This can only mean one thing; the presentation next week will be so full of other, high-profile and more appealing things that there simply wasn't enough room to announce an upgrade to the Mac Pro. So they decided to give it to us as soon as it was fully baked.

Very curious to see what's in store for the next week. Hopefully, it will help lift AAPL back into $200s...

good lord that's alota horsepower!

now if only they could somehow shoehorn that into a laptop

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Actual Reality wrote:
good lord that's alota horsepower!

now if only they could somehow shoehorn that into a laptop

You'd need asbestos jeans

Seriously is anyone else producing an 8 core personal computer?

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vasic wrote:
This can only mean one thing; the presentation next week will be so full of other, high-profile and more appealing things that there simply wasn't enough room to announce an upgrade to the Mac Pro

That's a great point, and probably right on. Who knows what's in store? Whatever it is, it'll be huge.

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geoduck wrote:
Seriously is anyone else producing an 8 core personal computer?

Mac Pro's are considered "work stations".

32gb of RAM??!? Holy shnikes, that's insane. I've been waiting for the Mac Pro refresh to come around, and here it is IN SPADES. All I can say is, I hope I'll be posting on Macobserver with one of those things by late spring. Though, I'll need to be a lot more productive to pay it off, so shame on me if I'm posting as frequently!

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xmattingly wrote:

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geoduck wrote:
Seriously is anyone else producing an 8 core personal computer?

Mac Pro's are considered "work stations";.

Not to sound sarcastic or anything but what is the difference any more between a high end PC and a Workstation? A Workstation used to be seriously heavy iron made by Sun or IBM for desktop use while PCs were made by Apple, Dell, et.al. and had a LOT less power. Now I'm really not sure how to draw the line. Ideas?

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32gb of RAM??!? Holy shnikes, that's insane.

One game I always play is to see what the price range of any new computer is. I price one out with everything possible and one with as little as possible. Usually there's a few thousand difference. The Mac Pro's have always been amazing in their virsatility. If you downgrade to a single processor (quad processor that is) 2Gb RAM, and a single drive, you can get one for around $2300. If you dump in every kind of optional hardware they offer you can get a full box for $25,000. That is an amazing range. Personally I think that's why they have not updated the Mac Pro case in a number of years. It is so adaptable there is no reason to. It just works and works well.

Still no SLI/Crossfire support for two cards powering a single set of monitors, which is a little disappointing. Still, powerful monsters.

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KitsuneStudios wrote:
Still no SLI/Crossfire support for two cards powering a single set of monitors, which is a little disappointing. Still, powerful monsters.

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised by that myself. I wonder if it has to do with their ongoing efforts to avoid committing to one standard or another, if they went SLI it would lock them to Nvidia and vice versa with Crossfire, and offering two different Mac Pro Mobo options just isn't very Apple (plus it probably hurts volume production savings).

It starts: "Oh, and one less thing..."

(Yes, anal retentive types, I know it should be "one fewer thing". Apple spies sent me this. They're the grammar butchers, not me.)

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geoduck wrote:
If you downgrade to a single processor (quad processor that is) 2Gb RAM, and a single drive, you can get one for around $2300. If you dump in every kind of optional hardware they offer you can get a full box for $25,000. That is an amazing range.

Judging the technology range based on price is a little flawed when you consider Apple's BTO options like extra RAM and HDs are 2-4x as expensive as they would be in just about any other store. They charge $500 for two extra 1GB RAM sticks, whereas at crucial.com you can get that for $150. (And that's not the cheapest you can get, either.)

But I agree, the current case is certainly not lacking expandability. These are very nice machines.

I still wonder if 8 cores can even be used efficiently with the limited memory bandwidth and things like that, though. You can only add so many cores before the returns diminish to nothing. Personally I think Intel is losing sight of what's really important and are focusing too much on cores, just like they focused too much on MHz for years. The bechmarks I've seen of the original 8-core Mac Pro aren't really that impressive, all things considered. The faster buses are larger caches on the new models should help that, so I'll be interested to see the benchmarks when they come around (Apple's benchmarks don't really interest me, and they're not that impressive anyway).

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geoduck wrote:
Not to sound sarcastic or anything but what is the difference any more between a high end PC and a Workstation? A Workstation used to be seriously heavy iron made by Sun or IBM for desktop use while PCs were made by Apple, Dell, et.al. and had a LOT less power. Now I'm really not sure how to draw the line. Ideas?

It's a legitimate question; that's not sarcastic at all. To tell you the truth, I'm only going by Apple's marketing terms, but the way the towers are differentiated from their other machines makes sense to me. As far as functionality, I think the lines are fairly blurred between today's desktops and what would have been defined as a work station several years ago. At the turn of the century, you pretty much had to have a tower to do graphic design; now you can do that, and even a little more with a PC made of laptop components running today's software. I think the dividing lines would be two things: 1) processing power and 2) as you mentioned, configurability. Example: while it's true that you can do video editing and animation on pretty much any modern Mac, you won't be able to do those on a practical, productive level. Where time is a definite part of the equation, you'd actually be losing money by investing in an iMac rather than a Mac Pro. And of course, you can do just about anything with a tower.

