iMac Conroe ?
When iMac gets Conroe???
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2903
Intel producing lots of good desktop CPU, cheaper, faster, energy efficient and more to come in the 4000 series 800 Mhz FSB ...
that will make entry level iMac cheaper as well
When? When?? When???
forgot abt xMac, Mac, Cube, i think iMac gets Conroe period.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2903
Intel producing lots of good desktop CPU, cheaper, faster, energy efficient and more to come in the 4000 series 800 Mhz FSB ...
that will make entry level iMac cheaper as well
When? When?? When???
forgot abt xMac, Mac, Cube, i think iMac gets Conroe period.
Comments
already been beat to death, hasnt happened and there is no real evidence that it will.
Doesn't that apply to 99% of all topics in Future Hardware?
I think the imac w/core duo was originally introduced in the start of '06 was it not? Well before Conroe was shipping - so intel's only desktop offering was P4 related at that time.
I could easily see them going to the desktop dual cores, and maybe offering a quad-core option on the big guy (24 inches of love) for a serious premium that'd probably put it at about $2500 or so.
Sad to see small minded responses to this, but I am fairly sure we'll see the imac move back to a desktop chip a la the g5 days.
I think the imac w/core duo was originally introduced in the start of '06 was it not? Well before Conroe was shipping - so intel's only desktop offering was P4 related at that time.
They chose Merom over Conroe even though Conroe was available first. The only argument against this is that it was an easy upgrade over changing the motherboards to socket 775, but the 24" iMac sort of defeats that.
So merom really doesn't enter into the picture except as an upgrade that's able to drop in to most existing Yonah platforms.
Now intel is taking their mobile platform to a new socket, so that drop in-ability is gone and they will have to chose a new socket and platform - either mobile or desktop - it'll be the first true 2nd generation imac for intel. So the question is that now that Apple is going to have to do some reworking, will they choose socket P or T?
I think T is a viable option.
How do you figure the 24inch imac defeats this argument? The less engineering one has to do on a project, the lower the R & D, the higher the profit margin can go while still being attractive to consumers. That being the case, it's best to borrow as much tech from other product lines as possible.
That's the single best argument I can find for the future imac going socket P - but I'm still willing to say that it could likely go T as well. especially due the engineering similarities of board design between s771 and socket T (aka 775).
The second argument for P over T is that the existing Mac Pros suffer from the FBDimm's massive memory latency problems - if they introduced a range of cheap, quad core (kentsfield) desktops in the imac with beter memory performance, and the option to hit 4gb or potentially 8gb (if they have 4 memory slots, but I don't think imacs have ever had 4 memory slots - anyone know if that's true? I think it's always been 1 or 2?), might sap away people looking at the mac pro.
So I can see reasons for either side. What I find disheartening is people thinking they can come to a forum, and just put 'beat to death' which is like saying 'take a hike' and not bothering to put any reasons.
I think this is a 'maybe' and that people can 'beat' whatever they want here on the forums, but to me Apple has always been about thinking different. Seeing people not really following those thought lines, while the company continues to deliver products that a lot of people didn't think could be done, or certainly not nearly half as well as they do - time and time again - and yet we have neighsayers here. Come on people
It may take 6 months or one year, but it is possible now compared to P4 and Pentium D days...
Thanks man, more and more energy efficient CPUs are coming out of Intel, it is time Apple need to put Desktop CPU in iMac, when is the question?
It may take 6 months or one year, but it is possible now compared to P4 and Pentium D days...
Yeah it's certainly possible. There are good reasons why it will and won't happen - so who knows
I'm still waiting on my powerbook g5 haha ;D
Sad to see small minded responses to this, but I am fairly sure we'll see the imac move back to a desktop chip a la the g5 days.
I think the imac w/core duo was originally introduced in the start of '06 was it not? Well before Conroe was shipping - so intel's only desktop offering was P4 related at that time.
I could easily see them going to the desktop dual cores, and maybe offering a quad-core option on the big guy (24 inches of love) for a serious premium that'd probably put it at about $2500 or so.
The original G5 iMacs were also louder and less reliable. They were also a bit thicker. For what the iMac does and who the intended users are, the laptop parts work fine. It's not really a desktop for traditional desktop users.
They'd get a very similar performance profile, but the parts would be a TON cheaper...
Sure.
...and the heating and power consumption would only be a little worse.
This is the part that makes me doubt. Any precise data about power consumption of Conroe vs. Merom?
I think Apple would very much like to use desktop CPU in the iMac for cost considerations alone. The fact that the iMac has a mobile CPU tells me that this was not possible without compromise the silent operation of this machine and perhaps its reliability. Apparently Apple does not want the early G5 iMac days to repeat again.
The reason it started as a laptop Cpu vs a desktop (as the imac has been in the past) was that the only desktop cpu available in early '06 was pentium 4 based (pentium D).
