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The "Waiting for Nehalem Mac Pros" thread

Apple would be downright stupid to only use Nvidia products, especially at the moment when ATI has a performance and price edge. Although, ATI is perfectly comfortable doing their own thing as evidenced by the 3870.

A 9600GT or ATI equivalent isn't much of a stretch for a base model card.

Any chance that the poorly written drivers will be remedied now that Apple and Nvidia are best friends? I doubt it.
 
m1stake said:
Apple would be downright stupid to only use Nvidia products, especially at the moment when ATI has a performance and price edge. Although, ATI is perfectly comfortable doing their own thing as evidenced by the 3870.
Click to expand...
I agree, dropping ATI would be a mistake, particularly over the driver issues. But these days, it just seems hard to tell with Apple. :rolleyes: :p
m1stake said:
A 9600GT or ATI equivalent isn't much of a stretch for a base model card.
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I hadn't seen the power requirement (not listed on nVidia) on the 9600GT, so I wasn't quite sure.
m1stake said:
Any chance that the poorly written drivers will be remedied now that Apple and Nvidia are best friends? I doubt it.
Click to expand...
LOL. :D Though it would be nice if they finally solved the performance deficit. :eek: ;)
 
Power requirement? This thing has an 1100 watt PSU. DUNTWURRY. This isn't a laptop :p

Apple made a smart move by going with a midrange card (2600XT) instead of a low end card (7300GT). I think they'll stick with that as the mid range is extremely cheap.
 
m1stake said:
Power requirement? This thing has an 1100 watt PSU. DUNTWURRY. This isn't a laptop :p

Apple made a smart move by going with a midrange card (2600XT) instead of a low end card (7300GT). I think they'll stick with that as the mid range is extremely cheap.
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I was thinking in terms of being able to power up to four of them (directly from PCIe slots), without the need for additional 6 pin PCIe connectors. I somehow doubt Apple would go beyond 2 of those little buggers. ;) :p

It's not an issue for me, but IIRC, Apple seems interested in low power solutions.
 
Two 130W nehalem chips as opposed to two 120W penryn chips might make them go to a slightly larger PSU anyway.
 
RhymeAnimal said:
I heard that Intel will be releasing the icore7 / Nehalem chip on November 17th:

http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2008/10/nehalem-based_core_i7_processo.php

but someone here said it was delayed... what's going on??
Click to expand...

There are three desktop processors (2.66GHz, 2.93GHz and 3.2GHz) that have a release date of the 17th. These are not for the Mac Pro. The Xeon Nehalem processors are not confirmed and rumours indicate that they will likely be available in January or production will start in January. It isn't clear at the moment.
 
RhymeAnimal said:
I heard that Intel will be releasing the icore7 / Nehalem chip on November 17th:

http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2008/10/nehalem-based_core_i7_processo.php

but someone here said it was delayed... what's going on??
Click to expand...


That would make sense for the mac pros to be updated then since apple released confirmation that their new ACDs would be launching in November. Unless the screens get delayed if intel delay. Seen as the mac pro is the primary complementary product it would make alot of sense to release them together.
 
ptjh said:
That would make sense for the mac pros to be updated then since apple released confirmation that their new ACDs would be launching in November. Unless the screens get delayed if intel delay. Seen as the mac pro is the primary complementary product it would make alot of sense to release them together.
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Can you clarify your statement? Did Apple say that the new ACD's would launch in Nov. or did they say that the new 24 inch (they touted as an addition for there MacBooks) would be available in Nov. Quite a difference from what you are saying if the latter is correct.
 
Roy said:
Can you clarify your statement? Did Apple say that the new ACD's would launch in Nov. or did they say that the new 24 inch (they touted as an addition for there MacBooks) would be available in Nov. Quite a difference from what you are saying if the latter is correct.
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It was mentioned in the keynote, but I think they're actually coming in December.

