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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > I'm looking at a Mac Pro but when is the next keynotes?

I'm looking at a Mac Pro but when is the next keynotes?
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Sakino
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Jan 28, 2007, 06:39 PM
 
I was looking into getting a new mac pro, but I was wondering when the next keynotes are?
I was shocked that Apple didn't announce an update to their mac pro line. I'm assuming the next chip update will be a the new intel quad core chips. Also has there been any updates to the core 2 duo chips?
I'm basically looking for a gaming machine, mostly world of warcraft and will probably be hooking up a 24 inch dell lcd. With that being said what is the best graphics card?

Thxs
     
ecaz
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Jan 28, 2007, 07:10 PM
 
why not just build a desktop? Small form factor or whatever you can put your feet on. Laptops are for portability.
     
butterfly0fdoom
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Jan 28, 2007, 07:51 PM
 
I'm guessing that a new Mac Pro would probably be introduced at WWDC again, this time in June. Although given the 6-month cycle, anytime February and onwards is a possibility.

There are updated to Core 2 Duo in the pipeline, but nothing's happened yet.

Originally Posted by ecaz View Post
why not just build a desktop? Small form factor or whatever you can put your feet on. Laptops are for portability.
And how exactly does that pertain to the question at hand?
     
mduell
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Jan 28, 2007, 09:11 PM
 
The next keynote isn't until at least June, but I think Apple will upgrade the Mac Pro to quads before that; they've been available and shipping in volume for over a month.
     
Sakino  (op)
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Jan 28, 2007, 10:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
The next keynote isn't until at least June, but I think Apple will upgrade the Mac Pro to quads before that; they've been available and shipping in volume for over a month.
Whats the price tag suppose to be on those? Are they more expensive then the core 2 duos out right now?
     
Sakino  (op)
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Jan 28, 2007, 10:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by ecaz View Post
why not just build a desktop? Small form factor or whatever you can put your feet on. Laptops are for portability.
You are thinking of a macbook pro. I am not looking into a laptop at this time. I thought about building a pc, but I am willing to spend the extra money for OSX.
     
Cadaver
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Jan 28, 2007, 10:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
The next keynote isn't until at least June, but I think Apple will upgrade the Mac Pro to quads before that; they've been available and shipping in volume for over a month.
The Intel QX6700 quad-core chip is based on the Core 2 line, not the Xeon version that Apple has been using in the Mac Pros. AFAIK, the quad-core Xeons are not yet commercially available. I'd expect Apple to make an announcement after Intel does ...unless Apple moves away from the Xeon-class architecture.
     
mduell
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Jan 28, 2007, 11:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Sakino View Post
Whats the price tag suppose to be on those? Are they more expensive then the core 2 duos out right now?
The quad core Xeons are priced the same as the dual core Xeons about two steps (~700Mhz) down. So the quad 1.86Ghz is the same price as the dual 2.66Ghz ($690), and the quad 2.33Ghz is the same price as the dual 3.0Ghz ($851).

Originally Posted by Cadaver View Post
The Intel QX6700 quad-core chip is based on the Core 2 line, not the Xeon version that Apple has been using in the Mac Pros. AFAIK, the quad-core Xeons are not yet commercially available. I'd expect Apple to make an announcement after Intel does ...unless Apple moves away from the Xeon-class architecture.
I'm pretty sure E5345 (and maybe the lower models) is shipping. Many sites on Froogle list it with "ships same day" or "xx in stock".
     
asodamiac
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Jan 29, 2007, 12:34 AM
 
What kind of performance gains would one be likely to see? I'm not sure how the math works out with having quad-cores vs. dual-cores. Would the quad-cores be much faster even with the -700mhz?
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Catfish_Man
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Jan 29, 2007, 01:00 AM
 
Probably not in most cases. There would certainly be a few cases the quads would win though.
     
Sakino  (op)
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Jan 29, 2007, 01:16 AM
 
So for gaming purposes should i wait around? Are there any new graphics cards due out soon?
     
