Apple in advanced discussions to adopt AMD chips - Page 10

Yes and I believe that is on a machine that required hard tooling. I'm not saying the Mini Server was a good idea but the point is it was a minor modification to serve a small segment of the Mini clientele.

Loosing ports would be very bad indeed.

I'd like to see the motherboard redesigned anyways. The idea would be to support a real GPU in the machine. Hopefully with the right components we could double GPU performance again and still maintain good battery life. Honestly I'd like to see the motherboard on the left side the drives in the middle and the battery to the right. This would mean one entire side becomes available for I/O, making room for a "card" expansion port, room for the SD slot and maybe even light peak.

Dave

Yeah. The Mac Mini. Less a stop gap. More a door step.

It's nice in person, though. But the entry model is a complete rip off.

Buy an iPad instead.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Somehow, I get the feeling that we're not going to agree on this one, so I'm going to let it go.

That sounds awful...and I say this an owner of a 2007 C2D base model Mini, that I felt was overpriced at the time, but it can at least run full-blown programs.

The iPad is a nice toy IMO, but I just don't see the point of it. But for all its warts, the Mini can still run OSX and almost all programs for it. The iPad just seems like a big version of my iPod Touch.

You have to use an iPad to see the point of it. It's anything but a toy. There's already an accumulating number of heavy hitters in the business world with apps for it.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._hw_2010-04-05

http://www.macpractice.com/mp/ipad/

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...mac_2010-04-06

http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=224600217

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20100427/tc_zd/250376

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363200,00.asp

This is just a little bit.

There's an awful lot of snobbery going around regarding the iPad.

The same thing was said about the Mac for years, and it isn't fully accepted yet.

:o

Lemon Bon Bon.

Dripping with irony from a Mac Mini owner. Give it a Radeon 4850 as a mere £50 upgrade and it would fly. But no...Apple want us to pay £2000 for an entry Mac Pro with a proportionately crapper gpu capabilities.

iPad, a toy?

It's the most affordable and fully featured Mac for 'non Geeks' ever. And unlike the Mini, you get a free keyboard and screen!

Lemon Bon Bon.

What he said.

Lemon Bon Bon.

PS. That 'full acceptance' isn't far away. My school secretary was coo-ing about the 'feel' and 'smell' of a Macbook Pro...that a friend had bought. Er. Yeah.

To clarify, it wasn't long ago that Apple mocked integrated graphics for their inferior capabilities. Offering decent gpus as standard has been an Apple weakness for some years.

From the Mac Pro to the iMac. eg the iMac's top end gpu is the 4850. A budget card these days. And something that should go into the entry model. Let alone the high end model.

And don't get me started on Apple's pretend 'workstation' like with their cutting edge gpus 'as standard.'

If Apple offered decent gpus with their overpriced desktops, it would at least go someway to appeasing the outrageous prices. But more galling it that they don't offer a 'cheap' upgrade to cards that would greatly enhance the mini and iMac range.

If I was an Apple shareholder, I may disagree with what I wrote because Apple are selling premium prices machines...but not all the parts are premium. See use of out of date Core Duo, out of date gpus and offering dual core when quad core was standard ages ago on budget PC machines.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Mind you, if I was a real snob, I might be against the use of AMD chips in Apple machines.

But then, I'd be a hypocrite for lauding the virtues of Intel performance (because I, along with Apple, used to be a PPC spouting fan boy...)

iPad rocks. It is the Mac for the 21st Century. For the 'rest of us.'

Lemon Bon Bon.

I can understand that the iPad will find its use in some domains (healthcare, education and media/publishing come into mind), but for my own personal and professional use any tablet device is just a toy and nothing more. I am not going to buy any unless my needs change.

I assume you're sold your Mac then, now that you have an iPad?

My Mini is a toy too...all I've ever really done with it, is browse the web, check e-mail, and edit some photos. I made the attempt to use it for tasks like Excel, but the SW isn't up to the task, although Pages is decent, although that was mainly to do with the awfulness of Mac Office and Numbers.

I don't just see the point of tablets ATM; I have plenty of devices to browse the web and check my mail with: a PC desktop, laptop, netbook, Mac Mini, iPod Touch, my phone (with mobile hotspot tethering), and my PSP can even get online (although it's painfully slow).

When I was still in school, an e-reader/iPad type device might have been great, but knowing publishers, the digital textbooks would have been just as expensive, and I would have lost out on the resale value that selling back textbooks brings.

For typing notes, I don't think it would have been as useful as my laptop was at the time; I was a heavy OneNote user, and from what I've read about the iPad dock/KB, it only works in portrait mode, doesn't fold flat, doesn't work with the Apple-designed iPad case, and basically reminds people, the BT KB would be a better option.

