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The 2009 (Gainestown) Mac Pro: Everything We Know
- Thread starter Tallest Skil
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Absolutely, your money, your choice.
Just don't ask questions if you know better anyways.
4.Why would I " need " a computer/farm? Well.. I'm doing some pretty advanced animation in HD, with 12,000+ bps output for the sound files alone. The rendering and editing is well within Apples range of computation at their high end.
.[/QUOTE]
You might want a farm/cluster because you want to cut down render times.
You asked for advice on that, remember ?
Neither the current MacPro nor the upcoming Nehalem model, 2 threads/core or not, are powerful enough for serious HD animation rendering.
That's why you see that pile of computers in render studios.
If your solution works for you, you think it's fast - perfect !
Just don't expect anyone else to buy your reasoning
.And that is correct .
You don't use your render station to check your emails, much less run Photoshop - at least not while it's rendering .
More Ram might keep you afloat while doing that, but rendering is mostly about CPU .
Spending 40k on 2 single workstations , even including displays and external storage, means crippling your workflow and wasting your money.
But it's your money, alright .
Just for that I'm going to outfit my mac pro with wings, and a voice system like "HAL".. So we can chat about how I'm rolling in computer parts for fun
Intel has, with good reason, quietly been replacing x86 under our noses since the release of the first Pentium processors. Sure the programming model is still x86 for compatibility, but since Pentium underneath it all it's RISC.
Tallest: Great thread. One thing though, reading the "Processor" part I got lost if it's two processors x4 cores or two x 8 cores. From previous articles I'm certain it's two processors x4 cores with HyperThreading (tot 16 logical but not with all hardware doubled) . I believe you've written 16 logical cores somewhere, which should be correct. If you don't mind I think it would help if you made the top post a bit more clear on this matter.
Sounds incredible that it would support 96GB RAM, considering that even the current Pro doesn't support more than 32GB. Have to say though, three channels x4 (for 256bit interface?) x 8GB max per RAM-stick does make sense. $1 000 000 Mac anyone? (Even not going BTO must cost a fortune today to go 96GB, in 4 years perhaps)
Realistically, when would be a good time to buy a gainestown Mac pro? Would it be wise to let it age a few months before considering purchasing? Are we hearing anything from intel/nvidea that suggests a mid(new mac) cycle gainestown would be an improvement?
Also, What new videocards are available for the available model?
Also, What new videocards are available for the available model?
I can't imagine that we will need to treat it like a wine... but some think that an aged computer is nice...
This is confusing. Are you asking what GPUs are available with the current line right now, what GPUs will be available with Gainestown, or what GPUs that Gainestown gets will be usable with the current model?
You are correct in that it is two processors each with 4 cores with each core providing two logical cores.
The current Mac Pro should support 64GB but I don't think anyone has tried it, or at least reported on it. As for the cost of new 8GB DIMMs it probably wont be that expensive. 8GB 667MHz FB-DIMMS are currently $100/GB from crucial (similar to Registered ECC DDR3). Being that Apple charge $250/GB to upgrade to 4GB it's almost a bargain
You really think it's going to be that long before we see them on the shelves?
^^ I was asking what graphics cards are available in the current mac pro model, and if any new ( very recent) cards could be used in the current mp system
Yes.
Seven cards work in the Mac Pro.
7600 GT, X1900, Quadro FX 4500, HD 2600 XT, 8800 GT, Quadro FX 5600, and Radeon 3870.
That's it.
Oh man its taken me three days to read through this whole thread to see everyone's thoughts and opinions. I was excited at first to see that the new Mac Pros might come out at the end of February, but thats seems to be false. I've been waiting a good time to get one of these things. Well guess it won't hurt to wait much more.
Yea, basically if you've waited this much then might as well wait a little longer.
A cursory search of macfixit.com searching for mac pro 2008 issues finds problems with:
imovie crashing
Office Word and Exchange problems
Safari instability
in the first month after release
further problems installing and running iTunes 2 months after release
then EFI updated 3 months after release to fix 'waking from sleep' issues
Many of these seem OS related rather than hardware, but your new mac pro is going to be on a new OS to take advantage of all that hardware, right?
Now, let's think about peripherals - every company may need to update drivers or test compatibility with the new hardware, that means your RAID card, your printer, scanner, other peripherals, and that all depends on the individual manufacturers doing these things, and that can take time (or may never happen, depending on the situation). You can have all the friends at Apple you want, it isn't going to help you in this situation, here is Apple's advice:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/9001.html
There were numerous OS updates released in the months following the 2008 mac pro, from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2. to 10.5.4, presumably these addressed issues that were present in the initial release.
