New Intel Sandy Bridge Xeon chips available for potential Mac Pro update - Page 2

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I don't think the real question is about the right Mac Pro, but the right Mac. Except for drives and maybe extreme IO, there isn't as much need for pros to have a tower computer as there was.



That's probably where Apple is going. I'm thinking of buying an iMac soon to replace my workstation tower for CAD CAM work. For the pro market, I think that or a laptop, pros have been using laptops for a decade now for their mobile activities anyway, and now there are quad core options.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Bullseye on both points.

As for your second point. It was pretty interesting when I attended a '3D Class' around eight years ago. Lots of '1 gighz' PEE CEE 'workstations'... One day, this girl came in with a 'PowerBook' (as they were then...I think...) and ran the 3D program in question much faster and rendered much faster than the desktops! I couldn't believe (at the time) how quick it was to model and render on the laptop.

Not so long ago, Apple boasted that the G5 could handle audio this and Photoshop actions that in x seconds...and do Mathematica algorithms twice as fast as a Pentium 4 etc.

Today. Many years after the transition to Intel...we have machines that can blitz G5s to melted marshmallows...in laptops and desktops from consumer to prosumer.

For a majority of creative types, I'd guess a quad core i7 with 4-8 gigs of ram with a reasonably recent GPU is more than enough.

You're paying an awful lot extra for that 2nd socket when maybe a Raid and more memory may better serve you.

By the time you get 6 and 8 core iMacs (who knows..?) in the next few years with even more ram and who knows what else...maybe even bigger screens to create an iMac Pro (you never know...

...it's not like the quad or 6 core Pro shames the iMac in any way. The iMac i7 quad core was all over the six core Pro in Aftereffects (a program that is apparently hard going?)

Apple have just sheared the laptop line to two models.

This makes the desktop line all the more bemusing. 3 desktop models when you're selling millions more laptops? Surely by the laptop reckoning, a desktop model gets dropped.

I'm not sure why Apple intro'd the Mini at all in retrospect. (An almost good idea when it was about £395...but it's very pricey now with no monitor, keyboard etc.) They'd have been better served by driving the iMac down to the £595 entry level mark. (They got close with £695 before the ginormous 2008 HIKE!) And drove the Pro down to £995 to £2000 single cpu topping out at dual cpu at the top end. Two models. Job done.

As it is...the desktop line seems neither one thing nor the other.

If we cast our minds back. The iMac started off as the 'entry' machine. The Pro had the upper end. They tried (and failed) to put the Cube in the middle. (What they did was have a more limited machine at the same price as the Pro. Big mistake.)

Still. I don't mind the top end iMac now. With a 27 inch monitor and a decent GPU and an i7 it's a whole new ball game.

I think Jeff is on the money re: Apple's direction.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.


Mabe that is their direction but the failure of the desktop line has more to do with the hardware than many are willing to accept. Apple created this situation through neglect and a gross misunderstanding of why people buy desktops in the first place. Apple may very well ride the mobile wave but they are passing up on a huge amount of opportunity.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Bullseye on both points.

As for your second point. It was pretty interesting when I attended a '3D Class' around eight years ago. Lots of '1 gighz' PEE CEE 'workstations'... One day, this girl came in with a 'PowerBook' (as they were then...I think...) and ran the 3D program in question much faster and rendered much faster than the desktops! I couldn't believe (at the time) how quick it was to model and render on the laptop.

Not so long ago, Apple boasted that the G5 could handle audio this and Photoshop actions that in x seconds...and do Mathematica algorithms twice as fast as a Pentium 4 etc.

Today. Many years after the transition to Intel...we have machines that can blitz G5s to melted marshmallows...in laptops and desktops from consumer to prosumer.

For a majority of creative types, I'd guess a quad core i7 with 4-8 gigs of ram with a reasonably recent GPU is more than enough.

You're paying an awful lot extra for that 2nd socket when maybe a Raid and more memory may better serve you.

