If it was, it was interesting to hear you question the pricing both here and over on their comment section. For Phil to say these updates are cheaper is...well. A lie.
I guess you know where I stand on the updates. I swore blind I was going to buy either a 'high end' iMac or Mac Pro. Now? It's the first time I've been to Apple's website and been gutted. I'm struggling to find a way in. It's not so much the cost as the nature of the cost and the price jack and bang for buck. ie the 'principle' of the thing.
Yes. Lies, Damn lies and statistics? Replace the last word with Apple pretty right much now. Say what 'you' like. They're reaching with this 'minor' update.
iMacs? You pay more for the same thing. And a BTO for the 4850, a card which is low end...being a 'high end' option is laughable. And those things put out some heat. I guess the experts around here were wrong about them being to hot for the iMac's casing.
As for the Mac Pro?
Teh outrageous. As for Hmurch'. I think he called it. He's usually pretty fair and balanced.
8 core in the UK gets a price hike of 500-600 pounds. Will the 8 core 2.2 beat the 3 gig last gen Octo which could be had for the same money or less?
The Quad core option gets a hike from £1450 to £1850 ish? (3 mere gigs of ram instead of 4 or 6. It's not as if Ram is expensive these days? A four hundred hike.) And then you get to pay £150 for a mid-range card that doesn't run the 2500x1600 ish resolution as handsomely as one would like. Yeesh. It's disappointing.
And going from the 2.2 Octo to the 2.66 is a thousand pounds more?
Yeh. I can see myself doing that.
We know the facts of the Apple line-up ad nauseum. And that isn't going to change anytime soon care of the just released line up. But they could put a tower in there...in the old G3 tower price range. From £1150-£1550 would be ok. Use the i7 enthusiast platform. What infuriates me is that Apple are not using the affordable and available components to give people a cheaper (but far from 'cheapest') option. It's not like they couldn't do and still make a profit. The 2.66 i7 chip is dirt cheap. *shrugs.
We have to pay £1500ish to get a low end GPU option with Core Duo only iMac or £1850 to get a mid range GPU...as an optional extra AND that gets you access to a 2.66 quad core (which I'll be very surprised if it doesn't get out gunned or equalled by PC systems at less than half the price.) I question Apple's use of the term workstation and having no high end GPUs...as EVEN an option.
Should the Apple consumer have to pay £1850 for a quad core option when that cost £1450 a mere few days ago? This is Apple's finest hour. Re: Sarcasm. There most audacious stunt yet. I thought it was crack-smoking when they hiked the G5 systems...and they did id again...AND again with this update. £1850 to get a tower.
Er. 'No.'
YEah. I know what Apple does. But, being a non-billionaire, I have a different perspective to Steve and Apple about what they 'should do' sometimes. And I'm not alone in my thinking.
Very jaded right now.
Lemon Bon Bon. \
PS. Start saving? Win the lottery? Or be even more 'successful' than I am now? All options I'm considering.
8 core in the UK gets a price hike of 500-600 pounds.
The Brits are whining in every thread - the problem is that the dollar/pound exchange rate has changed by 40% in the last year. You should feel lucky that the price has not gone up so little.
Have no idea why. It's not as if Apple was cheap over here in the first place. (Time to shrink the market share, Apple. Guess they got cold feet about double digit market share.)
First, high end kit always has a fat profit margin on it. Always. I don't know why people are acting as if fat margins were introduced with this update. This is partly to compensate for low sales volume, partly because the people serious about getting the latest and greatest have never begrudged the extra money.
Second, Apple is clearly making room for the iMac to move into the professional space, as I predicted (which makes it all the more remarkable that it actually happened).
Third, for its intended market it doesn't cost that much. Used professionally, i.e. to make money, it will pay for itself in a few weeks at the latest. Used institutionally, it will be bid for (not sold at MSRP) and frequently by institutions that qualify for educational discounts, and in many cases the purchase will be paid for by depreciation accounts set up 3 or 5 years ago to pay for them. In other words, most the Mac Pro's market have been buying machines at prices that would make most people here blanche, and they will react to this update by buying them if it's time for them to buy. They may go into debt that will be repaid within the month or they may draw from reserves built up for the purchase. Either way, no big deal. This isn't new: The PowerMac 9600 was made for the same market, as were the vastly more expensive workstations from SGI and Sun and HP.
