Wher are the new Max Pros????

No idea. Apple sells a Mac Pro, though.


That's a pretty funny statement, I gotta tell you.


In "your industry", you buy what's available exactly when it's available because you can't afford to wait. That's what I've always heard from the heavy-end Mac Pro users. So I don't really see how you're waiting.

Blame Intel for the 518 days between Mac Pro releases.

Your last post was in 2008, you seem to have been waiting quite a while. Finally cracked under the strain. Apple does it on purpose just so you are desperate enough you'll take anything they offer, like last year's chip architecture.


Is there anything better available on the other side? They seem to be using the same chips as Apple. There is the X5680 vs the Mac Pro X5670 but the Mac Pro seems to hold its own for rendering:

http://www.cbscores.com/

14th place and anything noticeably faster is hugely overclocked. Still the same line of CPUs though.


I don't know what Intel is playing at with these chips. They are releasing Sandy Bridge E5 Xeon chips this year when Ivy Bridge CPUs are coming out. I don't know why anybody would even bother with the Sandy Bridge ones. If you want a $6,000 workstation, you don't exactly want last year's tech.

Anyway, the E5 Xeons are ready to go so if there is an update, it will be any day now:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...channel-boston

It's probably going to be the most disappointing update in computer history. Nearly 2 years and it's just Sandy Bridge with maybe up to 8-cores per chip so 16-core/32-thread at the top end. It'll be a 30-50% boost over the last one (Xeon has no respect for Moore and his laws). It would probably have been better buying another 6-core and networking it.

NVidia was working on providing better support with top end gpus. If you needed the best, you wouldn't be on a Mac in the first place. The Quadros available Windows side are better. You can get a better version of displayport than thunderbolt provides (which annoys me, but I don't think they're going to fix this). Now Apple doesn't add much mid cycle. AMD didn't release much of anything interesting last year. No new cpus are really available anyway. Look at Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc. Single socket pricing is sometimes better. Some of them have been testing newer designs, but there isn't much in raw cpu hardware, and the superior gpus would end up with crap OSX drivers anyway even if you were willing to spend several thousand (which is what the top ones cost). On OSX, you can get up to a Quadro 4000. I don't know how good the drivers are though, and that is a big issue. OSX sucks on things like OpenGL. Really some of the glaring issues aren't lack of the latest cpus (which they basically have anyway).


Intel had a lot of errors. Now is there really anything that exciting to expect from an Ivy Bridge E release? It's no more exciting than Sandy Bridge. Higher clock speeds and other featured trickled down a bit, but the Ivy Bridge chips that are coming out don't really act as successor chips to Sandy Bridge E. Intel is having issues at the moment. I don't expect to see Ivy Bridge E until next year or late this year. some of the chips aren't scheduled until next year at this point anyway unless I read something incorrectly. I don't have any idea what their haswell roadmap looks like on this end. At most levels the real growth was at Nehalem. Aside from the low end I wouldn't expect anything interesting at least until next year or so.

I don't really care about the debate over the mac pro being killed at this point. If the hardware is there to address, Apple will most likely address it somehow.

Ivy Bridge Xeons go up to 10-cores/20-threads per chip vs 8/16 for Sandy Bridge:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/10-Co...s-250492.shtml

It's not amazing but if you've been waiting for 2 years, jumping from 6-cores per chip to 10-cores per chip just seems more worthwhile than jumping to 8. I think the benchmarks reported in the article there are faked but still, it will be 10-cores in a 95Watt chip.

I expect they will hold some of the Ivy Bridge Xeons back a while (single socket E3 version is supposed to be coming earlier) but we'll see how well a quad Sandy Bridge Xeon holds up against a quad Ivy Bridge iMac. If the Pro gets trumped with a brand new model, it's game over.

Sandy Bridge Xeon E5s were released today so you never know, maybe there will be a refresh tomorrow:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...e5-chips-cloud

even if it's just a little 'new' tag attached to the Mac Pro with some new CPUs.

I have to tell you I don't think they're in a hurry here. Last time it happened in the summer. If they feel it's too close to their other releases, it could get pushed back. I am guessing that most of the guys that are getting really annoyed are the ones who either own a pre 2009 model or simply don't realize that it may be a very disappointing bump in terms of real speed gains. They can have any amount of other supporting hardware that makes the other options from Apple unattractive. Anyway has intel mentioned much about Haswell yet?

They are making some pretty far out claims as usual:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA-H6yuARps

2011 Sandy Bridge (32nm) -> 2012 Ivy Bridge (22nm) -> 2013 Haswell (22nm)

They claim that going from Sandy Bridge to Haswell will drop power consumption by as much as a factor of 20. I imagine what they will do is have a way to run the chips in very low power modes so that everyday tasks use a lot less power. Who knows though, maybe they can dramatically restructure the chip with the 3D transistors.

Time to jump ship my friend. Apple is getting out of the professional game, their pro-software neutering is proof of that. I suggest looking into a company called Penguin Computing, they build custom workstations that fit every ones budget. Plus it's time for you to try Tesla computing if your really interested in 3D, the coolest thing since the invention Otterpops.

Any idea on benchmark improvement? More than the modest 6%-15% with Ivy?

...with a factor of 20(?!) improvement in cooling I have to wonder...

Any chance of a mainstream six core Hasswell making to market and into an iMac maybe?

Wonder if we'll see even higher HiDPI iMacs by then. *muses.

Lemon Bon Bon.

This page suggests the power saving being mentioned is during standby:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09...l_at_adc_2011/

So not operating efficiency but while you aren't using the machine to do anything.

It also looks like they are putting more emphasis on the GPU again:

http://flyingsuicide.net/news/intel-...mple-pictured/
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/02/08/h...phics-monster/

That's a good thing IMO. I don't think we need CPUs to improve as quickly any more. The faster the GPU gets, the better as it's also useful for computation.

I don't think it will be what the above sites are suggesting as the GT3 part (40EUs = 2.5x Ivy Bridge) doesn't seem to be coming:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTA3NDg

so GT2 only and the same IB design. Some reports suggest 20EUs but that doesn't explain the double sized GPU. Llano is already up to 50% faster than IB so they need to keep up with the GPU updates.


It all depends on what they feel is needed. They made a 6-core i7 a while ago but the next generation topped out at 4-core again. Haswell isn't a die-shrink so I suspect quad-core again.