New Mac Pros rumored with 8-core Xeon E5 CPUs, Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 - Page 3

The nearly ten year old case design looks as modern as ever. No need to change it for the sake of looking new. As is the case with many Apple designs, it's timeless and absolutely gorgeous, practical, tough, functional and unique.

agreed here.  now that they did away with the xserve, it would be great to see the new mac pro to be a little sleeker in the form.   not a mini, still fully expandable with drive bays, but maybe without the big stand and top hoops.

I am very pleased with the very likely possibility that Apple is continuing it's commitment to the Mac Pro. I will be waiting with cash in hand to purchase one if and when that materializes. What I find extremely odd is that after such angst about the possibility of the Mac Pro's demise that almost half of this thread has derailed into a discussion about retirement...  WTF? Just sayin'.

Unless they are aiming for a case design that works both as a desktop (floor) workstation or as a rackmounted unit.

Unfortunately the optimal rackmount design is kinda squared off and utilitarian (because a rackspace has specific dimensions). Only way to carry it off would be locking Ives in a room and make sure he didnt see the design before it hit production.

I have a G5 2.0 since 2005 and it's been fantastic machine.
No hardware issues and worth every penny. I originaly chose this as I'm a great believer in components being separated rather than integrated.
Back then reliability for iMacs were not as robust as of now but I will be in the market for a new machine and it will be a big decision which way to go.
Even though they are expensive I reckon they would last longer than an iMac.

Fixed by editing the html source code.

I never keep towers on the floor because when the housekeepers come in with their vacuum cleaner they are both blowing dust right into the intake fans as well as bumping into the computer. Also, in the case of the Mac Pro, it puts the front mounted i/o almost at ground level which I find awkward.

I'm kinda excited.. I might be in line buying my first Mac Pro this year.

I think it depends on a few things such as what you do. Overall the 1,1 and 3,1 machines aged quite well even if I wouldn't suggest one today, but the 3,1 still does well enough in heavily threaded functions. Imacs worry me at times because there are the people who end up with chronic problems, and of course I hate the lack of machine access. If they debut a decent machine this time in the sub 3k realm, I'll have to buy one. Even apart from raw computing power, there are things that I like. They're made for higher duty cycles. I can populate them with drives, keep gpus up to date if necessary, and they have more ports. I don't buy the thunderbolt display or expensive TB docking stations. It erodes any savings against a tower in the longer term.

 

That would be outstanding to see. I'd love to clear some desktop space for more monitors. Not to mention, our MDCs are due to be rotated out in another year or so. Rack units for our edit suites, though - yes, please. 

Only 67! Something tells me that you make live longer than you think! : ) Funny I have family friends that are in their 70's who still code...

My current Mac Pro has four new 3TB Serial-ATA drives.  Obviously, I want to retain and use these drives in any new MacPro I buy.  So, will the new MacPro support the same HDs as the Early 2008 models?

Probably since that is still the same power and SATA interface used today. SATA 3 should be backwardly compatible with your current drives however SATA 3 would be quite a bit faster. Depends on which drives you have and how you use them if it makes sense to put them in a new machine and also if you are going to sell or keep your current machine. Seems to me that if you are spending thousands on a new machine that is going to last you 5 years or more, you might as well bring everything up to current state of the art right from the beginning. 

 

Of course. The drives will just be slower than they could be, as the ports will be SATA III.

 

And… what, we might not have four bays in the next model if it gets a new case.

Then go with Active Storage mSAN....

 

Looks familiar hé!

I didn't believe they made the 3TB drives in SATA II flavors.  I have a feeling these are SATS III drives being run on a SATA II plug.  Mechanical hard drives didn't max out SATA II either tho, so it shouldn't matter either way.

 

I'll say. Forget ultrabook lawsuits…

Mine runs 24/7 as well. When it's not in use by me, it's running some global project.

Truth is, I've never had a problem with Apple's products, and between mine, my family's, and the many I bought for my company over the years, that's saying something.

You can put 128GB RAM inside, but OS X, because of some limitation, according to OWC, only currently recognizes 96GB. But if you install 64 bit Windows 7 in a boot partition, it will see, and use all 128GB.