Abbas
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Jan 29, 2007, 01:53 AM
 
Does anybody know if the Mac Pro can operate fine with one CPU? I have my dual 2.66 machine but probably wont be able to afford TWO quad core CPUs together. Would it be possible for me to but just one and put that in for now and then a few months later, buy another one?

-a
     
mavherzog
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Jan 29, 2007, 05:52 AM
 
I'm looking to buy a fairly pimped out Mac Pro as well. However, I won't be purchasing until the first part of 2008 (I'm currently working in southern Iraq). It will be interesting to see how the system evolves in the next year +.
     
SVass
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Jan 29, 2007, 03:42 PM
 
According to AppleInsider and MacNN, there will be a real upgrade this fall. Why would they upgrade in both June and September?
     
Catfish_Man
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Jan 29, 2007, 05:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by Sakino View Post
So for gaming purposes should i wait around? Are there any new graphics cards due out soon?
nVidia's 8xxx series came out a little while ago; it's pretty amazing.
     
Sakino  (op)
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Jan 29, 2007, 09:00 PM
 
I think im just going to go for the update and not worry about it. So you suggest the nvida card for gaming wise?
     
brokenjago
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Jan 29, 2007, 09:12 PM
 
Well, the 8xxx series of cards aren't available for the Mac Pro yet. I'd go with the Ati Radeon X1900XT. I did, and it's blazing.
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mduell
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Jan 29, 2007, 11:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by asodamiac View Post
What kind of performance gains would one be likely to see? I'm not sure how the math works out with having quad-cores vs. dual-cores. Would the quad-cores be much faster even with the -700mhz?
Depends on your application. Encoding video? Huge speedup. Playing a poorly written game? No speedup.

Originally Posted by Sakino View Post
So for gaming purposes should i wait around? Are there any new graphics cards due out soon?
Most games aren't multithreaded (although they're slowly moving that way), so more cores won't help much today.
The nVidia 8800 series was released a few months ago (PC only, no Mac cards yet) and it's a monster; destroys every other card on the market even in dual-card configurations.

Originally Posted by SVass View Post
According to AppleInsider and MacNN, there will be a real upgrade this fall. Why would they upgrade in both June and September?
They won't. Apple isn't going to wait until June to upgrade the Mac Pros.
     
Leonard
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Jan 30, 2007, 03:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
They won't. Apple isn't going to wait until June to upgrade the Mac Pros.

I sure hope Apple's not going to wait till June - I'll have no patience left by then. It would make more sense for them to upgrade the Mac Pro before the end of February, but who knows.
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Nugget
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Jan 31, 2007, 02:57 AM
 
NAB2007 in April is another potential "event" for Apple to announce new Mac Pros. I hope we don't have to wait that long, though.
     
EricTheRed
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Jan 31, 2007, 05:07 AM
 
Apple's next special event is on the 20th of Feb according to rumor control. Apple investors expect quad core CPUs and now the the move to Intel has been completed, maybe a different case since there is no reason to keep the "look" of the old G5 to sooth naysayers who thought that Apple was going to completely goof the transition to Intel (they weren't around when Apple transitioned to PPC from 68XXX in the early nineties or through a pile of operating systems—but I digress).

Apple investors also expect the release date of 10.5 to be announced now that Microsoft has lauched Vista and isn't positioned well to copy the new features that Apple has withheld out of fear of being duplicated in Vista.
     
Sakino  (op)
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Jan 31, 2007, 09:22 AM
 
Originally Posted by EricTheRed View Post
Apple's next special event is on the 20th of Feb according to rumor control. Apple investors expect quad core CPUs and now the the move to Intel has been completed, maybe a different case since there is no reason to keep the "look" of the old G5 to sooth naysayers who thought that Apple was going to completely goof the transition to Intel (they weren't around when Apple transitioned to PPC from 68XXX in the early nineties or through a pile of operating systems—but I digress).

