Apple intros new Mac Pro with "Nehalem" Xeon processors - Page 2

DVI (as Apple uses it) and DisplayPort are both digital, so you should be able to get a "perfect" signal translation.

People have been saying FW is dead. I have arguing that it's the FW400 interface that Apple has forsaken. Seems I was correct. Though I was very very wrong most of the iMac and mac Mini changes.


Worth is the value you attribute to something so we can't really answer that. For me, I use notebooks exclusively so a Mac Pro with any configuration at any price is of no value to me (except to sell it for a profit, of course). Do you need that much computing power (from any vendor)? Can you afford such a machine without affecting your other bills?

But according to the ratings on the apple store, the DisplayPort to DVI converters suck mightily.

I don't really follow graphic card revisions and what not - but I found this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...D_4830/26.html

Am I right in assuming that the new 4870 graphics card is a 15% faster card than the 8800gt I have in my 6 month old mac pro? When they update the 30" monitor to displayPort, I may upgrade - but it seems like kind of a blah upgrade, for what will probably cost $600.

LOL... I was thinking the exact same thing.
My 8c Dual 2.8, 14gig Ram is looking pretty sweet right now.

Here is the real kicker... what are the benchmarks going to say when Snow Leopard comes out?

Talk about hitting a wall... 8 times.

Did you ever think that coming to a forum loaded with uber geeks and asking a question... IS doing some research?
These forums are supposed to be an exchange of idea's and thoughts, questions, and a good resource. A community isn't just the pure elite pounding their chests in some intellectual nerd-off.

Stop being a wanker and answer the guys question if your going to spend the time to post.

Good grief, people, why are you counting megahertz? It's all about the efficiency of the data path, not the raw clock speed. Plus the Nehalem can "Turbo Boost" into about a 20% faster clock rate for single-thread calculations.

Look at a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo versus a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 -- nearly twice the clock speed. The Core will smoke the P4 inside and out just because the architecture is that much better. A processor is all about processing, not just about raw clock speed. If more of the clock cycles are spent in no-ops waiting for instructions, then what good is all those gigahertz?

You guys really need to relax, look at the real specs on these machines, and cut Apple a freakin' break. Apple has never subscribed to the idea that raw clock speed = performance, and rightly so. There's a lot more to it.

I was wondering why they removed the 15,000 RPM drive option when they have benchmarks on Apple's MacPro site for read/write speed tests using both 15,000 and 7,200 RPM drives for those tests.

Don't they realize that people need the 15K drives for video apps?

I didn't say it was Apple's fault, but has there *ever* been a time when the processors could be upgraded? I'm just saying there is a disconnect between the perceived upgradeability of this machine and the reality. It's a tower, but it's simply not upgradeable in the same sense as any other tower. You can add a new video card and a bit of memory. You can add speciality cards too but few exist and most users don't have much of a need for that last survey I read on the subject. It's almost the case that an iMac with easy access to hard drives and memory, could fill this same spot on Apple's line-up.


Exactly, so my "old" machine (hardly a year old) is using incompatible memory and processors from this "new" one. And every time this happens, someone posts to the effect of how happy they are that the new machine is so fantastically "upgradeable" when in fact we might be in the same spot talking about the same thing next year.

I understand all the reasons behind it and the technology choices, but I still have a problem with creating the impression that this is the same upgradeable "tower" type computer we are all used to when in fact it's barely upgradeable at all.

With WiFi, eSATA, and the advent of ZFS, they would be better off offering a much smaller sealed box with just the processors and memory that manages remote or connected storage and put the graphics in the monitor on a small replaceable board IMO. That way, since the processors and memory are hardly ever upgradeable separate from the motherboard, they can be bought (and tossed) as one unit.

Every time I hear people saying the price of a Mac Pro is too high I stop and think how much money I have made with mine over the years. The thing has paid for itself hundreds of times over.

It has one different port on the front. The last one has a FW 400 and FW 800, this one has 2 800's. So if you need to tell them apart at a glance, that's it.

Yeah!

And while you're at it, you can pretend that daisy-chaining FW400 & 800 devices won't slow all the devices down to FW400 speeds!

I think this image shows a dual processor version of the case, there's two heatsinks.
This picture from the front page only has one heatsink:

Also, the motherboard seems to be in two parts, as the lower part can slide out so you can add memory. Seems a little over-the-top seeing as it's fairly accessible anyway! Any other reason they've done it like this? Maybe the heatsinks are too heavy to support with the mobo vertical.
Incidently, the specs say you can have up to 4x nVidia GT120 cards to support up to 8 displays. I wonder if this is using 10.5.7, as the drivers for the GT120 and HD4870 weren't in 10.5.6, afaik.