It's pretty clear that Core i7 is launching in November, the reports of delays have been reported wrong. :p

The dates are more or less the same as the Penryn roll out a year prior, and I would expect them to remain about the same.
 
But Umbongo is suggesting that the core i7 chips coming in November are not for the Mac?

I'm a video editor and have been cutting on a PowerBook G4, 1.67ghz laptop for 3 years now. I can't take it anymore! Waiting for Motion to render an effect or for Compressor to re-format one of my edits is causing too many gray hairs.

I just don't want to buy a mac pro until these new ones come out, I know I'll regret it...
 
RhymeAnimal said:
But Umbongo is suggesting that the core i7 chips coming in November are not for the Mac?

I'm a video editor and have been cutting on a PowerBook G4, 1.67ghz laptop for 3 years now. I can't take it anymore! Waiting for Motion to render an effect or for Compressor to re-format one of my edits is causing too many gray hairs.

I just don't want to buy a mac pro until these new ones come out, I know I'll regret it...
Click to expand...

Desktop Nehalem chips are shipping in November. Workstation/server chips are assumed to follow VERY soon after if not at the same time. Last year the Penryn chips were launched in November (Or was it october?), and Apple didn't launch them until the 3.2Ghz server part was announced.

It is confusing, and the lack of information probably doesn't help :p
 
Anyone heard anything about Intel or anyone else producing i7 compatible server boards aimed at the enthusiast market? I'm thinking of something along the lines of this generations Skulltrail board. What'd be even better would be a dual socket desktop part. 8 cores of overclockable Nehalem goodness FTW...I hope.
 
sneezymarble said:
Anyone heard anything about Intel or anyone else producing i7 compatible server boards aimed at the enthusiast market? I'm thinking of something along the lines of this generations Skulltrail board. What'd be even better would be a dual socket desktop part. 8 cores of overclockable Nehalem goodness FTW...I hope.
Click to expand...

It's called skulltrail II, and because it no longer uses FB-DIMMS, it should be pretty solid all around. If you thought Skulltrail was an expensive piece of hardware, you might want to tuck your wallet into bed before you think about the prices.
 
m1stake said:
It's called skulltrail II, and because it no longer uses FB-DIMMS, it should be pretty solid all around. If you thought Skulltrail was an expensive piece of hardware, you might want to tuck your wallet into bed before you think about the prices.
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LOL! Nice. :D
 
m1stake said:
It was mentioned in the keynote, but I think they're actually coming in December.

It's pretty clear that Core i7 is launching in November, the reports of delays have been reported wrong. :p

The dates are more or less the same as the Penryn roll out a year prior, and I would expect them to remain about the same.
Click to expand...

At 37:44 minutes of the keynote, Jobs said "these will be available in Nov.". He was referring to "these" as the 24 inch new monitor. He didn't say anything about other sizes or other monitors coming out in Nov. He referred only to the 24 inch model they displayed at the keynote.
 
m1stake said:
It's called skulltrail II, and because it no longer uses FB-DIMMS, it should be pretty solid all around. If you thought Skulltrail was an expensive piece of hardware, you might want to tuck your wallet into bed before you think about the prices.
Click to expand...

I just read up on it a bit. It appears as though it will support the desktop Nehalems instead of the server version. That's a good thing since the desktop parts should be slightly cheaper. Even if it costs $100 or $200 more it should still be worth it. Especially if the Nehalems overclock as well as reports indicate they will.

If everything pans out, a Skulltrail II with overclocked Nehalems and fast DDR3 RAM is going to scream! The only thing I'm worried about is that because the motherboard isn't the same server board Intel will use for the server CPUs there will be some incompatibility with OSX. That'd be a major bummer.
 
sneezymarble said:
I just read up on it a bit. It appears as though it will support the desktop Nehalems instead of the server version. That's a good thing since the desktop parts should be slightly cheaper. Even if it costs $100 or $200 more it should still be worth it. Especially if the Nehalems overclock as well as reports indicate they will.
Click to expand...

