The Intel Powermac / Powermac Conroe / Mac Pro thread - Page 20

Yes, I know. I was obviously, as I'm sure you're aware, referring to Power Macs. How hard are CPU replacements on the Power Mac G5? Oh that's right, there aren't any. For the G4? Available from various suppliers, but extremely overpriced.


Well, hopefully you will, but who knows? What if Apple decides once more to include a humongous heatsink? Let alone a liquid cooling system that spills random green juice out the front? In either case, replacements won't be easy.

Yes, components will be much more widely available. But that doesn't mean that everything CPU-related in the Mac Pro will be "standard components".


And yet the only ATi driver to actually work is the one supplied by Apple.

Notice how the XOM user drivers page still says "None" for all X1600-based models in the video category. And while I only skimmed over the XOM developer video drivers page, it states "Following Drivers did NOT work:" as well as "The drivers expect the ATI Bios to be present in order to initialize the chip. Things like clock frequencies, memory frequencies, power management, all the is done through the video bios. The macpro video chip only supports EFI, it has the old BIOS completely stripped out. Thus I find it very doubtful that any video drivers will work out of the box. As I see it there are a couple of possible solutions, from easiest to hardest.", with various flashing or BIOS emulation-related suggestions, and finally: "When asked about using a PC ATI card in a Mac, however, it was pointed out that the Mac cards still feature different firmware sets as well as use different drivers."

So, as far as I can tell, yes, we're still dealing with different firmware here, and yes, it is because of EFI vs. BIOS, much like the earlier OpenFirmware vs. BIOS difference. I have yet to find evidence to the contrary.

No argument there. However, note that:

1) EFI has been out for years and Gateway was the only company to make much use of it in the consumer space. Manufacturers are extremely slow to adopt it.
2) Worse yet, OS manufacturers so far haven't been great about adoption either. Again, they mostly focused on the enterprise/server space so far (e.g., Windows for Itanium has supported this for a long time, whereas Windows Vista for x86 and x64 still won't; likewise for Linux, whose EFI version of lilo was, until Intel Macs started rolling out, mostly designed for Itanium).

This will, of course, change over time. Perhaps even by next year.

You're only giving one counter-example, namely the Intel-based Mac mini.


I was under the impression that CPU in the iMac Core Duo is soldered on?


I named some of them: fan, heatsink, perhaps liquid cooling, heatpipes, etc.


Is it in the iMac? I'm really quite unsure right now.

Chucker,
I'm pretty sure the iMac CPU is in a standard socket. It's only soldered on in the laptops.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the upgrade market will look like, and if I'll be able to upgrade my iMac to a higher end merom for a reasonable price in a year or so.

Edit:
Yup, definitely socketed!

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/...13185240.shtml

Mea culpa.

Me too. Enough already with all this talking ...

Bring. It. On.

I want an Intel Mac something...

Too scared to buy a 3rd *defective* MacBook Pro when we are this close to Intel Core 2 Duo (a.k.a. Merom)...

...Same with the iMac C.D...

I would like a tower and display anyway (nevermind also a cool-running, whine-free, evenly illuminated MacBook Pro).

I have already found conflicts with what are the assumed PCI-E Express lanes for intels new chipsets.

#1) I can not get one definite answer anywhere because what I read tells me otherwise, and
#2.) There is probably a Protomac MCH for the Apple board. This would be probably the only thing that could keep MacOS X only on a Mac anyway.

First off it's becoming clear that most people have no idea how many PCI-E lanes there are on the intel chipsets. The general consensus on the internet is 20 PCI-E lanes. (the Nforce has 46 for crying out loud)

Starting with the Blackford Volume server MCH, and the Blackford Value Server MCH. Or if you prefer the Bensley platforms. The blackford Volume server comes with three 8X PCI-E Express ports. 8 x 3 = 24. Obviously not 20 PCI-E lanes.


However the Glidewell, or Greencreek MCH supposedly has the same 20 lanes, but again that leaves us with the single 16X PCI-E Express lane, and then what? 4x PCI-E Express Lanes? That would give us a configurable four 1x slots. I'm doubting it. I am getting the idea that the Greencreek MCH has the additional 16 PCI-E Express lanes for the one 16X PCI-E Port, and the other 24 (8 X 3) Configurable PCI-E Express lanes totaling 40 PCI-E Express lanes. That would leave us with the possible Two 16X PCI-E ports, One 4X PCI-E port, and Three 1x or 2x PCI-E ports with one, or two lanes to spare.

But truthfully my real guess is that Apple has it's own Protomac MCH. Reason being is that I can not think of a better way to keep Mac OS X on Macs, and only Macs. And that I am sure is part of intels deal with Apple. " Must keep our OS off the rest of PC's."
They (intel) would have had to have agreed on something like that before Apple would have made their deal. Or Apple could have gone through IBM to AMD just as easily.
That's my opinion.
But, even if the Glidewell - Greencreek MCH did only have (20) 24 PCI-E Lanes. I am betting that there is a Macintosh - Protomac MCH of their own. At least I hope so. Apple and intel didn't each set aside an engineering design team to this project to work on this cooperatively together for nothing.