As far as the video card options go, I imagine that the hold-up is with DisplayPort compatibility. As workstation GPUs accommodate DisplayPort, Apple will add them to the options list. This seems to me a lot more likely than Apple abandoning one of their core professional markets.
This, from hmurchison, made me do a double-take:
Quote:
At this rate it appears that Apple needs a shakeup. They needs a couple bad qtrs and a rechecking of the ego.
They deserve a couple of bad quarters, a shakeup and an ego check because they're the only company in their product category that isn't watching their sales go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? They deserve to fail because they're offering a gorgeous workstation with bleeding-edge chips at a price in line with prices in its category for the last decade? What?
If your answer is that they aren't passing consumer desktops off as pro machines, I seem to recall that being the final knife through the heart of once-great SGI.
You can wish that the landscape is something other than it is, but if you step over the cliff that you have convinced yourself shouldn't be there you will still fall to your death.
Predictable. My turn to be predictable also.
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now. A few bad quarters of slowing sales may cause them to rethink the path they are going down. UK buyers now understand the pain of Australian and Canadian buyers. It wasn't as if Apple wasn't ripping off UK buyers in the first place. Is that the air of the 'not-invented-here' smugness I smell these days at the land of infinite price? Sorry 'loop'.
We can postulate about what Apple deserve. But if they were complaining about Mac Pro sales before this update...then they'll have to jack the prices up even more to compenstate as their market for them shrinks. Wallet and democracy go hand in hand. But I think they're missing out on the big picture.
I guess we'll see Amorph. You're right about one thing. Wishing doesn't make it so.
If your answer is that they aren't passing consumer desktops off as pro machines, I seem to recall that being the final knife through the heart of once-great SGI.
Puh-lease. Apple are passing off these 'workstations' as 'Workstations'. See the GPU options. Heh. I guess on price alone they qualify. What makes a workstation a workstation, then? I'd argue that the 2.66 i7 with an x2 4870 with 2 gigs of vram would have a say about that for half the price. And Overclockers.co.uk have been in business for quite a while. I wonder if have razor thin margins? Maybe they work for free to give those competitive prices. Or maybe they aint that greedy. Who knows?
They're passing the iMac off as competitive with the 'normal' PC tower market it's competing in.
They're passing the Mac Mini off as a competitive 'low end' computer. Ok. Take that back. It is a verrrrrrrrrrrry low end computer. Which doesn't come with as much as other computers for £400-£600.
Heh. Apple are passing these things off as updates... I guess it depends on what you want to believe, eh?
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now.
The price on EVERYTHING you import from the US is going to be higher, including competing Xeon 5500 servers. You will not be able to get a lower price from Dell than you are getting from Apple, most likely.
The price on EVERYTHING you import from the US is going to be higher, including competing Xeon 5500 servers. You will not be able to get a lower price from Dell than you are getting from Apple, most likely.
YEah. We know that. But that doesn't change the fact that Apple could put out a 'normal' quad tower product that doesn't START at £1850 pounds or more.
It also doesn't change the fact that quad core prices in the uk start from £400 or more.
Or that you can get access to a low end gpu or mid-range gpu without paying £1650-£1850!!!!!!!
So this was brushed on earlier, I'm interested to know the truth. I think OWC or Barefeet might figure this one out though...
Going off of apple's docs the quad vs the octo the memory slots are halved.
# 8-core: Eight memory slots (four per processor) supporting up to 32GB of main memory using 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB DIMMs
# Quad-core: Four memory slots supporting up to 8GB of main memory using 1GB or 2GB DIMMs
It makes no sense in my mind for the quad core to only take 2gb dimms... unless apple was really trying to cripple the machines on purpose.