Originally Posted by tipoo

I miss groundbreaking stuff like this in the Pro (well, it was the Power Mac then)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AACv...eature=related

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

For a majority of creative types, I'd guess a quad core i7 with 4-8 gigs of ram with a reasonably recent GPU is more than enough.

Originally Posted by wizard69

That really depends upon how you classify creative types. Somebody doing research into genetics or new drugs may very well find such a machine only suitable as a terminal.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Depends on how much they need. iMacs 2010 and later can use 32 gigs of RAM. A 16GB RAM kit costs $95 at OWC, there's little excuse to make do with less if there is any memory constraint at all. I'm curious if such specialized scientific software is even available for Macs. I would bet that the cost of the software is much higher than the hardware needed to run it.

Originally Posted by wizard69

Back then PowerPC really did have a few advantages over the i86 world. Well at least for specific genre of software.

There is still bleeding edge software that will challenge any hardware you through at it. Just because an architecture handles yesterday's tasks very well doesn't mean it is suitable for tomorrows.

That really depends upon how you classify creative types. Somebody doing research into genetics or new drugs may very well find such a machine only suitable as a terminal.

Or faster I/O to secondary storage. This is a significant shortcoming these days and is why I would love to see Apple address this in the Pros replacement in a forward looking way. SATA really should be looked at as end of life for boot/app drives.

It really doesn't matter how many cores Apple puts into the iMac, if you can't configure it to your needs it is the wrong machine.

IMacs shame is its lack of configurability, terrible serviceability and the built in screen.

The Mac Pro hardly qualifies as a desktop in most peoples minds. The iMac is in a category all of its own so all Apple really has is the Mini for a desktop solution. Now don't get me wrong the Mini is excellent for what it is, but many find it very constrained. So really they have one desktop machine.

As to portables I think your counts are way off. They have the laptops, iPads and other iOS devices.

Mini pricing is perplexing but if you judge it against other laptops using the same technology it isn't that bad. Yes I said laptops as that is the hardware it is built with.

Sadly it looks like AMD missed its chance to put Fusion into the Mini, that would have allowed for better pricing and actually better performance for many users. This based upon the signifance of GPU hardware in supporting modern user needs.

Apple never seems to learn. The debut of the Cube was a huge disappointment for me back then. In the end it kept me out of the fold for a number of years.

If it serves your needs go for it. I just think far to many iMac sales are due to people being disappointed with everything else Apple offers. Apples sales of desktops is absolutely flat in the USA which to me is a sign that the halo effect is wearing off. It is a WTF moment for many desktop shoppers.


Mabe that is their direction but the failure of the desktop line has more to do with the hardware than many are willing to accept. Apple created this situation through neglect and a gross misunderstanding of why people buy desktops in the first place. Apple may very well ride the mobile wave but they are passing up on a huge amount of opportunity.

Originally Posted by hmm

I think they're just taking whatever sells well and riding it as far as possible. Keeping a lot of cash on hand means they can buy into other things if necessary. The goal seems to be to make the lives of people revolve around Apple products wherever possible. They sell devices that aren't really interchangeable with non Apple products thus limiting choice once you start to integrate Apple products so it becomes a matter of what fits best within the product array provided by a single company. It's actually pretty incredible how well they've done. I don't spite them for that. They claim to want to focus on product lines where they feel they can make a difference which is really just corporate rhetoric. They have a number of mature product lines with good followings. These should see proper updates, and we need some machines that are competitive in terms of offering the best possible hardware rather than only what people on here feel is good enough for the mainstream consumer. The laptop gpu thing seems to be a sticky issue as killing that in favor of intel's offerings just to thin out hardware would alienate many different groups of users and leave them without a lot of differentiation between their two laptop categories.



I've tried to explain some of this before. Claims of performance under the G5 were greatly overstated just like all of the 64 bit garbage and about how much ram it could effectively use. Apple was just holding onto markets there that it had owned for years. The photoshop actions thing was a lie. Perhaps they were testing against earlier Pentium 4s that were lacking in ram.

