What were they thinking?

[nanofrog]

can someone explain how a 2.26ghz quad core with 8mb l3 is better then a 2.8 ghz octo with 24mb (combined) l2?

My guess, is they're equivalent to each other. I really can't see 2.26GHz, despite the new architecture, giving a performance gain over the 2.8GHz Harpertown.

Not from what's been available to us at any rate. Even Apple's performance page lends me to not change my thinking.

 

[m1stake]

B-b-but "fine" isnt good enough, you HAVE to have the LATEST and GREATEST or its complete crap!

I think you guys get what I'm trying to say.

If your $6,000 camera doesn't have FW800, do you buy a new camera?

Really though, if someone needs it they can spend they extra < $50 and buy a card with a bunch of FW400 slots.

Not from what's been available to us at any rate. Even Apple's performance page lends me to not change my thinking.

Apple's benches tend to be on the high side, so I'm expecting the 2.8 to beat the 2.26 by a slight margin.

A question: Who are these computers designed for? Certainly not for someone like myself who wants to stay in the "PowerMac" line to play games and compress lots of video. Strangely, the upper model doesn't make much sense to buy as a professional either unless you're a company with a serious budget.

 

[thedarkhorse]

I'd like to see how that new quad core compares to the old 8 core in terms of rendering video with various HD codecs, not just real time application performance comparison.

What apple did is release what everyone wanted-a mid-range mac pro, somewhat limited: quad core only & 8gb max ram(6gb max if you want tri-channel).
But what they forgot was the mid-range price.

 

[Infrared]

The new model is a good deal as far as I'm concerned.

Intel charges based on performance, not clock speed or cores. The new 2.66 Quad will beat the old 2008 2.8 Octo. This is a given since the consumer variant of this Xeon beat the old Mac Pro. Not bad for $300 less.

Yes you heard me right, 4 core 2.66 beats 8 core 2.8.

That's absolute nonsense. It depends on what you're running.
For applications that can't efficiently use 8 cores, that 4 core
machine will likely win. But for those that can use 8 cores well,
the new single quad won't beat the 8 x 2.8GHz in most scenarios.

 

[nanofrog]

Apple's benches tend to be on the high side, so I'm expecting the 2.8 to beat the 2.26 by a slight margin.

A question: Who are these computers designed for? Certainly not for someone like myself who wants to stay in the "PowerMac" line to play games and compress lots of video. Strangely, the upper model doesn't make much sense to buy as a professional either unless you're a company with a serious budget.

That's why I prefer 3rd party. At least the potential exists for less bias.

For some reason, I was under the impression many users (graphics/video pros), tend to be smaller companies and independants. Any idea?

Even with educational discounts, it may be out of reach for many video/graphics students. I would think this would hurt Apple in the future, as they won't be so familiar with Macs and demand them from their employers or buy them for their own businesses. Perhaps a shift from Mac to, dare I say it, PC's as a result?

Assuming this is the case, I think Apple has been drinking too much of their own Koolaid these days. At least when they determined MSRP.

 

[ManukM]

Blu-ray anyone?

Put everything aside for a moment. Why are they lagging on blu-ray drives? I'm a video user and was desperately waiting for a blu-ray burner on this update.

 

[nanofrog]

Put everything aside for a moment. Why are they lagging on blu-ray drives? I'm a video user and was desperately waiting for a blu-ray burner on this update.

It already works for data storage, but not for playing movies yet. There's been some information, that would leave me to believe it's eventually going to show up, but I'm hesitant to even guess when.

 

[ManukM]

It already works for data storage, but not for playing movies yet. There's been some information, that would leave me to believe it's eventually going to show up, but I'm hesitant to even guess when.

DVD Studio Pro already has a Blu-ray option in it. When blu-ray recently beat HD DVD I thought for sure Apple would commit and release the new Mac Pros with blu-ray burners. Very disappointing to say the least.

Pro video aside, even consumer camcorders are all Full 1920x1080p HD now. You can capture in HD, edit in HD, but the final product still comes out SD. It's a no-brainer. The market is begging for it. You can't even upload Full HD home videos into Apple TV. This is a waste of the HD format and blu-ray burners are long overdue on Macs.

 

[JesterJJZ]

Pro Cameras don't need more than 100mb/s and the FW400 connector is more secure than 800.