Well, the limitation is, to a great extent, due to the limitation imposed by Intel. Their workstation controllers can use up to 16GB DIMMS, and their server controllers, up to 8GB DIMMS. At the time, there were no 16GB DIMMS, and 8GB DIMMS were just getting to the prototype stage. Four socket machine scan use more than 8 slots, up to 16.

I don't yet know what the new Sandy Bridge Xeons are capable of handling insofar as the size of the DIMMS go. When I get to read the documentation, I'll let people know, if they're interested.

The Xeons have other advantages such as higher memory channel performance, as well as more channels. They also have a higher maximum speed vs the nominal speed as less than the full complement of cores is being used. They can also be run hotter. Overall, they are more robust.

There are companies that offer rack mounts for Mac Pro's as well as for Mini's. No reason why Apple needs to do so.

Can't move the drive bays to the front as that will kill the air flow. There are two fans on the front. One big one at the front of the processor board, at the bottom, and another, smaller one on the second level for the card cage and the drive bay. There are fans at the back as well. In addition there is a fan on the power supply. Putting the drive bays at the front destroys the airflow, as it blocks that entire design concept. There's no way around that.

As I mentioned in my post above, there are several company's that make horizontal rack mounts for Mac Pros.

ML runs fine on my MacPro 1,1.

They're not a very efficient fit. The mac pro's current shape would take up a lot of rack space per unit.

Me too. I have saved around 8K just for this and a Macbook for my girlfriend. This will be my first "computer computer". I have been looking up every fact I can about choosing properly so I can buy on launch day without waiting for reviews to come in. I hope there is an ample supply... :/

We can mention it, but we don't actually have influence. The info in this article has been taken from other sources, as is the info from a number of other articles. If the info from the source is wrong, it will be repeated elsewhere. This site being one of those elsewheres.

I'm amazed at how often all the world of computer reporting is wrong. Many errors in PcMag, for example, and they're not by any means alone. In some tech sites such as ArsTechnica and AnandTech, if the author has made a factual error, and a poster notes it, it will be corrected. But that's very unusual elsewhere, I've noticed. Once the article is posted, no one reads the posts to see if an error has been caught. That's a shame, but it's become much more common in recent years.

It's one reason why I still don't believe that much of what we read on the internet is reporting in the journalistic sense. While news papers make mistakes, it's far more common on the I telnet. One reason is that there's simply no fact checking going on. That eliminated most of the bloggers, and many of the web sites from my consideration as journalists, despite what the courts have said.

Even here, I find it annoying. I would like to see posting in an article regarding corrections of errors. But it's no better, or worse, here than most other places, I find.

What are you talking about?    There is no official retirement age in the U.S. except for Social Security purposes.    And you can start collecting SS at 62 if you want to - you just get less money.   Private companies who have retirement plans (and not all do) can set "retirement" age at any age they want.   However with most plans, you can always collect earlier, you just get less per month as per actuary tables, etc.

 

And for the record, when Social Security was first introduced under FDR in the 1930s, few working adults were expected to live past 65.    That's why you couldn't collect until 65 - they never really expected many people to actually collect Social Security and if they did, it wasn't expected to be for very long.     They had no idea that life expectancy would continually increase to where it's now about 80.

I'm not sure I understand why you are disagreeing with me. I'm talking about looks. If you look at some of the pro level servers and workstations out there, you will see that they are butt ugly. But many have a similar perforated front panel. These cases are designed for cooling and rigidity. Just like the Mac Pro case.

And just like the Mac Pro case, they are updated internally every year or two, while leaving the external shell pretty much the same, just like the Mac Pro.

Apple chose a very good design for the shell, and they made major internal upgrades since the first G5. I don't see why they need to change it, other than for more minor functional differences.

But, I would imagine that if Apple has some ideas for the machine that the current shell can't accommodate, they will then change that.

So I don't understand why you are arguing with me on this.

I can't agree. The Mac Pro is one of the best designed workstations I have seen. I don't see any wasted space. It was designed for excellent airflow, which it has. If you are looking at areas that are designed to be open for the purpose of that airflow, and are assuming that it's wasted space, and can be eliminated, well, that's just wrong.

