consequential as you wish you were.

You know buddy, life is more bearable when you keep a sense of humour about it. Lighten up!! I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with my comments which, evidently, you didn't pick up.

But I was making a serious point about credibility. Teens may think the whole world looks to them for what is cool and desirable, but it ain't necessarily so! When enough professionals start calling Apple products 'toys', it does create a bit of an Internet buzz. Maybe not enough to put a serious dent in iPod sales, sure—but enough to slowly shift the market perception of Apple. Apple has always been seen as a creative and innovative company, and this sits well with a company which caters to creative professionals. Take that a way, and you'll still be happy I suppose while-ever you can play Plants vs Zombies in your pyjamas, but it would be a sad day indeed for the people who actually make a living from their favourite platform.

 

[zimv20]

A Mac Pro (at least in it's current state) really isn't necessary anymore with Thunderbolt.

yes it is. TB isn't nearly as fast as onboard pci-e. for those of us recording bands, we need super-low latency for monitoring to ensure performances don't suffer.

until TB is as fast as what's onboard, i'll shell out for the mac pro w/o a 2nd thought.

 

[not1lost]

Thank you for your considerate reply, I really do appreciate it. as someone who has been around this equiptment long enough to know what you are talking about.. Although I am 55 years old and learned long ago there are no perfect worlds... Still I believe I am making a wise move to a company that cares about quality and the users of their products experience with them. Adversly, I dont believe Microsoft or its many vendors or hardware affiliates care anything about you accept to get your money and get you out the door. And it will be so much fun cause as Forest Gump says "Ya never know what yer gowna geait".... I may find I am wrong but I think I can trust Apple a little more than that... Thanks again

Oh, I fogot to mention! as far as help after the sale - Yes! Microsoft is training people from other countries all over the world to speak English so they can read the instructions from the manuals to the tech support callers! Fabulous!

 

[hstewart]

I would love to go Dual Xeon in a Mac Pro - but it cost too much money, 5 Years ago a built a Supermicro Dual Xeon 5160 and still use it every day - until basically Sandy Bridge cpus - it was basically faster than most machines and it was 5 years.

From what I would guess these Xeon would blow any thing out of water - Xeons on much faster that desktop cpus. At least with my experience. Combine with latest NVidia GPU's - it would make a killer 3d design machine.

But my interest have change, I probably go with 15 in MacBook Air or 15 in Macbook Pro next. A lot depends if Apples switches back to NVidia.

 

[not1lost]

And it's a really *huge* case without any more features than a typical mid-tower.

Only internal 4 drive bays? LOL

9 years old because you can't improve on perfection.... and by the way, there is far more than "only 4 internal drive bays" much more can be upgraded... Peace

 

[Mac2012]

Will it play Crysis??

Go get an XBOX... these are for ENGINEERING!
Would like to see the 6 core in an iMac 27"!!!!!

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Who wants a bunch of Thunderbolt boxes wired up to the back of their iMac? No thanks.

What's a few wires leading down to a rack? Even MP's have those! You can put 3 HD's in an iMac... really, the games changed bro! I'd like to see a 6 core in an iMac and I'm SET!!!!

 

[wikus]

Two technologies that Mac Pro customers won't be overly concerned with. Ivy Bridge is more of a player in the mobile space and USB 3 takes a back seat to Thunderbolt in storage speed and latency.

1) Ivy Bridge is for both mobile and desktop platforms
2) USB 3 wont be taking a back seat anytime soon because:
2a) Thunderbolt has almost ZERO devices
2b) Thunderbolt is expensive
2c) Thunderbolt doesnt support any older connections, making it another failed proprietary interface from apple, just like Firewire.

Furthermore, USB 3.0 speeds are just fine. None of the newest SSD drives can saturate USB 3.0's throughput, so the whole debate between USB3 vs. TB is useless.... especially since its been over a year that thunderbolt has been out and still nothing is out on the market.

Although that speaks volumes about thunderbolt; consumers either don't want it or don't care for it. If either weren't true, TB would have picked up some steam by now. Personally, I don't care for it as its a major ripoff.

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And it's a really *huge* case without any more features than a typical mid-tower.

Only internal 4 drive bays? LOL

6 bays. 4 for hard drives in the sleds, 2 for optical drives. The first gen. Mac Pros had 6 SATA ports.