Apple investors also expect the release date of 10.5 to be announced now that Microsoft has lauched Vista and isn't positioned well to copy the new features that Apple has withheld out of fear of being duplicated in Vista.
Sounds promissing, I could wait another 20 days. That gives me more time to save up.
     
Ken_F2
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Jan 31, 2007, 04:39 PM
 
Intel will slash prices and release its next slate of desktop chips on April 22. Intel is cutting prices by 30% to 40% and introducing the E6320 and E6420 to replace the current E6300/6400 -- the new chips have 4Mb L2 cache instead of 2Mb.

Full details on the new desktop processors and their pricing can be found here.

The biggest changes will be seen in Apple's notebook line. In late April / early May, Intel releases its next-generation mobile platform, otherwise known as Santa Rosa, along with a slate of new mobile processors. Thew new Core2 Duo mobile processors coming in May include the X7800 (2.6GHz) @ $795, the T7700 (2.40GHz) @ $529, the T7500 (2.20GHz) @ $315, the T7300 (2GHz) @ $241, and the T7100 (1.8GHz) @ $209. All of these processors feature a 4Mb L2 cache and use a 800MHz bus, except for the T7100 which has 2Mb and the older 667Mhz bus.

That's it for new processors until October, when Intel will refresh its Core2 lineup with several faster models. All that's known at this point is that will include the X7900 @ 2.8GHz for notebooks and a new quad-core desktop processor @ 3.0Ghz. Pricing and other frequencies are unknown, but will surely depend on the competitive situation with AMD at the time.

In early 2008 (January), Intel is expected to release its next-generation Core processors for desktops, servers, and notebooks based on the new 45nm "Penryn" design. The "Penryn" design will be used in dual-core processors and quad-core processors with 6Mb and 12Mb L2 cache, respectively, and a 1333MHz bus. In addition to the larger cache and faster bus, "Penryn" includes various tweaks and optimizations, improved 64-bit application performance, enhanced floating point performance, and a significant overhaul of SSE (SSE4). These processors are expected to debut at 3.4 to 4.0Ghz on the desktop in dual-core and quad-core versions.
( Last edited by Ken_F2; Jan 31, 2007 at 05:14 PM. )
     
SierraDragon
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Jan 31, 2007, 08:03 PM
 
Quad core MPs are overdue. I felt they were due at Mac Expo and will be amazed if they are not announced by early March at the latest.

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tkmd
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Jan 31, 2007, 08:33 PM
 
Why is apple going to introduce a more expensive dual quad core MP - that has be shown in tests as fast as the current dual core 2.66? Afterall, 99% of apps cant take advantage of more than 4 cores due to threading becoming extremely difficult after 4 cores.

I call BS on the "assumption" that an octo core MP is due out any day now. Even if the Leopard Xcode has some algorithm to aide in such difficult multi-threading tasks major apps wont be recompiled to take full advantage of it for at least another 6 months later.

Suggestion: the current MP is a multitasking beast. I swear! A year from now the prices for a quad core xeon chip will fall and you can just pop it into your MP then. Not sure about the extra power that will be needed (although I believe this wasn't an issue).
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mduell
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Jan 31, 2007, 08:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by Ken_F2 View Post
Intel will slash prices and release its next slate of desktop chips on April 22. Intel is cutting prices by 30% to 40% and introducing the E6320 and E6420 to replace the current E6300/6400 -- the new chips have 4Mb L2 cache instead of 2Mb.

Full details on the new desktop processors and their pricing can be found here.

The biggest changes will be seen in Apple's notebook line. In late April / early May, Intel releases its next-generation mobile platform, otherwise known as Santa Rosa, along with a slate of new mobile processors. Thew new Core2 Duo mobile processors coming in May include the X7800 (2.6GHz) @ $795, the T7700 (2.40GHz) @ $529, the T7500 (2.20GHz) @ $315, the T7300 (2GHz) @ $241, and the T7100 (1.8GHz) @ $209. All of these processors feature a 4Mb L2 cache and use a 800MHz bus, except for the T7100 which has 2Mb and the older 667Mhz bus.