People are making sff conroe boxes with low sound output, I doubt Apple would have a time with it. Isn't the current passively cooled anyhow? Hard to get quieter than that, but a small fan can cool a conroe, and it'd make minimal noise difference.
Sure, hit google - look up SFF Conroe, you'll see a ton of hits. People are building smaller boxes with desktop conroes. The thermal difference between the low end desktops and the high end laptops isn't great.
65 W vs. 34 W for the CPU alone, and that doesn't even take into account other parts they'd have to replace. Both chipset and RAM would have to be in desktop variants, which generally dissipate far more heat.
Oh, and don't forget to replace the power supply unit as well. And while you're at it, you might as well give it a higher-powered GPU?
Nope, not a great thermal difference.
The reason it started as a laptop Cpu vs a desktop (as the imac has been in the past) was that the only desktop cpu available in early '06 was pentium 4 based (pentium D).
The reason the iMac moved to Intel so early was that the iMac G5 was too loud, too power-hungry, and too hot.
Sure, the desktop memory and chipset use more power and have more heat, but so does the hard drive and graphics card already in there - but we're still not talking any deal breakers from a tech or even probability stand point.
Again, the real low down seems to be:
Could happen because:
Cheaper to make
Longer roadmap - socket P is already looking at being replaced in late '08 early '09 by a faster FSB version, intel is shortly due to release a desktop variant w/1333mhz fsb which should keep core 2 and core 3's happy until at least the same time frame.
Better performance per price
Why it might not happen:
*A little warmer
*Things like the memory being twice the size might make things a tad more cramped
*It seems that some of these forum users like the imac to be quiet, and there's a little heat savings in going mobile - which means less active cooling = less noise to a small extent
*I can see the desktop variants cutting in on the Mac Pro's space - especially the poor memory performance of the Xeon's with FB-DIMMs
*Since we don't know the deal Apple has with intel this is speculation, but typically it's better to buy bulk in given items for discount - without anything else using an intel desktop and 4 products (imac, mac mini, mac book, and mac book pro) Apple may receive better discounts on cpus and parts relating to those - if they spread out into desktops, who knows if this has any effect on per unit cost.
So again, no technical reason it can't be done, and I can see decent arguments over both sides.
Chucker - the imac is almost certainly slated for a higher powered GPU in it's next run, and it's unlikely you'd need to make any major increases in it's psu - again SFF's have been running Core 2 Duo Conroes for a while now - and many of them have over-rated PSUs(The kind that get their ratings in magic sub-zero tests).
Other than the chipset, memory and northbridge (since mobile parts and desktop parts have interchangible southbridges in intel's current chipset line up) I'm not sure what'd need changing?
1) The merom and the yonah both use about 30 watts when under load, a bit under their target profile - which is good. Of course this is two chips, and they can vary per chip to some degree, but the bottom line is it looks like they use less than their specified limit in this test - maybe a testament to intel's mature 65nm process?
2) The imac G5 used about 100 watts when under load.
3) The conroe based desktop, with a full on 3-d card that requires it be plugged in to the psu to even boot the system used 114 watts under severe system load, and this was at launch.
A bit further digging with google showed that an alienware built yonah with a mobility 7600 and 256mb of RAM was eating a tad under 50W, and a Dell system with similar specs was reported doing a similar power usage for spec. The tests didn't describe the load, but I'm going to guess they weren't doing 3d, but neither was the conroe - just the fact that the desktop version was sucking down juice to the video card to even boot is the point.
Now heat dissipation on the G5 vs the Conroe is a completely different story. The Conroe is a lot more efficient in it's performance per watt than the g5- so we come up with another set of interesting possible specs:
1) The next gen crestline is derived from the 965 chipset
2) Shuttle is claiming it will build an HTPC or SFF with the crestline that can run the conroe-l (which I take it is the celeron of the core 2 world)
3) The geforce 7700 is already more power efficient than the 7600
4) could these things end up totalling out to anything? Maybe...maybe not. I guess we'll see.
Also a quick side note - I noticed that all the non GMA based imacs are using mid-range chips...which also match up to mobile parts - any idea on if the graphics are mobile parts? Anyone booted to windows and run sisoft or anything that can tell the # and types of pipes?
SilentSpectre, rest assured, everyone here and elsewhere (Apple included) would like the iMac to sport a desktop CPU. If Apple manages with a redesign of this machine to accomodate a high(er) performance CPU, it will do it from day one. The savings and the performance kick are too great to be ignored. The heat issues with the current design if it had Conroe must be too serious to make Apple to decide against desktop CPUs.
If they could just get upgradable graphics the iMac would look more attractive to me. GIve an iMac 3 years, and it's it's graphics are useless now days.
If they could just get upgradable graphics the iMac would look more attractive to me. GIve an iMac 3 years, and it's it's graphics are useless now days.
Now that's something worth discussing, as ATI and Nvidia have standards (proprietary I think) to make laptop graphics chips interchangeable. Would make the iMac more appealing.