Kentsfield isn't available now is it? Isn't it coming to market at the end of this year?
Nope and probably December. Intel will have to ship Kentsfield to Apple 2 to 3 months early, assuming Apple announces "Mac Pros" at WWDC + 1 month ship date.
Kentsfield isn't really that difficult to do. It's just 2 Conroes in the same package sharing the same FSB. The hard thing is shipping 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Kentsfields with reasonable TDP. They can do it with a 100 Watt envelope, which will represent a return to 1S Prescott Wattage levels, but not sure people would want to go back to those days.
In a year or two, when all external HD's, DVR, etc are using either SATA ot USB 2, will people here be crying out for Apple to drop legacy support for Firewire, as only camcorders, and a few other items are the only ones using it?
Hmm.. Scarily, external SATA is gaining big traction in PC land. USB 2.0 is pretty much de facto now. One camcorders drop Firewire (Which remember Sony was also advocating as much as Apple at one time) FW400 will really be in the shitter.
Does external SATA provide power over the bus connection? Not with current eSata external hard disks I think... Not as convenient as back in 2002 when Lacie had this simple, small 20GB drives with FW400 connections. They were great "pocket drives", fast, big enough capacity in a nice form factor, and powered by the FW400 bus. 5400rpm laptop drives in them, no doubt, but they really were quite decent at the time... and when Lacie had much higher quality control, IMO.
USB 2.0 can bus-power 2.5" drives, I am not sure about 3.5"drives. Same with eSATA, not sure about bus powered 3.5" drives. Hmm.......... Whatever it is, lugging around an external power brick for your external drive is a huge pain in the ass. Again I ask, is eSATA supposed to solve this problem?
In a year or two, when all external HD's, DVR, etc are using either SATA ot USB 2, will people here be crying out for Apple to drop legacy support for Firewire, as only camcorders, and a few other items are the only ones using it?
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
USB stands for Universal SERIAL Bus. Meaning, it would have to stop sending video a couple times a second to see if it had any incoming data.
In other words, sloppy response times (although that has never been a strength of the MiniDV decks I've used) and dropped frames.
It's easy for you guys who never use equipment that requires these interfaces, because you really don't know much about it. You just deal with the computer as is, and some do some programming work for stuff in the computer industry itself, but not these sophisticated pieces of biomedical equipment and such. If you did, you'd know.
Survey equipment is number one in my book to give an example of modern day technology that still uses old school serial. Serial in terms of old school means easier on the batteries.
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
Isn't that for transferring from tape? Much of the industry is moving away from that, where you'd just copy files from a drive.
Nope and probably December. Intel will have to ship Kentsfield to Apple 2 to 3 months early, assuming Apple announces "Mac Pros" at WWDC + 1 month ship date.
Kentsfield isn't really that difficult to do. It's just 2 Conroes in the same package sharing the same FSB. The hard thing is shipping 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Kentsfields with reasonable TDP. They can do it with a 100 Watt envelope, which will represent a return to 1S Prescott Wattage levels, but not sure people would want to go back to those days.
According to this article, Cloverton will hit 2.67GHz and 110W at launch, I believe it will be the same for Kentsfield. It's hot but not to much given that "current" quad-core systems will be at least at 130W (2x65W). It's true that for Kentsfield the four cores will share a single FSB, so I don't know how much improvements in performance it will be compared to a 3.20GHz dual-core Conroe (that will also be available at the end of the year) and to a "regular" dual dual-core woodcrest at 2.67GHz that will have 2 FSB at 1333MHz (vs. 1066MHz)...
All I can see about this move from Intel is to bring "lower cost" quad-core and 8-cores systems to the market sooner, knowing that these CPUs will be pin-compatible with Conroe and Woodcrest respectively.
I don't think Apple will be able to use these new chips before 2007, my guess: announced at MacWorld, available in february...
By the way, I think that Woodcrest-based Macs will be announced AND shipping at the WWDC.
.....By the way, I think that Woodcrest-based Macs will be announced AND shipping at the WWDC.
