I liked everything you said except this. Sure, a Mac Mini w/Thunderbolt is way cool. Upgrade it to Sandy Bridge and toss in some quad core processors as a BTO option and you have a modern day SE/30. But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
A smaller Mac Pro would be pretty cool though. After all, how many PCI slots do you really need these days?
Okay. I was a bit overzealous. A Mac Mini (once the Sandy Bridge version is released) + a hot-swap drive bay over TB is a Mac Pro minus the dual processor goodness available in a Mac Pro. However, many Mac Pro's don't have 8 or 12 cores. For that matter, many people with Mac Pro's have never added a PCI adapter.
Glad to get called on something by an intelligent and respected poster. I've been reading MacRumors lately; forgot to raise my standards on the way back.
But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
You are correct sir. When we purchased our MacPros for Final Cut systems we always got the fastest one available. If you don't do this software advances will overwhelm the hardware too quickly. We still have two original 4 core Mac Pros, one running FCP 7 and one running Media Composer. Both work just fine. The 4 core Final Cut system can even handle true uncompressed HD (not 444) which is something the Avids have never done.
Looking forward to the rumored 16 core Mac Pros. Of course I would have to put FCP 7 on it
Wonder when there will be Thunderbolt cards for older Mac Pros?
When (...IF...) the next Mac Pro model comes out and includes graphics cards with Thunderbolt ports built into them instead of just Mini DisplayPort and DVI.
You install one of those in an older Mac Pro to get Thunderbolt. Otherwise you can't.
Quote:
Also, do the new airport routers have thunderbolt in addition to usb?
Also, do the new airport routers have thunderbolt in addition to usb?
There really wouldn't be much point to that. The data needs to travel via either Gigabit Ethernet or wi-fi after you get it off the drive. Much cheaper USB can handle that throughput.
I really don't see the need to use my 2011 imac as a monitor for my 2011 macbook pro. I would however, love to see a thunderbolt type converter cable that lets me use my imac as a monitor for my gaming pc (if that's even possible).
I was just going ask if anyone knew which drives Promise uses in these RAIDs. Is that it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I just want to know since we will be buying replacement drives for swapping at the same time, and they all need to match.
As people may have mentioned, the WD Green is from the Time Capsule.
For the Promise RAIDs it doesn't seem to specify the drives other than it is 7200rpm (the WD Caviar Greens don't specify the RPM from what I can find, people seem to think it is less than the 7200rpm standard).
I suppose you could pull the drives out when you purchase one and see what it comes with.
Not the best solution, I know. Let alone all this discussion about "enterprise class" which I am not going to rehash. I would be curious though what "class" of drives Promise RAIDs claim to be.
"All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5" hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10."
I'm looking forward to AnandTech's more in depth reviews in time to come. Anand is a true hard drive/SSD fanatic and I expect a thorough review.
As people may have mentioned, the WD Green is from the Time Capsule.
For the Promise RAIDs it doesn't seem to specify the drives other than it is 7200rpm (the WD Caviar Greens don't specify the RPM from what I can find, people seem to think it is less than the 7200rpm standard).
They don't say what it is, but they admit the greens are closer to 5400 RPM in some of the articles.
Quote:
I suppose you could pull the drives out when you purchase one and see what it comes with.
You're paying a bit of a premium for whatever drives are in there, to remove them right away is silly, unless you plan to buy the models with 1TB drives and stuff 3TB drives in there.
I really don't see the need to use my 2011 imac as a monitor for my 2011 macbook pro. I would however, love to see a thunderbolt type converter cable that lets me use my imac as a monitor for my gaming pc (if that's even possible).
It was possible with the 2010 27" iMac, but by all reports I've seen, that went away when they put in the Thunderbolt ports.
I liked everything you said except this. Sure, a Mac Mini w/Thunderbolt is way cool. Upgrade it to Sandy Bridge and toss in some quad core processors as a BTO option and you have a modern day SE/30. But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
A smaller Mac Pro would be pretty cool though. After all, how many PCI slots do you really need these days?