My 2¢

Don't forget to subtract a PCIe lane for Airport, and maybe one for Bluetooth. The wired networking can be on-board, but few non-laptop boards come with wireless built on, so that's at least one (can they share a lane? speed-wise they should be OK, but is there a control issue?) lane gone to that (I'm pretty sure it'll be standard).

Apple currently has 32 lanes in the PowerMac. They won't go down in lanes. It's currently 16,8,4,4. But all are x16 connectors, it's just how they're wired. Meaning you can have 4 graphics cards on there (if they're 6600s).

I never said it was a standard board. Intel is designing the board. Then Apple approves it or not. So far, supposedly, Intel designed a new small board that Apple turned down. I would imagine that the board was a type "b" (BTX) board. Intel has been pushing the industry to replace the "A" (ATX) type boards, because the "B" board designs offer better cooling and such. They are also smaller than the earlier boards.

Apple apparently wasn't happy with that. They wanted a bigger board. This is gleaned from stories here in Insider, as well as other places. how true it is, I don't know.

If Intel's products can't deliver some feature that Apple desires, then Apple would have to go elsewhere. If Apple thinks it's important.

But, so far, while we have people on these boards who think it's important, we don't know if Apple thinks so as well. And, we still don't know what the fine print in the contract says.

Car companies don't do it all the time. What they do is make alliences with other companies, sometimes. Mainly, these companies invest in each other, and then they use each other's parts. small companies that can'r afford to do the R&D such as Rolls Royce, had for a couplr of decades used GM transmissions. But not the other way around.

In this case, as I've already said, ATI and Intel have agreements about chipsets, and other cross licensing deals. Intel doesn't have that with Nvidia. They have been very reluctent to do those deals. Nvidia, that is.

Very good! I was going to point that out until I got to your post.

Even FireWire is implemented as a PCIe lane; perhaps two on the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

melgross - which part? I make about 3 points there.

Chucker - a PCIe lane is 250MB/s IIRC. Firewire is 50MB/s (400 Mb/s), so in theory you should just need one to a FW400 and a FW800. I've seen PCIe cards that do 2 ports/lane, so it's possible. I bet a Mac Pro could get by with only 1 PCIe lane devoted to Firewire. In the Powermac, didn't they use Hypertransport? I assume that's out, unless they build their own board (Intel doesn't cross-license it, I don't think, or at least they don't use it).

2 PCIe lanes should cover Firewire and wireless stuff. Even if it's APE/BT and 3x FW400 + 1x FW800, two lanes should handle that. Apple will likely also use lanes with 16x connectors, but time them differently. This is the one board I could see them building independently from Intel. A lower-end graphics card can run on 4 or 8 lanes, but cards like the 7800 or 7900 can't, if I understand Apple's webpage.

2.5 Gigabaud, so yes, realistically, that amounts to roughly 250 MiB/s, enough for both ports.

Apple's developer note claims that it's simply old-school PCI, for both ports.

That seems to suggest that they wouldn't have a problem under-supplying some ports with lanes, and just say "Well, if you're using them all at the same time, you get a bit of a bottleneck."

Well if it had 40 lanes, and you take 16 for the single graphics slot, and another Full speed 16X slot that leaves you with 8 lanes to play with.
First take out the 32:
2 - 16x PCI-E
And that could leave you with this.
1 - 4x Lane
2 -1x lanes - anyway that totals 5 PCI-E slots total, but If you took out the 4X slot and switched it to a 1x you could probably do more.
And still leaves 2 PCI-E lanes before reducing the 4x to a 1x for everything else.
You could probably get
1x FW 800,
2x FW 400
3 USB 2.0
2 USB 1.0
And what else would you need?
Would your SATA 2 run through there, or would that be dedicated elsewhere?

Pretty much the whole post.

I think SATA is dedicated.

If you are talking about me. I've acknowledged that Apple may not use SLI. My point is the possibility for businesses to use a Mac Pro to run all three major OS's and run all of their software would be a mistake for Apple to completely lock itself out of SLI. When Dell-HP and others will be selling SLI capable machines at the same price point.

Multiple GPU's are fairly new and as they become more common its only inevitable that software will be written to take advantage of SLI and Crossfire.


Autodesk Lustre HD, a digital color grading system designed for working on high-definition television (HDTV) commercials and programming, as well as HDTV film projects. Lustre HD is the latest addition to the Autodesk Lustre family of nonlinear digital color grading products, which have been used to grade Academy Award-winning films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong.

Autodesk Lustre HD offers real-time primary and secondary color correction capabilities and real-time formatting of video deliverables using advanced Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) technology available in commodity graphics cards. Petit added, GPUs are proving to be a powerful and more flexible alternative to older technologies for real-time media processing. They are extremely fast and easily programmable, and are being developed at a faster pace than CPUs. As a result, Autodesk is able to offer Lustre HD, a system with GPU-acceleration technology, at a price that is considerably lower than proprietary hardware-based solutions.