I can see uses of tablets in certain markets, I just don't fall into any of those, and I don't want another device, to sit on my ass, browse the web, check my mail, and run some other apps. It's just a big iPod Touch to me, with some expanded features. Great for content consumption, specific needs and limitations for creation, and if anyone ever complains, they just say it's not a computer, it's a paradigm shift or something (a actual point another poster made, when someone else wondered why the iPad couldn't save PDFs from within Safari), which I think is a legitimate use of the device.

Without stating your personal and professional needs, it's hard to judge from anyone else's perspective. Of course, it's your business to keep to yourself. But when people make statements without letting us know specifically why, it's pretty meaningless, and I say that without making it an insult.

I've had plenty of people over the years tell me the same thing about Macs, but when I knew what their needs were, most of the time, I could make a good case for switching over, and more than a few did. That doesn't mean that in your case it would be true for a tablet, but at some point, it might.

Of course, the iPad is still very new. When personal computers were very new, almost no one thought they were of any use to them either.

So then, we can assume that you've used an iPad enough by this time to know all of this about it? Or are you just saying it without any actual decent hands on experience?

Yet, with my life and professional experience at my age, I keep the right to know what fits my personal needs and what not. Tablets are just out of the question.

Ok. You don't have to be forthcoming. It's just not helping the conversation overall.

Especially considering all the limitations iPad brings to the game. Personally I find the device extremely frustrating because I could see the device being useful for me personally and even at work if it wasn't so limited. What are some of the limitations I see, well:

1. The lack of RAM is huge as it impacts personal use and also business use. Especially if you want to write custom software for the unit.
2. The lack of a built in scripting platform, either Python or Ruby. Or something else, it doesn't really matter as long as it has Apple behind it. This would vastly expand the business use possibilities.
3. While likely unneeded and unwanted by personal users, multiple accounts would be very useful for business users.
4. Lets face it IPhone 3.2 is an interim OS, however we don't know what 4.0 will look like on iPad especially with respect to memory usage.
5. While it is easy to end up blinded by the glowing reports, iPad is not a performance power house. Any app that stresses a desktop app will be truely wanting on iPad. The next gen iPad is likely to be much faster but I don't expect the gap to ever truely close.

Those are considerations off the top of my head. If any of the above are important to somebody then the iPad is a bad choice. It doesn't really matter if it feels great or is "magical" if it can't yet do what you need done then it is a poor investment. I know current owners take that personally but they really shouldn't. It is great that iPad works really well for so many but many isn't all.

Oh the constant responses that ask have you used one are meaningless. Especially to a professional with a well managed work flow.


Dave

I think apple would pay 15,4 to 17 bln for AMD. I i think it will be in the next time.

You obviously haven't read any of the links I posted, or any articles about the iPad in business.

There's one on the AMD website.



These size comparisons counts the L2 cache for Westmere/SB, which is included in some measurements and not included in others.


Anyone think that's why the Mac Pro update is "late"? Maybe they considered Westmere but then went to Magny-Cours. I don't think that's the case, but it just sneaked into my mind.

What I like the most about Magny-Cours is that they give a large performance increase over its predecessors without switching to a new process or using a new microarchitecture, but from their design decisions which are primarily outside of the chip itself.


There are 95 W 6-core Thubans so it's possible with AMD now. With Intel, the B2 socket variants (Bloomfield/Gulftown successor) is to be 95/80/<80 W, so seeing 8 cores for 95 W is quite good.

Patience Dave. All things in time.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Sure, the Pro is late. But so are Intel.

Intel say back end of June-ish. So I guess if we're lucky, we can see a Mac Pro then. Hopefully with an out of date gpu as standard. Sorry. Freudian slip.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Don't get my hopes up. It sounds tantalising, no? Using AMD chips in this context could really make Apple's over priced desktop line come back to reality. Paying anymore than £1500 for a glorified quad tower with a naff gpu doesn't make sense to me. And that's where AMD's price points maybe able to help give us consumers a deal and still give Apple some margins. Poor Apple, how do they survive?

Lemon Bon Bon.

We also have to consider that except for the Mac Pro*, the Macs aren't using the fastest (or close) CPUs in the respective CPU lineups. The restrictions on more powerful CPUs in those Macs seem to be TDP and price. So if AMD can be competitive on performance/W and performance/$, then it may make more sense to use AMD for much of the Mac lineup.

And that's not even considering Fusion.

Also while Magny-Cours lack in clock speed compared to Gulftown, they make up for it in core counts. Magny-Cours has 2x the core count of a similarly priced Gulftown, 3x for some price points.

* Well, not quite, but it's closer than with the other Macs.