A month back there was reports of apple being stuck between putting quads in the imacs and it cannibilizing the mac pro sales. Well when you limit to these ram limits.... it would. I think apple is trying to turn the lower end machine into a consumer tower, but with these prices they aren't getting anywhere.
If I could put 16gb of ram in the quad mac pro, I'd consider it. I think the 2.26ghz 8 core is clocked too low, and I think 4400 for a 2.66 8 core is too high. I really can't decide which to get. I bet the 2.26 8 core would work just fine for my work, but something inside of me says it wouldn't last as long as the 2.66 8 core. I'm just bitching, but I need to see benchmarks before I can decide.
YEah. We know that. But that doesn't change the fact that Apple could put out a 'normal' quad tower product that doesn't START at £1850 pounds or more.
It also doesn't change the fact that quad core prices in the uk start from £400 or more.
Or that you can get access to a low end gpu or mid-range gpu without paying £1650-£1850!!!!!!!
Lemon Bon Bon.
Well, maybe that is what you need to buy instead of a Mac Pro.
I love high end speakers from France (JMLab/Focal), Holland (Kharma) and Italy (Sonus Faber) - and was able to afford them when the Euro was super low, but the exchange rate went against me and I had to put those dreams on hold for a few years - when my investments go up, and if the Euro is low again then, I will spend $50K on a set of speakers from Europe maybe, but not now.
True. But when the price to the public is lower, it's a safe assumption that the price to Apple drops as well.
If a new chip sells publicly for less, but Apple ends up paying more than the previous generation, then they are doing something wrong.
Unless, as has been speculated by some writers, that Apple is paying more to get the chips early.
Also, the chips are just part of the cost of building the machine. do you know what Apple's cost for that has gone to?
Quote:
Well, one of the differences doesn't exist in shipping chips. A second one doesn't seem to exist in the 3500 series. And the other differences aren't ones that would have any effect on performance.
For the 35xx series. For the others, well it is a dual socket difference, and there will be performance differences. But ECC does matter to the companies who require that.
Aside from the ECC you mentioned and the 2 qpi (which looks like it's 55xx only, not in the 35xx), it looks like the only other difference is lower power use.[/quote]
I believe, but I'm not sure where I read it, because now I can't seem to find anything on it at all, that the Xenon's and chipsets have more lanes available.
One other difference though is that the 920 through the 950 i7's have a 4.8 GT/s QPI. The higher end, and much more expensive 965 and 975 have the faster 6.4 GT/s QPI that all the Xeons have.
So if you compare the 940 2.93 Ghz i7 it will have a slower memory transfer rate than will the more expensive chips used in the Mac Pro. Look at the difference in pricing of those chips for that reason alone.
If you don't think that memory bandwidth has anything to do with performance, then I guess that won't matter. Intel lists those chips as only needing 800 DDR 3, rather than 1066 DDR 3 for everything through the E5540. After that, 1333 is really required for optimum performance. If Apple is using 1066 RAM for the 2.66 and 2.93 machines, that can be increased to the 1333 parts. But 1066 will serve no purpose at all in the 920 through the 950, unless you have an enthusiasts board, and are willing to go through all that nonsense.
Quote:
And he listed more memory channels...which is only in a chip that apple is NOT using yet.
I said that. You don't have to repeat it as though I didn't.
Maybe I'll buy one of those instead. Yeah. Try something original. 'We don't need your sort anymore...' etc, etc.
No - I am just pointing out that you are blaming Apple for the exchange rate. That is like blaming Toyota for a heavy snowfall when your car gets stuck. Or when the price of oil goes back up, blaming the airlines for the new higher prices.
And I also can't afford a new powerMac - since I paid a bunch of money for one 6 months ago.
So if you compare the 940 2.93 Ghz i7 it will have a slower memory transfer rate than will the more expensive chips used in the Mac Pro. Look at the difference in pricing of those chips for that reason alone.
Ok, Mel'. It'll be interesting to see the benchmarks. I'm guessing negligable but with a 100% price premium going Apple's way over a PC vendor offering the i7 consumer enthuisiast chip 2.66 vs Apple's 'Xeon' 2.66 server chip.