That's it for new processors until October, when Intel will refresh its Core2 lineup with several faster models. All that's known at this point is that will include the X7900 @ 2.8GHz for notebooks and a new quad-core desktop processor @ 3.0Ghz. Pricing and other frequencies are unknown, but will surely depend on the competitive situation with AMD at the time.

In early 2008 (January), Intel is expected to release its next-generation Core processors for desktops, servers, and notebooks based on the new 45nm "Penryn" design. The "Penryn" design will be used in dual-core processors and quad-core processors with 6Mb and 12Mb L2 cache, respectively, and a 1333MHz bus. In addition to the larger cache and faster bus, "Penryn" includes various tweaks and optimizations, improved 64-bit application performance, enhanced floating point performance, and a significant overhaul of SSE (SSE4). These processors are expected to debut at 3.4 to 4.0Ghz on the desktop in dual-core and quad-core versions.
I see you've posted this same blurb in 4 or 5 threads now, but it's totally off topic in this thread. None of the products and code names you've mentioned are relevant to the Mac Pro.
     
imitchellg5
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Jan 31, 2007, 09:19 PM
 
There is a special event on February 20th.
     
Ken_F2
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Feb 1, 2007, 12:20 AM
 
I see you've posted this same blurb in 4 or 5 threads now, but it's totally off topic in this thread. None of the products and code names you've mentioned are relevant to the Mac Pro.
I posted portions of the above to three (not five) different threads inquiring about the future of Mac hardware.

You're assuming of course that Apple continues to use Xeons in its Mac Pros. Regardless, price cuts are also expected for the quad-core X5355, E5345, and E5335 parts on April 22.

Penryn is the codename for the processor core in the next-generation Xeon as well.

I will be surprised if Apple releases the new quad-core Mac Pros prior to the release of Leopard. Why? Because most applications in the current version of OSX are only written to utilize two threads. The same is also true of a number of professional OSX applications. In many cases, these applications actually run slower on a quad-core 2.4GHz system than they do on the dual-core 3.0GHz system because the extra two cores go largely unused. Apple is optimizing Leopard and its bundled applications to take advantage of quad cores.
( Last edited by Ken_F2; Feb 1, 2007 at 12:33 AM. )
     
Simon
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Feb 1, 2007, 05:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by Ken_F2 View Post
Penryn is the codename for the processor core in the next-generation Xeon as well.
Not really. Penryn is a core of the Intel Next Generation Microarchitecture, but it refers explicitly to a mobile CPU core. The Xeon cores within the upcoming cores of the Intel Next Generation Microarchitecture go by the names of Clovertown-MP, Tigerton, Harpertown, Dunnington, and Aliceton.
     
Simon
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Feb 1, 2007, 05:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by Ken_F2 View Post
You're assuming of course that Apple continues to use Xeons in its Mac Pros.
That's not an absurd assumption. Unless Apple gives up on SMP on the MP, they will have to use Xeon class CPUs (Woodcrest, Clovertown) no matter how many cores Kentsfield offers.
     
paulc
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Feb 1, 2007, 10:04 AM
 
Pretty sure I read that Penryn CPUs are expected to beginning shipping production this year. In any case, I fell the "we want more cores" is largely irrelevant to most Mac users. They are useful in only very limited applications (think of a video render farm with 20-30 machines). So I look at "going more core" as more about marketing than anything else.

Penryn, from what I've read so far, brings some really new things to the table that I think are "better for us" than adding more cores. As I read it, it seems to be the first real change in the architecture since the "Core." And isn't the Xeon line based on that same core architecture? Seems to me that the only benefit to the Xeon is the ability to add multiple, multi-core chips. Thus I find a dual Penryn running at 4G to be far, far better for most MP users than 4 or even 8 3G Xeons. Probably a lot less expensive to boot!

