So how many are expecting a new Mini to debut at WWDC? For me it is still a toss up as to which machine (the Pro or the Mini) gets the made in the USA label. I've leaned towards the Mac Pro but I'm not sure the economics of that machine would support a manufacturing plant running all year.
So maybe a Mini with some Long Horns on it? Mini could be far more interesting with a little refactoring which a modest redesign for made in America could do for that machine.
Would love to see it at WWDC however according to Wikipedia, Intel isn't releasing the processors with the GT3e graphics until the third quarter of this year.
Server for what? Unless you need an Apple specific feature you probably should be considering a Linux box that is designed to be a server.
Do you realize how silly and impossible that question is? There is no context at all here for even a wild assed guess. Again a server for what comes to mind.
I really just wanted to know if the Mac Mini server was worth the extra money and it seems my question was answered, no. I went ahead and bought a used SUN SunFire X4170 (2)Intel Xeon 5570 16 core's, 48gb ram, 4X 72GB HD's for less than 700 dollars off of eBay. I was just playing with the notion of buying a 1U or 2U server but after looking at how cheap a used Oracle-Sun machine could be had for I just couldn't resist, especially for such a powerful one. The thing is extremely noisy so I had to put it in the bomb shelter, yes I said bomb shelter, in Switzerland by law every building has to have own, weird huh, gosh we're paranoid. Most of us just use them as wine cellars or in my case a server room.
I host a server for my family and friends, I provide email, storage and some web apps . My previous server was a Linux box but I have over 30 people using it and it's age started to show, hence the question about the Mac Mini. However if you have the room and a place where you can't hear the blasted thing, a used Sun server is a really fantastic thing to own. Especially for the power you get for such little money, I'm sure it will cost more in power consumption in the long run but I'm a hopeless geek and couldn't resist.
Would love to see it at WWDC however according to Wikipedia, Intel isn't releasing the processors with the GT3e graphics until the third quarter of this year.
They tend to only mention redesigns at events. I reckon the only model that will get a redesign (even if it's minor) will be the Mac Pro.
HP has a list of notebooks they are bringing out next month, some with the HD5000 graphics:
I notice they've gone with the AMD 8750M. If Apple went all 8750M in the 15" MBP (hopefully 1GB minimum memory), they wouldn't need GT3 at all, they'd just use GT2 (4200/4400/4600).
With the Air, the GT3 (5100 = Iris) part (i7-4558U) still gives double the performance:
The Mini would really need Iris Pro, which is only in the quad-core parts, which would suggest a later update e.g October for Mini, iMac and Pro. I imagine the dual-core 13" rMBP will get double performance using Iris like the Air. We'll probably find out a week tomorrow when Intel shows what options are available.
I really just wanted to know if the Mac Mini server was worth the extra money and it seems my question was answered, no. I went ahead and bought a used SUN SunFire X4170 (2)Intel Xeon 5570 16 core's, 48gb ram, 4X 72GB HD's for less than 700 dollars off of eBay.
It's 8-core, 16-thread if it has 2x X5570s. It's the same as a 2009 8-core Mac Pro. It's a bit faster than the Mini and you have the extra RAM but you wouldn't have to keep the Mini in a bomb shelter. If you got the $799 Mini, put in a 250GB SSD ($170), 16GB RAM ($150), you'd get a better machine with a warranty for $1119.
If I come to find out that the $799 mini has the Intel HD 4600, I might pass until next year or just wait until my current Mac breaks. I know I said I am tempted to get an iMac, though next year will mean a lot more with the 20nm Maxwell GPUs from nVidia.
If I come to find out that the $799 mini has the Intel HD 4600, I might pass until next year or just wait until my current Mac breaks. I know I said I am tempted to get an iMac, though next year will mean a lot more with the 20nm Maxwell GPUs from nVidia.
I'm not sure what I will do. My old MBP has really developed a few quirks and other issues so I can't hold out forever. I could eve see an AIR as a potential replacement if they can significantly beef up the secondary storage and do a few other things to make the machine more useful. Having a couple of VM images installed really eats up the "disk" space. As such the lack of a sizable and affordable SSD option still puts the AIRs on the back burner.
