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sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
984
52
What I mean is, what is the next big thing people are waiting for in regards to the Mac Pro? Is there a great new processor? HD drives? What is the next cat's meow?
 

killmoms

macrumors 68040
Jun 23, 2003
3,752
55
Durham, NC
Calling Multimedia, come in Multimedia! Your thread has arrived!

Apparently there's a new chipset on its way, codenamed Stoakley-Seaburg, which will improve performance with current chips and future more core chips. I'll admit I'm not incredibly familiar with Intel's upcoming chipset roadmap though, outside of the eventual 45nm process shrink on the CPUs themselves.
 

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
5,032
1,373
Denmark
Penryn is the next optical shrink of the Core 2 Duo (on 45nm lithography) with 6MB shared cache.

Should speed the current Quad core Xeon up to 3.33Ghz+.

8-cores chugging away at that speed should make it pleasant to work with, to say the least :D

And new graphic cards of course ;)
 

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
984
52
Penryn is the next optical shrink of the Core 2 Duo (on 45nm lithography) with 6MB shared cache.

Should speed the current Quad core Xeon up to 3.33Ghz+.

8-cores chugging away at that speed should make it pleasant to work with, to say the least :D

And new graphic cards of course ;)

Ok. So the next big updates to the MAC PRO will be Penryn, and possibly HD burners, and maybe price drops?
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,407
3,126
Like killmoms said, and multi would be the best to elaborate on, the SS chipset will truly make the 8-core and maybe 4-core machines much more efficient. Supposedly the current chipset bottlenecks somewhere other than the CPU, which is why the new 8-core Mac Pro isn't as dramatic an increase as it could be, added to which the current OS and apps don't fully utilize mutliple cores. Do a search for multimedias threads/posts or the Stokley-Seaburg and you will find much discussion on it.
 

cube

Suspended
May 10, 2004
17,011
4,972
The new chipset is the most important as Penryn would suck like the current octomac without it.
 

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
984
52
The new chipset is the most important as Penryn would suck like the current octomac without it.

So any ideas when intel will be releasing the next chipset? Or is it released, and now are we waiting for apple to incorporate it?
 

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
5,032
1,373
Denmark
The new chipset is the most important as Penryn would suck like the current octomac without it.

I think people are getting overly exaggerated expectations of the Stoakley-Seaburg chipset.

Both processors are still limited by the Bensley chipsets dual Front Side Bus (the Stoakley chipset has the exact same bus). Which means that 4 cores are still sharing one Front Side Bus (at 1333Mhz).

What will be improved is the Memory Controller Hub (Seaburg) to support twice the amount of ram (128GB).
 

cube

Suspended
May 10, 2004
17,011
4,972
Penryn with Seaburg will have 1600 MHz FSB. But it's true that it's still not great.
 
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