Exactly!!!!! All this immature whining about Apple and the lack of new Mac Pros is BS because suitable hardware for a worthwhile revision simply isn't available from Apples suppliers. Apple can't build a new Mac Pro out of Air. Speaking of which much the same can be said about AIR the MacBook, to really upgrade Apple needs new chips which aren't available yet.

GPUs sigh! Maybe Apple can do better this time in it's "Pro" machine.



Dave

I thought that was the whole point of the Appleinsider forums?

Lemon Bon Bon.

That's not the point, but that is often the end result. Bring a screaming baby to any intelligent debate and the crying will drown out any valid arguments. Unfortunately for internet forums it's hard to get the babies to leave.

Weren't they supposed to be using the 6-core 5600-series Gulftown/Westmere-EP Xeons that came out 7 weeks ago?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03...n_5600_launch/

I don't think there's another chip they have to wait for. Engadget asked Intel what was up and they replied that 'Apple call their own shots'. We just have to wait and see I guess. EDIT: seems Intel might just have shortages of the chips.

They could consider a switch to Magny Cours:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2978/a...-6-core-xeon/1

"The 4000 series will be aggressively priced, but the price for the 6000 price will be the same for a 2P or a 4P processor. AMD’s price is $1,386 while Intel’s 2P costs $1,633 and $3,600 for 4P systems. Said Fruehe."

http://www.techeye.net/chips/amd-cla...intel-on-price

Intel have some aggressive pricing on their 8-core 7550 but it draws a lot of power. Plus, although benchmarks show the Intel coming out on top, it's often in benchmarks where Windows isn't optimizing the processing. Apple's developments should max out all the cores much better and it will draw less power.

AMD said their 12-core could get away with between 80-115W.

http://blogs.amd.com/work/tag/magny-cours/

"In each case, AMD is saving you about $2,000 in what we consider unnecessary “taxes.” You shouldn’t have to pay a premium when buying 4P capable processors, so we’re changing that."

But that price difference only really matters in a server, not a workstation. Apple were also supposed to be going with the 6-core Xeon, which costs $1440 and compared to the AMD equivalent - the Opteron 6174 12-core at $1165, you save about $275 per processor by going with AMD.

So a 24-core AMD Mac Pro with the 6174 would be $550 cheaper than the 12-core X5670 Xeon. Problem is, it might be significantly slower in real world testing and draw the same power as even the 5650 beats it and only costs $996:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...5650-review/11

The Cinebench time for the Intel came out 50% faster than AMD. So Intel is actually faster and cheaper here.


If they go AMD, it will be interesting if they stick with NVidia for the GPU or go all AMD/ATI. I think they make the right decision with the GPUs, all that would happen with better ones is they jack up the entry price again. The cost in the machine comes from the high-end server chips.

EDIT: The other point made earlier about price and the Mac Pro being $1400 cheaper, that was confusing the desktop/server issue *smacks forehead*. The cheaper AMD chips are desktop chips, not server ones so you can't have a dual processor model. That Phenom chip really affects the iMac, which has the quad i7 just now and could go to a 6-core Phenom II. The Mac Pro won't benefit from going AMD unless Apple decide to stop making it the highest end workstation they can build and instead a better value desktop that people can actually afford. But they won't.

Phenom II scores 18000 on Cinebench vs 12-core Xeon 5650 scoring 32000. If they made a more compact Mac Pro and not have the option for dual CPU. I'll buy two or more of 'em if I need a render farm and that way each process gets more RAM.

Right now, the 8-core Nehalem 2.93 gets just over 25000 in Cinebench and the 8-core 2.26GHz 18000, same as the 6-core Phenom. The 2.26GHz Xeon is priced at $276 though and you buy two vs a single Phenom at $295 so you'd save some money making a desktop version of the Mac Pro but nowhere near $1400. It's about $250 less and then you lose the upgrade path.

To cut a long story short:
- Intel chips are still the fastest and they aren't actually all that expensive vs AMD for Apple's purposes
- Intel have shortages in their supplies so Apple will have to wait a few months just like with the MBPs
- AMD offer attractive options but none compelling enough for Apple to switch, it would basically be a side-step, maybe lower a few prices here and there and get round the Intel/NVidia issues
- anything AMD-related will probably be for 2011, so nothing to bother about now

Maybe that's it, or maybe the speed bump over the current design isn't enough to warrant the update. Apple's isn't like other OEMs trying to use every available chip design in their products. often market their new generation based on the performance of their previous generation.

http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html What is next in Intel's workstation line?

Hopefully, Apple will use AMD processors in the Mac mini in its next update. Apple could treat us right and use a mobile Phenom II X2 N620 (2.8 GHz) as the base CPU while offering the X3 N830 (2.1 GHz) and X4 N930 (2.0 GHz) as CTO options. If only one will be offered then it should be the X4 N930. Apple can then pair it up with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 GPU

Magny-Cours? This will be same as going with i7 980X? ( in terms of price).