What I think most people need from a Mac Pro is the drive bays more than the PCI slots (I could be wrong). And TB I think will solve that problem for a lot of people. Mac mini or MBP or ??? But there are also people who want a high-end graphics card that will require a Mac Pro or will need to leverage the (yet-to-be-developed) Thunderbolt-based graphics cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by planetWC
Wonder when there will be Thunderbolt cards for older Mac Pros?
I remember reading that this isn't doable. The Thunderbolt controller chip needs to be physically connected to the actual bus, not just a PCI slot downstream. A motherboard will either natively support Thunderbolt or it won't, but there won't be add-on cards.
What I think most people need from a Mac Pro is the drive bays more than the PCI slots (I could be wrong). And TB I think will solve that problem for a lot of people. Mac mini or MBP or ??? But there are also people who want a high-end graphics card that will require a Mac Pro or will need to leverage the (yet-to-be-developed) Thunderbolt-based graphics cards.
I remember reading that this isn't doable. The Thunderbolt controller chip needs to be physically connected to the actual bus, not just a PCI slot downstream. A motherboard will either natively support Thunderbolt or it won't, but there won't be add-on cards.
so no add in video cards can't use Thunderbolt?
and the next mac pro will have a MXM or on board video.
Long story short, these are more than just cables:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeB
so no add in video cards can't use Thunderbolt?
I think it's more like you have to have the Thunderbolt chipset support built into the motherboard, then you should (warning: conjecture ahead) be able to drive an additional video card across the Thunderbolt bus (which is really a type of extended/external PCI bus) or drive a standard video card from the existing PCI slot.
What you won't be able to do is install some type Thunderbolt card in a PCI slot on your Mac Pro.
Long story short, these are more than just cables:
Thanks for posting that. That article is more informative on the subject than anything else I've seen so far.
Quote:
I think it's more like you have to have the Thunderbolt chipset support built into the motherboard, then you should (warning: conjecture ahead) be able to drive an additional video card across the Thunderbolt bus (which is really a type of extended/external PCI bus) or drive a standard video card from the existing PCI slot.
What you won't be able to do is install some type Thunderbolt card in a PCI slot on your Mac Pro.
It seems to me that a video card with a Thunderbolt plug is feasible within the unusual requirements of the technology, the video card has access to PCIe and the video output of the graphics chip. Then the way add a second or third Thunderbolt jack is to get another hybrid I/O and graphics board. It seems a bit ridiculous though, if you just need more I/O, then you're buying a graphics chip that you don't really need. But if you have a legacy Mac Pro, this might be an option, provided that the graphics chip is supported by Apple in the particular machine in question.
You're paying a bit of a premium for whatever drives are in there, to remove them right away is silly, unless you plan to buy the models with 1TB drives and stuff 3TB drives in there.
Err... What I said was in response to the user that was wondering what drives to buy if the original drives went down, since it is best to use matched drives in RAIDs. Hence I mentioned, one could just pull it out to see what drives they were using, and then put it back of course.
Anyway initial reviews show it shipping with Hitachi Deskstar drives, with specific models etc as I posted earlier:
"All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5" hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10."
Err... What I said was in response to the user that was wondering what drives to buy if the original drives went down, since it is best to use matched drives in RAIDs. Hence I mentioned, one could just pull it out to see what drives they were using, and then put it back of course.
You're right, I should have corrected my statement once I realized my misunderstanding of the context.
If you remember when HDMI first came along the cables were taking the piss expensive like this. Prices soon drop and in practice, this is an area where buying the Apple option will cost you dear, when compared with a generic.
Exactly. You can get HDMI cable now for $0.99 shipped.
Shameless Apple still sells it for dear $19.00 + $4.00 shipping. They also still sell 10 ft HDMI cable for $44.95. Makes sense: they have to run high margin business.
Comments
I liked everything you said except this. Sure, a Mac Mini w/Thunderbolt is way cool. Upgrade it to Sandy Bridge and toss in some quad core processors as a BTO option and you have a modern day SE/30. But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
A smaller Mac Pro would be pretty cool though. After all, how many PCI slots do you really need these days?
Okay. I was a bit overzealous. A Mac Mini (once the Sandy Bridge version is released) + a hot-swap drive bay over TB is a Mac Pro minus the dual processor goodness available in a Mac Pro. However, many Mac Pro's don't have 8 or 12 cores. For that matter, many people with Mac Pro's have never added a PCI adapter.