A search of Apple forums for mac pro 2008 "known issues" reveals 45 user threads on problems recognized by Apple as known issues upon release:
http://discussions.apple.com/search...e=lastyear&userID=&numResults=15&rankBy=10001
The primarily occur from 0-3 months after release, but some persist 6+ months after release.
I will repeat again that professionals with mission critical work will not be rolling out these new machines for several months after release. There is no "speed advantage" that makes up for things not working, apps crashing, or not being able to access your RAID array. Early adopters will be those who are more enamored with shiny toys than actually cranking out work, or the professional IT guys that burn in systems for months prior to roll out company-wide, or people who don't understand the software and hardware development and release cycle.
sssshhh... I know someone that works at mac pro dot com and the cat has been let out that purple will be the hot color for 2009. Wow!
sssshhh... I know someone that works at mac pro dot com and the cat has been let out that purple will be the hot color for 2009. Wow!
I doubt Apple will offer 96GB either, it's likely to be 48GB on offer (not sure how you got 36). However that doesn't mean 96GB won't work.
Hope you don't mind, thought i'd throw this in.
The new macosrumors.com on Mac Pro here -take it with however much salt you want
Their key points:
"we’ve had the opportunity to look under the hood of far more recent prototypes and a much clearer picture of the final Mac Pro has begun to emerge."
- Xeon-class i7 chips "….we were able to confirm last week in web comments & conversations on Twitter, AIM, et cetera that yes, in fact the new Mac Pro would continue to be based around Xeons."
"the Pro that we’ve had the opportunity to examine is three things for damn sure: extremely sexy, extremely energy-efficient, and extremely fast"
"incredible new enclosure that this powerful machine will reside in." -"….the most striking change in the prototypes we’ve seen which include the new enclosure design is what used to be called the “cheesegrater” — the intake & exhaust vents on the front and rear of the tower. - They’re no longer silver like the side panels; instead, they are matte black."
"Being slightly taller and wider, plus having numerous internal ventilation/cooling tweaks, the new tower actually improves upon them and combined with the cooler operation of the Nehalem CPUs/chipset, will result in almost silent operation of the new Mac Pro. In fact, during some operations most internal fans shut down entirely; dust-clogging problems experienced in older towers should be a thing of the past from what our sources at Infinite Loop have told us."
"he matte-black center panels give the tower a less dazzling, more striking profile with consirerably more visual contrast — but most importantly, they transform the appearance of the “cheesegrater” into something far more subtle. Still offering appealing texture, but without the awkward similarity to a kitchen utensil that the same panels create in bare aluminum.
The only parts of the front panel which aren’t black are the optical drives and the cluster of front-mounted ports; both remain the silver-grey of bare aluminum, making them stand out considerably more — in our own hands-on tests, it was much easier to reach out into one’s peripheral vision and make successful contact with a cable on the first try than it was with a PowerMac G5, for example."
"All in all, we couldn’t be more impressed with the enclosure which we’ll be able to describe in even more detail (handles, subtle touches, port locations and internal layout, et cetera) soon once another source embargo expires. But what really impresses is far more than skin deep — the Core i7 Xeon components inside delivered performance and thermal/energy efficiency numbers that simply crush any other computer we’ve ever seen by astonishing margins."
[At this point, anyone care to mock up what's been described? ]
Rough Specs (most of which we know):
*2.8, 2.93, and 3.2GHz Core i7 Xeon 5500-series “Gainestown” processors with 8MB of L2 cache
*All versions dual-chip/dual Front Side Bus based; 2.93 and 3.2GHz models available with either quad or eight-core chips creating a total of eight or sixteen(!!!) cores.
*Nehalem re-introduces Intel’s HyperTransport technology which processes two threads on each core — causing the OS to see 16 or 32 “logical cores,” respectively.
*Triple DDR3-1333 (!) SDRAM memory busses, forcing memory to be installed in sets of three DIMMs, but offering upwards of 4.8 billion transfers per second through Nehalem “QuickPath Interconnect” which is a more than 60% boost over the closest alternative DDR3-1066 based design currently on the market.
