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Mac Pros May See Bus Speed Increase With Penryn

EXACTLY! My Sonnett E4P eSATA card has gotten the job done for me for a year. After endless issues with the reliability of FW400/800 drives through the years I just won't touch them. eSATA has been flawless and wicked-fast. It would be righteous if they put 4 eSATA ports in the back with port multiplication abilities.

Wild-Bill said:
Ditch the FW800 Apple and give us eSATA. That is the way forward. :apple:
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Pressure said:
Do you have any numbers you can share with us?

And this really belongs in a thread for itself. Tried to google for "Mac Pro firewire performance" and found zero hits that mentioned anything about lacking FireWire800 performance.
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Go to Barefeats.
 
Wild-Bill said:
Well whenever Apple decides to give the Mac Pro a much overdue update, I certainly hope they offer current and powerful graphics card options. The Mac Pro is severely dated in the video card department. However, judging by Apple's recent inclusion of the ATI HD 2400 and 2600 Pro cards in the new iMacs, I tend to think they'll screw up this refresh too.
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Nothing like using parts that retail as PCIe cards loaded with RAM in the PC world for $55 and $110 in your new "showcase" desktop. I think it was BareFeats that showed the old 2.16GHz iMac beating the 2.4GHz new one in almost every 3D game because the RadeonHD is so lame.

I think eSATA should be added to the pro machines even though there are already 4 internal drive bays, however, FW800 allows MUCH longer cable lengths so it still has a place.
 
macintel4me said:
I'll second that. eSata is double the throughput of properly working FW800.
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Why should they ditch the single most important port in the media world?

Come on, use your brains please.

FireWire is used for more than driving hard drives afterall.
 
I just purchased my Mac Pro 2 months ago. I've been wanting it for 3 years. I love the current design. I love that adding RAM and HDs was so easy. It sits between my 2 desk so my cat has not discovered the tray, he spends too much time watching the printer spit out paper.
 
As someone said earlier, I really don't care what the Mac Pro looks like since it will sit under my desk. I have an eight-year-old, single-processor G4 400 and really hope the Penryn Mac Pros will be released during Macworld SF in January.
 
elliottbayman said:
I'm only interested in replacing my Dual G4 if I can get a huge increase in speed. My current machine is only lacking when it comes to encoding video but does everything else as fast as it ever did. I would like to encode a one hour video in a few seconds or minutes rather than hours. Now that HD content is becoming more prevalent it seems I will need even more power. How many more years should I wait to get a new Mac Pro?
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You've got to be kidding!

A Quad Mac Pro or Quad G5 WILL be a "HUGE Increase in Speed" compared to any Dual G4. There is no comparison.
 
I'm waiting to get an updated Mac Pro. I like the G5 casing - and now that they've redesigned it internally to provided decent function I will be very happy with it. I would be worried that if the produced a redesigned case, that they might stuff up again like they did with the G5's. Perhaps they might make the whole case smaller and only have space for 2 hard drives. I would not be impressed - I'm looking forward to getting rid of my G5 for that reason.

I think the next update should include eSATA as well as Firewire 800. I think it's only recently that they added FW800 to the iMac, so I hardly thing they'll remove it from the Mac Pros.

For me it's a shame they don't put Bluetooth in as standard - seems daft to have to get a CTO just for that (if you don't have an Apple Store nearby). I'm still using my PowerMac G5 with a Bluetooth 1.1 USB dongle - I'd much rather have internal bluetooth.

What I'd REALLY like is for Apple to update the Mac Pros before the expected release of the new chips. Probably just a dream - but with it being such a long time since the current models came out, perhaps Apple are desperate to update them too?
 
elliottbayman said:
I'm only interested in replacing my Dual G4 if I can get a huge increase in speed. My current machine is only lacking when it comes to encoding video but does everything else as fast as it ever did. I would like to encode a one hour video in a few seconds or minutes rather than hours. Now that HD content is becoming more prevalent it seems I will need even more power. How many more years should I wait to get a new Mac Pro?
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You may just want to invest in an Elgato Turbo H.264, which can make an iBook G4 as fast as a MacBook Pro for encoding H.264.

So if all you want to be faster is video encoding, this is $150 that you want to spend. However, even a Quad Mac Pro is the same speed, and once QuickTime can spawn more than 2 threads for encoding, a Quad or Octo system would be significantly faster. And, yes, a Quad G5, or any Mac Pro, will be "a huge increase in speed".
 
ehurtley said:
You may just want to invest in an Elgato Turbo H.264, which can make an iBook G4 as fast as a MacBook Pro for encoding H.264.

So if all you want to be faster is video encoding, this is $150 that you want to spend. However, even a Quad Mac Pro is the same speed, and once QuickTime can spawn more than 2 threads for encoding, a Quad or Octo system would be significantly faster. And, yes, a Quad G5, or any Mac Pro, will be "a huge increase in speed".
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I wished there was a USB thumbstick to make my PowerBook play WoW better :rolleyes::eek:
 
The biggest thing they need to address in the next Mac Pro incarnation is the video cards. I think an 8800GTX would be better over an ATI HD 2900xt. Benchmarks have proven that even an 8800GTS (640 meg) handily beats the 2900xt.