On ram you're kind of mistaken here, but it's a common mistake. OSX and Windows can both operate with a sub optimal amount of ram. A lot of applications were bumping up against the 32 bit wall for years, which meant that you ensured your workflow worked within its limits whether that meant turning things off, using raid or at least fast drives with minimal excess data for boot volumes or scratch disks, or whatever else. Given the current cost of ram, it's easier just to load it up and let the system handle as much as possible within ram rather than swap space. You also don't have to make quite as much effort to manage your settings in many applications. Photoshop is one where in the next version the potential ceiling could raise again if they assign more functions to 32 bit as they did with 16 long ago. If you're working with mixtures of photographic and cg output, 32 bit floating point formats can be quite advantageous given the extreme range that they can hold. It's not that you see all of it simultaneously. It's simply there if you need it, and it's excellent for compositing. Nuke is still way ahead of them in that regard. I don't use it (I wouldn't get enough use out of it to justify the $5k or so), but I still wish Adobe was more like The Foundry in terms of adding powerful features .

On the topic of 3d I'm not sure what application you were using. Many of them ran primarily under Windows or Linux with the OSX releases prior to the Intel transition having been really gutted comparatively. I owned a powerbook too. They were not powerful. They were terribly slow. The core2 duo macbook pros were the point where it felt like laptops were starting to keep up with the push for power from software. Even then the integrated gpu models were too slow in anything requiring OpenGL.

3d is an area that's actually evolved quite a bit with machine hardware. Since I mentioned the previous 32 bit limit, consider that meant much more restrictive polycounts or texture resolutions. Many things that had to be mapped years ago can be represented by geometry today. Scanline as a general concept looks like it's going to fade out from rendering. There's still a lot to be said for efficiency, but that's an area where the advancements in computer hardware change the way people are able to work. That's a point that's commonly misunderstood especially when it comes to topics like how long people own a desktop or workstation. If they make a living from it, a new purchase is typically made when it allows them a smoother workflow or the new software with whatever settings won't run on the old one. A 20% change in benchmarks doesn't always mean much of anything. It can be a lot of things. It could be a gpu requirement in terms of what supports a certain OpenGL version or Mercury playback in the case of NVidia. It could be that you want more cpu power because the old one is starting to choke. It could be ram because you're tired of hiding things and closing out applications to ensure that everything runs stable. I think you need to consider the difference between can run on and runs smoothly on. They can be quite different in specs. A macbook pro isn't necessarily that bad in terms of cpu power. I can still choke the gpus, and (many) previous Apple laptop issues make me concerned about trusting one as a primary machine.

Anyway I'd still like to know what program it was. I can't think of any that ran better on a powerbook than Windows, even if the powerbook was newer than the Windows box. I'm not sure if you realize just how much of that was unavailable on the mac prior to the intel transition including many things that only ported basic versions.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Pros have been using laptops for a decade now for their mobile activities anyway, and now there are quad core options, and pretty soon enough, hexacore, etc.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

'Typical' PC Gamer Tower types I've spoken to...an ex-friend of mine seems to find the iMac limiting.

Shrugs.*

He's paid a total of £2700 to keep his i7 tower up to date...with another GPU purchase. Uses it for gaming.

Might as well have got a HD tv and PS3. My mileage. And a top end iMac with dual boot into Windows. Far better value all round.

Especially if you're putting the latest gpu through a tiny 20 inch monitor. Doesn't make sense to me.

Desktops. You pay the Apple premium due to the fact that Apple 'lost' the desktop wars. But with Airs and iOS devices, Apple have got in first, bought up all the components and are showing how to fight the fight on a new battle field. They're winning. Handsomely.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

I'd argue all Apple's machines have a lack of configurability. But that's how they do things from top to bottom. Even the Pro (purportedly an expansive machine...) but the GPU might as well be soldered onto the M/Board for all the good it does. You have 'standard' average card or a premiumly priced card version of the PC market. Whhooop. That's some choice.

