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Nehalem EP (Xeon) Processors 'Ridiculously fast'

MrCrowbar said:
Lots of these look great on paper (specs, features), but they're not though out well. For instance the mainboard can be a serious bottleneck if not matched well, cooling might be an issue (case design) and power consumption (if you care about it).
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That's funny, considering that I have 10 eMachines that I bought 4 years ago running 24x7 server tasks without any problems.

Yes, cooling can be an issue if you put a 100 watt graphics card and overclock the crap out of everything.

Joe the Plumber, however, thinks that "overclock" is when you get paid more because you work more than 40 hours per week.

He's not going to see these issues from any mainstream vendor's system.
 
AidenShaw said:
Joe doesn't like all-in-ones - doesn't see the point in tossing the monitor when you want to upgrade the CPU.

Joe is going to Fry's this morning (see ads). He'll either get quad-core, 4 GiB, 1 TB and Blu-ray for $699, or maybe the 6 GiB system with Media Center and built-in HDTV tuner? (It has a spare optical slot, and a BD drive is $79 at Fry's.)

To the people suggesting that Apple should make an $1800 mini-tower, this should be a wake-up.
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And you can build a tower system with the e8400, 4gb of high speed ddr2 ram, 500gb hd, dvdrw, good psu, p45 board or a nvidia board, mid range or better video card for about $600 $700 before rebate as well. You can add a good wifi card for about $80 the DESKTOP mini should not come with the forced cost of a wifi card in a desktop. And you can replace the $50 video card with a $100 or more better one. It's said that card that costs less then $50 rebate is better then the base card in the $2300 mac pro.
 
^ The percentage of computer users who build their own machines is tiny. You can't compare the two. Your labour is free, if you don't value your time spent tracking down parts and putting it together. You don't have to make a profit margin on it either.
 
Blue Velvet said:
^ The percentage of computer users who build their own machines is tiny. You can't compare the two. Your labour is free, if you don't value your time spent tracking down parts and putting it together. You don't have to make a profit margin on it either.
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Very true. I am very much one of those guys that doesn't have the time to hunt down the parts and put them together. I like the idea for a gaming rig, but even then I'd probably pay for the convenience of just picking up the box and setup the parts.
 
I think the hunt for the parts is all part of the fun. Nothing beats the time you hear the rig you just built turn on and all the fans spinning up. Feels better than any computer you can get in a box :)

Midget Mariachi
 
Blue Velvet said:
^ The percentage of computer users who build their own machines is tiny. You can't compare the two. Your labour is free, if you don't value your time spent tracking down parts and putting it together. You don't have to make a profit margin on it either.
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But you can still have a $800 to $1900 tower with a profit margin. The dell's and others have systems that blow the mini away for same price range. Apple needs to have a head less system under $1500 with it's own video card and a desktop HD, CPU, RAM and DVDRW.
 
Joe The Dragon said:
But you can still have a $800 to $1900 tower with a profit margin. The dell's and others have systems that blow the mini away for same price range. Apple need have a head less system under $1500 with it's own video card and a desktop HD, CPU, RAM and DVDRW.
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In many ways, I agree with you, but it would take away sales from the iMac which has always been Steve's baby. He's always wanted a computer as an appliance, as sealed as possible... he's poured scorn on user forums, wanting his flagship computer to be as self-contained as possible, much like a washing machine.

I don't care for the iMac but while it's still around, no headless Mac in that price range, in my opinion.

Edit: And Dell operate on far slimmer margins with far higher volume, especially to enterprise. There isn't really a comparison.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Edit: And Dell operate on far slimmer margins with far higher volume, especially to enterprise. There isn't really a comparison.
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And this is very true. It's quite hard working with Apple when you need to buy things in bulk. My university had to pay full price for all of the 75 Mac Pros and matching 23" ACDs. They didn't lower the price until the new Mac Pro (the current model) was unveiled, and Apple still didn't work out a deal for us outside of a $500 price drop on all the towers.

Not that we ever worked with Dell, but when we got our quote from Avid and HP there was a significant difference, and we would have been able to walk away with 80 HP workstations and an Avid Media center server for a few thousand dollars more... not to mention the Avid Media Composer licenses.
 
Digital Skunk said:
And this is very true. It's quite hard working with Apple when you need to buy things in bulk. My university had to pay full price for all of the 75 Mac Pros and matching 23" ACDs. They didn't lower the price until the new Mac Pro (the current model) was unveiled, and Apple still didn't work out a deal for us outside of a $500 price drop on all the towers.

Not that we ever worked with Dell, but when we got our quote from Avid and HP there was a significant difference, and we would have been able to walk away with 80 HP workstations and an Avid Media center server for a few thousand dollars more... not to mention the Avid Media Composer licenses.
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Apple uses consistent margins instead of variable, at least when it comes to their end. Dell and HP sell desktop systems at next to nothing while jacking the price up on higher end systems like workstations. Apple uses higher margins on consumer machines to allow the Mac Pro to be sold at a more reasonable price compared to competing workstations (its still unreasonable to expect people to buy a workstation outside a business/institutional setting). In a way, they give you the deal upfront.
 
