The Next Mac Pro - Skultrail?
With all this chatter about SLI, and graphics options it's time we start looking at the possibilities of what will be in the next Mac Pro.
Starting with the motherboard.
Skulltrail - Is supposedly going to be the gaming powerhouse motherboard for intel later in 2008. The design isn't exactly Mac Pro centric. It's going to be SLI capable, but it's not really a Mac Pro style board. #1 it's a single processor setup. Other than that it's not that different than the current Mac Pro.
What do you think? Will Apple have their own Multi Processor Slkultrail motherboards for Mac Pro's, or will they stay with the current intel motherboard design on their next Machine?
[edit] Moderator please move to Future Hardware.
Starting with the motherboard.
Skulltrail - Is supposedly going to be the gaming powerhouse motherboard for intel later in 2008. The design isn't exactly Mac Pro centric. It's going to be SLI capable, but it's not really a Mac Pro style board. #1 it's a single processor setup. Other than that it's not that different than the current Mac Pro.
What do you think? Will Apple have their own Multi Processor Slkultrail motherboards for Mac Pro's, or will they stay with the current intel motherboard design on their next Machine?
[edit] Moderator please move to Future Hardware.
Comments
With all this chatter about SLI, and graphics options it's time we start looking at the possibilities of what will be in the next Mac Pro.
Starting with the motherboard.
Skulltrail - Is supposedly going to be the gaming powerhouse motherboard for intel later in 2008. The design isn't exactly Mac Pro centric. It's going to be SLI capable, but it's not really a Mac Pro style board. #1 it's a single processor setup. Other than that it's not that different than the current Mac Pro.
What do you think? Will Apple have their own Multi Processor Slkultrail motherboards for Mac Pro's, or will they stay with the current intel motherboard design on their next Machine?
[edit] Moderator please move to Future Hardware.
You're mistaken. Taken from your own linked article:
Skulltrail is based on workstation-class Xeon hardware...
The Skulltrail board is based on the Seaburg chipset and Stoakely platform, which we just reviewed. Seaburg is a potent beast, with dual 1600MHz front side-buses connected to dual CPU sockets, the ability to feed four PCIe x16 graphics slots with PCIe 2.0 support, four channels of FB-DIMM memory at 800MHz...
The Skulltrail mobo has four FB-DIMM slots, allowing it to host up to 8GB of memory. (We're hearing rumors that memory makers may step up with FB-DIMMs that run at low latencies?as low as CL3?and at clock speeds above 800MHz.) The mobo's two CPU sockets will house a pair of Extreme Edition processors in a Xeon-style LGA771 package. The board itself isn't especially large given everything it can accommodate, but it fits into the EATX form factor, not the smaller standard ATX...
This is just a reworked motherboard for gamers, and at the heart it just another dual cpu Xeon-based workstation motherboard.
Have you been sleeping well lately?
The Mac Pro will definitively follow Intel workatation steps, with Nehalem (Bloomfield + Tylersburg) early next year.
.................
Have you been sleeping well lately?
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Actually no, but I don't know how I missed that, but now I definitely think this board could be, at the very least, a BTO option in the next Mac Pro.
and it likey has high power use do to the FB-DIMMS + the high number of chip set's
the MB will cost more then a one with same chipset with out the NVidia chips you may even be able to find one with on board hardware raid for the same price.
skultrail is just the mac pro chipset + nvidia chips on the pci-e 2.0 links that take a x16 2.0 lane and spilt it to 2 x16 1.1 links. Also it only has 4 ram slots.
and it likey has high power use do to the FB-DIMMS + the high number of chip set's
the MB will cost more then a one with same chipset with out the NVidia chips you may even be able to find one with on board hardware raid for the same price.
Which adds up to what?
Which adds up to what?
Skulltrail has virtually no advantage over the current Mac Pro.
Skulltrail has virtually no advantage over the current Mac Pro.
Ahhh.. It is capable of SLI.
Ahhh.. It is capable of SLI.
You know Apple doesn't care about gaming or SLI.
Ahhh.. It is capable of SLI.
at the cost of pci-e 2.0 and 4 ram slots as well as have even more chips on the mb that drive cost and power use up.
at the cost of pci-e 2.0 and 4 ram slots as well as have even more chips on the mb that drive cost and power use up.
That's why I'm calling it BTO optional. And I'm probably never going to use 32GB of RAM, and If one of my PCI-E 2.0 slots is gone but my frame-rates are 2x as fast, and I can grab a model with 30 million polygons in maya and move it like it's a 6 sided cube who cares?