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Sandy Bridge next year? really?

B

Bokes

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I have an older Macpro (06) I would like to replace. There seems to be little excitement for the current offerings and a whole lot of talk about
"Sandy Bridge". What is so great about SB? And why do so many here believe it will be out next year? Look how long it took Apple to get us this Westmere.

So many seem to be willing to wait for Sandy B- real facts to support next year?
 
As far as I know consumer SB chips are slated for Q4 2010. And the server grade versions (ie Mac Pro chips) will follow later in 2011.

There's no reason to think Apple won't refresh the pros with the newest Intel chips in a year.
 
So far the date we have seen for Xeon processors is the second half of 2011.

Apple have released 3 of the 4 Mac Pros within 2 months of new processors. We've no idea what reason there is for the latest ones being 5 months after new processors. So with that all in mind it is perfectly feasible they will come in 2011, but I think now people should be more wary about waiting.
 
Just buy one. Forget Sandy Bridge. The current core chips are a pretty good and a big improvement over the Core Duo's. I don't know why everyone thinks they are a 'small' upgrade when in fact the current chips are a big upgrade, they have the memory controllers on board for one plus other features which has removed the normal separate on board chip for these entirely.
I believe Xeons are the same, they just have different names and some extra functions over normal CPU's.

If we were expecting SB in 2 months I would say wait. Otherwise just buy one now. The 6 core seems to be a stonking performer reading this forum.
 
Well, Sandy Bridge gives some interesting prospects - since they plan on having 8-core Xeons. So you can have a single-cpu 8-core Mac Pro, and a dual-cpu 16-core Mac Pro.

Pretty insane and possibly worth the wait if you realllllllllllllly need 16-cores 😛
 
I doubt Apple will be in any hurry to release these. Judging from this years crop, add 5 months on to the "real" Sandy Bridge release date and even then don't hold your breath.
 
sandy bridge is already coming in a few months, as is ATI Radeon 6000 series.

sandy bridge for servers (and macpro) will take another year tho. so q4 2011
 
Vylen said:
Well, Sandy Bridge gives some interesting prospects - since they plan on having 8-core Xeons. So you can have a single-cpu 8-core Mac Pro, and a dual-cpu 16-core Mac Pro.

Pretty insane and possibly worth the wait if you realllllllllllllly need 16-cores 😛
Click to expand...

If you really need 16 cores, or 32 virtual cores money cant be an option and you just get a nice EFI flash next year when the new proc has been released and get them from your local pc dealer. As always they will be.. expensive. We all know what a stock 3.33G 6-core costs...
 
studiox said:
If you really need 16 cores, or 32 virtual cores money cant be an option and you just get a nice EFI flash next year when the new proc has been released and get them from your local pc dealer. As always they will be.. expensive. We all know what a stock 3.33G 6-core costs...
Click to expand...

sandy bridge will be a new socket and no one has performed a successful software efi flash yet.
 
Vylen said:
Well, Sandy Bridge gives some interesting prospects - since they plan on having 8-core Xeons. So you can have a single-cpu 8-core Mac Pro, and a dual-cpu 16-core Mac Pro.

Pretty insane and possibly worth the wait if you realllllllllllllly need 16-cores 😛
Click to expand...
You saw the already released Becktown Xeon octo-cores, right?

Sandy/Ivy Bridge are not focussing on performance, they focus on power consumption. It gets more interesting with Haswell, as it comes with 8 cores by default. (Means, we finally get quad core MBPs)
 
Vylen said:
Yea, but you're not going to see those in a Mac Pro...
Click to expand...
Well, that's Apples fault to choose Intel over AMD, as those 8 core Xeons cost $2700 (2GHz) and $3800 (2.26GHz) each.

A 2.40Ghz 8 core AMD Opteron costs ~$900, less then the Intel 6-cores. Also, AMD has released 12 core CPUs - 12x2.20GHz for $1200.

Even if AMD CPUs are slower - MacPro users who render stuff rely on parallel executon of their code, thus need more cores rather then more speed per core. A 12 core Opteron would be much faster then a 6 core Xeon when heavily rely on multitasking. (Yeah, I know, HT. But HT only uses unused parts of the core to emulate a second core, and execute another thread if the cache is to slow for the CPU to provide the data, and such stuff.) They are also higher clocked then the Xeons to compensate the architectural disadvantages.
 
Giuly said:
Sandy/Ivy Bridge are not focussing on performance, they focus on power consumption. It gets more interesting with Haswell, as it comes with 8 cores by default. (Means, we finally get quad core MBPs)
Click to expand...