I've got a bad feeling though they're going to use the 2900xt. But at least it's an improvement over the year and a half old 1900xt, plus has DirectX 10 capability for those interested in dual-booting with Vista and gaming. I, personally, have no use for Vista or DirectX 10. I just want a current, powerful video card option.
 
I am guessing we will get about half of what we want and the best graphics card {sans the Quadro upgrade} will be one below the best PC game card on offer at the time of launch.
 
Wild-Bill said:
The biggest thing they need to address in the next Mac Pro incarnation is the video cards. I think an 8800GTX would be better over an ATI HD 2900xt. Benchmarks have proven that even an 8800GTS (640 meg) handily beats the 2900xt.

I've got a bad feeling though they're going to use the 2900xt. But at least it's an improvement over the year and a half old 1900xt, plus has DirectX 10 capability for those interested in dual-booting with Vista and gaming. I, personally, have no use for Vista or DirectX 10. I just want a current, powerful video card option.
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There are also cases where the Radeon HD 2900 XT handily beats both the Geforce 8800GTX and Geforce 8800 Ultra, like Bioshock in DirectX 9c.

It really isn't such a bad GPU by any means but if the update comes in November, there will be all new GPUs from NVIDIA.
 
Wild-Bill said:
The biggest thing they need to address in the next Mac Pro incarnation is the video cards. I think an 8800GTX would be better over an ATI HD 2900xt. Benchmarks have proven that even an 8800GTS (640 meg) handily beats the 2900xt.

I've got a bad feeling though they're going to use the 2900xt. But at least it's an improvement over the year and a half old 1900xt, plus has DirectX 10 capability for those interested in dual-booting with Vista and gaming. I, personally, have no use for Vista or DirectX 10. I just want a current, powerful video card option.
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The whole graphics card situation is ridiculous. They should update the graphics cards as new ones become available - even without waiting for a major upgrade to the computer as a whole. Even if they don't do that - they should make all the latest graphics cards available as CTO options. Ideally they should make the latest graphics cards available to buy separately.

Mac users are treated really badly when it comes to graphics cards. I remember spending an arm and a leg on one a few years ago, only to see the PC version in a shop a few months later for about a quarter of the price.

When there is no update to the Mac Pro's in over a year (except the top model) surely it would help to maintain sales if they maintained it's value by making easy changes like putting in better graphics cards. Without it, the Mac Pro has become progressively worse value for money as the year has gone on.

I suspect Apple has seen sales remaining fairly healthy due to the introduction of software like Adobe CS3 that people have been waiting for - and so not felt the need to do anything to help sales.
 
bilbo--baggins said:
The whole graphics card situation is ridiculous.
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Agreed. This is the sole reason I haven't bought a Mac Pro yet. My guess is that Leopard is the blocker on this front -- Apple don't want to commit to Tiger and Leopard support for any next-generation graphics card options. I'll bet they'd planned to have new cards out already but the delay to Leopard's release date scuttled that plan.

I'm sure we'll see new cards, even if we don't get new Mac Pros, shortly after Leopard's release. And I'll bet they'll require Leopard for people upgrading their existing Mac Pros.
 
Does anybody think that there is a chance for a iMac processor upgrade araound X-Mas?

I am very unpatient - i know! :D
 
Christmas seems too soon to expect iMac updates in light of the fact that the iMac just got a complete facelift just a few weeks ago. Nothing on the Intel roadmap, either, that would seem to encourage such a rapid update.
 
TheMechanic said:
Well, the MacPro is a pro machine and I'd say that pros don't care much about the look of it. They want it's power.
And BTW all towers are ugly with all of the cables coming out of them. But the current MP is far sexier than everything I've seen on the PC market.
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i agree. i could care less how "sexy" or "cool" it looks so much as how "sexy" and "cool" what i produce with it looks!

probably mostly gamers who worry about the looks, i suppose. (i love games too, just don't have many these days)
 
Apple needs to offer the best

Wild-Bill said:
Ditch the FW800 Apple and give us eSATA. That is the way forward. :apple:
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Apple needs it's Pro line to offer the best hardware configurations regardless of platform. Why no eSATA as standard? Why no offer of a BlueRay drive and burner as part of the configuration process?

OSX is the best of the best. However at this moment my dream MacPro would be built by Alienware not Apple. I'm referring to their line of workstations not the gamer line. Which is still better than Apple's line up.

Apple has its own needs and reasons for limiting choice. But say with Adobe software it does not matter what platform I am using. It might behoove Apple to realize this.

Apple is my preferred choice. I can wait till the end of the 1st quarter 2008. After that I might be enjoying an Alienware workstation with the latest hardware, while Apple sits on its iPhones.
 
Apple needs it's Pro line to offer the best hardware configurations regardless of platform. Why no eSATA as standard? Why no offer of a BlueRay drive and burner as part of the configuration process?
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Please Apple.

BOOTABLE eSata ports on macbook pros and mac pros PLEASE!!!
 
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