Apple intros new Mac Pro with "Nehalem" Xeon processors - Page 4

I agree, it doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

We were pretty much all expecting a new case altogether at this point.


That's what we were expecting.

But. I'll bet they could have gotten it in there
if they wanted to.

Yes, and AMD STILL has upgrade issues with their many socket designs.

You can get a DELL Studio XPS 435 about $1000 less with x2 ram then the mac pro.

With the same cpu power.

750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive vs 640GB

a 640gb is $50 less on the dell

Dell 24 inch S2409W Widescreen Flat Panel vs none

ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs # NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB

can add ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB for $100 or ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB for $200 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB for $200 more

can also get a Studio XPS 435 with No Monitor for $1,299

with x2 the ram or - $150 for the same ram

ATI Radeon HD 3650 256MB
ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB [add $50]
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB [add $150]
ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB [add $250]

you can also find other dell core i7 deals as well.

I have two questions to ask.

One as I want to run 3 screens with dedicated cards can I install 3 4870's ?

And should I bother with the 8 way 2.26 that no doubt will be replaced in 6 months, or buy an 8 way 3.2gig from the refurb store instead for the same money?

must be getting old,

I have a Mac Pro (first gen) that I am not sure if i will update or not, though replacing my second screen 20" Dell with an Apple 24" sure sounds good.

But my point, I remember paying close to $7K for a top end system in the mid-ninties. I think it was for a Quadra and large monitor : ) 3-4K for a well equiped laptop was pretty normal then too.

$7K is a lot less to me today. And the specs sure do look attractive to me. Maybe

I especially want to see how much Snow Leopard improves multi-processor efficency.

We know Dell has cheaper machines. Compare their Nehalem Xeon workstations.

edit.

I hate that they are calling it 8 core and confusing people like this. Poor kid.

That's an interesting thought.

Is it the number of cpu's that matter these days?

Or is it the number of cores, or even the number of threads available.

If we go by that last, my new (when it gets here!) 2.66 Mac Pro will be called a 16 thread machine.

Does Dell even make Xeon 5500 series machines yet? They have some quad core xeon based systems, but the tech specs don't mention which series of Xeon is being used.

Does it really matter? You knew what I meant right. What's your problem?

"Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon" Make you feel better sonny?

No confusion here, it was easier to say.

No they don't. That's why I mentioned it.

But when they do, they will cost the same, or more.

they always do.

People here just love to compare PC consumer machines to Apple's professional workstations.

It's the only way they can justify themselves.

This is clearly price increase, not decrease.
I understand Apple, however don't like the decision.
They increased Mac Pros price for double socket as previous edition (Harpertown) was eating high-end iMac sale. Harpertown with 2 sockets was incredibly attractive, so many of you confessed.

What's the word on an update on monitors that aren't so so shiny? I hate to stir this debate again.

No way that I can invest in the new MacPro without a decent, preferably Apple, definitely matte screen, monitor. It's perplexing that Apple doesn't recognize the needs of a good portion of their early adopters and devotees (designers and photographers).

I was hoping for an updated Apple 23" (MATTE). I don't have the real estate for the 30".

The 24" Cinema Display is beautiful, but not so useful for photographers and graphic designers. It's not about reflections. It's about some degree of accuracy when going to print. The 24" is to displays as Kodachrome is to film (if you born before 1970, you may recognize the reference).

I have never bought an Apple monitor either for my business or personally, after they discontinued the crt Studio series.

Don't sweat it. If you don't buy their product, and enough people agree with you, they will either improve them substantially, or discontinue them altogether.

The thing is Nehalem is a more expensive platform. Ondie memory controllers and Quickpath and DDR-3. If AMD was more competitive we'd probably see cheaper pricing but Nehalem has no equal if total performance where total performance is considered for a mainstream platform.

No. The 4870 is a dual-slot card that requires two extra power connectors. Two of them will fit physically, but three won't. I'm not sure if there are four six-pin power connectors in the Mac Pro, but I guarantee you there aren't six.

No I am sorry. I didn't mean it offensively. I just see people get fooled by sales people all the time because they do not understand what they are getting. And everyone gets confused by threads and cpu's. (A friend of mine in 2008 bought a single core PC clockde at 3 ghz for 1,700 bucks because the sales person told him hyperthreading was 2 cores) There are not 8 physical cores. This is old technology in the Mac Pro and I am disappointed because I really wanted to stop using a PC for gaming... looks like that won't be happening for a while. We are about $1,000 dollars or so away from a reasonable price at this point.

Really? Then what are the four red and green lumps in this picture?

My mac pro can be upgraded, any xeon 5400 series proc will drop right in, and as time goes on I'll probably be able to find the faster processors for cheaper and upgrade the machine...


how so? I build a lot of machines. I also buy a lot, from many manufacturers (I maintain a cluster and it's associated servers and workstations). The mac pro is just as upgradeable, assuming you want to void the warranty (and if you think *that's* unique, take a look at dell's pricing on HDs for their disk arrays and servers ::shudders every time he looks at the MD1000 that sits above him in the machine room:: )


The old ram will be made for *long* time, there are many shops that are using xeons that will need FB-DIMMs in the future, but yes, eventually it will be obsolete and prohibitively expensive to find replacement ram <i> just like every other machine</i> ::glares at sun ultrasparc 60 under his desk::



You are apparently *not* the target market for this machine.


which would be great if most people buying a mac pro were on a yearly upgrade cycle, this is a workstation, and those of us who use such machines are usually on a 3-5 year upgrade cycle, where you typically do small upgrades (ram/disk) then replace the entire machine at the next cycle (though I may drop in faster procs in mine if I get the chance :-p).