*There has been some question as to whether Core i7 Xeon supports ECC (error correction/control) FB-DIMMs which have been in the past several models of Mac Pro; the other Core i7 chips do not. Checking this with sources, will post updates to the comments of this article and in future articles.
*Power usage and operating temperatures of the new CPUs are down substantially from the current 5400-series Xeon models, making for a quieter, more energy efficient, and “greener” Mac….the entire chipset/motherboard also cuts down significantly on environmental pollutants such as lead, mercury and volatile manufacturing by-products.
*Dual-GPU “SLI” graphics system built by nVIDIA; entry-level eight core 2.8GHz model will have a single ATi GPU — possibly a 3600-class card — and all others will sport various types of dual nVIDIA cards in the 8000/9000 series. A configuration with dual GeForce 9800GX2 cards (which have dual GPUs on each card) for a total of four GPUs has been mentioned by sources but thus far, we have not been able to see one with our own eyes.
*Three memory riser cards (one for each bus) provide a total of twelve DDR3-1333MHz DIMM slots supporting at least 32GB, possibly as much as 48GB of RAM with 4GB DIMMs. Stock configs will sport either 1.5 or 3GB of RAM due to the triple-channel architecture — a significant improvement over the 1 & 2GB configurations currently offered.
*PCI Express expansion options considerably improved: two double-wide 32X graphics slots for SLI GPU(s), either 3 or 4 (depending on which prototype; we think, but cannot confirm, that the final version will have four) single-wide slots for “regular” expansion cards. These slots have a total of 32 PCIe lanes which can be dynamically assigned based on how many cards are inserted and what type of cards they are; the first two slots can run at up to 16X, the rest up to 8X. There had been some reporting early on that the dynamic feature might be disabled in favor of a more stable/reliable/compatible fixed 8X speed for all slots, but this no longer appears to be the case.
Other than these changes, most of the other things such as internal drive bay layouts, ports, and so forth do not appear to be significantly altered in the new case. Due to its only somewhat increased height/width over the current models, the new Mac Pro doesn’t have too much room for other changes now that it has up to twice as many expansion slots and half again as many RAM slots….
Shipping in early to mid March, "
"Overall, we couldn’t be more impressed by this incredible piece of technology and will be keeping a very close eye on related rumors as they develop. Be sure to check back often, since even before new articles are posted we’ll be posting updates to the comments section below….and if you’re a retailer or other party who wouldn’t mind parting with one or more of these beastly machines when they ship, please consider becoming a sponsor of Rumors! Barter with us to be the exclusive provider of our new desktops which are badly needed for the new team who are slaving away on Macs multiple generations old, mostly laptops and Minis. If you’re interested, drop us a line and we’ll show you how strong returns on your investment are ensured by our Guaranteed Return-on-Investment sponsorship/advertising policies….otherwise, thanks for visiting MOSR today and for supporting us with your clicks!
Much more “Nehalem” Core i7 dirt is on the way — starting with the forthcoming Nehalem iMacs which we may see significantly sooner than March….so stay tuned!"
The new macosrumors.com on Mac Pro here -take it with however much salt you want
Their key points:
"we’ve had the opportunity to look under the hood of far more recent prototypes and a much clearer picture of the final Mac Pro has begun to emerge."
- Xeon-class i7 chips "….we were able to confirm last week in web comments & conversations on Twitter, AIM, et cetera that yes, in fact the new Mac Pro would continue to be based around Xeons."
"the Pro that we’ve had the opportunity to examine is three things for damn sure: extremely sexy, extremely energy-efficient, and extremely fast"
"incredible new enclosure that this powerful machine will reside in." -"….the most striking change in the prototypes we’ve seen which include the new enclosure design is what used to be called the “cheesegrater” — the intake & exhaust vents on the front and rear of the tower. - They’re no longer silver like the side panels; instead, they are matte black."
"Being slightly taller and wider, plus having numerous internal ventilation/cooling tweaks, the new tower actually improves upon them and combined with the cooler operation of the Nehalem CPUs/chipset, will result in almost silent operation of the new Mac Pro. In fact, during some operations most internal fans shut down entirely; dust-clogging problems experienced in older towers should be a thing of the past from what our sources at Infinite Loop have told us."
"he matte-black center panels give the tower a less dazzling, more striking profile with consirerably more visual contrast — but most importantly, they transform the appearance of the “cheesegrater” into something far more subtle. Still offering appealing texture, but without the awkward similarity to a kitchen utensil that the same panels create in bare aluminum.