There is just so much happening in the industry right now that I can see many possibilities for this years hardware.
I really just wanted to know if the Mac Mini server was worth the extra money and it seems my question was answered, no. I went ahead and bought a used SUN SunFire X4170 (2)Intel Xeon 5570 16 core's, 48gb ram, 4X 72GB HD's for less than 700 dollars off of eBay. I was just playing with the notion of buying a 1U or 2U server but after looking at how cheap a used Oracle-Sun machine could be had for I just couldn't resist, especially for such a powerful one. The thing is extremely noisy so I had to put it in the bomb shelter, yes I said bomb shelter, in Switzerland by law every building has to have own, weird huh, gosh we're paranoid. Most of us just use them as wine cellars or in my case a server room.
I host a server for my family and friends, I provide email, storage and some web apps . My previous server was a Linux box but I have over 30 people using it and it's age started to show, hence the question about the Mac Mini. However if you have the room and a place where you can't hear the blasted thing, a used Sun server is a really fantastic thing to own. Especially for the power you get for such little money, I'm sure it will cost more in power consumption in the long run but I'm a hopeless geek and couldn't resist.
Yeah my initial question there was a matter of bandwidth required more than anything else. I wasn't sure how this was being set up. The way you worded it here, it sounds more like ISP bandwidth rates would bottleneck it long before ethernet limits. Something like the server you described would provide much more bandwidth assuming an installed OS that supports any kind of traffic management.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
They tend to only mention redesigns at events. I reckon the only model that will get a redesign (even if it's minor) will be the Mac Pro.
I don't think there's any chance of seeing one at WWDC. If they're using Ivy Bridge E, which would be the most direct step, I wouldn't expect anything to actually ship before Q4.
Quote:
It's 8-core, 16-thread if it has 2x X5570s. It's the same as a 2009 8-core Mac Pro. It's a bit faster than the Mini and you have the extra RAM but you wouldn't have to keep the Mini in a bomb shelter. If you got the $799 Mini, put in a 250GB SSD ($170), 16GB RAM ($150), you'd get a better machine with a warranty for $1119.
Better is subjective. It would be quieter, but this one looks cooler. I'm assuming you quoted the $799 mini to match the thread count of mini to the used server (8 with hyperthreading to 8 physical)? I've kept old servers around before to test hypervisor configurations, so I'm familiar with the noise level. They're designed to be in a different room with whatever other hardware. The used server would have more options in terms of higher bandwidth use cases. That was what I mentioned about the mini before. I didn't know if the access would be local as in several people in the same office or the file sizes that would be transferred concurrently. The specs on that server are quite impressive. Even today that ram alone is pretty expensive.
I didn't know if the access would be local as in several people in the same office or the file sizes that would be transferred concurrently.
Wouldn't really matter, the Mini can handle external IO faster than the SATA connection to the drive. Although the Sunfire has more drives, they're only HDDs.
It's unlikely that it was an issue of cpu bottleneck there unless it was actually being used to crunch numbers or run multiple VMs. That's why I figured you were going by threads.
Quote:
Gigabit ethernet is plenty and Thunderbolt can add a second one or fibre channel.
Wouldn't really matter, the Mini can handle external IO faster than the SATA connection to the drive. Although the Sunfire has more drives, they're only HDDs.
It depends on the use case as I mentioned, but thunderbolt isn't a viable option there at all . I didn't bother mentioning it as I didn't think it would come up. You aren't going to find a thunderbolt connection to any kind of switch. You could add a DAS solution via thunderbolt, but you would still be limited by gigabit ethernet. Regarding gigabit ethernet, I wasn't sure if it might be a corner case of supporting a number of users where large files are being either transferred or accessed directly. For someone hosting a site and some files from their basement, their upload bandwidth isn't going to saturate gigabit ethernet anyway. On the topic of SATA, it's still faster than gigabit ethernet, which has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of roughly 120MB/s. I'm not sure of your point here. The Mini's fastest connection isn't the one that would be used as a networking protocol.