 

[longball11]

Windows would always welcome you back. They understand "pros" like you. That's where you belong. Apple is a consumer brand.

 

[Macpropro80]

Windows would always welcome you back. They understand "pros" like you. That's where you belong. Apple is a consumer brand.

..... nice try, but i will never touch windows ever again. I would rather die!

BTW if i was to ever leave mac, I would go to linux, never windows.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Only two video cards to choose from and one is the cra*tacious Nvidia GT120. Oh doG this is hilarious. No Quadros. No Fire Pros. They really and truly hate video cards at Apple. I can't believe the junk they are putting in these "Pro" computers. Two video cards out of dozens to chose from. Unbelievable stupidity.

 

[striatedglutes]

I don't really know anything about pro video aspects of Mac land, but would this solve your blu-ray questions?

http://www.mcetech.com/blu-ray/

 

[JesterJJZ]

Windows would always welcome you back. They understand "pros" like you. That's where you belong. Apple is a consumer brand.

That sounds completely backwards to me.

 

[ManukM]

I don't really know anything about pro video aspects of Mac land, but would this solve your blu-ray questions?

http://www.mcetech.com/blu-ray/

Thank you for the suggestion but I already know about that. With this the only thing you can do natively is burn data. If you want to burn videos you have to buy 3 expensive softwares (Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore, and Roxio Toast Titanium 10 with a special plug-in) and use them just for that one task when you already have much superior Final Cut Pro & DVD Studio Pro. And if you want to watch movies you have to install windows. I am not going through all that

 

[striatedglutes]

Ah, so you wanted native software compatability. Sorry I missed that, and hopefully they will work out licensing soon.

 

[ManukM]

So you think it's a licensing issue?

 

[m1stake]

That sounds completely backwards to me.

Unfortunately, it's not.

 

[nanofrog]

DVD Studio Pro already has a Blu-ray option in it. When blu-ray recently beat HD DVD I thought for sure Apple would commit and release the new Mac Pros with blu-ray burners. Very disappointing to say the least.

Pro video aside, even consumer camcorders are all Full 1920x1080p HD now. You can capture in HD, edit in HD, but the final product still comes out SD. It's a no-brainer. The market is begging for it. You can't even upload Full HD home videos into Apple TV. This is a waste of the HD format and blu-ray burners are long overdue on Macs.

I agree, Apple needs to provide it. They seem to be sitting on their hands. The technical issues are solvable, so the only thing I can realistically think of preventing it, is licensing. Even though Apple sits on the board, they'd still have to pay to use it.

They don't license SLI. The only instance I can think of off the top of my head, is HDMI for cables and the TV. No choice really, as HDMI is needed to connect to HDTV's.

 

[ManukM]

Apple TV does have an HDMI connection and it's not the only choice. Component is just as good if not better, or so I've heard

 

[JesterJJZ]

Unfortunately, it's not.

Not in my experience. I personally can't think of one ProTools engineer that isn't Mac based. I've dealt with a lot of them. Apart from Final Cut, a good chunk of Avid systems run on Macs. You only seem to be talking about 3D animation work that's mainly PC based. Most of the AV world run on Mac.

 

[dagomike]

FW400 is dead. Just accept it. All you need is a FW800 -> 4/6 pin FW400 cable. It makes more sense to just buy a $5 cable than supporting legacy ports. Add more FW800 instead. Or better yet, add on eSATA.

 

[Macpropro80]

Apple TV does have an HDMI connection and it's not the only choice. Component is just as good if not better, or so I've heard

I think HDMI is better.

Also people think monster cables aren't better, well they are. I have a $400 panasonic blu-ray player and the 10 gb/s hdmi cable doubled the picture quality over standard hdmi cables.

 

[dimme]

Why can't apple just put a freaking normal size displayport on the graphics card, its like they are avoiding all possibilities of making a displayport to mini displayport cable.

Is this another "Apple only" Monitor port. Or will the rest of the world be using these and is Apple ahead of it's time? I hope for the latter if not this would be the third time they made this mistake.

 

[danny_w]

Is this another "Apple only" Monitor port. Or will the rest of the world be using these and is Apple ahead of it's time? I hope for the latter if not this would be the third time they made this mistake.

I think its the 3rd time they have made this mistake. It seems Apple doesn't leanr from history.