Doesnt matter though, the Mac Pros case is absolute perfection in design. Its been out for 9 years and every single other case since then has paled in comparison on an aesthetic level. The only one thats been original is the Acer Aspire Predator;

The only problem is, is that THAT design gets really old really fast (and its cheap plastic where all those hinges will snap real easily).

 

[AidenShaw]

9 years old because you can't improve on perfection.... and by the way, there is far more than "only 4 internal drive bays" much more can be upgraded... Peace

Where do you put the 5th 3.5" drive?

The 6th?

The 7th?

Perhaps it's not "perfection", but just what you accept.

 

[Mac2012]

Or how many virtual instruments, software plug-ins and tracks you can run in Logic.

Or, run X-Plane 10 with all options on and the machine doesn't break a sweat.

I'll plug in a Universal Audio Apollo QUAD into a new iMac and produce a platinum album easily... not hard these days really! They are fast enough to do SERIOUS records! Now video... I think a 6 core iMac with SSD's and a TB RAID would be fine.
If you're talented, an iMac is enough really these days for music production if using a DSP processing solution.

 

[AidenShaw]

Think inside the box

I'll plug in a Universal Audio Apollo into a new iMac and produce a platinum album... not hard these days really! They are fast enough to do SERIOUS records! Now video... I think a 6 core iMac with SSD's and a TB RAID would be fine.

If you want a rat's nest of external boxes and $50 cables.

A tower can do it all inside the box.

 

[Mac2012]

If you want a rat's nest of external boxes and $50 cables.

A tower can do it all inside the box.

There's not a studio on EARTH that is completely wireless he he...
Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you have internal drives or not... you STILL have to open it up and pull out the drive sleds... I know, I have 8 MP's he he. An iMac with 6 cores @ 3.4 Ghz and a TB RAID 0 with an Apollo is a KILLER music production system... I'm not concurrently playing back 10 VI's... I render as audio and can play 300 tracks so... If you know how to use a DAW, the power in an iMac is PLENTY!!!! I can see the kids though... they just throw a plugin on a track because they THINK it's needed, OR, it was a crap performance and are massaging it into existence and sorry... crap in = crap out EVERY TIME!!!!!

 

[Nostromo]

A great solution would be a well cooled, beautiful casing that can hold enough hard drives and a large graphics card.

For mobility, a MacBook Air or even an iPad will be fine (I hope we'll see an iPad that can handle larger image, maybe even tethering).

 

[nuckinfutz]

AidenShaw

Please go back to the Main Coon Avatar. It was cool.

OS X Main Coon lol.


Wikus

Second generation Thunderbolt chipsets are coming which should make them cheaper. Right now we've got some decent parts.

http://www.provantage.com/seagate-stae121~7SEG904F.htm
Seagate TB Adapter

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/
Sonnet Technologies

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudio3d/
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/
Blackmagic Design

http://www.apple.com/displays/
Apple Thunderbolt Display

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/26/western-digital-mybook-thunderbolt-duo-hands-on-macworld-2012/
Western Digital

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5577/lacie-2big-thunderbolt-series-review
Lacie

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/press/releases/Matrox_Thunderbolt/
Matrox

And more coming. But lets face it most of the people screaming about the need for USB 3 are mainly worried about transfer their Pr0n collection faster.

The Pro's are going to want TB

 

[zephonic]

Where do you put the 5th 3.5" drive?

The 6th?

The 7th?

Perhaps it's not "perfection", but just what you accept.

5th and 6th go in the second 5.25" bay. OWC sells very neat one-stop solutions. If you're willing to use an external ODD, you can use the first 5.25" bay for drive 7 and 8.

More importantly, you can drop in an ESATA board and have unlimited superfast external HDD's.

An iMac with 6 cores @ 3.4 Ghz and a TB RAID 0 with an Apollo is a KILLER music production system... I'm not concurrently playing back 10 VI's... I render as audio and can play 300 tracks so... If you know how to use a DAW, the power in an iMac is PLENTY!!!!

That depends. For film composers a 12-core MacPro is not even powerful enough. With VSL and EWQL stuff you run out of headroom quick.

I used to work on an iMac and loved it, but I find that you really need dedicated hdd's for streaming large sample libraries. If you mostly record and mix bands, a MacbookPro will do that just fine.