Would a price drop be possible maybe by $100 across the board or does anyone think it'll just stay the same $600/$800/$1,000?
A price drop isn't impossible though $100 might be rich for Apple.
The big problem with Apples machines is that $200 differential between machines doesn't buy you a lot. It would be very interesting to see how sales spread across the line up. By the time you get to the server model you are left with the unpleasant taste of the word "ripoff" in your mouth. Apple really needs to throw people a bone here when it comes to desirable features in the 200 dollar increments. Disk space and fusion drive comes to mind here.
MM is coming out with the Haswell chip and it will be the same price.
Yep, and with the "improved" Intel graphics, a discrete graphics card is off the table, probably permanently.
21 inch iMac will probably move to integrated-only graphics as well.
WWDC announcements will be software only. A separate announcement towards the end of the month will highlight speedbumped iMacs with the Mini as a footnote. If the Texas factory will be making Mac Pros, don't look for anything before November.
Yep, and with the "improved" Intel graphics, a discrete graphics card is off the table, probably permanently.
Desktop Haswell gets worse iGPUs than laptop Haswell. Desktop gets 4600, laptop gets 5x00. Not that I ever see the Mac Mini having a dedicated chip in the first place, but the reason for that won't be how good the iGPU is. At least, not this revision.
21 inch iMac will probably move to integrated-only graphics as well.
I seriously doubt that.
WWDC announcements will be software only.
And that.
A separate announcement towards the end of the month…
Why does that make any sense? Rent out Moscone West and then waste MORE money later in the month for less press?
…don't look for anything before November.
Also nonsense. They may as well not make a new Mac Pro at all. Do you understand how long it has been since an actual update? They've had THAT time to build them here.
Also nonsense. They may as well not make a new Mac Pro at all. Do you understand how long it has been since an actual update? They've had THAT time to build them here.
Actually that part has less to do with quibbling over what factory might be making them and more to do with what parts will be used. If they're sticking with E/EP, they won't be out for a bit. Sandy Bridge E officially launched roughly 3 months prior to any oems shipping units, and the official launch date hasn't even hit yet on Ivy. Rumors still say Q3. I thought intel had confirmed that, but I can't find it now. They could always go with Haswell E3s, but the chips would be equivalent in performance to those represented by the imac. You have 4 more PCI lanes and no integrated graphics when comped against the options used in the imacs.
It's still not saying that this is all somehow intel's fault for not releasing anything. They released chips, and Apple obviously didn't use them. I also can't seee intel returning to an annual update on this line. I wonder if their tick/tock cycle will even hold up in consumer lines. I certainly don't see them releasing a machine based on Sandy Bridge E at this point. In terms of events, they could always announce a Mac Pro, but it would be pretty far out. I don't just mean a month out either. If they wanted to tie it to an event, it would probably be one in the Fall along with whatever else hasn't been refreshed. Otherwise I'm quite sure a new mac pro announcement would get significant press anyway. It wouldn't be due to its potential sales. It would just be due to Apple finally updating a machine after 3 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Desktop Haswell gets worse iGPUs than laptop Haswell. Desktop gets 4600, laptop gets 5x00. Not that I ever see the Mac Mini having a dedicated chip in the first place, but the reason for that won't be how good the iGPU is. At least, not this revision.
Desktop chips are also quite often cheaper. If they did that, I expect it would be to offset a price drop. I don't expect it with Haswell.
The i7-4770R IGP should be as fast as the 650M so suitable for all the 21" models assuming it's also available in an i5 variety. Iris would be fine at that level too though. This is no match for the 680MX, which is a further 3x faster so I don't expect they'd get rid of the dedicated GPU in the 27". It does mean better use of the space and easier cooling for the 21.5" though.
Integrated graphics still understandably has a bad reputation but with OpenGL 4 support, OpenCL 1.2, DX11 and performance to rival at least a 640M, it's not warranted any more (assuming it lives up to the description).