Power efficiency means more cores and higher clocks can be used resulting better performance. Clock for clock performance will increase as well. I don't get it where the power consumption theme comes from because mobile quads are still 45W and duals are 35W, just like before. There may be more low voltage models and it looks like LGA 1155 CPUs top out at 95W but there I would guess there will be 130W LGA 2011 CPUs, just like there are LGA 1366 CPUs now.

That 8 cores by default statement is again just a rumor. It's 2.5 years till Haswell so we don't know how many cores there will be in base models
 
Hellhammer said:
Power efficiency means more cores and higher clocks can be used resulting better performance. Clock for clock performance will increase as well. I don't get it where the power consumption theme comes from because mobile quads are still 45W and duals are 35W, just like before. There may be more low voltage models and it looks like LGA 1155 CPUs top out at 95W but there I would guess there will be 130W LGA 2011 CPUs, just like there are LGA 1366 CPUs now.

That 8 cores by default statement is again just a rumor. It's 2.5 years till Haswell so we don't know how many cores there will be in base models
Click to expand...
Take a 35W CPU, Sandy Bridge reduces that to - let's say - 30W, then they rise the clocks to get to 35W again.
Have a look here, the 35W mobile dual core i7 just raises the clock from 2.66GHz to 2.7Ghz. Still no mobile quad core i7 with 35W TDP, and this data is as of August 11th.
 
Hellhammer said:
There is 2.8GHz i7-640M coming later on this year which is expected to be 35W
Click to expand...
That's what the roadmap from May says, the new roadmap from this month slightly differs by 100MHz.

The 640M would be Arrandale, though. The Sandy Bridge one would be Core i7-2640M, and I guess would have 2.9GHz.
 
Giuly said:
That's what the roadmap from May says, the new roadmap from this month slightly differs by 100MHz.
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about Sandy Bridge, I was talking about Westmere and more precisely, Arrandale. However, it might have been cancelled because Sandy Bridge is coming earlier than it was supposed to be coming. Anyway, give or take 100MHz, it doesn't affect the performance that much. SB is reported to provide ~20% better clock for clock performance than Nehalem/Westmere so 2.7GHz SB would provide performance of ~3.2GHz Nehalem/Westmere, much faster than any Arrandale is.
 
Giuly said:
(Yeah, I know, HT. But HT only uses unused parts of the core to emulate a second core, and execute another thread if the cache is to slow for the CPU to provide the data, and such stuff.)
Click to expand...

That's a common misconception. The second core isn't emulated, it's a second hardware core although a partial one. And it does provide the benefits of having extra hardware cores in many situations.
 
milo said:
That's a common misconception. The second core isn't emulated, it's a second hardware core although a partial one. And it does provide the benefits of having extra hardware cores in many situations.
Click to expand...

It's not a second hardware core, there are some things duplicated (what's necessary for the core to function as multiple ones), as it's normal in such schemes, but the execution units are not replicated.
 
What would be significant about SB except maybe more cores?
I currently have 8 core 2008 with 8gb ram and 8800gt and have two options

1) keep it and maybe buy 5870 for £370
2) sell it and get the new mid2010 with 5870 for an extra £800 with applecare (i have student disc)

Now, hellhammer thinks its not worth it but what about others? Does it makes more sense to wait for SB and then sell? Hence me asking why is SB such a big deal or would I be better of to get mid2010 now with that £800 difference?

What do you think?
 
Gloor said:
What would be significant about SB except maybe more cores?
I currently have 8 core 2008 with 8gb ram and 8800gt and have two options

1) keep it and maybe buy 5870 for £370
2) sell it and get the new mid2010 with 5870 for an extra £800 with applecare (i have student disc)

Now, hellhammer thinks its not worth it but what about others? Does it makes more sense to wait for SB and then sell? Hence me asking why is SB such a big deal or would I be better of to get mid2010 now with that £800 difference?

What do you think?
Click to expand...

or you can wait another week, get 5870 PC version, flash it and it will cost you 1/3 of the Apple's price.
 
skiffx said:
or you can wait another week, get 5870 PC version, flash it and it will cost you 1/3 of the Apple's price.
Click to expand...

Well, if I could then it would be worth it but the cheapest one I found here :

www.overclockers.co.uk

is £290 which is not worth the trouble. If it was £120 then It would be but this way its only £80 cheaper than from Apple so in that case its better to get it officially, right?

What about that Sandy Bridge though? Shall I wait and update in 2011 or 2012? I'm happy with my current setup except the graphic card. Yes, I could have more cores for rendering but there is no such thing as enough cores when it comes to rendering 🙂))))

Luckily, I don't do that that often so apart from that, would I lose more money to sell now and update to 2010 or sell in 2011-2012 and get that model?
 
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