YEAH!!! BRING IT ON!! ARHGHGHGHHGH the wait is killing me. Luckily though I will be going to Australia this Saturday night for a 6-month stint. So the packing and unpacking and the plane trip will kill a few days of waiting for WWDC. By the time I'm set up in OZ with a laptop and broadband and stuff, it would be say just 5 days to go to WWDC..... Yes, free of Malaysistan and back to OZ-land for a while. To misquote a line from Sixth Sense, "I miss seeing white people everywhere"
Oh, it does. The only people buying 2S 2 GHz Woodcrest machines over a 2.66 GHz Conroe are buying it for specific applications, ones that take very good advantage of the cores or ones that may need 16+ GB memory. I don't think Apple's market fits this bill, and Conroe machines will present much better price/performance.
I definitely think that in Apple minds, they are thinking, "Why Bother?" when Conroe delivers on average the same performance for better margin.
Quote:
Another reason Apple may want an all Quad line-up is that it makes a nice delineator - a 2.67 GHz Mac Pro isn't that much ahead of a 2.4 GHz Conroe iMac. An all-quad pro line-up makes it clear that these are the workstations, especially if coupled with a "Mac" desktop.
Best on the last 5 years, I don't think Apple will have no problem selling a 2.4 GHz Conroe iMac at $1800 whil selling a $2000 2.67 Conroe "Mac Pro". They'll just pump the features up: better graphics, more memory capacity, better optical, better hard drive, expansion capability.
THT - what I meant was that the Power Mac sort of fills two spots in the Apple line-up: high-end desktop and workstation.
I think Apple will make the Mac Pro the workstation - and thus all Quad, while either introducing something in the $1400-1800 range to cover the high-end desktop part.
A 2.67 GHz Conroe at $2000 competes with an XPS (probably poorly)
A Quad-2.0 at $2000 competes with a $3000 Dell Precision workstation. That puts the hurt on Dell.
Apple has got to have a 4-core system. Conroe: max 2-cores (1 socket). Woodcrest: 4 cores with 2 sockets. IMHO, Apple will want to have a "Quad" to market on the high end. I know, this sentiment has been repeated here very often \ 8)
Apple has got to have a 4-core system. Conroe: max 2-cores (1 socket). Woodcrest: 4 cores with 2 sockets. IMHO, Apple will want to have a "Quad" to market on the high end. I know, this sentiment has been repeated here very often \ 8)
Yeah - I think it's pretty much assumed that Apple will release at least one Quad. The major issue is whether they will release one Quad, two Quads, or three.
THT - what I meant was that the Power Mac sort of fills two spots in the Apple line-up: high-end desktop and workstation.
I think Apple will make the Mac Pro the workstation - and thus all Quad, while either introducing something in the $1400-1800 range to cover the high-end desktop part.
A 2.67 GHz Conroe at $2000 competes with an XPS (probably poorly)
A Quad-2.0 at $2000 competes with a $3000 Dell Precision workstation. That puts the hurt on Dell.
That's a pretty good sounding idea, but it gets too close to iMac pricing, and they have always frowned on mixing markets. Apple is a shit or get off the pot computer manufacturer. Thus far. Things change, but we'll have to see in 11days! Wow that's close!
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
USB stands for Universal SERIAL Bus. Meaning, it would have to stop sending video a couple times a second to see if it had any incoming data.
In other words, sloppy response times (although that has never been a strength of the MiniDV decks I've used) and dropped frames.
I would be very suprised if it happened.
Yeah, we know about USB 2.
There are other technologies that are more professional that replace it quite handily. firewire is a poor brother when dealing with uncompressed hi def formats. It also doesn't work for some pro uses because the standard doesn't have needed info passed up the bus.
That's a pretty good sounding idea, but it gets too close to iMac pricing, and they have always frowned on mixing markets.
In the UK, an iMac 20" is £1129. The current low end PowerMac 2.0 Dual is £1399. Pretty close. Back when they did the 1.8Ghz single CPU PowerMac it was even closer.