Sandy Bridge E officially launched roughly 3 months prior to any oems shipping units
It was delayed though, you can't expect every release to follow the same pattern. Intel is launching Haswell at Computex on June 3rd. They have an IDF in San Francisco on September 10th-12th. It's likely that they'll release Ivy Bridge E/EP at that point, which gives Apple the opportunity to mention it alongside their iOS updates at an event in September or October. I don't think there's enough reason to have a separate Mac event as the MP would be the only update.
Integrated graphics still understandably has a bad reputation but with OpenGL 4 support, OpenCL 1.2, DX11 and performance to rival at least a 640M, it's not warranted any more (assuming it lives up to the description).
… Not having their own RAM still warrants it, yeah.
And isn't OS X still dragging its digital feet on modern OpenGL support?
Comments
What do you want a written guarantee it works!
So maybe a Mini with some Long Horns on it? Mini could be far more interesting with a little refactoring which a modest redesign for made in America could do for that machine.
I really just wanted to know if the Mac Mini server was worth the extra money and it seems my question was answered, no. I went ahead and bought a used SUN SunFire X4170 (2)Intel Xeon 5570 16 core's, 48gb ram, 4X 72GB HD's for less than 700 dollars off of eBay. I was just playing with the notion of buying a 1U or 2U server but after looking at how cheap a used Oracle-Sun machine could be had for I just couldn't resist, especially for such a powerful one. The thing is extremely noisy so I had to put it in the bomb shelter, yes I said bomb shelter, in Switzerland by law every building has to have own, weird huh, gosh we're paranoid. Most of us just use them as wine cellars or in my case a server room.
I host a server for my family and friends, I provide email, storage and some web apps . My previous server was a Linux box but I have over 30 people using it and it's age started to show, hence the question about the Mac Mini. However if you have the room and a place where you can't hear the blasted thing, a used Sun server is a really fantastic thing to own. Especially for the power you get for such little money, I'm sure it will cost more in power consumption in the long run but I'm a hopeless geek and couldn't resist.
The Mac Mini is the product that is going to be made in America.Watch for it soon.
They tend to only mention redesigns at events. I reckon the only model that will get a redesign (even if it's minor) will be the Mac Pro.
HP has a list of notebooks they are bringing out next month, some with the HD5000 graphics:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-introduces-latest-mainstream-ProBook-400-series.91990.0.html
I notice they've gone with the AMD 8750M. If Apple went all 8750M in the 15" MBP (hopefully 1GB minimum memory), they wouldn't need GT3 at all, they'd just use GT2 (4200/4400/4600).
With the Air, the GT3 (5100 = Iris) part (i7-4558U) still gives double the performance:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6926/intel-iris-iris-pro-graphics-haswell-gt3gt3e-gets-a-brand
The Mini would really need Iris Pro, which is only in the quad-core parts, which would suggest a later update e.g October for Mini, iMac and Pro. I imagine the dual-core 13" rMBP will get double performance using Iris like the Air. We'll probably find out a week tomorrow when Intel shows what options are available.
It's 8-core, 16-thread if it has 2x X5570s. It's the same as a 2009 8-core Mac Pro. It's a bit faster than the Mini and you have the extra RAM but you wouldn't have to keep the Mini in a bomb shelter. If you got the $799 Mini, put in a 250GB SSD ($170), 16GB RAM ($150), you'd get a better machine with a warranty for $1119.
I'm not sure what I will do. My old MBP has really developed a few quirks and other issues so I can't hold out forever. I could eve see an AIR as a potential replacement if they can significantly beef up the secondary storage and do a few other things to make the machine more useful. Having a couple of VM images installed really eats up the "disk" space. As such the lack of a sizable and affordable SSD option still puts the AIRs on the back burner.
There is just so much happening in the industry right now that I can see many possibilities for this years hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
I really just wanted to know if the Mac Mini server was worth the extra money and it seems my question was answered, no. I went ahead and bought a used SUN SunFire X4170 (2)Intel Xeon 5570 16 core's, 48gb ram, 4X 72GB HD's for less than 700 dollars off of eBay. I was just playing with the notion of buying a 1U or 2U server but after looking at how cheap a used Oracle-Sun machine could be had for I just couldn't resist, especially for such a powerful one. The thing is extremely noisy so I had to put it in the bomb shelter, yes I said bomb shelter, in Switzerland by law every building has to have own, weird huh, gosh we're paranoid. Most of us just use them as wine cellars or in my case a server room.