Glad to get called on something by an intelligent and respected poster. I've been reading MacRumors lately; forgot to raise my standards on the way back.
Also, do the new airport routers have thunderbolt in addition to usb?
But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
You are correct sir. When we purchased our MacPros for Final Cut systems we always got the fastest one available. If you don't do this software advances will overwhelm the hardware too quickly. We still have two original 4 core Mac Pros, one running FCP 7 and one running Media Composer. Both work just fine. The 4 core Final Cut system can even handle true uncompressed HD (not 444) which is something the Avids have never done.
Looking forward to the rumored 16 core Mac Pros. Of course I would have to put FCP 7 on it
Wonder when there will be Thunderbolt cards for older Mac Pros?
When (...IF...) the next Mac Pro model comes out and includes graphics cards with Thunderbolt ports built into them instead of just Mini DisplayPort and DVI.
You install one of those in an older Mac Pro to get Thunderbolt. Otherwise you can't.
Also, do the new airport routers have thunderbolt in addition to usb?
No.
Also, do the new airport routers have thunderbolt in addition to usb?
There really wouldn't be much point to that. The data needs to travel via either Gigabit Ethernet or wi-fi after you get it off the drive. Much cheaper USB can handle that throughput.
I was just going ask if anyone knew which drives Promise uses in these RAIDs. Is that it?
I just want to know since we will be buying replacement drives for swapping at the same time, and they all need to match.
As people may have mentioned, the WD Green is from the Time Capsule.
For the Promise RAIDs it doesn't seem to specify the drives other than it is 7200rpm (the WD Caviar Greens don't specify the RPM from what I can find, people seem to think it is less than the 7200rpm standard).
I suppose you could pull the drives out when you purchase one and see what it comes with.
Not the best solution, I know. Let alone all this discussion about "enterprise class" which I am not going to rehash. I would be curious though what "class" of drives Promise RAIDs claim to be.
If you want to put 6G SSDs in there will it support SATA III?
I guess as long as it supports SATA III it’s OK for SATA II drives.
Answers from Promise:
Sata III is supported
http://www2.promise.com/storage/raid...tistic=pegasus
http://www2.promise.com/media_bank/D...0110628_EN.pdf
Answers from AnandTech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4473/a...-available-now
"All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5" hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10."
I'm looking forward to AnandTech's more in depth reviews in time to come. Anand is a true hard drive/SSD fanatic and I expect a thorough review.
As people may have mentioned, the WD Green is from the Time Capsule.
For the Promise RAIDs it doesn't seem to specify the drives other than it is 7200rpm (the WD Caviar Greens don't specify the RPM from what I can find, people seem to think it is less than the 7200rpm standard).
They don't say what it is, but they admit the greens are closer to 5400 RPM in some of the articles.
I suppose you could pull the drives out when you purchase one and see what it comes with.
You're paying a bit of a premium for whatever drives are in there, to remove them right away is silly, unless you plan to buy the models with 1TB drives and stuff 3TB drives in there.
I really don't see the need to use my 2011 imac as a monitor for my 2011 macbook pro. I would however, love to see a thunderbolt type converter cable that lets me use my imac as a monitor for my gaming pc (if that's even possible).
It was possible with the 2010 27" iMac, but by all reports I've seen, that went away when they put in the Thunderbolt ports.
I liked everything you said except this. Sure, a Mac Mini w/Thunderbolt is way cool. Upgrade it to Sandy Bridge and toss in some quad core processors as a BTO option and you have a modern day SE/30. But I still think most pros wouldn't give up 6-12 cores of Xeon badness, not to mention the data throughout of that system.
A smaller Mac Pro would be pretty cool though. After all, how many PCI slots do you really need these days?
What I think most people need from a Mac Pro is the drive bays more than the PCI slots (I could be wrong). And TB I think will solve that problem for a lot of people. Mac mini or MBP or ??? But there are also people who want a high-end graphics card that will require a Mac Pro or will need to leverage the (yet-to-be-developed) Thunderbolt-based graphics cards.
Wonder when there will be Thunderbolt cards for older Mac Pros?