Of course, you don't get the monitor with the PowerMac so the iMac is a better deal if it's all you need anyway and you're not the sort that has to add serial cards.
I think it might be nice to see a small footprint mini-tower, like the size of the Performa 6400, for a low end dual, Conroe based, maybe extreme edition. And then a woodcrest based quad for the real power users. The G5 case doesn't fit on a 24" wide table. Anybody want the desktop configuration like the Power Mac 7500-G3 had?
USB supports isochronous data transfers like FireWire does.
Like RS-232, the original serial port standard never used on Macs, it supports an interrupt mode to start and stop the flow of data.
Of course USB supports up to 127 logical devices, where the old serial port only dealt with one. Of course there is also the hot swap advantage. There is also the advantage of only needing 4 conductors and the small connector.
USB supports isochronous data transfers like FireWire does.
That is not quite true, or, true, but not good enough. Those that read the spec know that USB Isochronous transfer assures data timing but does not assure data integrity, which is why the article you quoted states there is no error correction.
edit: never mind, an industrial developer told me this, I thought I saw confirmation elsewhere some time ago, but I can't find backup and a few pages that say there's now Firewire error correction, so it's probably not true.
However, if, as megross says, USB doesn't have a standardized VTR hardware control or timecode transmission, then it's not sufficient for DV or HDV use.
In the UK, an iMac 20" is £1129. The current low end PowerMac 2.0 Dual is £1399. Pretty close. Back when they did the 1.8Ghz single CPU PowerMac it was even closer.
Of course, you don't get the monitor with the PowerMac so the iMac is a better deal if it's all you need anyway
Many of the the complaints factored in the cost of an extra monitor. Including the cost of the base Apple monitor, even the base PMG5s are considerably more expensive. iMac is the way to go if you don't need a 30" monitor, more than 2GB of RAM or I/O expansion.
Comments
Originally posted by backtomac
Kentsfield isn't available now is it? Isn't it coming to market at the end of this year?
Nope and probably December. Intel will have to ship Kentsfield to Apple 2 to 3 months early, assuming Apple announces "Mac Pros" at WWDC + 1 month ship date.
Kentsfield isn't really that difficult to do. It's just 2 Conroes in the same package sharing the same FSB. The hard thing is shipping 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Kentsfields with reasonable TDP. They can do it with a 100 Watt envelope, which will represent a return to 1S Prescott Wattage levels, but not sure people would want to go back to those days.
In a year or two, when all external HD's, DVR, etc are using either SATA ot USB 2, will people here be crying out for Apple to drop legacy support for Firewire, as only camcorders, and a few other items are the only ones using it?
Hmm.. Scarily, external SATA is gaining big traction in PC land. USB 2.0 is pretty much de facto now. One camcorders drop Firewire (Which remember Sony was also advocating as much as Apple at one time) FW400 will really be in the shitter.
Does external SATA provide power over the bus connection? Not with current eSata external hard disks I think... Not as convenient as back in 2002 when Lacie had this simple, small 20GB drives with FW400 connections. They were great "pocket drives", fast, big enough capacity in a nice form factor, and powered by the FW400 bus. 5400rpm laptop drives in them, no doubt, but they really were quite decent at the time... and when Lacie had much higher quality control, IMO.
USB 2.0 can bus-power 2.5" drives, I am not sure about 3.5"drives. Same with eSATA, not sure about bus powered 3.5" drives. Hmm.......... Whatever it is, lugging around an external power brick for your external drive is a huge pain in the ass. Again I ask, is eSATA supposed to solve this problem?
Originally posted by melgross
In a year or two, when all external HD's, DVR, etc are using either SATA ot USB 2, will people here be crying out for Apple to drop legacy support for Firewire, as only camcorders, and a few other items are the only ones using it?
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
USB stands for Universal SERIAL Bus. Meaning, it would have to stop sending video a couple times a second to see if it had any incoming data.