I host a server for my family and friends, I provide email, storage and some web apps . My previous server was a Linux box but I have over 30 people using it and it's age started to show, hence the question about the Mac Mini. However if you have the room and a place where you can't hear the blasted thing, a used Sun server is a really fantastic thing to own. Especially for the power you get for such little money, I'm sure it will cost more in power consumption in the long run but I'm a hopeless geek and couldn't resist.
Yeah my initial question there was a matter of bandwidth required more than anything else. I wasn't sure how this was being set up. The way you worded it here, it sounds more like ISP bandwidth rates would bottleneck it long before ethernet limits. Something like the server you described would provide much more bandwidth assuming an installed OS that supports any kind of traffic management.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
They tend to only mention redesigns at events. I reckon the only model that will get a redesign (even if it's minor) will be the Mac Pro.
I don't think there's any chance of seeing one at WWDC. If they're using Ivy Bridge E, which would be the most direct step, I wouldn't expect anything to actually ship before Q4.
Quote:
It's 8-core, 16-thread if it has 2x X5570s. It's the same as a 2009 8-core Mac Pro. It's a bit faster than the Mini and you have the extra RAM but you wouldn't have to keep the Mini in a bomb shelter. If you got the $799 Mini, put in a 250GB SSD ($170), 16GB RAM ($150), you'd get a better machine with a warranty for $1119.
Better is subjective. It would be quieter, but this one looks cooler
'Looks cooler' is also subjective:
Just to get comparable performance.
Gigabit ethernet is plenty and Thunderbolt can add a second one or fibre channel.
Wouldn't really matter, the Mini can handle external IO faster than the SATA connection to the drive. Although the Sunfire has more drives, they're only HDDs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
'Looks cooler' is also subjective:
You know I was just having fun with that one.
Quote:
Just to get comparable performance.
It's unlikely that it was an issue of cpu bottleneck there unless it was actually being used to crunch numbers or run multiple VMs. That's why I figured you were going by threads.
Quote:
Gigabit ethernet is plenty and Thunderbolt can add a second one or fibre channel.
Wouldn't really matter, the Mini can handle external IO faster than the SATA connection to the drive. Although the Sunfire has more drives, they're only HDDs.
It depends on the use case as I mentioned, but thunderbolt isn't a viable option there at all . I didn't bother mentioning it as I didn't think it would come up. You aren't going to find a thunderbolt connection to any kind of switch. You could add a DAS solution via thunderbolt, but you would still be limited by gigabit ethernet. Regarding gigabit ethernet, I wasn't sure if it might be a corner case of supporting a number of users where large files are being either transferred or accessed directly. For someone hosting a site and some files from their basement, their upload bandwidth isn't going to saturate gigabit ethernet anyway. On the topic of SATA, it's still faster than gigabit ethernet, which has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of roughly 120MB/s. I'm not sure of your point here. The Mini's fastest connection isn't the one that would be used as a networking protocol.
A price drop isn't impossible though $100 might be rich for Apple.
The big problem with Apples machines is that $200 differential between machines doesn't buy you a lot. It would be very interesting to see how sales spread across the line up. By the time you get to the server model you are left with the unpleasant taste of the word "ripoff" in your mouth. Apple really needs to throw people a bone here when it comes to desirable features in the 200 dollar increments. Disk space and fusion drive comes to mind here.
MM is coming out with the Haswell chip and it will be the same price.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marvfox
MM is coming out with the Haswell chip and it will be the same price.
Yep, and with the "improved" Intel graphics, a discrete graphics card is off the table, probably permanently.
21 inch iMac will probably move to integrated-only graphics as well.
WWDC announcements will be software only. A separate announcement towards the end of the month will highlight speedbumped iMacs with the Mini as a footnote. If the Texas factory will be making Mac Pros, don't look for anything before November.