Cheeeeeeese graterrrrrrrrr.

Boo.

Okay, I should have edited that before I sent it out but calling folks "fools" is not necessary. My point was about the (again) lack of any upgradeability options on what is supposed to be a "tower" type machine.

The MacPro being what it is, could easily be designed so that a new motherboard (along with the new memory and processor architecture), could be dropped in, but yet again they haven't done that either. I'm just saying that with the almost complete lack of upgradeability from the flagship model introduced just last year, this thing might as well be a sealed box.

Disappointing overall (unless more benchmarks show phenomenal improvements), but considering the prices of Nehalem, not surprising. What *IS* surprising is why the 4-core is locked to 8GB RAM. Instead of insulting each other, could someone with a technical understanding please comment on whether the limitation is really to do with the memory controller changes. If so, why do 4 cores handle only 8GB and 8 cores can handle 32GB?

Is the 8GB limit a cynical ploy to push us up to the 8 core machines, or really the best engineering compromise possible with Nehalem?

And I know I was probably dreaming, but I'd hoped for SLI support for 2X 4870s in this generation Mac Pro in anticipation of rocket-fuelled Snow Leopard performance (or at least be competitive with PCs from last year!!!) Why oh why does a machine that is so heavily aimed at graphics professional keep lagging behind GPU-wise with cheap fugly PCs...

Anyone know which of the two video cards would be quieter? I'm into silent computing. My Mac Pro 2.8 is virtually silent....

How many firewire busses does the new Mac Pro have? It should just slow down one of the busses, right?

So how is this ANY DIFFERENT than buying a Dell? Your processor is locked in by the motherboard you have in there. If you want to upgrade to the next gen processor, you'll have to completely swap out your motherboard. If you simply want to upgrade to a faster version of the same processor, you can do that on an Apple or a Dell. They work THE EXACT SAME way.

If you want to upgrade the processors on your older Mac Pro to a faster clock speed, then go ahead! Just don't be so naive to think that everybody but Apple lets you randomly drop next gen processors into older motherboards.

Hard drives, memory, video cards, and all other accessories are also upgradable just like any other computer out there. You might as well drop the argument that the Mac Pro is "unupgradable", because that's just patently false.

I would think that anyone needing more than 8G of RAM isn't going to buy the 4 core processor and Apple is probably trying to keep the costs down, since adding connectors, etc. to offer 32G of RAM is more expensive. They probably looked at the custom configurations people have been buying and maybe everyone that purchases more than 8G of RAM is always buying the more expensive 8 core version. It's probably more of a cost of production/demand situation than a technical. Personally, for anything that I would need a MacPro for, I wouldn't buy the 4 core, I would just buy 8 core and be done with it. MORE POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR............

Praise Jesus! <weeps uncontrollably>

According to Intel pricing at Xbitlabs.com, a 4-core 2.26 Nehalem Xeon (E5520) chip is $373 (in quantities of 1000). The 4-core 2.66 Nehalem Xeon (E5550) chip is $958. The Intel price difference for two chips is $1170. But Apple could be getting a much better price (like $300 or less) on the Mac Pro standard 2.26 chips since they're buying those in much larger quantities than the Mac Pro optional 2.66 chip, moving the price differential over $1300.

So yes Apple is taking a piece, but almost all of the cost difference is attributable to the Intel pricing.

Single 4 core option maxes out at 8 GB. If you choose 8 core option then you can upgrade to 32 GB.

If you honestly think the Xeon in your old machine and the ones in the new Mac Pro are even remotely similar you're fooling yourself. The Nehalem procs are light years ahead of the old Xeons. They're like night and day.

Sorry, we're not all sycophants here.

Well, some apps are more memory than CPU starved (lightroom and photoshop as examples; running filters isn't a most-of-the-time sort of thing, but memory is always beneficial). 4 cores and lots of memory is a valid use space.

And I wonder how 4-core 2.66 is vs. 8-core 2.33 on existing programs that may not always be cleanly multithreaded...

If it is cost saving, it is not really reflected in the Mac Pro price ;-)

It's a little odd that Apple has been removing pro options...however, any self-respecting person would buy the absolute base (and just play around with the processor options) and buy memory and storage from some place that isn't hell-bent on ripping its customers off.

It pains me to see what Apple is charging its customers for HD and RAM upgrades.

Which is flat out false.

Sure, you can't easily upgrade the CPU (but I suspect it is possible with a little work), but you keep ignoring that you can easily upgrade ram, hard drives, and PCI cards.

And while you're not happy that each new generation uses different ram and CPU slot, that doesn't make the ram any less upgradable, just not backwards compatible which is an entirely different issue. And that's exactly the same situation as the PCs that use the exact same chips and motherboards.