That's your opinion, and I strongly disagree with it. I've designed a lot of electronics for my own company, way back when. Apple's Mac Pro compares to $6,000-$10,000 machines from Boxx, Dell and HP, not their cheaper stuff which is crowded inside, with bays hanging down, and wires wandering everywhere. The more expensive machines are built more like Apple's. Apple uses those large, slow rpm fans for the processor board on the bottom, and that requires room. Then there are fans on the heatsinks as well. Also more fans above those. My Mac Pro is one of, if not the quietest workstation I've ever used, or seen.

Great, just what I need is Apple to tempt me with big performance gains (well thanks to Intel) just when I need a 13" MacBook Air as well.

Judging by the gains seen in mobile Sandy Bridge a 16 core Mac Pro could easily hit twice the performance of the previous 12 core model.

Here's hoping for retina MBA!

 

Pshh, airflow. Like Apple knows anything about that. Check out my ride, bizzizzles:

 

 

Now lemme see, we got one, two, three, four, five, SIX di-rec-tions of fans for mayyyyximum airfaaaaa-low.

 

Single direction front to back… Pah! Mac Pro's got nuthin' on this.

I don't understand and this smaller case thing here. I can only suspect that those wanting one don't really need a Mac Pro. Mine has a 950 watt power supply. These machines are often used with a pro level graphics card, or even two, that consume 250 watts of power each. In addition they have more slots that can use more power. In addition they have 4 official drive bays, plus a free bay under the DVD drive at the front.

This all uses power, and requires a big machine for full length boards. If you don't NEED a Mac Pro, then don't get one. Get an iMac, they are very good machines, and will satisfy the needs of most people.

But if you need 32GB or more of EEC RAM, 2 workstation level processors, and a pro level graphics card or two, plus other specialized hardware, then you need a Mac Pro. And that's goi g to be a big machine. Indeed, it's been criticized as being too small, with not enough slots. Some workstations in its class have 8.

The only one I let clean my computer room is me. I clean the front with the vacuum as well as the rear, and once every 6 months or so open it up and do the inside.

It works, but it was never intended to be rack mounted. It is what it is. Apple gave up on rack mounted servers. This is a workstation by nature. Not a server, though obviously it can e used that way.

My god, what an absolute horror! That's typical of the crappy, not quite designed machines I see around. Unfortunately, crap like that is built to just get everything in, but with no worry about electrical noise, stray capacitance, and airflow eddies, of which I can predict several from just looking at that. There's no shielding between various sections of the machi e which should be isolated. Also, the airflow, wherever it is there, just swirls around in the machine rather than moving through, the way it's supposed to.

Basically, yuck!

Some of those have more features in terms of PCI slots, bays, and memory capacity. When they came out with the first mac pro, I figured they were holding back a little on that stuff to keep the price down. Right now I'm slightly surprised that the base configuration still exists. I would've expected a better sustained cpu performance gap between top imac and bottom mac pro.

That looks like a home built gaming computer given the weird frankensteined setup and routing and the large cpu cooler.

Some workstations pack more into the same footprint. It varies. Most of this comes from the camp looking for an Xmac or those that aren't really satisfied with the alternatives. The other problem is when people attribute the cost of the machine to the large aluminum case even though the CNC work necessary for a macbook air might be more labor intensive given the necessary cuts and relatively fine tolerance on curvature. There's a myth that making it smaller would bring down the retail price. There was also a suggestion that accommodating a wider range of hardware down to the consumer end would help the volume of the platform, but I don't think they'll do this anymore than I think they'll try to cram an X79 chipset into an imac (regarding frequent mention of a 6 core imac concept, I don't think we'll see that until such a thing is made for consumer level chipsets).

 

Some shops might benefit from it. I noticed lenovo designed one of their smaller ones to be efficiently rackable.

I keep throwing my money at the screen but nothing is happening!!
 

Agreed. The Mac Pro is a thing of beauty and should never be relegated to the floor like it's some kind of ugly plastic beige box! It deserves to stand high and proud!

Cue "Shut up and take my money!" Fry picture!