Originally Posted by Conrail
Yep, and with the "improved" Intel graphics, a discrete graphics card is off the table, probably permanently.
Desktop Haswell gets worse iGPUs than laptop Haswell. Desktop gets 4600, laptop gets 5x00. Not that I ever see the Mac Mini having a dedicated chip in the first place, but the reason for that won't be how good the iGPU is. At least, not this revision.
21 inch iMac will probably move to integrated-only graphics as well.
I seriously doubt that.
WWDC announcements will be software only.
And that.
A separate announcement towards the end of the month…
Why does that make any sense? Rent out Moscone West and then waste MORE money later in the month for less press?
…don't look for anything before November.
Also nonsense. They may as well not make a new Mac Pro at all. Do you understand how long it has been since an actual update? They've had THAT time to build them here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Also nonsense. They may as well not make a new Mac Pro at all. Do you understand how long it has been since an actual update? They've had THAT time to build them here.
Actually that part has less to do with quibbling over what factory might be making them and more to do with what parts will be used. If they're sticking with E/EP, they won't be out for a bit. Sandy Bridge E officially launched roughly 3 months prior to any oems shipping units, and the official launch date hasn't even hit yet on Ivy. Rumors still say Q3. I thought intel had confirmed that, but I can't find it now. They could always go with Haswell E3s, but the chips would be equivalent in performance to those represented by the imac. You have 4 more PCI lanes and no integrated graphics when comped against the options used in the imacs.
It's still not saying that this is all somehow intel's fault for not releasing anything. They released chips, and Apple obviously didn't use them. I also can't seee intel returning to an annual update on this line. I wonder if their tick/tock cycle will even hold up in consumer lines. I certainly don't see them releasing a machine based on Sandy Bridge E at this point. In terms of events, they could always announce a Mac Pro, but it would be pretty far out. I don't just mean a month out either. If they wanted to tie it to an event, it would probably be one in the Fall along with whatever else hasn't been refreshed. Otherwise I'm quite sure a new mac pro announcement would get significant press anyway. It wouldn't be due to its potential sales. It would just be due to Apple finally updating a machine after 3 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Desktop Haswell gets worse iGPUs than laptop Haswell. Desktop gets 4600, laptop gets 5x00. Not that I ever see the Mac Mini having a dedicated chip in the first place, but the reason for that won't be how good the iGPU is. At least, not this revision.
Desktop chips are also quite often cheaper. If they did that, I expect it would be to offset a price drop. I don't expect it with Haswell.
All of the chips will have options for the 4xxx graphics or Iris/Iris Pro. The desktop with Iris Pro is faster than all of them:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/02/intel-outlines-upcoming-core-i7-haswell-integrated-graphics-touts-up-to-triple-performance
The i7-4770R IGP should be as fast as the 650M so suitable for all the 21" models assuming it's also available in an i5 variety. Iris would be fine at that level too though. This is no match for the 680MX, which is a further 3x faster so I don't expect they'd get rid of the dedicated GPU in the 27". It does mean better use of the space and easier cooling for the 21.5" though.
Integrated graphics still understandably has a bad reputation but with OpenGL 4 support, OpenCL 1.2, DX11 and performance to rival at least a 640M, it's not warranted any more (assuming it lives up to the description).
It was delayed though, you can't expect every release to follow the same pattern. Intel is launching Haswell at Computex on June 3rd. They have an IDF in San Francisco on September 10th-12th. It's likely that they'll release Ivy Bridge E/EP at that point, which gives Apple the opportunity to mention it alongside their iOS updates at an event in September or October. I don't think there's enough reason to have a separate Mac event as the MP would be the only update.
Originally Posted by Marvin
Integrated graphics still understandably has a bad reputation but with OpenGL 4 support, OpenCL 1.2, DX11 and performance to rival at least a 640M, it's not warranted any more (assuming it lives up to the description).
… Not having their own RAM still warrants it, yeah.
And isn't OS X still dragging its digital feet on modern OpenGL support?