[ssegaric]

I apologize, if this has already been asked or discussed. I am thinking of getting the new MP low end configuration with one quad core. I was wondering if I could add another quad core in a year or two?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

[newtech]

Best guesses currently are yes.

[eggman]

Originally Posted by newtech 

Best guesses currently are yes.

With the caveat that, at best, best guesses are still guesses. I've until someone actually sees one of these motherboards with an empty chip mount soldered onto it, I'd be very wary.

[Simon]

We already have confirmation that the part numbers for the 2.8 single CPU and 2.8/3.0 dual CPU MLBs are the same. That indicates that at least the MLB shouldn't be a problem. Of course other issues might still have to be solved, for example if the single CPU MP only comes with a single CPU heat sink assembly.

[ninahagen]

The savings don't justify the risk and the hassle.

Let's say:

— you wait a year and a half.
— the processors come down to $200.
— you have a techie friend who smiles on you and solders in the chip bracket for $50.

$500 (the difference you would pay now to get the base 8-core) minus $250.

You save $250 on the face of it, but:

— for a year and a half you have a lesser machine.
— you have a real chance of eating up that savings and more if problems arise.
— it wastes time and mental energy.

How long would it take you save up the extra $500 to buy the base 8-core now? If it were a short time in terms of the immediacy of your upgrade needs, I would exercise a little patience.

[devastHB]

Originally Posted by Simon 

We already have confirmation that the part numbers for the 2.8 single CPU and 2.8/3.0 dual CPU MLBs are the same. That indicates that at least the MLB shouldn't be a problem. Of course other issues might still have to be solved, for example if the single CPU MP only comes with a single CPU heat sink assembly.

OR... buy the dual 2.8, remove one processor, keep the heatsink, sell the processor for ~800, then buy back the processor for <=$500 when you need it.

so you get the 2.8 with one processor for ~$2000
and don't have the issue of mismatched heatsinks when you eventually get the second 2.8
I imagine resale also won't suffer vs a macpro w/ two different heatsinks.

[SierraDragon]

Tech marches on. Planning such adds in the Mac world is usually nonsensical because real world box performance involves the complete overall architecture of the box. By the time you retrofit another processor in a year other parts of the architecture will have evolved anyway.

All that said, since you would be buying a CPU level a bit below the rest of the architecture, what you suggest is not illogical. However if your apps actually need the extra CPU power ("low end" is already quite powerful!) I still think it may be best to just find a way get the stock MP now.

-Allen Wicks

[Simon]

Originally Posted by devastHB 

OR... buy the dual 2.8, remove one processor, keep the heatsink, sell the processor for ~800, then buy back the processor for <=$500 when you need it.

That would make more sense as Apple is only giving you a $500 discount on the single CPU MP. The CPU they save costs them over $700 though and you might even be able to sell if for more.

[lindyhopfan]

If I buy the 8 core Mac Pro will I encounter any difficulties removing the second chip? Will I have to make firmware changes to get the computer to use the single quad-core chip properly? Also, will the chip be soldered in or will there be a ZIF lever to help me remove it from the motherboard? I am hoping I can sell the chip, but keep the heat sink for later. Thanks.

[newtech]

Removing the second processor ( CPU_B ) will involve removing its heat sink and unlatching the socket. No change or problem should be encountered in the firmware.

[devastHB]

OR BETTER YET!!!!

buy dual 2.8,
2800

sell BOTH processors, (without heatsinks)
-1600

get this processor from newegg,
Newegg.com - Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
+300

get a 2.3 Quad macpro for $1500!!!

What do you guys think? is this possible?

[Simon]

Not a good idea.

That E5410 Harpertown runs on a 1333 MHz FSB. The new MPs use X/E54x2 series Harpertowns on a 1600 MHz FSB (with the new Seaburg chipset).

What would work is putting that E5410 into an older Woodcrest/Clovertown MP.

[devastHB]

To save some $$$ I think some wouldn't mind the bump down in FSB speed, Is it verified that only 1600 mhz bus harpertowns only work in the new mac pros? I read somewhere else that the slower clocked memory has been verified to work in the new macs, so perhaps these cpus would too.

I have "a friend" that would definately be interested in a 1500-1700 mac pro.

[bearcatrp]

If your looking for savings, keep an eye on the refurb apple sells. You might find a good deal on a 1st generation pro. I snagged a 2ghz mac pro last year for 1999.00. I can now buy 2 quad core chips 2.66ghz for around 500 a piece at new egg. The 3.0ghz chips are still high at 1000 a piece so won't be upgrading to those unless they come down. Ebay sells for a bit lower too. Apple has a 2.66ghz for 2199.00 (refurb) on there site now.
Randy

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by ssegaric 

I apologize, if this has already been asked or discussed. I am thinking of getting the new MP low end configuration with one quad core. I was wondering if I could add another quad core in a year or two?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

I'm like 99.999% that the new quad macpro is 2 dual-core chips so that wouldn't work.

I bought a quad core mac pro and updated it to eight core myself but that was because
Apple wasn't offering a cheap 8-core box at the time. I now have 8 cores at 2.66Ghz.
But if I were doing it from now I wouldn't do that. Won't you end up with a mac pro that
has no warrantee and that costs more that just buying the 2.8 8-core mac pro in the first
place?

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by Tesselator 

I'm like 99.999% that the new quad macpro is 2 dual-core chips so that wouldn't work.

it's one chip. read the tech specs page.