In other words, sloppy response times (although that has never been a strength of the MiniDV decks I've used) and dropped frames.
I would be very suprised if it happened.
Originally posted by melgross
It's easy for you guys who never use equipment that requires these interfaces, because you really don't know much about it. You just deal with the computer as is, and some do some programming work for stuff in the computer industry itself, but not these sophisticated pieces of biomedical equipment and such. If you did, you'd know.
Survey equipment is number one in my book to give an example of modern day technology that still uses old school serial. Serial in terms of old school means easier on the batteries.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
Isn't that for transferring from tape? Much of the industry is moving away from that, where you'd just copy files from a drive.
Originally posted by THT
Nope and probably December. Intel will have to ship Kentsfield to Apple 2 to 3 months early, assuming Apple announces "Mac Pros" at WWDC + 1 month ship date.
Kentsfield isn't really that difficult to do. It's just 2 Conroes in the same package sharing the same FSB. The hard thing is shipping 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Kentsfields with reasonable TDP. They can do it with a 100 Watt envelope, which will represent a return to 1S Prescott Wattage levels, but not sure people would want to go back to those days.
According to this article, Cloverton will hit 2.67GHz and 110W at launch, I believe it will be the same for Kentsfield. It's hot but not to much given that "current" quad-core systems will be at least at 130W (2x65W). It's true that for Kentsfield the four cores will share a single FSB, so I don't know how much improvements in performance it will be compared to a 3.20GHz dual-core Conroe (that will also be available at the end of the year) and to a "regular" dual dual-core woodcrest at 2.67GHz that will have 2 FSB at 1333MHz (vs. 1066MHz)...
All I can see about this move from Intel is to bring "lower cost" quad-core and 8-cores systems to the market sooner, knowing that these CPUs will be pin-compatible with Conroe and Woodcrest respectively.
I don't think Apple will be able to use these new chips before 2007, my guess: announced at MacWorld, available in february...
By the way, I think that Woodcrest-based Macs will be announced AND shipping at the WWDC.
.....By the way, I think that Woodcrest-based Macs will be announced AND shipping at the WWDC.
YEAH!!! BRING IT ON!! ARHGHGHGHHGH the wait is killing me. Luckily though I will be going to Australia this Saturday night for a 6-month stint. So the packing and unpacking and the plane trip will kill a few days of waiting for WWDC. By the time I'm set up in OZ with a laptop and broadband and stuff, it would be say just 5 days to go to WWDC..... Yes, free of Malaysistan and back to OZ-land for a while. To misquote a line from Sixth Sense, "I miss seeing white people everywhere"
Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
A Quad-2.0 system doesn't compete with Conroes.
Oh, it does. The only people buying 2S 2 GHz Woodcrest machines over a 2.66 GHz Conroe are buying it for specific applications, ones that take very good advantage of the cores or ones that may need 16+ GB memory. I don't think Apple's market fits this bill, and Conroe machines will present much better price/performance.
I definitely think that in Apple minds, they are thinking, "Why Bother?" when Conroe delivers on average the same performance for better margin.
Another reason Apple may want an all Quad line-up is that it makes a nice delineator - a 2.67 GHz Mac Pro isn't that much ahead of a 2.4 GHz Conroe iMac. An all-quad pro line-up makes it clear that these are the workstations, especially if coupled with a "Mac" desktop.
Best on the last 5 years, I don't think Apple will have no problem selling a 2.4 GHz Conroe iMac at $1800 whil selling a $2000 2.67 Conroe "Mac Pro". They'll just pump the features up: better graphics, more memory capacity, better optical, better hard drive, expansion capability.
I think Apple will make the Mac Pro the workstation - and thus all Quad, while either introducing something in the $1400-1800 range to cover the high-end desktop part.
A 2.67 GHz Conroe at $2000 competes with an XPS (probably poorly)
A Quad-2.0 at $2000 competes with a $3000 Dell Precision workstation. That puts the hurt on Dell.