If it was, it was interesting to hear you question the pricing both here and over on their comment section. For Phil to say these updates are cheaper is...well. A lie.
:
Was that me? You mean MDN? If so, then yes.
Look, I try to be as honest as possible. That gets some people mad. I really have no agenda.
MDN is nuts. Period! They throw everything Apple's way. He knows nothing about anything. If some people here think that we have some Apple fanboys, then, wow! go over there!
But I do notice that here, we can depend on a few people to always denigrate everything Apple does, no matter what, and a few who always laud everything Apple does, no matter what.
Their comments have to be mentally filtered out. The rest of us swing both ways.
I'm not happy that prices have risen on the MP's. This affected me as well this time.
The iMacs are good deals though, even though some don't agree with that either. They are a bit cheaper than the ones I bought last year, and come with more. Are they major upgrades? Well, no. but they are a good incremental update, with much better pricing when the extras are counted in. That's some progress. The low end machines are not great though.
The Mini is a decent update, but not what I would have hoped for.
Mel? Sit down? Pass out? Lay down? Pick your eyes up?
I'm still trying to find my eyes...they fell out somewhere....over...there...(*Fumbles...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
Oh tosh!
you read what I said.
I think that Apple is in hunker down mode for a while.
This economic meltdown has caught everyone by surprise.
It can take a year to come up with a really new lineup. These updates were likely planned 6 months ago as well. I don't think Apple, or most other companies can simply scrap their plans. You can do that with software, but with hardware, it's much more expensive.
But, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is working on newer models that will better reflect the realities of the current marketplace with at least a few machines. But it could take a while before they hit the market. You can't just snap your fingers, and three months later new models appear.
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now. A few bad quarters of slowing sales may cause them to rethink the path they are going down. UK buyers now understand the pain of Australian and Canadian buyers. It wasn't as if Apple wasn't ripping off UK buyers in the first place. Is that the air of the 'not-invented-here' smugness I smell these days at the land of infinite price? Sorry 'loop'.
We can postulate about what Apple deserve. But if they were complaining about Mac Pro sales before this update...then they'll have to jack the prices up even more to compenstate as their market for them shrinks. Wallet and democracy go hand in hand. But I think they're missing out on the big picture.
I guess we'll see Amorph. You're right about one thing. Wishing doesn't make it so.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I happen to agree with him.
But you must look to see what slowing sales means. No matter what Apple does, sales will slow.
We need to compare Apple's sales with the sales of other companies. So Dells sales fell much more than did Apple's. Hp's sales fell more than Apple's, but Hp is into much more stuff, so overall, they weren't hurt as much.
If Apple's sales fall, let's just say, 5%, and everyone else's sales fall 10%, then Apple would be doing well.
But there are many factors. School systems are buying much less right now, and that's a big part of Apple's Macbook and iMac sales. Schools buy these computers because they do get good prices, and they work better for them. Cheaper machines might not be wanted. It's complex.
By the way, what no one here mentioned is the turbo mode of Nehalem. This does also help a "slower" machine to equal, or pass a much faster machine at times.
While the older chips have turbo mode, it's much better in the new chips.
For those who don't know, this is where one or more cores can actually speed up if not all cores are working, and the total dissipated power level isn't being reached.
Actually, all cores can speed up a bit if the power levels aren't being reached, but it's much more functional with one or two cores. for example, a 2.66 GHz core can get to 2.93 GHz if only one or two are working. A 2.93 GHz core can get to about 3.2 GHz.
This is why, for programs that can only use one or two cores, a 2.26 GHz machine might perform as well as an older 2.8 GHz machine. Combining the speedup from Nehalem and the turbo mode, some programs will go much faster.
This won't work as well for everything, but it will for a bunch.
Comments
If it was, it was interesting to hear you question the pricing both here and over on their comment section. For Phil to say these updates are cheaper is...well. A lie.
I guess you know where I stand on the updates.
Yes. Lies, Damn lies and statistics? Replace the last word with Apple pretty right much now. Say what 'you' like. They're reaching with this 'minor' update.
iMacs? You pay more for the same thing. And a BTO for the 4850, a card which is low end...being a 'high end' option is laughable. And those things put out some heat. I guess the experts around here were wrong about them being to hot for the iMac's casing.
