Apple's Mac Pro to sport modified Power Mac enclosure - Page 3

Yep.

The ante was upped, it happens a lot. Technology shifts downmarket, singles to duals, duals to dual dual core. Like memory, dual channel memory was a workstation feature that migrated down, workstations are moving to quad channel or other higher bandwidth memory. Most desktop systems are limited to four memory slots because that's all that market needs, many workstations have offered eight slots for nearly a decade.


I was referring to the expansion slots. Granted, SCSI isn't built-in to PowerMacs but it does offer 1394b built-in. eSATA doesn't seem to be standard integrated component in anyone's workstation model like yet. I wasn't aware that SAS or FiberChannel was a standard integrated workstation feature, I think that's probably more enterprise targeted techs. Those running any of these other than eSATA generally aren't running them on a consumer computer.

You're contradicting yourself. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out where.


What about them? PCIe isn't special any more, and if you're referring to PCI-X, which the Power Mac G5 no longer has, the $400 Athlon 64 I built last year had that, too. So, nothing special either.

As you said, "the ante was upped; technology shifts downmarket".


So now you're distinguishing not only between desktop and workstation, but also between workstation and enterprise computer?

Isn't "enterprise" part of the very definition of a workstation; the very defining element that once separated it from a 'mere consumer desktop'?

Re: PCI-X, I know, but I was talking for the respective era. Almost no conventional desktop offered anything better than PCI. To get PCI-X, you got a workstation or server.

As for PCIe, I don't know of any consumer desktops that offer more than two PCIe slots where the additional slots are larger than 1x.


Enterprise computer would be a large server, serving many users at the same time, like the XServe. A workstation computer is generally a single user product.

I do understand that the market segments aren't as differentiated as they were in the past, but that doesn't mean that they are now just one category without any differentiation at all.

Yes, that is (well, was) true.


I really don't think it's useful to distinguish between desktop and workstation any more.

If you want, you can just think of it as a pro desktop or non-consumer desktop, which I just shorthand as workstation. It is at least useful as a market differentiation if even you don't think there is any system differentiation. Performance-wise, there's no rigid boundary but I think there is in terms of features, development, marketing, who uses it and what they use it for. It's anything but the kind of machine that a consumer would use, and it's usually not the thing a rabid gamer would get either.

SLI does not work with intel chip sets

thats not true... even Dell sells Xeon workstations with Intel 5000X chipsets and dual x16 PCIe slots and SLI configed video cards...

why wont apple?

They can't. nVidia does not support SLI on non-nVidia chipsets.

you can claim that all you want, but it works fine... and they sell it... Nviida only links to "certified SLI systems" if they have an nvidia chipset...

http://www.dell.com/content/learnmor...ecn&~tab=other

See this:
http://www.dell.com/content/products...=19&l=en&s=dhs

"The ultimate gaming solution includes the optional NVIDIA® Quad SLI..."

Steve

Power Supply on top makes no sense.

while you can SLI on intel chipsets, that link is a Dell nvidia chipset machine, not intel.

Remember the "chipset" is not the processor... many use that term incorrectly

I don't remember anyone here or anywhere using that term incorrectly in recent months.

Dell's site says that the Precision 690 uses an Intel chipset:


It doesn't say anything about using an nVidia board chipset. It looks like a fairly new system, I didn't realize that SAS was being offered for workstations now. The 690 is a pretty impressive system, offering up to 64GB memory capacity with up to 16 slots. It's defininitely not cheap to max out this sytem, with the configurator I think I hit $70k, just experimenting.

I don't know if anybody is confused on chipsets but there is some confusion on the board as to what the chipsets support.

A link to Intel will indicate what the Woodcrest 5000 series chipsets support.

http://indigo.intel.com/compare_cpu/...&culture=en-US

There are three flavors of the 5000 chipset. Two for servers and one for a workstation. The earlier posts about Nvidia being the only supplier of SLI technology also sound correct based on the article that I just read on Anandtech about the capabilities of Conroe and Intel chipsets (another thread on Appleinside). Intel does not share well and on new processors often has an exclusive on the supporting chipsets. Anandtech could not do an SLI comparison on Conroe versus Athalon because the 975X chipset does not support SLI. Only Nvidia chipsets support SLI. ATI has a competing technology that they used for gaming performance using two X1900XTs in 'Crossfire' mode.

So it seems likely that the Intel 5000 chipset does not support SLI either. Nvidia owns it.