Originally posted by sunilraman
Apple has got to have a 4-core system. Conroe: max 2-cores (1 socket). Woodcrest: 4 cores with 2 sockets. IMHO, Apple will want to have a "Quad" to market on the high end. I know, this sentiment has been repeated here very often
Yeah - I think it's pretty much assumed that Apple will release at least one Quad. The major issue is whether they will release one Quad, two Quads, or three.
Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
THT - what I meant was that the Power Mac sort of fills two spots in the Apple line-up: high-end desktop and workstation.
I think Apple will make the Mac Pro the workstation - and thus all Quad, while either introducing something in the $1400-1800 range to cover the high-end desktop part.
A 2.67 GHz Conroe at $2000 competes with an XPS (probably poorly)
A Quad-2.0 at $2000 competes with a $3000 Dell Precision workstation. That puts the hurt on Dell.
That's a pretty good sounding idea, but it gets too close to iMac pricing, and they have always frowned on mixing markets. Apple is a shit or get off the pot computer manufacturer. Thus far. Things change, but we'll have to see in 11days! Wow that's close!
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
For video editing, Firewire can't be easily replaced by USB 2.0. When video editing, not only are you pulling in video and time codes, you're also sending out controls like play/pause/go here/etc... This requires at least two simultaneous streams, each going in different directions.
USB stands for Universal SERIAL Bus. Meaning, it would have to stop sending video a couple times a second to see if it had any incoming data.
In other words, sloppy response times (although that has never been a strength of the MiniDV decks I've used) and dropped frames.
I would be very suprised if it happened.
Yeah, we know about USB 2.
There are other technologies that are more professional that replace it quite handily. firewire is a poor brother when dealing with uncompressed hi def formats. It also doesn't work for some pro uses because the standard doesn't have needed info passed up the bus.
Originally posted by onlooker
That's a pretty good sounding idea, but it gets too close to iMac pricing, and they have always frowned on mixing markets.
In the UK, an iMac 20" is £1129. The current low end PowerMac 2.0 Dual is £1399. Pretty close. Back when they did the 1.8Ghz single CPU PowerMac it was even closer.
Of course, you don't get the monitor with the PowerMac so the iMac is a better deal if it's all you need anyway and you're not the sort that has to add serial cards.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
USB stands for Universal SERIAL Bus. Meaning, it would have to stop sending video a couple times a second to see if it had any incoming data.
Firewire is serial too...what's your answer to *that*?
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/usb1.htm
USB supports isochronous data transfers like FireWire does.
Like RS-232, the original serial port standard never used on Macs, it supports an interrupt mode to start and stop the flow of data.
Of course USB supports up to 127 logical devices, where the old serial port only dealt with one. Of course there is also the hot swap advantage. There is also the advantage of only needing 4 conductors and the small connector.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Firewire is serial too...what's your answer to *that*?
Um, I don't have an answer to that. My whole video world just crashed down. All 1 and 2/3 classes of it.
Originally posted by BradMacPro
USB supports isochronous data transfers like FireWire does.
That is not quite true, or, true, but not good enough. Those that read the spec know that USB Isochronous transfer assures data timing but does not assure data integrity, which is why the article you quoted states there is no error correction.
edit: never mind, an industrial developer told me this, I thought I saw confirmation elsewhere some time ago, but I can't find backup and a few pages that say there's now Firewire error correction, so it's probably not true.
However, if, as megross says, USB doesn't have a standardized VTR hardware control or timecode transmission, then it's not sufficient for DV or HDV use.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
In the UK, an iMac 20" is £1129. The current low end PowerMac 2.0 Dual is £1399. Pretty close. Back when they did the 1.8Ghz single CPU PowerMac it was even closer.
Of course, you don't get the monitor with the PowerMac so the iMac is a better deal if it's all you need anyway
Many of the the complaints factored in the cost of an extra monitor. Including the cost of the base Apple monitor, even the base PMG5s are considerably more expensive. iMac is the way to go if you don't need a 30" monitor, more than 2GB of RAM or I/O expansion.