Besides, the really annoying thing I find about the Pro machines is that a fair amount of hardware that ships w/all the consumer machines is left out, I'm speaking about an iSight, Airport and Bluetooth cards.

As for the GPU, there does seem to be a very, very slow "migration" to using it for more than just blasting images onto the screen. Am architecture move I've been hoping for quite a while now. The "issue" is that the stock card most feel is kind of underpowered. AND we do seem to face a choice of a underpowered card from one of the big 2 and a high end card from the other of the 2.

As for the case, I thought it was a terrible design (functionality, I care not about looks) when introduced. BUT, as it stands now, I'd say it's damn close to what I would look for (as in multiple drive bays and dual drive bays for optical drives).
     
Ken_F2
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Feb 1, 2007, 10:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by Simon View Post
Not really. Penryn is a core of the Intel Next Generation Microarchitecture, but it refers explicitly to a mobile CPU core. The Xeon cores within the upcoming cores of the Intel Next Generation Microarchitecture go by the names of Clovertown-MP, Tigerton, Harpertown, Dunnington, and Aliceton.
In all press literature, Intel uses the term "Penryn" to refer to the core itself, and not specifically the mobile variant of that core.

Quoting CEO Paul Otellini last week:

Penryn is the code name for a family of desktop, notebook and server chips based on Intel's Core microarchitecture, and systems with the chips will be available before the end of this year.
Today, we will demonstrate the first mobile, desktop, and server configurations based on the Penryn core.
From Ron Curry, technology strategist for Intel:
We have the first chips of the Penryn family of processors in-house and we're testing them. Things are looking very good.
Every slide of Intel's presentation used one name and one name only, even in reference to desktops and servers -- Penryn. That's not to say that it doesn't also refer to the mobile variant (it does on all past Intel roadmaps), but for marketing purposes, Intel has settled on the term "Penryn family" to describe all mobile, desktop, and server chips based on that core. See Intel's latest press release.
( Last edited by Ken_F2; Feb 1, 2007 at 01:21 PM. )
     
CIA
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Feb 1, 2007, 11:04 AM
 
I don't know why Mduell blasted Ken_F2 about that post, I found it very informative.

As for Dual-Quadcore machines, yeah, there is no point for them for MOST users. But I crunch video all day, using FCP, Compressor, and even good old fashioned QT Export to h.264. I use a quad G5 and frequently watch in dismay (and secret glee) when all 4 processor bars redline in activity monitor during a render/export, etc.

So, for me, I would LOVE an 8 core machine.
Yeah, it's not for everyone, and I don't expect Apple to replace the quads with octs, but adding a 8 core machine to the lineup would be nice.
<wish>eSATA ports would be nice also</wish>
Hopefully Apple will refresh its graphics cards at the same time. Altho my 7800Ultra works fine for everything I play. Haven't played WoW.... Still addicted to FFXI.
Also, for games anything beyond Dual core is overkill, unless YOU are multitasking. It's going to get better over time blah blah blah, but for now, and for the foreseeable future, a fast dual core is better for gaming....

Case design.... hmm..... I keep my machine on my desk (floors too dusty) and I have scrapped my elbows on that cheesegrator front so many times, guess I'm clumsy. I agree that the case is getting a little old, but hey, how long we been using that powerbook G4-esque case?
I think that with the pro desktop should come a functional pro case. The current case fits this rather well, especially since the switch to intel freed up so much space inside it vs the G5 model.
But yeah, apple needs to be fresh, so who knows what we will see....
I would expect an addition to the Pro line in the next 8 weeks......
And yes, RAM for the new MacPro's will still be un-godly expensive.
( Last edited by CIA; Feb 2, 2007 at 02:47 PM. )
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Ken_F2
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Feb 1, 2007, 11:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by paulc View Post
Pretty sure I read that Penryn CPUs are expected to beginning shipping production this year. In any case, I fell the "we want more cores" is largely irrelevant to most Mac users. They are useful in only very limited applications (think of a video render farm with 20-30 machines). So I look at "going more core" as more about marketing than anything else.
Intel clarified the statements late last week. They will begin shipping Penryn CPUs in Q4 2007, but they won't actually be available for purchase until 1Q 2008. Hence, it's likely to be another January release.