Give the iMac a Raid and some more ram and it thumps the 4/6 core models for value and performance.

Sales of desktops flat? *Shrugs. By what metric? Apple sold 4 million laptops because that's the way things are going.

Those are Apple sales. 1 million desktops. If most of those are iMacs it's doing pretty well historically compared to the 'Candy' iMac's Halo High. How many Minis sold? Pros? If they got 250K sold between them they've done well. Apple don't do break outs. But if they iMac sold 650-750k it's doing very well for a single desktop/model.

What did the 'Candy' iMac sell at it's peak in any given quarter? 544k? Back when Apple well selling 1 million units per quarter (or less!) that was good then. The market has changed greatly since then in terms of portability vs desktop.

Factor in that the price of the mini and it's improvements (in my eyes...) were relatively modest. Same for the iMac bar the top end model (which took me by surprise.)

Mini vs laptop? May as well get entry Air.

All the people I know who have the iMac love it. Any Pro user paying for a dual processor model for nearly £3000 may not see it that way. But that fact is the iMac is no longer the 13 inch Candy iMac. I think the screen is good. Sure, it's not quite as subtle as my old CRT Trinitron but it's good for an LED. Sure, you can pay a fortune for a screen. And if you have your own screen you're limited to a Mac Mini, Laptop or a Pro. I see the argument for an x-Mac. Nobody was more disappointed that the Cube 'got it wrong' (Apple Hubris moment...) than me...but I don't see the evidence that a separate desktop will be added to 3 models of desktop.

4 desktops? Not happening. My numbers aren't off. Apple have shaved the laptop line to Pro and Air. They've canned the Macbook entry model. As far as Macs go. Two portable lines.

Augmented by the iOS devices.

Desktop. It's a little odd to have 3 models. But I can't see them dropping the Mini. The iMac. They're getting most desktop sales from there. I no longer see the 'built in' screen as any more of a problem than it would be for a laptop. It's been fine. 24 inch model took a while to adjust to. Massive. I never liked the look of a lot of ugly 3rd party monitors really. Apple are about the whole widget. Most of their kit from laptop to iOS include a screen. The Mini and Pro do not. A minority....with diminutive sales. Yes. It's a bitch to get into. So is an iPhone. So is a laptop. Apple want you to buy new kit. It's not as if the original Mac was hyper accessible? Most towers are crap inside compared to the state of the art Pro.

As for configure. To what? I can add a Raid and a decent 2 gig Vram GPU with 16 gigs of ram. I don't see any shame in that. It's not like the Pro, the Mini or the Laptops have a vast array of options at Apple.

It leaves us with what they are going to do to inject life into the Pro. Price. Redesign.

Can't wait until Apple updates the Mac line. I hope the Pro drops 1st. I want to see what they're going to do.

The Mini had the 'shroud' of death rumour around it. But it got a tweaked design with thunderbolt and an i7 option. Much better than was.

AMD? They seem to have signalled they're going to entry the ultra mobile space. Expect reasonably competitive desktop cpus cheaper...but beat Intel? I doubt it anymore. They've taken a beating since Core Duo/2/i7 onwards. Recent desktop benches show promise. But they haven't stormed ahead. And Ivy bridge is yet to hit. The GPUs are very competitive. The Fusion seems reasonable. Will they get Apple's business? Doubt it. Never say never, I guess.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Bullseye on both points.

As for your second point. It was pretty interesting when I attended a '3D Class' around eight years ago. Lots of '1 gighz' PEE CEE 'workstations'... One day, this girl came in with a 'PowerBook' (as they were then...I think...) and ran the 3D program in question much faster and rendered much faster than the desktops! I couldn't believe (at the time) how quick it was to model and render on the laptop.

Not so long ago, Apple boasted that the G5 could handle audio this and Photoshop actions that in x seconds...and do Mathematica algorithms twice as fast as a Pentium 4 etc.