As for the Mac Pro?
Teh outrageous. As for Hmurch'. I think he called it. He's usually pretty fair and balanced.
8 core in the UK gets a price hike of 500-600 pounds. Will the 8 core 2.2 beat the 3 gig last gen Octo which could be had for the same money or less?
The Quad core option gets a hike from £1450 to £1850 ish? (3 mere gigs of ram instead of 4 or 6. It's not as if Ram is expensive these days? A four hundred hike.) And then you get to pay £150 for a mid-range card that doesn't run the 2500x1600 ish resolution as handsomely as one would like. Yeesh. It's disappointing.
And going from the 2.2 Octo to the 2.66 is a thousand pounds more?
Yeh. I can see myself doing that.
We know the facts of the Apple line-up ad nauseum. And that isn't going to change anytime soon care of the just released line up. But they could put a tower in there...in the old G3 tower price range. From £1150-£1550 would be ok. Use the i7 enthusiast platform. What infuriates me is that Apple are not using the affordable and available components to give people a cheaper (but far from 'cheapest') option. It's not like they couldn't do and still make a profit. The 2.66 i7 chip is dirt cheap. *shrugs.
We have to pay £1500ish to get a low end GPU option with Core Duo only iMac or £1850 to get a mid range GPU...as an optional extra AND that gets you access to a 2.66 quad core (which I'll be very surprised if it doesn't get out gunned or equalled by PC systems at less than half the price.) I question Apple's use of the term workstation and having no high end GPUs...as EVEN an option.
Should the Apple consumer have to pay £1850 for a quad core option when that cost £1450 a mere few days ago? This is Apple's finest hour. Re: Sarcasm. There most audacious stunt yet. I thought it was crack-smoking when they hiked the G5 systems...and they did id again...AND again with this update. £1850 to get a tower.
Er. 'No.'
YEah. I know what Apple does. But, being a non-billionaire, I have a different perspective to Steve and Apple about what they 'should do' sometimes. And I'm not alone in my thinking.
Very jaded right now.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. Start saving? Win the lottery? Or be even more 'successful' than I am now? All options I'm considering.
8 core in the UK gets a price hike of 500-600 pounds.
The Brits are whining in every thread - the problem is that the dollar/pound exchange rate has changed by 40% in the last year. You should feel lucky that the price has not gone up so little.
I'm really shocked about the prices. You can buy or build a faster Core i7 for half that.
I'm lying down. How are you doing?
Lemon Bon Bon.
The Brits are whining
Have no idea why. It's not as if Apple was cheap over here in the first place. (Time to shrink the market share, Apple. Guess they got cold feet about double digit market share.)
Lemon Bon Bon.
I just did two things I never do when a new model comes out.
Mel? Sit down? Pass out? Lay down? Pick your eyes up?
I'm still trying to find my eyes...they fell out somewhere....over...there...(*Fumbles...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
A few things:
First, high end kit always has a fat profit margin on it. Always. I don't know why people are acting as if fat margins were introduced with this update. This is partly to compensate for low sales volume, partly because the people serious about getting the latest and greatest have never begrudged the extra money.
Second, Apple is clearly making room for the iMac to move into the professional space, as I predicted (which makes it all the more remarkable that it actually happened).
Third, for its intended market it doesn't cost that much. Used professionally, i.e. to make money, it will pay for itself in a few weeks at the latest. Used institutionally, it will be bid for (not sold at MSRP) and frequently by institutions that qualify for educational discounts, and in many cases the purchase will be paid for by depreciation accounts set up 3 or 5 years ago to pay for them. In other words, most the Mac Pro's market have been buying machines at prices that would make most people here blanche, and they will react to this update by buying them if it's time for them to buy. They may go into debt that will be repaid within the month or they may draw from reserves built up for the purchase. Either way, no big deal. This isn't new: The PowerMac 9600 was made for the same market, as were the vastly more expensive workstations from SGI and Sun and HP.