The drool factor for me is not just horse power, but the fact that they're so expandable I'm sure I can make one of those last for several years.

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geoduck wrote:
If you downgrade to a single processor (quad processor that is) 2Gb RAM, and a single drive, you can get one for around $2300. If you dump in every kind of optional hardware they offer you can get a full box for $25,000. Personally I think that's why they have not updated the Mac Pro case in a number of years. It is so adaptable there is no reason to.

Absolutely. Which is partly why I've thought the discussion about Apple producing a "headless iMac" was a little bit ridiculous. $2300 is nothing to sneeze at, but that's still less than what you would have paid for the original 64k Mac.

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Anonymous wrote:
I still wonder if 8 cores can even be used efficiently with the limited memory bandwidth and things like that, though. You can only add so many cores before the returns diminish to nothing.

The faster buses are larger caches on the new models should help that, so I'll be interested to see the benchmarks when they come around

Yeah, I've kind of wondered that myself. In fairness, the new Pro's are slightly faster machines, with twice as many cores and a beefed up cache. I would imagine that at this point in the game, it's really up to the software makers to develop their stuff to fully take advantage of the extra cores, isn't it?

I'm still reeling over the max. RAM in these things. 32gb?? Man, my last computer had less than that for storage between two hard drives.

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geoduck wrote:
Seriously is anyone else producing an 8 core personal computer?

Well, Dell does, if you can really call either of them a "personal computer." Actually, you can get a quad-quad-core from them.

Which Dell workstation gives a quad-quad core option?

From what I can find on their site, the T7400 is their top end, and it claims to only go to dual quad core Xeons.

Configuring the T7400 to the same specs as the baseline Mac Pro (the quad 2.8) comes out to $4473 (and I did not include anything like AV, and left it ad XP Pro vice bumping to Vista).

Here is the config:
My System Details
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5440 (2.83GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5440 (2.83GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI Capable
2GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVDâ„¢ and Roxio Creatorâ„¢ Dell Ed
C1 All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cacheâ„¢
No Monitor
My Accessories
USB Entry Quietkey, No Hot Keys
Dell USB 2-Button Mechanical Mouse with Scroll
No Floppy Drive
Internal Chassis Speaker,Dell
My Software
Resource DVD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers
My Services & Warranties
3 Year Limited Hardware Warranty with Next Business Day On-Site Service
No Onsite System Setup
Also Included
Genuine Windows® XP Sticker

It was the closest I could come to the Mac Pro config. Better warranty than Applecare. don't know anything about the video card.

For now, the Mac Pro seems pretty competitive. Even configuring the T5400 comes in at a little over $4200.

Some economic/business news site was expecting new Mac Pro tower enclosure designs at MacWorld or sometime this quarter. I guess this Mac Pro refresh makes that unlikely. I wanted to see a new fresh enclosure design for the towers.

Maybe Apple will release a tower/cpu that fills the price point space between the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini.

Maybe the iMac will go to four processing cores.

Rob

Just wanted to make some comments.

The Dell/Apple comparison does show the value of a new Mac Pro but also realize that the Mac Pro has 800 Mhz memory as opposed to the 667 Mhz on the Dell, and the Dell is over a thousand dollars more.

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"I would imagine that at this point in the game, it's really up to the software makers to develop their stuff to fully take advantage of the extra cores, isn't it?"

Yes, I agree. Software programmers need to get on the ball and start designing their apps to take advantage of multiple cores. Luckily, my main design program Vue 6 Infinite, already takes advantage of as many cores as you want to throw at it, but other apps I use don't.

If you are a huge multi-tasker, as I am, all those cores will keep everything running fast and smooth, as long as you have enough Ram.

Another tip I've found very handy when using programs like Artmatic Pro, Bryce, and Terragen, that are only optimized for one core, is to setup multiple accounts and then just render an image under each separate login, with user-switching, because each separate account makes use of a different core.

So if you have an eight core Mac Pro, open eight user accounts and you can render eight different images, each using it's own core, should you be using apps with that limited function.

You may not need such a thing, but I often render multiple different sizes of an image for different products I sell, so it comes in handy.


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"If you downgrade to a single processor (quad processor that is) 2Gb RAM, and a single drive, you can get one for around $2300. If you dump in every kind of optional hardware they offer you can get a full box for $25,000. That is an amazing range."

Yes, but look at some of the prices that Apple charges, especially regarding Ram. Apple will charge you $500 for 4 GB of Ram:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/91124000/wo/BR408CfWzTej2bstY4B2zpy1v50/2.?p=0

However, you can go to OWC and purchase 8 GB of Ram for $399:

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=284&type=Memory&TI=1506&shoupgrds=Show+Upgrades

If you added that to your standard 2 GB you would have 10 GB for less than what Apple charges you for 4 GB.

So some of those prices are quite inflated, but I do understand your point. Apple's Mac Pro does have a broad range of configurations. I just wouldn't recommend you use all of them, especially concerning memory.

I'm picking up a new Mac Pro in the Spring so I'm doing my research now. Can't wait!! : -D