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:
"weve 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 weve 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 weve 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. - Theyre 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 arent 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 ones 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 couldnt be more impressed with the enclosure which well 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 weve 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 Intels 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 doesnt 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 couldnt 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 well be posting updates to the comments section below
.and if youre a retailer or other party who wouldnt 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 youre interested, drop us a line and well 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!"
