PickUrPoison

GeorgeBMac said:

racerhomie3 said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Perhaps the most significant part of this story might be on the impact of this on iOS.

Year by year prior models of iPhones get slower as the newer version of iOS (designed to exploit the abilities of the newest processors) places increased demands on their older, slower less flexible processors.

Does this mean that future versions of iOS are less demanding of older processors?

Or maybe, Apple could customize its newer versions of iOS to run more efficiently on older processors?

Most companies would simply put this older, 3 year old, processor out there and let it run like dog -- particularly in a year or two.   But that doesn't sound like the Apple I know...

Dude iPhone 5S works more than fine on iOS 11.3 
Most slowdowns are due to OS bugs which get resolved. I still know a person who uses an iPhone 2G as his regular phone.
If you are facing slowdown from an iPhone 6 , turn off Low Power .
If still facing slowdown, wipe the phone , and restore your data again from iCloud or iTunes.

That's all been done.  It's still slow...   Really slow.... 

I'm just hoping I can stand it till the 8S or 6.1" LCD comes out.

At a certain point, older hardware just won’t run the latest OS very well. iPhone 6 and earlier are pretty much at that point. There’s a big difference between between 1GB of RAM and 2GB.

The A9/2GB platform of the iPhone 6S/2017 iPad and iPhone SE performs very well under iOS 11, and with Apple still selling those devices here in 2018, they believe they’ll be sufficiently performant with iOS 12 and 13, and probably even later versions of iOS as well. 

Soli said:

horvatic said:

Apple never announced the new Mac Pro for a specific sale date. They only said they were going to reinvent it with the help of Pro users and customers. They never said it was going to be ready on any certain date. I for one would rather they take there time and do something awesome than rush and only do something so, so.

They may not have stated a certain date, but if they made a claim like like 2018, end of the year, or Winter, that's definitely a self-imposed timeframe that was missed.

They made no claim in April 2017 except not that year (i.e., not 2017). They were so non-specific and non-committal that some snarky posters immediate claimed that we’d not see one until 2020 at the earliest. Others said, well, if they said not in 2017 that surely means it’ll ship in 2018, otherwise they would have said “not this year or next year”. 

Turns out both were wrong.

2019 is still not very specific. It could be less than 8 months away, or almost two years from now. I hope it’s closer to January 2019 than December 2019. We may get another update before it ships, or the next we hear might be that it’s shipping. Who knows? I sure hope it’s worth the wait though. 

VRing said:

PickUrPoison said:

VRing said:

PickUrPoison said:

Apple isn’t even using a W-2145, let alone downclocking one. 

The W-2140B is essentially a downclocked version of the W-2145. The same way the W-2150B is a downclocked W-2155.

These are straight up weaker versions of their regular counterparts.

That said, I’m confused about the comments re: thermal throttling. From the article:

In the multi-core benchmark, the 8 cores ran at 3.9 gigahertz, which seems to be the top CPU frequency when maxing out all CPU cores. 

and, during 10 consecutive multi core tests:

After the second test, each additional run would cause the iMac Pro to thermal throttle when the CPU reached roughly 94 degrees celsius, which caused the clock speed to drop from 3.9GHz to about 3.6GHz for a second or two. This allowed the CPU to drop below 92 degrees, and the clock speed to rise back to the maximum 3.9GHz. 

The base frequency of this processor is only 3.2GHz.  So multicore performance seems well beyond spec. 

That doesn’t explain the single core at 3.9 but if it can do 3.6 to 3.9 with all cores, 4.2 with single core would seem to be attainable wrt thermals. There may be some further optimizations possible, trading off fan speed (which was described as inaudible and seemingly near idle) with maximum clockspeed under various load conditions. 

Looks very promising so far. 

Well beyond spec? What are you talking about. Turbo should be sustained. None of this looks promising.

Even the overall performance is disappointing. A 1950X scores 3100 in Cinebench R15, meanwhile, the W-2140B scored 1680.

1) A W-2145 is a 3.7/4.5 part, the W-2140B is a 3.2/4.2 part. Are you saying Apple should also offer the faster, more expensive chip? Fine, but that would be a $5,200 or $5,300 machine, not $5,000. You don’t get something for nothing. Apple is unlikely to offer 2 different speeds of 8-core though, so don’t hold your breath. 

With your logic, you might just as well say Apple should only offer the 18-core at $7,400. 

2) The part is spec’ed at 3.2GHz base frequency. In 2 different multicore tests, it benched at either 3.6-3.9GHz or a solid 3.9GHz. 

A 3.2GHz part running at 3.9GHz with all cores at 100% is promising. The fan seemed not to be running. As I said, with an optimization of fan speed, 4.2GHz on one core would seem to be within the thermal capacity, since it’s easily beating its 3.2GHz base speed—upon which TDP is defined. 

3) Mac workstations are typically purchased by those who want to use MacOS, so your comparison of this 8-core machine to a 16-core machine, which can’t run MacOS, isn’t particularly relevant. TCO isn’t maximized by simply buying the cheapest hardware available.