The only parts of the front panel which aren’t black are the optical drives and the cluster of front-mounted ports; both remain the silver-grey of bare aluminum, making them stand out considerably more — in our own hands-on tests, it was much easier to reach out into one’s peripheral vision and make successful contact with a cable on the first try than it was with a PowerMac G5, for example."
"All in all, we couldn’t be more impressed with the enclosure which we’ll be able to describe in even more detail (handles, subtle touches, port locations and internal layout, et cetera) soon once another source embargo expires. But what really impresses is far more than skin deep — the Core i7 Xeon components inside delivered performance and thermal/energy efficiency numbers that simply crush any other computer we’ve ever seen by astonishing margins."
[At this point, anyone care to mock up what's been described?
]Rough Specs (most of which we know):
*2.8, 2.93, and 3.2GHz Core i7 Xeon 5500-series “Gainestown” processors with 8MB of L2 cache
*All versions dual-chip/dual Front Side Bus based; 2.93 and 3.2GHz models available with either quad or eight-core chips creating a total of eight or sixteen(!!!) cores.
*Nehalem re-introduces Intel’s HyperTransport technology which processes two threads on each core — causing the OS to see 16 or 32 “logical cores,” respectively.
*Triple DDR3-1333 (!) SDRAM memory busses, forcing memory to be installed in sets of three DIMMs, but offering upwards of 4.8 billion transfers per second through Nehalem “QuickPath Interconnect” which is a more than 60% boost over the closest alternative DDR3-1066 based design currently on the market.
*There has been some question as to whether Core i7 Xeon supports ECC (error correction/control) FB-DIMMs which have been in the past several models of Mac Pro; the other Core i7 chips do not. Checking this with sources, will post updates to the comments of this article and in future articles.
*Power usage and operating temperatures of the new CPUs are down substantially from the current 5400-series Xeon models, making for a quieter, more energy efficient, and “greener” Mac….the entire chipset/motherboard also cuts down significantly on environmental pollutants such as lead, mercury and volatile manufacturing by-products.
*Dual-GPU “SLI” graphics system built by nVIDIA; entry-level eight core 2.8GHz model will have a single ATi GPU — possibly a 3600-class card — and all others will sport various types of dual nVIDIA cards in the 8000/9000 series. A configuration with dual GeForce 9800GX2 cards (which have dual GPUs on each card) for a total of four GPUs has been mentioned by sources but thus far, we have not been able to see one with our own eyes.
*Three memory riser cards (one for each bus) provide a total of twelve DDR3-1333MHz DIMM slots supporting at least 32GB, possibly as much as 48GB of RAM with 4GB DIMMs. Stock configs will sport either 1.5 or 3GB of RAM due to the triple-channel architecture — a significant improvement over the 1 & 2GB configurations currently offered.
*PCI Express expansion options considerably improved: two double-wide 32X graphics slots for SLI GPU(s), either 3 or 4 (depending on which prototype; we think, but cannot confirm, that the final version will have four) single-wide slots for “regular” expansion cards. These slots have a total of 32 PCIe lanes which can be dynamically assigned based on how many cards are inserted and what type of cards they are; the first two slots can run at up to 16X, the rest up to 8X. There had been some reporting early on that the dynamic feature might be disabled in favor of a more stable/reliable/compatible fixed 8X speed for all slots, but this no longer appears to be the case.
Other than these changes, most of the other things such as internal drive bay layouts, ports, and so forth do not appear to be significantly altered in the new case. Due to its only somewhat increased height/width over the current models, the new Mac Pro doesn’t have too much room for other changes now that it has up to twice as many expansion slots and half again as many RAM slots….
Shipping in early to mid March, "
"Overall, we couldn’t be more impressed by this incredible piece of technology and will be keeping a very close eye on related rumors as they develop. Be sure to check back often, since even before new articles are posted we’ll be posting updates to the comments section below….and if you’re a retailer or other party who wouldn’t mind parting with one or more of these beastly machines when they ship, please consider becoming a sponsor of Rumors! Barter with us to be the exclusive provider of our new desktops which are badly needed for the new team who are slaving away on Macs multiple generations old, mostly laptops and Minis. If you’re interested, drop us a line and we’ll show you how strong returns on your investment are ensured by our Guaranteed Return-on-Investment sponsorship/advertising policies….otherwise, thanks for visiting MOSR today and for supporting us with your clicks!