As far as the video card options go, I imagine that the hold-up is with DisplayPort compatibility. As workstation GPUs accommodate DisplayPort, Apple will add them to the options list. This seems to me a lot more likely than Apple abandoning one of their core professional markets.
This, from hmurchison, made me do a double-take:
Quote:
At this rate it appears that Apple needs a shakeup. They needs a couple bad qtrs and a rechecking of the ego.
They deserve a couple of bad quarters, a shakeup and an ego check because they're the only company in their product category that isn't watching their sales go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? They deserve to fail because they're offering a gorgeous workstation with bleeding-edge chips at a price in line with prices in its category for the last decade? What?
If your answer is that they aren't passing consumer desktops off as pro machines, I seem to recall that being the final knife through the heart of once-great SGI.
You can wish that the landscape is something other than it is, but if you step over the cliff that you have convinced yourself shouldn't be there you will still fall to your death.
Predictable. My turn to be predictable also.
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now. A few bad quarters of slowing sales may cause them to rethink the path they are going down. UK buyers now understand the pain of Australian and Canadian buyers. It wasn't as if Apple wasn't ripping off UK buyers in the first place. Is that the air of the 'not-invented-here' smugness I smell these days at the land of infinite price? Sorry 'loop'.
We can postulate about what Apple deserve. But if they were complaining about Mac Pro sales before this update...then they'll have to jack the prices up even more to compenstate as their market for them shrinks. Wallet and democracy go hand in hand. But I think they're missing out on the big picture.
I guess we'll see Amorph. You're right about one thing. Wishing doesn't make it so.
Lemon Bon Bon.
If your answer is that they aren't passing consumer desktops off as pro machines, I seem to recall that being the final knife through the heart of once-great SGI.
Puh-lease. Apple are passing off these 'workstations' as 'Workstations'. See the GPU options. Heh. I guess on price alone they qualify. What makes a workstation a workstation, then? I'd argue that the 2.66 i7 with an x2 4870 with 2 gigs of vram would have a say about that for half the price. And Overclockers.co.uk have been in business for quite a while. I wonder if have razor thin margins? Maybe they work for free to give those competitive prices. Or maybe they aint that greedy. Who knows?
They're passing the iMac off as competitive with the 'normal' PC tower market it's competing in.
They're passing the Mac Mini off as a competitive 'low end' computer. Ok. Take that back. It is a verrrrrrrrrrrry low end computer. Which doesn't come with as much as other computers for £400-£600.
Heh. Apple are passing these things off as updates... I guess it depends on what you want to believe, eh?
Lemon Bon Bon.
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now.
The price on EVERYTHING you import from the US is going to be higher, including competing Xeon 5500 servers. You will not be able to get a lower price from Dell than you are getting from Apple, most likely.
The price on EVERYTHING you import from the US is going to be higher, including competing Xeon 5500 servers. You will not be able to get a lower price from Dell than you are getting from Apple, most likely.
YEah. We know that. But that doesn't change the fact that Apple could put out a 'normal' quad tower product that doesn't START at £1850 pounds or more.
It also doesn't change the fact that quad core prices in the uk start from £400 or more.
Or that you can get access to a low end gpu or mid-range gpu without paying £1650-£1850!!!!!!!
Lemon Bon Bon.
Going off of apple's docs the quad vs the octo the memory slots are halved.
# 8-core: Eight memory slots (four per processor) supporting up to 32GB of main memory using 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB DIMMs
# Quad-core: Four memory slots supporting up to 8GB of main memory using 1GB or 2GB DIMMs
It makes no sense in my mind for the quad core to only take 2gb dimms... unless apple was really trying to cripple the machines on purpose.
A month back there was reports of apple being stuck between putting quads in the imacs and it cannibilizing the mac pro sales. Well when you limit to these ram limits.... it would. I think apple is trying to turn the lower end machine into a consumer tower, but with these prices they aren't getting anywhere.