Today. Many years after the transition to Intel...we have machines that can blitz G5s to melted marshmallows...in laptops and desktops from consumer to prosumer.

For a majority of creative types, I'd guess a quad core i7 with 4-8 gigs of ram with a reasonably recent GPU is more than enough.

You're paying an awful lot extra for that 2nd socket when maybe a Raid and more memory may better serve you.

By the time you get 6 and 8 core iMacs (who knows..?) in the next few years with even more ram and who knows what else...maybe even bigger screens to create an iMac Pro (you never know...

...it's not like the quad or 6 core Pro shames the iMac in any way. The iMac i7 quad core was all over the six core Pro in Aftereffects (a program that is apparently hard going?)

Originally Posted by Haggar

The latest Intel Xeon processors have up to 10 physical cores. Pros may do graphic design work on laptops, but the heavy 3D rendering is done on desktop towers or rack mounted servers. If running Handbrake for 10 minutes causes a MacBook Pro to heat up and the fans to run loudly at full speed, what chance does it have at running rendering and computation jobs that take a week or longer to complete?

Now that Mac OS Lion and Lion Server are supported under virtualization, I would like to see Apple start making 2U or even 3U rack mounted servers with dual or even quad 10 core processors. They should also make a deal with VMware to bring ESXi and all the admin tools to the Mac. Mac users in many companies are already demanding native Mac versions of VMware admin tools such as Vshpere Client to manage their VMware servers and clusters, but VMware has been unresponsive. The situation could improve if Apple stepped in.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.


I remember the program. Lightwave. And yes. Before you chirp in...the Mac version has perhaps been behind the PC version (just like Mac Maya lagged to some degree...) But shrugs* again. During the dark G4 mhz years...was there anybody left that didn't storm for the exit when Apple was in trouble?

There's still Mac 3D people. Still Mac Photoshop users. Final Cut users. How big the rump is? Depends on how you see the creative market. Does that count everyone from the Mini to the Pro? On Laptops as well? Just Pro buyers?

Just those who can buy super duper 'Photoshop' from another company software at the Houdini/Xsi/Maya high end?

As per the quote. The 3D course had workstations that were a few years old. Verses a G4 1 gig plus (1.4 gig G4 I think...) The 'workstations' had little ram relative to these days, poor screen update (relatively weak GPU) and the renders took ages. The PB G4 smashed them. Sure it wasn't a level playing field. Is it ever? Sure, my example is anecdotal. And I had to go home to a 'so-so' Athlon PC to continue my homework on. The kit was old on the course. Or wasn't brand new. But computers age badly. Ergo buy a new iMac every 3 years and I'll be happy. My needs aren't your needs.

I remember being at the Bournemouth NCCA for 3D in 2000/2001. Dual Pentium 500s/1 gig Pentiums. My Athlon was 800 mhz at the time. Cost me £2k. About. Xsi. In Beta. The course leaders plumped for that vs Maya. The students on the Programmers course got Maya. Learning 3D has never come naturally to me. I like Lightwave though. My needs can't justify a £3-4k Mac Pro that will do the render in a minute less. I don't need to render things over a week. Apple do offer a top end iMac now that more than gives me what I want due to the fact they priced the Pro insanely wiht each revision over the last ten years (and no doubt pushed more of the faithful pros over to the dark side.)

I take your point that 3D is on another planet right now. But how concerned are Apple with that market or ever have been? Mac Render farms? Look at Apple and Open GL cards vs PC Open GL cards?

Wizard's frustration is palpable and I have some sympathy with him. At least historically. But if you gave me a fully loaded iMac i7 8 gigs of ram and 2 gigs of Vram I'd be in heaven. It's telling that Apple are now able to offer such a high end iMac. Maybe that fits 'most' of their creative demographic now. Ball park 650-750k iMacs sold vs 50k Pros? (Just guessing.)