Again, you are clearly not the target for this machine (or any other made by sun, dell, lenovo, HP, acer, etc in its class), go buy/build a cheap PC or buy an imac or mac mini and stop grouching

That and you can pass any price hike you want when you're the only game in town for your platform.

I just wish this new computer had a cupholder and over 4 gigahertz. It is so slow. Also it has no serial port to connect to my keyboard. HELLO APPLE already bought a good keyboard from you 20 years ago! They keep changing the standards.

There aren't any Philips screws holding the new processor on. How can I detach it? All you guys act like processors are so complicated now. Plus there is no floppy drive? Are you kidding? And where is the joystick? No preloaded Donkey Kong?

You people are all bitching about the updates. How do you think I feel. I had to buy a MacPro on Sunday as my G5 died a horrible death and I was left machine-less. I knew the new MacPro was due out soon but didn't think it would be less than 48 hours from my purchase date. Luckily Apple offers a 14 day return policy so this puppy is going back. And for all the price bitchers out there, you have to admit the new RAM prices are incredible, unless of course you want 32GB. The additional $5000 is a little steep.

The Australian prices are utter insanity. Exchange rates aside, I'm talking about relative affordability. Consider that average wage here is about the same as in the USA, and check these out.

Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon A$ 8,449.00
Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon A$ 10,599.01

Yes - that's A$ 10,599.01 without any upgrades to RAM, drives, graphics...

As a long time PC guy (commodore 64 ring a bell) I have been ready to make the jump to the Mac Pro for some time, but was waiting to see the new updates. Trying to stay in the $2400 to $2800 range, do I get the previous gen dual quad core 2.8 which my local store still has, or do I go for the new single quad core 2.6? I am having a terrible time with this one. My local store is now discounting the previous gen to $2499 by the way. I am not real crazy about being limited to 8gb of ram, but hey what do I know? Photography is my main useage, lightroom, photoshop, etc. Any help?

Hi melgross,

If you were to purchase a 20-24" monitor for personal use, which one(s) would you recommend?

Regards,
Sean

Stupid question, could someone please tell me why they did not include a 2nd on board graphics chip for OpenCL?

I am going to wait for SL to come out and get a 32 nm Westmere system.

Hm... there is new Xeon based on i7 architecture, isn't there..?

I'm need to buy a new tower. What's the best bang for the buck?

My application focus is Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, VMware, and Windows XP (Autodesk AutoCAD, Revit, and Quantity Takeoff).

- Quad 2.93 Gz, 6 GB ($3149)

or

- Oct 2.16 Gz, 6GB ($3299)

Hopefully, we'll have some benchmarks soon.

No the Xeon 3500 is the Server/Workstation equivalent to the Core I7 enthusiast desktop.

The architecture is Nehalem. I know...clear as mud.

The Octo.

Nehalem isn't fast enough to overcome the lack of 4-cores and the ondie
memory controller is good but they typically don't strut their stuff until you
have 4 socket systems which we don't have here.

The core i7 and Xeon 3500 are the Bloomfield variant of Nehalem (same chip, consumer versions have ECC-support disabled.)
The xeon 5500 is the gainestown variant of nehalem

Right on. As wonderful a company as they can be, from time to time Apple's decisions prove perplexing.

The Mac Pro page no longer mentions the ability to use SAS hard drives. When configuring the Mac Pro on the Apple Store, SAS hard drives are no longer an option. The Apple RAID card still does not support external connections.

There is still no mention of Crossfire or SLI support on the Mac Pro. A pair of high end Nvidia Geforce cards running SLI can provide better performance and cost less than a single Quadro card. But any time someone mentions a pair of SLI cards being a better value than a single Quadro card, some Apple apologist always responds with "Quadro is for professionals". So the Mac Pro does not support SLI because "Quadro is for professionals". Exactly how does that address the issue at all? And what if those "professionals" want more power than a single Quadro card can provide? On PCs. multiple Quadro cards can be used in SLI configuration. If a single Quadro card is so "professional" then wouldn't multiple Quadro cards running SLI be even more "professional"?

But according to Apple apologists, the Mac Pro does not support Geforce SLI or even Quadro SLI because "Quadro is for professionals". Also note that an Nvidia Quadro card is no longer an option for the new Mac Pro. How "professional" is that?

Yay, a price increase. Sounds like Apple's suffering from their OWN reality distortion. Apparently "innovating through a recession" means innovative accounting.

I'm not sure which naming convention is more confusing. Intel's seemingly, mostly random alpha-numeric model names or their Tolkien-ish code names.

Intel's own Core i7 motherboard has 4 RAM slots.

Believe it or not, 8GB RAM is plenty, unless you are doing large composites. As long as Photoshop efficiency is at 100%, then more RAM serves no purpose. You need to have enough to run the plug-ins as well, but that is read in the efficiency line in the small window menu when you choose it.

If you are running 1GB images or composites, then I would recommend more, but we were running 1GB files on G4's with 1.5 GB RAM. not pleasant, but it worked.

Ah, what exactly do you do with your "personal use"?

Are each of the Firewire ports on different busses, or do they all share the same bus? If you connect a FW 400 device, will it slow down all the ports?