Personally, I need the flexibility and scalability, and the MacPro is the only machine to offer that. If Apple ditches it, my next studio machine will most likely be a bespoke Windows workstation. Or Linux, if the audio devs start playing ball.

 

[lukarak]

How is this even remotely a good thing? do we really want a mac pro refresh with this and NOT ivy bridge? that's a huge stab in my opinion, because they would not refresh with this and then again with ivy bridge in 3 months, it'd be either or, and it better be ivy bridge. because if we get a refresh of a revised LAST gen cpu, the see the rest of the macs get ivy bridge, it's just going to make me mad, because i've been waiting for a mac pro refresh for a new mac. But THIS is not what i'm waiting for.

You clearly don't know what you are talking about. Ivy Bridge won't appear in Xeon form until 2013. Ivy Bridge that will be released in Q2 2012 or Q3 even (in volume) will only be quad core chips (or lower) with the ability to utilize only one processor package per computer. The sandy bridge E is here to fill the workstation and server needs for at least one year.

 

[lukarak]

3)Here we go again...Windows...not even gonna start a 100 page essay on this. Suffice to say that my point was that a $2500 Mac Pro box can easily be challenged by a cheaper Wintel box.

Xeon Windows boxes are not that much cheaper.

Personally, i don't like the imac because it is limited on ram, drives and has a crappy display, and i don't need the pro, that's why i use a hackintosh, X58 chipset gives me 6 cores, 48 gigs of max ram (have 24 atm), desktop graphics cards and 30'' screens, and it has been runing for a full 3 years now (it was quad core at first) with 1 day downtime in the whole timeline. Total time invested in making OS X working (all the updates 10.5 -> 10.6 - 10-7 and all patches) is about 2 working days. That's a bargin.
But i don't do number crunching, i run multiple VMs. Extra cpu power (up to 16 cores) you get with xeons, that has its price.

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There's not a studio on EARTH that is completely wireless he he...
Sorry, but it doesn't matter if you have internal drives or not... you STILL have to open it up and pull out the drive sleds... I know, I have 8 MP's he he. An iMac with 6 cores @ 3.4 Ghz and a TB RAID 0 with an Apollo is a KILLER music production system... I'm not concurrently playing back 10 VI's... I render as audio and can play 300 tracks so... If you know how to use a DAW, the power in an iMac is PLENTY!!!! I can see the kids though... they just throw a plugin on a track because they THINK it's needed, OR, it was a crap performance and are massaging it into existence and sorry... crap in = crap out EVERY TIME!!!!!

There isn't a 6 core iMac and there won't be a 6 core iMac with Ivy Bridge as well.
Only if apple puts SBE or IBE (2013) in the iMac, and i doubt it will happen. Intel won't make a 6 core consumer desktop CPU, maybe not even with Haswell

 

[aliensporebomb]

Ahem.

Oh yeah? Really? In terms of what? Price? Sure!!

Because last time I check, performance wise, i7 2600 on top end 2011 27" iMac beat the $h1t out of "Nehalem" Xeon W3530 found on basic 2010 MacPro. And it's a fair quad core CPU comparison, no 6, 8 , or 12 cores of course!

Not convinced? Check for yourself!

If you're comparing a Sandy Bridge i7 (32 nanometer) to a Nehalem Xeon (45 nanomater) yes the i7 gets greater performance but the about-to-be-released Pros will have Sandy Bridge Xeons which will outperform the Sandy Bridge i7 (unless you're spending a thousand bucks a chip for an i7 extreme which Apple never has specced in their iMac machines).

As it is, the i7 iMac I run (2.8 ghz with 16 gigs of 1333 memory benches in the low 10,000 range in geekbench, the equivalent 8 core Xeon Mac Pro was benching well over 11,000). Not real world performance but I guarantee the I/O of the Pro will eclipse that of the iMac.

That being said, the iMac is a good deal. All my pro audio apps treat this machine an 8-core as Logic and some of my other applications use all 4 hardware and all 4 hyperthreading cores to run applications. It shows as an eight core machine in activity monitor even though it's just a first generation i7 quadcore machine.

The Pro simply does a better job even though I do love my iMac.

 

[AidenShaw]

5th and 6th go in the second 5.25" bay. OWC sells very neat one-stop solutions. If you're willing to use an external ODD, you can use the first 5.25" bay for drive 7 and 8.