I know there were some articles that suggested desktop processors could be used, but I believe this was confusion over the fact that they all have the same socket and high end desktop and dual socket workstation boards will both use the X58 chipset. There is no reason for Intel to do such a thing. I'd expect Skulltrail to really be about overclocking on eight cores more than anything.
 
Umbongo, have you seen anything else for X58 part #'s, besides these?

* Tylersburg-24S – 24 PCIe lanes, 1x QuickPath Link
* Tylersburg-24D – 24 PCIe lanes, 2x QuickPath Links
* Tylersburg-36S – 36 PCIe lanes, 1x QuickPath Link
* Tylersburg-36D – 36 PCIe lanes, 2x QuickPath Links
 
No those are the only chipsets and cover all possibilities.

I would say that in regards to the Mac Pro there isn't much confusion now. The processors are likely to be the X5550 and W5580 on the low and high end, then maybe one or both of the X5560 and X5570. I would think we will see a board with dual Tylersburg-36D chipsets for 4 full PCI-E slots, but maybe they will go with just a single one. The only mystery I'd say is the graphics cards.

Skulltrail will probably be similar but allow quad sli on the PCI-E slots.
 
Umbongo said:
No those are the only chipsets and cover all possibilities.

I would say that in regards to the Mac Pro there isn't much confusion now. The processors are likely to be the X5550 and W5580 on the low and high end, then maybe one or both of the X5560 and X5570. I would think we will see a board with dual Tylersburg-36D chipsets for 4 full PCI-E slots, but maybe they will go with just a single one. The only mystery I'd say is the graphics cards.

Skulltrail will probably be similar but allow quad sli on the PCI-E slots.
Click to expand...

It'll be interesting to see if Apple offers GTX200 series cards in the Nehalem Pros. It sure would be a good thing especially if Snow Leopard is as GPU optimized as people hope.
 
Umbongo said:
No those are the only chipsets and cover all possibilities.

I would say that in regards to the Mac Pro there isn't much confusion now. The processors are likely to be the X5550 and W5580 on the low and high end, then maybe one or both of the X5560 and X5570. I would think we will see a board with dual Tylersburg-36D chipsets for 4 full PCI-E slots, but maybe they will go with just a single one. The only mystery I'd say is the graphics cards.

Skulltrail will probably be similar but allow quad sli on the PCI-E slots.
Click to expand...

Quad crossfire can be four graphics cards or two X2 cards, but Quad SLI only works with X2 cards (9800GX2, or, 7950GX2 which we won't talk about :eek:).

SLI supports up to 4 GPUs, but only 3 physical cards at the moment.

Anyway I think I'm reading into your statement too much and you already knew that.

Skulltrail was a lightly modified 5400 chipset, I wonder if Tylersburg will support some of this stuff all the way through to avoid tacking on the extra crap that made it run hotter?

Not sure if I'd spend money on SLI or crossfire though, I find that they're only actually needed with 1920x1200 and up to get solid frame rates. Other than that it's a waste of money.
 
m1stake said:
Quad crossfire can be four graphics cards or two X2 cards, but Quad SLI only works with X2 cards (9800GX2, or, 7950GX2 which we won't talk about :eek:).

SLI supports up to 4 GPUs, but only 3 physical cards at the moment.

Anyway I think I'm reading into your statement too much and you already knew that.

Skulltrail was a lightly modified 5400 chipset, I wonder if Tylersburg will support some of this stuff all the way through to avoid tacking on the extra crap that made it run hotter?
Click to expand...

I assumed that the current limitations were due to the lack of boards with four full PCI-E 2.0 slots meaning Nvidia hadn't bothered to make it work with four phyiscal cards. This would be a good platform to show it off on though who knows what will happen with all the licensing issues between Nvidia and Intel.

Maybe the focus of Skulltrail will be purely overclocking 8 cores.
 
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