The Dell machine linked from an earlier post is the XPS700 and it has SLI and an Nvidia chipset, the 590 (which supports Intel chips, is brand new and a competitor for the 975X).

duplicate post deleted.

the 5000X does not officially support it from intel or nvidia, but it does work.

no the 975 series does not, so this is more of a Xeon 5100 thing that might be used on 4 core Macs, as those wont run on the 975 anyways


also i was saying that you can run SLI on an intel chipset (5000X), but there is no evidence saying that Apple is going to use an intel chipset... they could very easily use an nvidia.

The way I understand it (I may be wrong.) the Intel chipset is the only party in town for the brand new chips from Intel. AMD releases chips with supporting chipsets from other vendors but Intel has enough Fab that they go it alone and let the others chipset vendors play catch-up (and often pass).

I found a link on SLI and the 5000X chipset on a gamer site and it says that it doesn't actually work. It supports four monitors, which I think two ATI cards will do as well, but it detects that the motherboard is not Nvidia and gives an error message on actual SLI performance.

http://www.gamepc.com

Here's the real reason the low-end Mac Pros will be Quad: AMD's 4x4 initiative. In theory, AMD might cut low-end X2 or even FX prices by 1/3 to 1/2, which'll leave you with some bargain prices. They are then releasing a motherboard that can have two X2s or FXs (these are Athlons, not Opterons) on a prosumer desktop board. Additionally, Dell/everyone will have 2.4 or 2.67 GHz Conroes shipping for $1500.

Therefore, a Mac Pro running a 2.33 or 2.0 GHz single Woodcrest would get "pwn3d" by a mid-line XPS. Thus Apple needs to have at least a 2.66 GHz chip in there. And with AMD bringing dual-socket to the Prosumer (non-workstation or enterprise) market, Apple will be a good position to put a 2.0 GHz dual-dual setup in the Mac Pro (which, IIRC, is cheaper than a 2.67 GHz Woodcrest). That way, it side-steps fighting XPSes, dominates Precisions on pricing, and we all know a 2.0 GHz Woodcrest is gonna own a X2 or most FXs, and certainly anything you can get at $2k.

Woodcrest needs FB-DIMMs

Apple needs a $1500 singe duel core with good video system to compete with dell and others.

Amd 4X4 can use ddr2 non ecc and SLI with NVIDIA chip set / cross fire with a ATI one.
And when quad-core core come out amd 4x4 will let you have 2 of them and they will not be choked up like Intel ones that are 2 duel cores on one cpu linked by a FSB.

Because a single lower clock rate multi-core part is more power efficient than a single core high clocked part or a multi-chip processor arrangement. Also, the Xeons are built with a high power target which is what makes them Xeons and this does not fit well with the laptop market. So no, you will never see a Xeon in a laptop (unless Intel significantly redefines how they use the term) but you will see chips with the performance levels of the current (and past) Xeons in laptops as technology moves forward.

1) In theory, Apple could (if they wanted to) hack together a "normal" memory controller for the Mac Pros and leave the FB-DIMMs to the XServe. It'd be annoying, but cheaper and not killer performance-wise.

2) It looks like you're an AMD fan. Like it or not, Conroe dominates an X2 or FX one-on-one. But two X2s could (probably) beat a single Woodcrest (which is basically a Conroe at heart) at 2.0 or 2.33 GHz. Thus my point is that Apple wants to position the Mac Pros as competing with Precision workstations (which they'll destroy on price) and 4x4 (which they'll destroy performance-wise, for now), not XPS & co. on the low end (which'll pretty much rule the single-socket roost).

If a Mac Pro at $2000 gets you a 2.0 GHz Quad, it'll beat a 2.4GHz 4x4 (based on Conroe vs. FX benchmarks) for the same price. It'll be the cheapest Quad on the workstation market (by a mile), hurting Dell (who has 30-40 percent workstation mark-ups to cover for single-digit margins on $400 boxes).

If a Mac Pro at $2000 gets you a 2.66 GHz Conroe, it'll look over-priced next to the "same-spec" XPS at $1500-1600 (which'll also have SLI or Crossfire BTO). It'll also mean a different Motherboard (which is a SKU issue for Apple, a relatively low-volume company).

If a Mac Pro at $2000 gets you any sort of single Woodcrest, it'll be underperforming compared to XPS and 4x4 (2.0 GHz or 2.33 GHz WC) or it'll be more expensive than a 2.0 GHz Quad (2.66 GHz WC).

I think I just covered all the options for the low-end Mac Pro, and based on all the Conroe and Woodcrest chips, the only set-up that my analysis (which may be flawed) shows as being practical and impressive spec-wise is 2.0 Quad. It has a margin of about 15% at that price, but my analysis works for any price in the ballpark of $1800-$2200.