[eggman]

Originally Posted by Tesselator 

I'm like 99.999% that the new quad macpro is 2 dual-core chips so that wouldn't work.

It's a beautiful thing to see the purity of such near-certainty unblemished by the ravages of solid evidence.

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by mr. burns 

it's one chip. read the tech specs page.

Really? Dang it! Well, I did leave myself 0.0001% wiggle room!

Eggman, you're just mean! (hehehe)

[Photocro]

Wow, adding more speed and processors. I am pretty conservative about computers and have gone through more computers than I would like to see versus my bottom line. Just a question with no blame, but, what more does one need? I mean, sheesh, when can the fingers no longer do the walking and the mind no longer multi task before a computers speed is overkill for the user? Of course, I use computers for post processing photos and an occasional game. My MP is fast enough for me. It is incredible that the thoughts of ones needs might exceed the computers speed.

I would be fascinated to know what some of you are doing that needs all the speed versus the actual price. I mean this sincerely as I am just a newly resurgent back comer to Mac Pro.

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by Photocro 

Wow, adding more speed and processors. I am pretty conservative about computers and have gone through more computers than I would like to see versus my bottom line. Just a question with no blame, but, what more does one need? I mean, sheesh, when can the fingers no longer do the walking and the mind no longer multi task before a computers speed is overkill for the user? Of course, I use computers for post processing photos and an occasional game. My MP is fast enough for me. It is incredible that the thoughts of ones needs might exceed the computers speed.

I would be fascinated to know what some of you are doing that needs all the speed versus the actual price. I mean this sincerely as I am just a newly resurgent back comer to Mac Pro.

For me? I want a quantum computer before I feel satisfied. What do I do? 3D CG and simulations
of all sorts: Water, fire, smoke, hard body collisions, soft body interactions, photonic and radiosity
lighting models, etc. etc. this is pretty common stuff!. My 8-core mac right now could be 100
times faster and I would still have to wait much too long for renders to finish up. Some animations
can take 2 or 3 hours per frame to render (easy!) and at 30 frames per second that's 60 ~ 90
hours of machine time per second of video. If I had a mac 100 times faster it would still take
about an hour and a half for the same 1 second of video to render. At 1,000 times the speed of
my current mac I could begin to get a little relief. This is why a company like Pixar or CafeFX
even, have what they call a "render-farm" with hundreds of multi-core blade servers ready to
go to work for you when you press render and return the results to you when it's finished. Most
companies that have such render farms will tell you... Even IT is not really enough and more
is highly desirable! More speed and more RAM! I could totally make use of a system that was
a few thousand times faster than the Mac Pro and that had a terabyte or more of RAM installed
and locally available to the processor(s).

[Tesselator]

Some examples?

http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...5175_large.jpg
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...5257_large.jpg
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...3388_large.jpg
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...8907_large.jpg
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...7637_large.jpg
http://features.cgsociety.org/galler...668_medium.jpg
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/g...2749_large.jpg

etc. etc. etc.

[devastHB]

Examples??? I feel like everyday stuff can always be sped up. I just tried to launch microsoft word 2008 and it takes forever on my 2.16 macbook pro core 2 duo. I thought it might be just my computer but I installed it on a 2.6 quad macpro at work and even that is slow. I'm hoping a 2.8 8-core with 6 gigs of ram, running on 3 500gig harddrives on a raid 0 will help word 2008 be a little more responsive. I crave speed in just normal every day stuff, like running vmware utilizing 2 cores in the background running some pc only apps, and maybe having 2 instances of handbrake crunching netflix disks from dual optical drives in the bacground, while I'm replying to this message like this one. I feel like I can use the speed in just those normal tasks, but once I do some heavy after fx stuff, processing power is more than welcome aswell. Its true I may not utilize those cores too often, but during heavy multitasking, i imagine it would be much appreciated.

[eggman]

Nice work!

And I'm sorry I was mean. I've got a bad cold and I'm grumpy.

Fortunately for you, rendering is one of those tasks that benefits from massively parallel operations, which multiple cores help enormously with.

As long as the app supports it, and they're among the first adopters of multi-core code, for obvious reasons!

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by Photocro 

I would be fascinated to know what some of you are doing that needs all the speed versus the actual price. I mean this sincerely as I am just a newly resurgent back comer to Mac Pro.

Running Aperture, many tens of thousands of ~20 MB images, and routinely adding batches of 5-20 GB of images that need to be dealt with.

Running Photoshop. With pretty much any graphic design work the creative process gets "nicer" as the machine response time becomes more negligible. Even a second of wait time can be subtly distracting to creativity.

-Allen Wicks

P.S. David, nice work.

[Tesselator]

eggman Wrote:
Nice work!

Yeah, there are some awesome artists on that site.


And I'm sorry I was mean. I've got a bad cold and I'm grumpy.

Hehe, I wasn't being serious. Besides, when I'm grumpy - I'm much much worse.


Fortunately for you, rendering is one of those tasks that benefits from massively parallel operations, which multiple cores help enormously with.

As long as the app supports it, and they're among the first adopters of multi-core code, for obvious reasons!

Very true. Us and anyone dealing with databases of any kind.

[ssegaric]

I spoke to a knowledgeable Apple rep (not all of them were) standing by the MPs at MacWorld. he said that he hadn't seen the machine but had seen the repair manual and it said that the quad core logic board was physically different from the Octo core. He said it was sorta like the single versus dual core G5s, and how those had different boards.

Steve