1) You're the one that's not understanding. The W-2145 is the standard model that will be used in every other Xeon W workstation. Apple's version is just a downclocked version of that chip. This has nothing to do with cost, which, by the way, likely costs more for Apple as they're not using the off the shelf variant. Unless of course they're just using the portion of the yields that couldn't become a full W-2145. 

2) Nothing about that is well beyond spec. Sustaining speeds above the base clock should be expected for a desktop with a decent cooling + a PSU that draws power directly from the wall.

3) The point is that the performance as a workstation is underwhelming. Just because a macOS user has no other options is simply unfortunate. 

1) I don’t think you understand Intel’s pricing model. 

2) I don’t think you understand base clock and turbo boost.

3) I don’t think you understand TCO. 

VRing said:

PickUrPoison said:

Apple isn’t even using a W-2145, let alone downclocking one. 

The W-2140B is essentially a downclocked version of the W-2145. The same way the W-2150B is a downclocked W-2155.

These are straight up weaker versions of their regular counterparts.

That said, I’m confused about the comments re: thermal throttling. From the article:

In the multi-core benchmark, the 8 cores ran at 3.9 gigahertz, which seems to be the top CPU frequency when maxing out all CPU cores. 

and, during 10 consecutive multi core tests:

After the second test, each additional run would cause the iMac Pro to thermal throttle when the CPU reached roughly 94 degrees celsius, which caused the clock speed to drop from 3.9GHz to about 3.6GHz for a second or two. This allowed the CPU to drop below 92 degrees, and the clock speed to rise back to the maximum 3.9GHz. 

The base frequency of this processor is only 3.2GHz.  So multicore performance seems well beyond spec. 

That doesn’t explain the single core at 3.9 but if it can do 3.6 to 3.9 with all cores, 4.2 with single core would seem to be attainable wrt thermals. There may be some further optimizations possible, trading off fan speed (which was described as inaudible and seemingly near idle) with maximum clockspeed under various load conditions. 

Looks very promising so far. 

Well beyond spec? What are you talking about. Turbo should be sustained. None of this looks promising.

Even the overall performance is disappointing. A 1950X scores 3100 in Cinebench R15, meanwhile, the W-2140B scored 1680.

1) A W-2145 is a 3.7/4.5 part, the W-2140B is a 3.2/4.2 part. Are you saying Apple should also offer the faster, more expensive chip? Fine, but that would be a $5,200 or $5,300 machine, not $5,000. You don’t get something for nothing. Apple is unlikely to offer 2 different speeds of 8-core though, so don’t hold your breath. 

With your logic, you might just as well say Apple should only offer the 18-core at $7,400. 

2) The part is spec’ed at 3.2GHz base frequency. In 2 different multicore tests, it benched at either 3.6-3.9GHz or a solid 3.9GHz. 

A 3.2GHz part running at 3.9GHz with all cores at 100% is promising. The fan seemed not to be running. As I said, with an optimization of fan speed, 4.2GHz on one core would seem to be within the thermal capacity, since it’s easily beating its 3.2GHz base speed—upon which TDP is defined. 

3) Mac workstations are typically purchased by those who want to use MacOS, so your comparison of this 8-core machine to a 16-core machine, which can’t run MacOS, isn’t particularly relevant. TCO isn’t maximized by simply buying the cheapest hardware available.

VRing said:

macplusplus said:

No one would notice that minus 0.3 GHz in real life usage. The stock throttles more than that 0.3 GHz by the way...

“the clock speed to drop from 3.9GHz to about 3.6GHz for a second or two. This allowed the CPU to drop below 92 degrees, and the clock speed to rise back to the maximum 3.9GHz”

The stock Xeon W-2145 is supposed to turbo to 4.5 GHz and will not throttle. Most desktop cooling solutions can likely sustain even higher frequencies without throttling.

Apple's solution is downclocked and still throttles.

Apple isn’t even using a W-2145, let alone downclocking one. 

That said, I’m confused about the comments re: thermal throttling. From the article:

In the multi-core benchmark, the 8 cores ran at 3.9 gigahertz, which seems to be the top CPU frequency when maxing out all CPU cores. 

and, during 10 consecutive multi core tests:

After the second test, each additional run would cause the iMac Pro to thermal throttle when the CPU reached roughly 94 degrees celsius, which caused the clock speed to drop from 3.9GHz to about 3.6GHz for a second or two. This allowed the CPU to drop below 92 degrees, and the clock speed to rise back to the maximum 3.9GHz. 

The base frequency of this processor is only 3.2GHz.  So multicore performance seems well beyond spec. 

That doesn’t explain the single core at 3.9 but if it can do 3.6 to 3.9 with all cores, 4.2 with single core would seem to be attainable wrt thermals. There may be some further optimizations possible, trading off fan speed (which was described as inaudible and seemingly near idle) with maximum clockspeed under various load conditions. 

Looks very promising so far.