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Goddard11 · Jun 2, 2007, 12:48 AM

I would first like to know when the Mac Pro first had 8 Cores, (if anyone knows the date)

Secondly, does anyone suggest I keep my money and save for later ( I don't need the Mac Pro right now, I have a G5, but I'd like to use FCS2 with all its new features with good performance later on) Or should I just go ahead and get it now, and not wait 6mo, to a year for a new major upgrade.

I'd be perfectly fine for waiting until the end of this year for a big upgrade, like 45nm, Blu Ray, Ghz, GPU upgrades, etc. Or is that all not coming until a year or so?...

Any suggestions on good buy times is appreciated (I don't need the Mac Pro right now, I just want to know if it would be foolish for me to buy now) I'd only want to wait no more past Jan 1st 2008

tavin64 · Jun 2, 2007, 02:40 AM

There might be a refresh with some price cuts for the mac pros coming soon. Intel is slashing prices across the board on all their cpus on June 22nd including the quad core chips so the cost of quad core on the mac pro might become cheaper. I would at least wait a couple of weeks after the price cut to see if apple implements it as well on the mac pros.

Simon · Jun 2, 2007, 05:51 AM

The 8 core MP was introduced April 4.

IMHO if you don't need it now, there's no special reason to buy one now. Hopefully the BTO options and RAM/HD specs will be updated within the next few months. Intel will be dropping prices and reorganizing their offerings on July 22. When this has all happened and Apple has updated the MP you can consider buying again. If you see a satisfactory value and you think the performance increase justifies the purchase, get it. If not you can still hold off.

But I think there's hardly any use in guessing what the Xeon and MP line-up will look like in 6-12 months from now. Intel just hasn't released very much roadmap information regarding the Penryn-core based Xeons (45nm) yet. There was some discussion about it here.

mduell · Jun 2, 2007, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by Goddard11

I'd be perfectly fine for waiting until the end of this year for a big upgrade, like 45nm, Blu Ray, Ghz, GPU upgrades, etc. Or is that all not coming until a year or so?...

For everything except the CPU there's plenty of room for Apple to improve both the base spec and the upgrade options. Aside from adding one CPU option, Apple hasn't updated the Mac Pro base spec or upgrade options since it was released, so I expect we'll see an update in the near future.

Veltliner · Jun 2, 2007, 07:50 PM

I think there is no single application that uses 8 cores at the same time. So, if you don't multitask, doing some processor intensive work in the background... I'm not sure if an 8-core makes sense at this time.

Og Oggilby · Jun 3, 2007, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by Veltliner

I think there is no single application that uses 8 cores at the same time. So, if you don't multitask, doing some processor intensive work in the background... I'm not sure if an 8-core makes sense at this time.

There are a few applications that use all 8 cores. 3D apps can take as many cores as you can throw at them.

bballe336 · Jun 3, 2007, 05:07 PM

So is intel updating on june or july 22nd?

mduell · Jun 3, 2007, 05:54 PM

Originally Posted by bballe336

So is intel updating on june or july 22nd?

July 22nd is Intel's 3rd quarter price drop.

The quad 2.4Ghz desktop chip will fall from ~$530 to ~$250... I'd expect similar drops for the workstation chips.

bballe336 · Jun 3, 2007, 07:58 PM

Well then I guess it's worth it to wait it out until august or so in hopes of Apple dropping prices.

Goddard11 · Jun 5, 2007, 02:34 PM

In light of the new updates of the MBP, it seems to me like the Mac Pro / Cinema Display setup is starting to be a little behind. The Cinema Display is in need of some improvements ( in terms of response time, maybe higher resolution, the current MBP 17 has the same resolution as the 23" cinema display ) And now, the baseline GPU on the MacBook pro is an Nvidia 8 series, the current Mac Pro baseline GPU is a 7300. It seems like if WWDC shows some GPU / Cinema Display updates for the Mac Pro, I'd definately wait it out for a few more months.

mduell · Jun 5, 2007, 06:10 PM

Originally Posted by Goddard11

In light of the new updates of the MBP, it seems to me like the Mac Pro / Cinema Display setup is starting to be a little behind. The Cinema Display is in need of some improvements ( in terms of response time, maybe higher resolution, the current MBP 17 has the same resolution as the 23" cinema display )

I don't expect the Cinema Display resolutions to change; no one is really putting >100dpi panels in their desktop LCDs. 15" panels at the resolution of the 23" ACD have been available for about 4 years in laptops, but you'd be hard pressed to find a 15, 17, or even 20" desktop LCD at that resolution.