Will Apple upgrade the Mac Pro as soon as Quad Xeons come out?

opusopus
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
I am looking at buying a Mac Pro, but with Intel saying that they plan on shipping Quad core processors this year, 4 months seems pretty short time to wait. How long do you think Apple will take to start shipping 8-core system (dual-quad) MacPros? I hope Apple will stride to keep up with the latest processor releases, since it appears they finally have a CPU manufacturer that is delivering.



Is anyone else shocked at turnaround that Intel has made recently?

AMD was kicking their butts performance wise and a lot of Intels processor plans were scrapped. Nice to see they are back in the business and forcing AMD to work hard not to lose the recent ground they have gained.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    imacfanimacfan Posts: 444member
    As far as I understand it, the first Quad core intel chips are not dual processor compatible - they're pretty much like the two Xeons in the Mac Pro, only in one physical unit.



    David
  • Reply 2 of 8
    mwswamimwswami Posts: 166member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iMacfan


    As far as I understand it, the first Quad core intel chips are not dual processor compatible - they're pretty much like the two Xeons in the Mac Pro, only in one physical unit.



    David



    Clovertown IS dual processor capable (but not MP capable i.e. >2 sockets) and Intel's Bensley platform is designed for compatibility with both Woodcrest and Clovertown. Whether or not Apple will upgrade Mac Pros as soon as Clovertown comes out, we will have to wait and see. My money is on dual Clovertown Mac Pro (total 8 cores) being released at Mac World 07 or shortly thereafter.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    maimezvousmaimezvous Posts: 802member
    I don't really understand the point in the multiple cores, as in more than two, if there aren't any programs that can take advantage of it. I know that you can multi-task a lot easier with more cores, but does anyone really need to be multi-tasking that much?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    joe_the_dragonjoe_the_dragon Posts: 931member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mwswami


    Clovertown IS dual processor capable (but not MP capable i.e. >2 sockets) and Intel's Bensley platform is designed for compatibility with both Woodcrest and Clovertown. Whether or not Apple will upgrade Mac Pros as soon as Clovertown comes out, we will have to wait and see. My money is on dual Clovertown Mac Pro (total 8 cores) being released at Mac World 07 or shortly thereafter.



    It too bad that the FSB bus will slow them down and AMD true quad-core cpus will kick there ass.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    mwswamimwswami Posts: 166member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon


    It too bad that the FSB bus will slow them down and AMD true quad-core cpus will kick there ass.



    This has been discussed before.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    drboardrboar Posts: 477member
    Things like FSB limitation is very application dependent. CPU and cache wise the Intel seem to be "better" than AMD. So sure AMD will own Intels Quad cores in some applications but not all. So it really depend on what you need to do with the computer.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon


    It too bad that the FSB bus will slow them down and AMD true quad-core cpus will kick there ass.



    Try going outside for a little while, alright?
  • Reply 8 of 8
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mwswami


    This has been discussed before.



    Frankly, there's no point in arguing with Joe. If you want to, knock yourself out. Most of his claims are basically conjecture on unreleased products, and any counter argument would be the same, so it's pointless.



    Frankly, front side bus isn't everything. More bandwidth helps in some cases but for the typical MacPro use, I think it will probably be encoding and such, and I don't think it needs that much bandwidth per unit of processing power.
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