I would be happy with 2X AMD 1055T/1090T starting price of $1299 option. Magny or i7 980x system will easily bump the starting price at $1999.

I think 2X 1090T may beat 1X Magny and may even take away some bench trophy from 2X Magny system due to low speed of 2.2Ghz.

I mentioned the sad state of the GPU offerings earlier, I still believe this is a serious issue for a machine marketed to the "Pro" market. A high performance GPU obviously isn't needed in the base machine but the lack of an Apple supported high performance option.

In other words Apple needs to market at least one machine that provides state of the art performance for its OpenCL initiatives. Not to mention the other high performance computing markets. HPC isn't a huge market but it is certainly as large as others that Apple targets with the Mac Pro.

Frankly the Mac Pro is the only machine where I find Apples GPU marketing to be a bit strange. In the context of this thread, and the speculation around AMD, one needs to wonder if Apple even has enough sales to justify the Mac Pros existance. An obvious high performance machine from Apple might drive the Pros sales, but Apple seems ignore its own initiatives that leverage the GPU. It is no longer a CPU centric world anymore, adding six cores is nothing like adding 500; at least for apps that can use them.



Dave

AMD in 2010 is nothing special and likely wouldn't be worth the effort (IMO). AMD is basically betting the company on their 2011 products. Bulldozer has to hit on time, Bobcat has to get some market and Fusion has to own it's segment as well.

I think Apple, if they go with AMD, will be going with Llano. It makes sense. If Llano was available today Apple would have never had to go with the Core 2 Duo in the Macbook Pro 13(again) because they didn't want crappy graphics.

Llano will have a 32nm CPU and GPU on die that supports DirectX 11 (which means it should support OpenGL 4 fully in the future). This is PERFECT for the Mac mini and entry level Macbook. Apple can then test out Bulldozer and see if it's worth carrying in the Enthusiast and Pro Workstation markets later in the year.

The desktop isn't dead but the days of people spending $3000 on a workstation for home probably are. It's time to bring the pricing down to under $2000 for people that want a bit of expandability versus the $2500 we have today.

That's right but you can't do that. You can't put two Phenom II chips on a board. This is the same thing with the Intel chips. The desktop chips are much cheaper than the server chips but they don't let you put more than one on a motherboard. When you go into that territory, you need to buy server chips with a different board and up goes the price.


You can buy other cards for it that Apple don't sell BTO:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product...or_mac_us.html

but I agree they advertise graphics capability way more than they deliver. Almost to the extent that their marketing department doesn't know what they're talking about and just like using superlatives.

The Fermi GPUs for double precision computation are only just shipping though:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...upermicro_gpu/

448 cores but very expensive. OpenCL is new and like SSD will take time to filter in. There's no point in buying expensive GPUs if you can't use them, it's better buying lower end ones, get the software to a point where you know you need better hardware and then upgrade.

When fundamental software like Quicktime encoding is done entirely with OpenCL then there will be a big push to get better GPUs.

I actually see AMD as being more innovative than Intel with their new products. That at both ends of the performance spectrum. The only problem or concern i have is will Fusion deliver the performance and core counts Apple needs.

At the high end Bulldozer is very interesting and can almost be described as a core and a half. For some workloads, especially servers it ought to be very impressive. On a Mac though I suspect it will depend upon the apps use of floating point.

Well I'm taking a wait and see with respect to performance. Liano simply might not be "Pro" material. If not it will enable Apple to deliver other innovative products.

The potential in the Mini is excellent. I do wish it had more cores but considering how low end the Minis performance is now they might get a good boost in performance.

As to testing out chips I suspect Apple would have samples already. The meetings with AMD might indicate a successful design in already.

With iPad I actually see the possibility of people moving back to desktop machines instead of trying to make a laptop do double duty. This is why I think the time is ripe for an XMac. Beyound the obvious performance gap between the Mini and the Mac Pro there could be a significant shift in market dynamics as tablets replace laptops for many uses.

With the obvious stagnation in the economy pricing is a concern and will be for at least a couple of more years. Honestly though I don't think that will be a big driver for Apple. The big advantage that AMD will provide is the ability to smartly fill out the product line up. For example Lliano in a Mac Book is smart in that it allows for the low power requirements and performance while letting Apple deliver a lower cost machine.

It also allows Apple to address Intels artificial lockout of NVidia. This is probably a bigger concern to Apple than anything because Intel is screwing with initiatives Apple has spent a lot of time and money on. In effect Apple may implement an AMD chip or two to simply send Intel a message.


Dave