BenRoethig said:
Apple uses consistent margins instead of variable, at least when it comes to their end. Dell and HP sell desktop systems at next to nothing while jacking the price up on higher end systems like workstations. Apple uses higher margins on consumer machines to allow the Mac Pro to be sold at a more reasonable price compared to competing workstations (its still unreasonable to expect people to buy a workstation outside a business/institutional setting). In a way, they give you the deal upfront.
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Then why can't apple lower prices or bump ram , hd size , cpu speed , video cards over time?
 
ChrisA said:
Most of the time if you watch the Activity Meter you see the CPUs are not running at 100% On most Macs the computers spends most of it's time waiting for the user to click the mouse
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Clearly you don't run a web browser on yours. Safari and Mail.app together on my G5 suck over half the CPU most of the time, just sitting idle.
 
anthony11 said:
Clearly you don't run a web browser on yours. Safari and Mail.app together on my G5 suck over half the CPU most of the time, just sitting idle.
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Sounds like there's something wrong with your computer. On my little macbook Safari never uses up more than 15% of the CPU, unless it's frozen, and mail never really uses any resources.
 
anthony11 said:
Clearly you don't run a web browser on yours. Safari and Mail.app together on my G5 suck over half the CPU most of the time, just sitting idle.
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i hear ya my older MBP is starting to date with this aswell.

TuffLuffJimmy said:
Sounds like there's something wrong with your computer. On my little macbook Safari never uses up more than 15% of the CPU, unless it's frozen, and mail never really uses any resources.
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no there isnt, clearly youve never used hotmail before!! or checked the CPU usage when your on youtube/a flash based website.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Sounds like there's something wrong with your computer. On my little macbook Safari never uses up more than 15% of the CPU, unless it's frozen, and mail never really uses any resources.
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That's about what Safari uses on my iBook G4. The exceptions are with flash pages, freezes, etc.
 
rpaloalto said:
I hope they don't go for the desktop line.

With the amount of stress. And the hours I log. And plan to log on my mac pro. It is very comforting to know. That I do have a server class chip in my mac. That I don't have to worry about stressing her.
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Do you have any idea what people are doing with the current Core i7 processors? The 920 is rated at 2.66 Ghz from Intel. People overclocking it to 3.7Ghz and it's been fine.

So I don't think you have to worry much about overstressing a desktop CPU at stock speed in your work. :rolleyes:
 
SeaFox said:
Do you have any idea what people are doing with the current Core i7 processors? The 920 is rated at 2.66 Ghz from Intel. People overclocking it to 3.7Ghz and it's been fine.

So I don't think you have to worry much about overstressing a desktop CPU at stock speed in your work. :rolleyes:
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Nothing unless there's a really high end big screen iMac announced. The bloomsfield core may or may not show in the form of the xeon 3500 (i7 with ECC support enabled) along with x58 SP in the lower ranks of the Mac Pro.
 
milo said:
It's about time, I've been ready to buy a new machine for a while but they haven't updated in ages.



Why? That doesn't seem to make any sense.

What apple should do is use the workstation CPUs in the big tower but ALSO have a "budget" model with desktop cpus.
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Why? So Apple could offer a more reasonably priced workstation, like HP does with the XW4600 series.

The regular i7 procs are benching faster than an 8-way Xeon system right now. How is that not a good thing?

EDIT

Sorry, it appears you and I were agreeing. :)
 
polaris20 said:
The regular i7 procs are benching faster than an 8-way Xeon system right now. How is that not a good thing?
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Honestly? Because Apple hasn't done it yet. And when they do it will be like the second comming of the Nehalem Microarch.

Yes people are mistakenly calling the Xeon variant of Nehalem i7. In the end it is the same chip with ECC and 1 more quickpath (in the 5000 line).
 
diamond.g said:
Honestly? Because Apple hasn't done it yet. And when they do it will be like the second comming of the Nehalem Microarch.

Yes people are mistakenly calling the Xeon variant of Nehalem i7. In the end it is the same chip with ECC and 1 more quickpath (in the 5000 line).
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You're saying it's "bad" because of the Apple fanboy snobbery, yes?

Because yes, the chips are nearly identical otherwise.
 
polaris20 said:
You're saying it's "bad" because of the Apple fanboy snobbery, yes?

Because yes, the chips are nearly identical otherwise.
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More or less yes, Apple fanboy snobbery is why Nehalem (in any form) is seen as not all the special. Even more so when someone claims the Xeon chip is way more robust than the Desktop chip. Which that could be seen as true if the Xeon chip had more pins in its socket or had some other special feature (other than ECC support) that couldn't be lived without. Right now it is practically the same chip with the 2nd QPI enabled and support for ECC enabled. It doesn't run faster, nor cooler.
 
Digital Skunk said:
p.s. I'd love desktop chips, but Apple won't do it. So instead of whining about it like I have done for years now, I will just suck it up and pay an extra $1000. This is the Apple world we live in.
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Don't give up hope man, keep up the fight! :D Sad how you can be let down so many times that you give up and pay more for something you don't really want. What is wrong with us?
 
I remember when the G3 was 'ridiculously fast' and was going to herald 3D apps moving to apple.

fast processors + bloat = standing still
 
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