Penryn, from what I've read so far, brings some really new things to the table that I think are "better for us" than adding more cores. As I read it, it seems to be the first real change in the architecture since the "Core."
The larger cache and improved 64-bit performance (should help Leopard) certainly sound interesting, but what interests me most is SSE4. Intel claims that SSE4 is the largest revamp of SSE ever, even more significant than SSE2, with 50+ new instructions. If Intel is true to its word, vector processing in the Penryn family should finally make Altivec obsolete. I'm anxious to see how fast Apple is able to optimize for it in their OS and applications.
     
paulc
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Feb 1, 2007, 11:23 AM
 
Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that they should completely abandon "more cores." 100% they should have a model to suit the render farms and guys like CIA.

A lot will ride on whether they stay with the current model/price scheme (which is essentially one model with a BIG penalty to go up in performance, and a very small price decrease to go down in performance, $800 to go up, $200 to go down).

Ah eSATA ports, totally forgot that! I've had a 4 port card in my G5 for a LONG while. I think it's pretty clear FW isn't gong to really going anywhere and in the next 5 years I bet you it will disappear.

Ken, thanks for the clarifications. I thought the new gate material was very significant.
     
OtisWild
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Feb 1, 2007, 12:37 PM
 
Meh. Mac Pro == too expensive for normal folks who only need a smokin' PCIe GPU, 1 CPU slot and 4 sticks of RAM (that is, the standard desktop PC).
     
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Feb 2, 2007, 09:16 AM
 
For the money, you're better off building a nice gaming PC and then buying a Mac Mini or iMac. Chances are you'd still be below the price of a Mac Pro and have your games and OSX. That's kind of what I do.
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Ken_F2
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Feb 6, 2007, 04:08 PM
 
A few days ago, I noted that Intel Xeon price cuts were coming on April 22. Today, we learned a few more details about that price drop:
The Quad-Core Xeon X3220 [2.4GHz] is expected to drop from US$851 to US$530, while the X3210 [2.13GHz] will be cut from US$690 to US$423, say the vendors, both decreases of close to 40%. Prices for Dual-Core Xeon 3040, 3050, 3060 and 3070 CPUs are also set to fall between 10-40%, add the sources.
Original source: Intel to cut 1-way server CPU prices in April
     
Simon
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Feb 7, 2007, 03:49 AM
 
It's important to note though that those X30x0 "Xeons are actually rebadged Conroes. And the X32x0 "Xeons" are actually Kentsfield CPUs (basically two Conroe cores on one MCM) rather than Clovertown (the E53xx and X53xx Xeons) CPUs. So while they are called "Xeon" they actually don't support SMP or 1.33 GHz FSBs. They also don't use the LGA 771 socket (Socket J) the Woodcrests use - instead they use LGA 775 (Socket T). Unless Apple is willing to go single CPU or to 1067 MHz FSBs on the MP, these CPUs are of no interest to the MP crowd. And due to the different sockets they are also not drop-in compatible contrary to the Clovertown Xeons which have already been successfully installed in MPs.

Yeah, talk about a mess. Intel really needs to clean up their moronic naming scheme. It's causing more confusion than anything else these days.
     
P
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Feb 8, 2007, 07:23 AM
 
While rumors are notoriously unreliable, current info is that Penryn is a fairly straight dieshrink of Merom. That would be consistent with Intel's current plan to do dieshrinks separately from major core revisions (to avoid debacles like Prescott). Not even SSE4 is confirmed, as far as I know, and in any case it's a smaller revision than Core to Core 2. The big revision is Nehalem, which DOES bring new instructions (currently named NNI, final name not announced) and CSI compability. That one isn't going to be here until the end of 2008 at the earliest.