Note that for the purpose of this discussion, I've been defining "low-end Mac Pro" as the replacement for the current low-end Powermac ($2000), not a possible $1400-1800 "Mac Cube"/"xMac"/"Mac".

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JeffDM
.......That's not a complete solution, and it nearly triples the cost of the system (several thousand for XSR vs. sub-$1k for several drives). XServeRAID is enterprise-class, not workstation-class, leaving a major cost and storage gap in between two drives and seven.


Cool. But so if we are looking at 3-5 drives some of the drives HAVE to be external for backup purposes. If you dump all 3-5 drives in one workstation what are you going to backup to? Unless you choose Option 2 below:

Option 1
We have 2 drives on RAID 0 in the workstation and then 2-3 drives as external backup, possibly in RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, etc. configuration. The only downside to this is the FW400 connection out to the external drives/ RAID. Which is where eSATA would come in very handy.

Option 2
In your scenario fair enough, you dump 3-5 drives in one workstation and run a decent RAID on it. But as you mention, this requires an OS update to handle it well (maybe Leopard), but better still a dedicated hardware RAID controller on the chipset (eg shipping nVidia chipsets in PC land). I don't know in OS X now how it handles rebuilding the RAID if you're running RAID 1 and one of your two drives goes down. Supporting RAID 5 via OSX or OSX+chipset would also be interesting to see how setting up and rebuilding the raid and reporting lost data if any, will go. It is interesting to note that RAID 5 can have slow write speeds (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/chi...-intel_11.html)


Re: Chucker and others: "workstation" above can mean "desktop" as well

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sunilraman

My planned method is to have a stripe RAID internally, with an occasional back-up to a different computer. The system partitions is and will be backed up using SuperDuper to an external FW400 drive as a cold backup, only powered during backup. If something happens, I could turn the external on and boot from it. The data partition is backed up to a hardware RAID-5 in a Compaq W8000.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JeffDM
My planned method is to have a stripe RAID internally, with an occasional back-up to a different computer. The system partitions is and will be backed up using SuperDuper to an external FW400 drive as a cold backup, only powered during backup. If something happens, I could turn the external on and boot from it. The data partition is backed up to a hardware RAID-5 in a Compaq W8000.


So your stripe RAID internally would be just 2 drives? Or would you like 3 drives?

I would like as many three drives on the stripe volume, and a fourth drive that's a system/boot drive. Whether that gets done depends on whether I care to go through the effort of making a hard drive mount bracket. It's not too much work, but I'm sometimes lazy like that.

But the Mac Pro may only support 2 hd sata drive bays. \ So anyway, no worries, thanks for the discussion. I was just trying to see why people were clamouring for 3-4 hd sata drive bays.

I think I am starting to understand, about the primary storage needs for the "workstation-class" computer. I am assuming that in most cases you would need a 1:1 backup solution. That means the bigger your primary storage, the backup solution needs to be equally big. But some people don't need a 1:1, they need primary boot/system drive/partition backed up 1:1 and then a data partition backup for finalised files only, not *all* the files used during the work.

Heh. Maybe it's just fun. Run a RAID 0 off four HITACHI Deskstar 500gb 7K500's for 2TB of internal storage Whereas two drive bays in the Mac Pro would only give you 1TB of internal storage with these drives.

Okay, cool, not being sarcastic here, just delving into the world of HDs, RAID, Backup solutions and the big question mark over the specs of the new Mac Pros. I think we'll be kept guessing till the very end... Hurry up and start WWDC already!!!

Would a quad 2.66 be much faster than a quad 2.5 G5? And with the same case, what would be the reason to upgrade?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ascii
Would a quad 2.66 be much faster than a quad 2.5 G5? And with the same case, what would be the reason to upgrade?


Wow, that's like a whole 'nother thread in and of itself. Let's start with: What do you do with your Mac? Do you derive income from it? What would you like to do with your Mac that you're not doing now? What software do you use mostly? What Mac do you own currently?

Your answers will be useful in answering your question

It would probably be faster, simply because the Core architecture will beat out the G5 architecture. Remember back in January, when the first Yonah iMacs came out? They were competitive with a low-end PowerMac (dual-2.0 GHz vs. dual-2.0 GHz) at the time. And the Core architecture chips (Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest) are supposed to be 20% to 40% faster than Yonahs clock-for-clock (according to Intel's numbers, which I can't find ATM). Therefore, a Woodcrest should beat a G5 clock-for-clock.