I remember reading that this isn't doable. The Thunderbolt controller chip needs to be physically connected to the actual bus, not just a PCI slot downstream. A motherboard will either natively support Thunderbolt or it won't, but there won't be add-on cards.
Also, Apple has posted an FAQ for the 2 meter Thunderbolt cable (no, I am not making that up!) : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4614
What I think most people need from a Mac Pro is the drive bays more than the PCI slots (I could be wrong). And TB I think will solve that problem for a lot of people. Mac mini or MBP or ??? But there are also people who want a high-end graphics card that will require a Mac Pro or will need to leverage the (yet-to-be-developed) Thunderbolt-based graphics cards.
I remember reading that this isn't doable. The Thunderbolt controller chip needs to be physically connected to the actual bus, not just a PCI slot downstream. A motherboard will either natively support Thunderbolt or it won't, but there won't be add-on cards.
so no add in video cards can't use Thunderbolt?
and the next mac pro will have a MXM or on board video.
And an Ars discussion here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...hopping-50.ars
Long story short, these are more than just cables:
so no add in video cards can't use Thunderbolt?
I think it's more like you have to have the Thunderbolt chipset support built into the motherboard, then you should (warning: conjecture ahead) be able to drive an additional video card across the Thunderbolt bus (which is really a type of extended/external PCI bus) or drive a standard video card from the existing PCI slot.
What you won't be able to do is install some type Thunderbolt card in a PCI slot on your Mac Pro.
Can I buy Apple Care for that Thunderbolt cable? LOL
Wow
Can I buy Apple Care for that Thunderbolt cable? LOL
Can I get the cost amortized over two years. I can't wait for the 500MB update files for the cable.
More info from an iFixit teardown of the new Thunderbolt cable here: http://www.ifixit.com/blog/blog/2011...ightning-fast/
And an Ars discussion here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...hopping-50.ars
Long story short, these are more than just cables:
Thanks for posting that. That article is more informative on the subject than anything else I've seen so far.
I think it's more like you have to have the Thunderbolt chipset support built into the motherboard, then you should (warning: conjecture ahead) be able to drive an additional video card across the Thunderbolt bus (which is really a type of extended/external PCI bus) or drive a standard video card from the existing PCI slot.
What you won't be able to do is install some type Thunderbolt card in a PCI slot on your Mac Pro.
It seems to me that a video card with a Thunderbolt plug is feasible within the unusual requirements of the technology, the video card has access to PCIe and the video output of the graphics chip. Then the way add a second or third Thunderbolt jack is to get another hybrid I/O and graphics board. It seems a bit ridiculous though, if you just need more I/O, then you're buying a graphics chip that you don't really need. But if you have a legacy Mac Pro, this might be an option, provided that the graphics chip is supported by Apple in the particular machine in question.
You're paying a bit of a premium for whatever drives are in there, to remove them right away is silly, unless you plan to buy the models with 1TB drives and stuff 3TB drives in there.
Err... What I said was in response to the user that was wondering what drives to buy if the original drives went down, since it is best to use matched drives in RAIDs. Hence I mentioned, one could just pull it out to see what drives they were using, and then put it back of course.
Anyway initial reviews show it shipping with Hitachi Deskstar drives, with specific models etc as I posted earlier:
From AnandTech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4473/a...-available-now
"All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5" hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10."
Err... What I said was in response to the user that was wondering what drives to buy if the original drives went down, since it is best to use matched drives in RAIDs. Hence I mentioned, one could just pull it out to see what drives they were using, and then put it back of course.
You're right, I should have corrected my statement once I realized my misunderstanding of the context.
If you remember when HDMI first came along the cables were taking the piss expensive like this. Prices soon drop and in practice, this is an area where buying the Apple option will cost you dear, when compared with a generic.
Exactly. You can get HDMI cable now for $0.99 shipped.
http://cgi.ebay.com/HDMI-CABLE-4-FEE...ht_3328wt_1135
Shameless Apple still sells it for dear $19.00 + $4.00 shipping. They also still sell 10 ft HDMI cable for $44.95. Makes sense: they have to run high margin business.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC...co=MTk0MjQxODI