EDIT: Intel has said that SSE4 will come in Penryn and Nehalem, but not if Penryn includes all of SSE4. Presumably NNI was SSE4, but Intel decided to bring part of it forward when Core 2 went so well.
( Last edited by P; Feb 8, 2007 at 07:59 AM. )
     
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Feb 8, 2007, 08:04 AM
 
Originally Posted by Ken_F2 View Post
The larger cache and improved 64-bit performance (should help Leopard) certainly sound interesting, but what interests me most is SSE4. Intel claims that SSE4 is the largest revamp of SSE ever, even more significant than SSE2, with 50+ new instructions. If Intel is true to its word, vector processing in the Penryn family should finally make Altivec obsolete. I'm anxious to see how fast Apple is able to optimize for it in their OS and applications.
The one part of Altivec that is still better than SSE (as of SSSE3) is that it can take 3 operands. SSE4 has been revealed - it does not include instructions with 3 operands.
     
Catfish_Man
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Feb 8, 2007, 12:07 PM
 
Indeed; SSE4 appears to be continuing Intel's trend of using the SSE name not to introduce Streaming SIMD Enhancements, but rather as a catchall name for various ISA improvements and new instructions targeted at accelerating certain specific tasks. In my case, SSE4 looks vaguely interesting due to the new string manipulation instructions which they claim should speed up compilers, but I wouldn't expect it to be a huge improvement in general.

Core 2 was a huge improvement in vector perf, there's not that much more they can do now without moving to 3 operand instructions so they can add a permute unit and fused multiply-add. Unfortunately, they're almost certainly not going to do that; the cost in front-end complexity would be prohibitive (all the decoders would have to handle 3-operand instructions, they'd probably need an additional cache read port to keep it fed, a bunch of internal data paths would have to be widened, etc...). One thing I've seen speculated about on realworldtech is the possibility of fusing two two-operand instructions into one three-operand instruction (i.e. a multiply and an add into a multiply-add). This would certainly bypass the front end issues nicely, but if I remember correctly the general consensus was that it would be quite difficult for other reasons, and probably not worth it. It also wouldn't remedy the lack of a permute unit.

Overall I would expect the most interesting part of Penryn to be the move to Intel's 45nm process, which they appear to be pleased with to the point of being smug about it. Heavily reduced leakage current is a Good Thing, particularly for laptops, but also in terms of giving it more thermal headroom to increase the clock frequency.
     
Ken_F2
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Feb 9, 2007, 05:43 PM
 
At the last IDF, Intel did say that Penryn would support SSE4 with 50+ new instructions. Thus far, there are only 53 published SSE4 instructions. If there are additional instructions not supported by Penryn, they haven't been announced yet.

Intel recently posted a SSE4 whitepaper in PDF format:

ftp://download.intel.com/technology/...ions-paper.pdf

Introductory quote from the above document:
SSE4 is Intel’s largest ISA extension in terms of scope and impact since SSE2. SSE4 has several compiler vectorization primitives for even greater and more efficient media performance, as well as new and innovative string processing instructions. Beginning with the 45 nm Intel microarchitecture based processors (codenamed Penryn) slated for production in 2007,1 these new instructions will start to appear in most of the volume market segments, including desktop, mobile, and server
     
shabbasuraj
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Feb 20, 2007, 11:16 AM
 
Originally Posted by OtisWild View Post
Meh. Mac Pro == too expensive for normal folks who only need a smokin' PCIe GPU, 1 CPU slot and 4 sticks of RAM (that is, the standard desktop PC).
plus 1.

Apple really has to address this issue somewhow.. by introducing new models and thus driving down the price of its other stuff.

I need, GPU power and disk space, and not so much CPU power...
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