Is it worth $1000-$1500 (once you eBay your G5 Quad)? If you have the money, and if you use mostly UB apps, and if the Woodcrest Quads come with nice other features (Airport, BT, etc), it'd prolly be worth it, if you need the performance.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sunilraman

To cost-justify it, I'd suggest that you'd definitely need to derive significant benefit from time savings on compute-intensive tasks, assuming those tasks are a limiting factor in your productivity. Or be able to derive a time or productivity benefit from having Windows readily available for the occasional program or device that doesn't have an adequate (or affordable) Mac equivalent.

The thing should either be able to save you a lot of work time or increase productivity sufficiently for the maybe extra $1k (assumptions here, but it's a nice, round number) it might take to sell the old unit and buy a new one.

I don't have a quad, but I might get some form of Mac Pro for my work desk so I can add OS X apps and capabilities. I can't do without Windows because it will be running a fairly expensive (to me) type of commercial machinery that's not compatible with OS X, but I'm hoping will run within Parallels. If it weren't for Parallels, a Mac Pro wouldn't even be considered.

Or if you just want it, then there's no reasoning about that.

I'd hazard a guess that a 2S 2.66 GHz Woodcrest would be on average the equivalent of a 3.2 GHz G5 Quad assuming native apps and such.

Hands-down, Woodcrest will dominate in integer apps, possibly by as much as 2 times, with an integer performance/watt advantage that could be 3x to 4x better than a 2.5 GHz G5 Quad.

For floating point apps, it won't be such a huge benifit. Maybe 25% to 40% faster.

The Mac Pro lineup will have to be something like:

1S 2.66 GHz Conroe for $1999
2S 2.66 GHz Woodcrest for $2799
2S 3.00 GHz Woodcrest for $3599

I could buy into either a Conroe Extreme in the mid-range, and at lower odds, a 2S 2.33 GHz Woodcrest on the low end for something like $2399 or $2499 which would push the mid-range price to $2999

If Apple comes out with a headless Conroe system in the $1000 to $200 range with a modicum of upgradeability (1 PCIe x16 slot, 1 PCIe x2 slot, 1 external bay, 1 internal bay, 2 memory slots), it'll great for buyers who don't need all the pro features in the Pro desktop, but I'm fairly convinced that Apple thinks this will cannibalize "Mac Pro" sales producing a net negative on revenues.

Via the nForce 590 chipset.

But that's not the only system being discussed. Mac Pro isn't a consumer computer, and will likely use a 5000 series Intel chipset. Dell is claiming they have SLI on their Precision 690, which they say is running the 5000X chipset.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the Mac Pro came with 4 HD bays. That way, 4 identical drives on two SATA2 buses could be striped to RAID level 50. That could be a nice and fast 2TB array which would be dandy for HD video editing.

And by all means, let's have the Greencreek memory controller onboard with FB-DIMMs.

I know it works/worked on certain ULI-chipsets, and now apparently on the Blackford too, so it certainly can be done, but I for one would not run uncertified and unsupported hardware on mission critical systems.

I configured a Dell 690 and saw the SLI as an option as well. Since the 690 has the 5000X chipset (which is the only chipset that I know that supports the Woodcrest) that means that Dell is saying that it supports SLI????

I posted a link earlier to a game site review of a Tyan motherboard with the 5000X chipset. Tyan was also claiming to support SLI but the game website found that the Nvidia software gave an error message and did not actually support interlacing. I wonder if Dell has gotten 'special permission'/ programming from Nvidia to advertise SLI on a non-Nvidia chipset???

I don't know, I'd like to see confirmation of it as well. I don't understand why Tyan is promoting the feature if it didn't work. Given that the cards in question that Dell says is configured for SLI ($2700 for the pair of them, more than an entire base 690 w/ 1kW PSU), I would think that it's in nVidia's best interests to support it regardless of whose chipset is used.

I could have sworn that there was an nVidia PCIe bridge chip that is added to a base PCIe chipset that enables two of their boards to operate in SLI mode, but I can't find that chip right now. It might be that this chip is used in conjunction with the 5000X.

All this is speculation though, especially as to whether Apple would support SLI assuming the chipsets they get from Intel are capable of running it.

Maybe not, but that's what the source says.

While it's possible that the power connector could still be on the bottom (with a cable inside the case), when it came to drawing the mockups I decided to put the connector on top. The information received only specifed that the power supply was relocated to the top of the case.

Intel quad-core will end up the same way or worse then the first Intel duel cores. Linked to each other by FSB where AMD is useing true quad-cores with Shared L3.
Also intel new chips sets have raid bug even with a raid card.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.../07/06/1831221
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=931556