If I could put 16gb of ram in the quad mac pro, I'd consider it. I think the 2.26ghz 8 core is clocked too low, and I think 4400 for a 2.66 8 core is too high. I really can't decide which to get. I bet the 2.26 8 core would work just fine for my work, but something inside of me says it wouldn't last as long as the 2.66 8 core. I'm just bitching, but I need to see benchmarks before I can decide.
YEah. We know that. But that doesn't change the fact that Apple could put out a 'normal' quad tower product that doesn't START at £1850 pounds or more.
It also doesn't change the fact that quad core prices in the uk start from £400 or more.
Or that you can get access to a low end gpu or mid-range gpu without paying £1650-£1850!!!!!!!
Lemon Bon Bon.
Well, maybe that is what you need to buy instead of a Mac Pro.
I love high end speakers from France (JMLab/Focal), Holland (Kharma) and Italy (Sonus Faber) - and was able to afford them when the Euro was super low, but the exchange rate went against me and I had to put those dreams on hold for a few years - when my investments go up, and if the Euro is low again then, I will spend $50K on a set of speakers from Europe maybe, but not now.
Please. Think of somemore.
I had to put those dreams on hold.
Now. That I agree with. It's looking like I have no choice. AGAIN!
Lemon Bon Bon.
A
True. But when the price to the public is lower, it's a safe assumption that the price to Apple drops as well.
If a new chip sells publicly for less, but Apple ends up paying more than the previous generation, then they are doing something wrong.
Unless, as has been speculated by some writers, that Apple is paying more to get the chips early.
Also, the chips are just part of the cost of building the machine. do you know what Apple's cost for that has gone to?
Well, one of the differences doesn't exist in shipping chips. A second one doesn't seem to exist in the 3500 series. And the other differences aren't ones that would have any effect on performance.
For the 35xx series. For the others, well it is a dual socket difference, and there will be performance differences. But ECC does matter to the companies who require that.
Aside from the ECC you mentioned and the 2 qpi (which looks like it's 55xx only, not in the 35xx), it looks like the only other difference is lower power use.[/quote]
I believe, but I'm not sure where I read it, because now I can't seem to find anything on it at all, that the Xenon's and chipsets have more lanes available.
One other difference though is that the 920 through the 950 i7's have a 4.8 GT/s QPI. The higher end, and much more expensive 965 and 975 have the faster 6.4 GT/s QPI that all the Xeons have.
So if you compare the 940 2.93 Ghz i7 it will have a slower memory transfer rate than will the more expensive chips used in the Mac Pro. Look at the difference in pricing of those chips for that reason alone.
If you don't think that memory bandwidth has anything to do with performance, then I guess that won't matter. Intel lists those chips as only needing 800 DDR 3, rather than 1066 DDR 3 for everything through the E5540. After that, 1333 is really required for optimum performance. If Apple is using 1066 RAM for the 2.66 and 2.93 machines, that can be increased to the 1333 parts. But 1066 will serve no purpose at all in the 920 through the 950, unless you have an enthusiasts board, and are willing to go through all that nonsense.
And he listed more memory channels...which is only in a chip that apple is NOT using yet.
I said that. You don't have to repeat it as though I didn't.
Maybe I'll buy one of those instead. Yeah. Try something original. 'We don't need your sort anymore...' etc, etc.
No - I am just pointing out that you are blaming Apple for the exchange rate. That is like blaming Toyota for a heavy snowfall when your car gets stuck. Or when the price of oil goes back up, blaming the airlines for the new higher prices.
And I also can't afford a new powerMac - since I paid a bunch of money for one 6 months ago.
So if you compare the 940 2.93 Ghz i7 it will have a slower memory transfer rate than will the more expensive chips used in the Mac Pro. Look at the difference in pricing of those chips for that reason alone.
Ok, Mel'. It'll be interesting to see the benchmarks. I'm guessing negligable but with a 100% price premium going Apple's way over a PC vendor offering the i7 consumer enthuisiast chip 2.66 vs Apple's 'Xeon' 2.66 server chip.
Awaits benches with interest...
Lemon Bon Bon.
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=532
The new Xeon 5570 outperforms the "old" 5450 by 119%!!!