From what I have read, the eight slots are divided between four each for each of the two CPUs, so with one CPU you can only access four of the slots. I'm not sure what's up with maxing out with 2G chips instead of 4G, or if that's a false limitation.


But is the new quad really faster than the old 8 core (which Apple is trying to pass off as an "upgrade")?

You can't add a second 24" display unless you add a second card.


I wouldn't call it over the top. They needed more motherboard space and Ive's design team apparently wasn't going to budge on the case, so they did what Apple engineer do best (but seem to not have much opportunity with the slim is are only concern): Innovate. The DIMMs could not be on riser cards, so they put the CPUs on a big quick-path connected riser card and made it easier to access the memory CPUs. I just which they had the opportunity make it a bit wider for the additional DIMMs. I really like how they designed so you could work on it without having to tip it on its side.

Beautiful Systems as always.

NO SLI: No Tesla, No massive OpenCL.

What the hell?

Give me this beautiful system with 3 Full-size PCI-Express 2.0 slots.

"You're a Mac" WTF does that mean!! Don't be an idiot like the win users running around saying "I'm a PC." The people in the ads are metaphors for the actual computers NOT for users!

Sorry for ranting. Pet peeve of mine.

Carry on....

Its hard to perfect...."perfection".

Still a sexy looking cabinet.

The apple webpage says that you can have two monitors on one card, one with dvi and one with displayport. Eight monitors max with four cards.


It looks like Nehalem is 50% to 100% faster than harpertown when matched clock for clock.

http://forum.xcpus.com/intel/14750-n...pec-tests.html

JERK

Finally Apple has put up the prices. Thus targeting even more for the rich people amongst us. I feel a lot more exclusive now. Don't people get it. Apple makes products for rich people not for poor people scraping money from their backs to finally have saved up enough to make a "big" purchase.

Get over it. If you have a Mac be glad to have entered into an elite group cheap. I you don't, then don't bother. It's just for rich people. Buy a Dell computer. Don't put your hat where you can't reach it.

/JERK

I think we are paying Apples lawsuits, don't you think?

Let's hack some more.

Or maybe we should just be content with the mac we have at the moment or use a PC for a while.

The headline news I got from this announcement? The Mac Pro no longer has a high-end GPU option. ATI has lowered the price of the 512MB HD4870 to $149. It's a mid-range GPU. The GT120 is a rebranded 9500GT which was a rebranded 8600GT. It retails for about $60 now. What's more Apple is charging $200 to upgrade from the GT120 to HD4870. The entire HD4870 is only worth $150 so Apple is making $100+ pure profit from a $150 GPU by charging the equivalent of $260 for it.

Nehalem is a great CPU and it's great Apple is getting first dibs, but with their recent promotion of GPU technology, their inability to outfit the Mac Pro with a high-end GPU is disappointing.

They are probably limited in GPU choice because they wanted to be an early adopter of DisplayPort. There just aren't that many displayport cards - a month ago I could only find one $1000 ATI card when I googled it.

Does that $149 HD4870 card include displayPort?

Well, mea culpa, I was wrong about the pricing!

And that's too bad.

I just did two things I never do when a new model comes out.

One, I ordered it the first day.

Two, I ordered the middle speed model instead of the top model. Dual 2.66 GHz cpus will have to do for now. The dual 2.93 GHz model is even too expensive for me, now that I'm retired.

Grats!

For some reason, the single cpu model doesn't accept the 4GB memory modules. Otherwise, you could go to 16 GB.

The other reason is that memory slots are limited per processor. One chip, 4 slots.

I wonder whether the still very expensive 4GB sticks WILL work, just that Apple isn't saying so. This has happened before, so it's a possibility they just haven't tested the machine with them, as people buying the machine are limited by cost, so expensive memory is likely something that Apple figures they won't be buying.

Those prices are shocking. You were previously able to buy a quad 2.66 for £1470 or something. Now the entry level quad 2.66 model is £1899. Over £400 increase.

GPUs are also disappointing although we've yet to see what they'll be capable of. I'd personally rather have a reliable GPU that runs cool enough than one that freezes up like the old X1900XTs.

The lack of a Quadro is surprising but I guess nobody buys computers from iphone Inc for serious graphics work these days anyway.

I think the machines will be very high performing machines but with no quad on the iMac, that is seriously bad to have your lowest quad core sitting at £1900 when PCs have them starting at £450.

I am really getting a bit tired of hearing that the next model is up to 2X faster. It's getting old and not relative to anything you really do with your computer. I also think it makes Apple look bad. Every model since, who knows when, has been up to 2X faster. If that were REALLY true we would be discussing quantum physics with our HALpro 9000.