Much more “Nehalem” Core i7 dirt is on the way — starting with the forthcoming Nehalem iMacs which we may see significantly sooner than March….so stay tuned!"
I have had absolutely no issues with my early 2008 Mac Pro that was bought on release.
Early adopters will be those who are either looking for an upgrade or more power.
What professionals most likely won't do is update the operating system before all software compatibility issues have been ironed out. Face it, Snow Leopard is NOT coming with the new Mac Pro, period. The newest build 10a222 is not exactly stable to say the least.
45 people aren't even an statistic when it comes to the amount of Mac Pro's sold.
8-Core Nehalem (16-Core Mac Pro) ?!
I'm taking the Mac OS Rumors site not with a grain of salt, but with a giant 40-lb block of rock salt:
http://macosrumors.com/2009/01/28/impressive-new-details-of-next-gen-mac-pro-emerge/3/
These guys are pretty flakey when it comes to Intel product specs. On the first page of this rumor, they mention that the Core i7 tops out at 2.93 GHz. But the Core i7 Extreme is 3.2 GHz. And the whole line has been available for months, not weeks. Just visit Alienware.
It's unlikely that their first reference beta system had dual-socket Core i7. I don't think that's possible. It has to be Xeon to have dual-socket inter-CPU communication AFAIK. Maybe they are just careless about mixing the Core i7 and Xeon terms. Come to think of it, Intel will probably call these Core i7 "family", so maybe it's not Mac OS Rumor's fault.
Still, there are plenty of other rumors that point to early 2009 for 8-core Nehalem / Xeon. Just Google "8 core Nehalem".
The other parts of their rumors are at least plausible. 16-cores might explain some of their early performance raves. Although without Snow Leopard / Grand Central to manage all the cores that doesn't make sense either.
One cool thought is that in the past Intel has indeed partnered with Apple to be the show-case release of new CPU products.
One downer is their hint that Nvidia 9xxx will be the standard for the high-end. That doesn't sound like hype. That sounds like Apple. Sigh.
Anyway, the excitement is fun.
I'm taking the Mac OS Rumors site not with a grain of salt, but with a giant 40-lb block of rock salt:
http://macosrumors.com/2009/01/28/impressive-new-details-of-next-gen-mac-pro-emerge/3/
These guys are pretty flakey when it comes to Intel product specs. On the first page of this rumor, they mention that the Core i7 tops out at 2.93 GHz. But the Core i7 Extreme is 3.2 GHz. And the whole line has been available for months, not weeks. Just visit Alienware.
It's unlikely that their first reference beta system had dual-socket Core i7. I don't think that's possible. It has to be Xeon to have dual-socket inter-CPU communication AFAIK. Maybe they are just careless about mixing the Core i7 and Xeon terms. Come to think of it, Intel will probably call these Core i7 "family", so maybe it's not Mac OS Rumor's fault.
Still, there are plenty of other rumors that point to early 2009 for 8-core Nehalem / Xeon. Just Google "8 core Nehalem".
The other parts of their rumors are at least plausible. 16-cores might explain some of their early performance raves. Although without Snow Leopard / Grand Central to manage all the cores that doesn't make sense either.
One cool thought is that in the past Intel has indeed partnered with Apple to be the show-case release of new CPU products.
One downer is their hint that Nvidia 9xxx will be the standard for the high-end. That doesn't sound like hype. That sounds like Apple. Sigh.
Anyway, the excitement is fun.
sssshhh... I know someone that works at mac pro dot com and the cat has been let out that purple will be the hot color for 2009. Wow!
You do realize that www.macpro.com is a makeup website, right?
too be honest
I don't really care what it looks like, or anything else other than having as much CPU power as possible and a half decent graphics card. I'm sure I will be able to stick in 6+GB of RAM, so that will be fine. Only other thing is that they keep 3.5" HD trays so I can continue to use my current HD's. Wouldn't mind 4x3.5" trays and an extra 2.5" one for an SSD start up disk. That'd be pretty awesome.
I don't really care what it looks like, or anything else other than having as much CPU power as possible and a half decent graphics card. I'm sure I will be able to stick in 6+GB of RAM, so that will be fine. Only other thing is that they keep 3.5" HD trays so I can continue to use my current HD's. Wouldn't mind 4x3.5" trays and an extra 2.5" one for an SSD start up disk. That'd be pretty awesome.
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