Could they use HyperTransport? I mean, I know Intel doesn't, but as long as they're designing their own board, they use it in the Powermac now for connection to some of the ports.

Yeah, that's sort of out there, but it's an option, right?

I inquired about that and was pretty much shouted down that Hypertransport is impossible.

Appears that Intel's chipset does not support it at all so there is no way Apple can use it.

Not just you. Quite a few are hoping for for this. I wouldn't mind seeing either Crossfire or SLI. I just think we are pushing our desires onto Apple's "to do" list.

The idea of multiple gpu's is an old concept, and was used years ago. There were as many as four gpu's on boards available to Macs in the "old days". But, that was before gpu's bacame more powerful and power hungry. One slot could handle no more than 15 watts at one time, so that practice ended. It's just now coming back.

Color correctiong and rendering are two very different things.

Now that Hyper Transport has been released into the public arena, Intel could use it. There has been speculation as to that.

Depends on what resolution you are working at, but yes in general color correction will not be as processing intensive as 3D rendering.

At the same time you need a very capable system to color correct uncompressed HD in real time. This being done on the GPU is impressive.

I'm sure any concept they come up with today someone already thought about it long ago. Just likely did not have the processing power to do it.

More specifically beyond concept, SLI and Crossfire implementation of multiple GPU's that developers can actually write software for and are actually usable in the real world are fairly new.

Although hasn't Apple been a member of the Hyper-Transport consortium from the beginning? READ ME = YES If this Rev A Mac Pro does not have things like Dual 16X PCI-E slots, and Hyper-transport to speed up connections I would hope that Apple take a more aggressive hands on role, and flat out beg intel to continue with manufacturing their motherboards, and continue their Apple design partnership for the REV B, but let their company use technology to help them gain competitive footing in different areas. (REV B will have Quad Core CPU's BTW) Giving Apple more flexibility as to what their design can offer. Apple is a very competitive company but to gain good ground when you have such a small percentage of computers you need everything you can muster to throw at nay sayers, and the other manufacturers. Apple is a charter member of the hyper-transport consortium, and I think their partnership with intel can be advantageous to both companies. Who says Apple wont use it this time around, and intel take notice of it, and implement it in their REV B boards?

It's far easier.

What most don't realise is that when rendering frames for Pixar, or other movie quality images are done, there can be 12, or 18, or sometimes even 24 re-renders per frame. One layer at a time, then several layers at once. It can take hours per frame. Color correction is a pretty simple task. One machine can tackle it.

It was easier back then because the gpu's were seen as one unit.

I see Apple as being able to leverage Intel's better chips with the technologies Intel doesn't use, namely SLI and Hypertransport. That'll be Apple's edge over Dell's Xeon workstations, and whoever's Opteron servers. The fact is that Woodcrest wipes the floor with Opterons. And Dell's already got SLI in it's better Precision models.

MacRumors Buyer's Guide

Not sure if this has been posted before, and is almost certainly a fake....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ohUfPtBxq...ch=apple%20mac

Obviously. You can't get more fake than that.

I understand that, I'm the one who posted the article about ILM using 100 proc AMD render farm and 64 bit AMD workstations.

And this is an extremely high end example. Rendering 3D graphics for a print ad does not require such resources but its still 3D rendering.

In color correction at this time there is no such thing as real time 4K color grading. The colorist has to work with HD proxies that simulate 4K color gamut. Then the color grade has to be rendered into a 4K image.

This is less processor intensive than ILM or Pixar rendering 3D for film but more processor intensive than a graphic designer rendering 3D for a picture.

Also in that ILM article they said they were using the latest Nvidia graphic boards in their AMD workstations. Which my over all point is the fact that software will be written to take advantage of the power on the graphics cards.

The Intel 5000 chipsets have a maximum of 28 PCIe lanes (X and P) grouped to 7 ports with 4 lanes each.
1 port is dedicated to connect the ICH, 2 ports can be used for slots or for increasing bandwidth to the ICH.
The 5000P groups 2x2 ports for 2x PCIe with 8 lanes, the 5000X groups 4 ports for 1x PCIe with 16 lanes.

The ICH has 8 USB ports, 6 SATA ports, a PATA port, 2 GbE ports, 2 PCIe x4 ports, a PCI-X 133 port and a PCI 32/33 port.
The ballout of the MCH only showes room for another port (4 lanes). I couldn't find why Intel doesn't use this port.

Obviously if Apple wants more slots with more lanes they need another controller.
I don't think we will see Nvidia or ATI but a custom design from Intel.

So Woodcrest comes out tomorrow and Apple's going to wait to use it until August 7?

Also monkey see, monkey do with the aluminum....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWYh1yT7WCc

Looks like they are *trying* to copy the Power Mac G5