(Maybe the Pro has a dam bursting surge of Pros buyers waiting for Sandy Bridge?)

My point being. There's an uber duber high end that Apple doesn't seem overly concerned about. Sure. Intel have sat Sandy Bridge. But Apple could have offered more ram, better gpus as standard, given us a more compact pro with better value but no. It languished for the want of a cpu for almost 2 years? Year and a half? After that sort of treatment to it's 'Pro' customers I'd be surprised if there are still lights on in the building.

I admire people for their loyalty.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Yes, Apple hasn't cared much about desktop games in a decade, it's always been a different market segment. Especially as that's the last refuge of computer users that still assemble their computers from interchangeable parts. I don't think a PS3 can compare with a computer rig these days. PCs can be hooked up to TVs, so I don't know why anyone would stick with a 20" screen for games.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.


By the time the iPad3 hits and certainly with a 'Rogue' powered iPad4 I doubt the 'casual' gamer will care much for PC tower rigs or PS4s. (Though 'some' might. There will still be a market for consoles. Just like there's a market for PS Vitas or 3DSs, right? )

Originally Posted by tipoo

Haven't we heard that before? Consoles and especially PCs will always be a few steps ahead of handheld devices. Maybe with the iPad 4 you'll be able to get titles as good in quality as PS360 games. You'll still be controlls limited as I mentioned before, but ok, say Apple allows a third party controller. But then, console and PC hardware will have jumped ahead too. The developers of this demo say its possible only on 2 terraflop + cards (for reference, the 7970 is over 3tf):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXyztq_0uM

Each successive generation of consoles has enjoyed bigger revenues and a bigger pool of consumers, I doubt the next will be different.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

The x-Mac seems obvious. So why don't Apple want to build one? It makes them more like PC Towers. They're moving away from that.
It's like the classic side on Dell tower vs iMac picture. Wires. Not wires. And that was years ago.

Originally Posted by MacTac

And yet Apple making things smaller and smaller and removing internal devices force Apple users to purchase external devices and deal with wires. That is why an XMac with a little bit of internal expansion room that isn't near as big as the Mac Pro makes so much sense.

Originally Posted by wizard69

When everyday goes about dismissing XMac they do so in terms of a PC tower. This is not what XMac is or would be if realized in hardware. The PC tower is pretty much a dead end for the same reason the Mac Pro is, you just don't need all that space to make a decent high performance machine. In fact with the advent of SoC technology which Ivy Bridge closely approximates you can drastically shrink a PC.

Look at another way, the Mini is a good example of what can be done with todays much higher integration devices but is a bad example for other reasons. Those are mostly serviceability and configurability issues. Take the concept of the Mini, scale it up to use faster processors and allow for more RAM expansion, easy access disk / SSD bays, a respectable GPU and a slot or two, you are then well on your way to an XMac. The reality is the tower architecture of the pass isn't really optimal for deliver or computing hardware in the future. There is to much space dedicated to legacy components that where left behind years ago by Apple.

Originally Posted by hmm

This is something I didn't understand with Apple. They scaled the mini down in its last design revision rather than beefing up the components. I tend to wonder if they simply didn't see a lot of growth opportunity there. I'm not debating whether or not it is there, but more their opinion on the matter.

Originally Posted by wizard69

One thing I'm certain of is that the Mini could be a lot more than what it is for the price considering what they can do with the AIR. Again it comes around to Apple shooting themselves in the foot with respect to the desktop lineup. They simply don't delver the goods the way they do with the laptops. Frankly there won't be any growth with the Mini nor any other Apple desktop if it is pretty obvious that you actually get much more with the laptop machines. I really don't get this as the desktops ought to be a snap to manufacture and design.

Originally Posted by wizard69

When everyday goes about dismissing XMac they do so in terms of a PC tower. This is not what XMac is or would be if realized in hardware. The PC tower is pretty much a dead end for the same reason the Mac Pro is, you just don't need all that space to make a decent high performance machine.