Was that you, Mel on Macdaily?
If it was, it was interesting to hear you question the pricing both here and over on their comment section. For Phil to say these updates are cheaper is...well. A lie.
:
Was that me? You mean MDN? If so, then yes.
Look, I try to be as honest as possible. That gets some people mad. I really have no agenda.
MDN is nuts. Period! They throw everything Apple's way. He knows nothing about anything. If some people here think that we have some Apple fanboys, then, wow! go over there!
But I do notice that here, we can depend on a few people to always denigrate everything Apple does, no matter what, and a few who always laud everything Apple does, no matter what.
Their comments have to be mentally filtered out. The rest of us swing both ways.
I'm not happy that prices have risen on the MP's. This affected me as well this time.
The iMacs are good deals though, even though some don't agree with that either. They are a bit cheaper than the ones I bought last year, and come with more. Are they major upgrades? Well, no. but they are a good incremental update, with much better pricing when the extras are counted in. That's some progress. The low end machines are not great though.
The Mini is a decent update, but not what I would have hoped for.
Mel? Sit down? Pass out? Lay down? Pick your eyes up?
I'm still trying to find my eyes...they fell out somewhere....over...there...(*Fumbles...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
Oh tosh!
you read what I said.
I think that Apple is in hunker down mode for a while.
This economic meltdown has caught everyone by surprise.
It can take a year to come up with a really new lineup. These updates were likely planned 6 months ago as well. I don't think Apple, or most other companies can simply scrap their plans. You can do that with software, but with hardware, it's much more expensive.
But, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is working on newer models that will better reflect the realities of the current marketplace with at least a few machines. But it could take a while before they hit the market. You can't just snap your fingers, and three months later new models appear.
Predictable. My turn to be predictable also.
He's right. Apple could do with an ego-reality-check right now. A few bad quarters of slowing sales may cause them to rethink the path they are going down. UK buyers now understand the pain of Australian and Canadian buyers. It wasn't as if Apple wasn't ripping off UK buyers in the first place. Is that the air of the 'not-invented-here' smugness I smell these days at the land of infinite price? Sorry 'loop'.
We can postulate about what Apple deserve. But if they were complaining about Mac Pro sales before this update...then they'll have to jack the prices up even more to compenstate as their market for them shrinks. Wallet and democracy go hand in hand. But I think they're missing out on the big picture.
I guess we'll see Amorph. You're right about one thing. Wishing doesn't make it so.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I happen to agree with him.
But you must look to see what slowing sales means. No matter what Apple does, sales will slow.
We need to compare Apple's sales with the sales of other companies. So Dells sales fell much more than did Apple's. Hp's sales fell more than Apple's, but Hp is into much more stuff, so overall, they weren't hurt as much.
If Apple's sales fall, let's just say, 5%, and everyone else's sales fall 10%, then Apple would be doing well.
But there are many factors. School systems are buying much less right now, and that's a big part of Apple's Macbook and iMac sales. Schools buy these computers because they do get good prices, and they work better for them. Cheaper machines might not be wanted. It's complex.
So this was brushed on earlier, I'm interested to know the truth. I think OWC or Barefeet might figure this one out though...
Here's a little bit of analysis from Barefeats. Not a review yet, and he's talking about performance, not memory slots.
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal01.html
By the way, what no one here mentioned is the turbo mode of Nehalem. This does also help a "slower" machine to equal, or pass a much faster machine at times.
While the older chips have turbo mode, it's much better in the new chips.
For those who don't know, this is where one or more cores can actually speed up if not all cores are working, and the total dissipated power level isn't being reached.
Actually, all cores can speed up a bit if the power levels aren't being reached, but it's much more functional with one or two cores. for example, a 2.66 GHz core can get to 2.93 GHz if only one or two are working. A 2.93 GHz core can get to about 3.2 GHz.
This is why, for programs that can only use one or two cores, a 2.26 GHz machine might perform as well as an older 2.8 GHz machine. Combining the speedup from Nehalem and the turbo mode, some programs will go much faster.
This won't work as well for everything, but it will for a bunch.