More importantly, you can drop in an ESATA board and have unlimited superfast external HDD's.

And after putting in hack adapters to put drives in the ODD bays, where do you connect the SATA cables? I didn't think that the Mac Pro mobo has open SATA connectors.

And how do you fit two 3.5" drives into one 5.25" bay?

As for the external eSATA card, those cards will also fit in any Windows box - so no advantage for Apple there. (And "unlimited" must be in the sense of how AT&T uses the word "unlimited" - since eSATA cards are certainly limited in the number of ports and the number of drives that can be connected to those ports.)

 

[portishead]

Who wants a bunch of Thunderbolt boxes wired up to the back of their iMac? No thanks.

A bunch? I doubt most people would have 1 or 2 devices. In a professional environment, I don't think people care if everything isn't in a tidy package. I have almost all the devices on my iMac filled. It's really not that big of a deal. It's certainly not worth several hundred if not a thousand dollar premium to have everything look pretty.

 

[zephonic]

And after putting in hack adapters to put drives in the ODD bays, where do you connect the SATA cables? I didn't think that the Mac Pro mobo has open SATA connectors.

More than 6 devices will require an additional SATA controller, but those come in PCI(e) so no prob.

And how do you fit two 3.5" drives into one 5.25" bay?

You don't, but you can fit a 3.5" and 2.5" into one 5.25" bay like this:

Again, OWC has a lot of neat solutions to squeeze the most out of your Pro.

As for the external eSATA card, those cards will also fit in any Windows box - so no advantage for Apple there.

What's Windows got to do with this? You asked where you'd stick those extra drives in a MacPro, that's all I'm talking about.

(And "unlimited" must be in the sense of how AT&T uses the word "unlimited" - since eSATA cards are certainly limited in the number of ports and the number of drives that can be connected to those ports.)

Sure, but I meant unlimited in the sense that you can remove and replace at will. You can have 7000 petabyte in external storage if you need. I don't even know how much external storage I have at the moment. I just swap drives and don't even think about it.

If you need all that storage permanently accessible, there are limits, of course, but if your needs are such you are most likely looking at dedicated SAN etc. Not eSATA.

 

[top]

I'll take please -
High-end 12 core machine
16 to 24GB RAM
512GB SSD for OS & apps
3TB HD for data
2x 27" Thunderbolt displays

I will most certainly splurge this time around - probably the last time I will.

I'm budgeted for the same thing but adding 12tb thunderbolt Promise Pegasus raid for our video work.

 

[zephonic]

My biggest concern with a new MacPro is in fact Thunderbolt. Apple has dilligently replaced all MiniDisplayPorts with ThB ports on their entire line-up, so I wonder if they'd do that to the MacPro as well?

It wouldn't make sense, but if they don't how are you gonna connect their flagship ThB display?

 

[top]

My biggest concern with a new MacPro is in fact Thunderbolt. Apple has dilligently replaced all MiniDisplayPorts with ThB ports on their entire line-up, so I wonder if they'd do that to the MacPro as well?

It wouldn't make sense, but if they don't how are you gonna connect their flagship ThB display?

why wouldn't they?

 

[justperry]

Hopefully this is true for all those people who want/need a Mac Pro, it's been too long since an upgrade, thanks to Intel.

Thank the lord. Time to buy my first Mac Pro. My 2002 Power Mac G4 is still chugging along, but can't really keep up with modern scientific computing anymore. Also, Tiger's getting a little old. Switching back and forth between Lion and Tiger gets annoying.

Something doesn't compute here

Lion on a G4?

 

[zephonic]

why wouldn't they?

Because a sizeable portion of the MacPro's target clientele does not use a ThB display and does not want one. They may want ThB for other peripherals but still need dedicated ports for their displays.

I'm not sure how many MacPro users would happily share a port between their display and HDD's or peripherals. I'm not sure I'd want to run bandwidth-intensive stuff like realtime audio on the same port as my display.

10Gbps sounds good, but if you have HDD's, pro-audio IO and graphics all running on that port, I doubt it would be fast enough.

So dedicated ThB ports are a must, but that conflicts with Apple's philosophy. Also, are the ThB ports gonna be on the GPU? Or elsewhere? Is there even an X79 mobo with ThB controllers?

Sooo many questions...