Who is waiting for the new i7 Mac Pros?

FreeStream

FreeStream

FreeStream

Soldato
Joined
10 Apr 2004
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Rumors are that its Q1 2009, which gives me enough time to save up for my perfect spec:

3/3.2Ghz Quad (Don't need 8 physical cores, don't see the point for lightroom!)
4Gb (maybe 8Gb) ram
HD4870/GTX260/280
300Gb Velociraptor - OSX/Apps/Winblows
2x1Tb - Data + Time Machine

YUM :D

So who else is in the waiting boat?

I guess this is the 2009 Mac Pro speculation thread too :p :o
 
I was waiting but i have been waiting for a Mac Pro revision for so long that i have moved on!

I will be very intrigued to find out what specs it's going to have!
 
Logsi said:
I was waiting but i have been waiting for a Mac Pro revision for so long that i have moved on!

I will be very intrigued to find out what specs it's going to have!
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If I had the money now I still wouldn't buy, I missed out a MBP revision by a week :rolleyes:

i7 Xeon is released Jan so feb/march for a Mac Pro with them...
 
I just hope they stick a decent GFX option in this time as I loved my Mac Pro just couldn't do without my game fix, and couldn't justify 2 desktop machines.
 
Tempted! But Ive said in threads before, depends if I can be bothered to sell my current Mac Pro, only a month old but I got it for an absolute bargain price and would probably have £1500-1700 after selling this if I did!
 
Well, the i7s run hot and the memory is expensive, the ECC DDR3 is even worse.

So I think I'll skip, thats the reason I bought /this/ MacPro, I don't think the next one will be as nicely balanced and run as nicely cool as this one... And I filled it with 16GB for ~£320, that buys me 4GB DDR3 :D
 
Won't something feel wrong about the situation when you're railroaded in to buying bazillion dollar server grade DDR3 for what will serve as a home desktop?
 
Yes, Im not totally impressed with the cost.

But I don't want a PC seeing as everything I own is OS X (apart from Autodesk) and there is no point in an iMac.

Sadly, leaves me with only one choice. :p

I wish Apple would release a low end Mac Pro with desktop, not server components.

But thats not going to happen :(

Oh ands its going to be used for CAD, coding and Photography work so not totally just a home desktop :p
 
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I'll wait until Snow Leopard ships before getting a Mac Pro (if it were me).

They're plenty powerful, but the software just doesn't utilise the multiple cores. I'd say a top spec iMac would run most people's requirements, but then no one likes having an iMac when they have the cash for the Mac Pro :o
 
EVH said:
I'll wait until Snow Leopard ships before getting a Mac Pro (if it were me).

They're plenty powerful, but the software just doesn't utilise the multiple cores. I'd say a top spec iMac would run most people's requirements, but then no one likes having an iMac when they have the cash for the Mac Pro :o
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An iMac is hardly an improvement from a updated Macbook Pro really and I already have a 24" TFT. Edit: AND A top iMac is roughly the same as my Mac Pro spec :p

Mac Pro it is :p
 
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im waiting to for long time, macbook barely holding out :D
saved up for the following

3.0/3.2Ghz Quad's
12GB ram or 16GB (undecided)
3x 4670 ATI (3x24" 1x40" 1x28")
750GB - OS
1TB - Windows -vmware
1TB - Music/docs/data
 
EVH said:
They're plenty powerful, but the software just doesn't utilise the multiple cores.
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That's a lie, yes the software does 'utilise the multiple cores'. Nearly all desktop programs are multi-threaded, so YES they do utilise the multiple cores, and I know for a fact OSX does too (like any other BSD operating system).
 
Hatter The Mad said:
That's a lie, yes the software does 'utilise the multiple cores'. Nearly all desktop programs are multi-threaded, so YES they do utilise the multiple cores, and I know for a fact OSX does too (like any other BSD operating system).
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Multithreaded? Give me a break :rolleyes:

Most apps will utilise 2 possibly 4 cores efficiently.. there's minimal / next to no desktop apps (aside from Folding@Home) that can truly utilise a full 8 core machine.

My point was.. it's worth waiting for Snow Leopard if you'd like the core-management (grand central) upgrades. Not to mention the i7's will be blistering.
 
EVH said:
Multithreaded? Give me a break :rolleyes:

Most apps will utilise 2 possibly 4 cores efficiently.. there's minimal / next to no desktop apps (aside from Folding@Home) that can truly utilise a full 8 core machine.
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Do you know what multithreaded means? Nearly all applications are multithreaded, otherwise you would not be able to multi-task with them. Programs like Microsoft Office, Firefox, Photoshop use many threads, and while one core executes one thread the other core can execute another.

If you think that OSX doesn't already use "all cores" efficiently, you're an idiot.

Snow Leopard is going to make it easier for developers to develop for multi-core processors; thread management, process management and so on.

I don't know what on earth you mean by "Most apps will utilise 2 possibly 4 cores efficiently..", because it isn't up to the applications what cores are used and how efficiently, it is up to the operating system.

If a program has 8 threads that need to run at the same time, it will use 8/8 cores. If a program has 4 threads, it will use 4/8 cores. Snow Leopord isn't going to magically extrapolate the number of cores used by applications that only need 4 threads to process with.
 
Well, the thing of note here is that on a 8 cores machine, you have 1/8 the latency of running a thread too, so it does effect the user experience.
For example, on a 2 core machine running 2 threads/processes means that all the needs needs to wait for the time slice to be finished before starting.
On a 8 core machines, your machine feels a lot snappier because there is just more core to dispatch to. I know that for a fact, because my hackintosh is rather vastly faster at pure CPU hungry tasks, but the MacPro feels a lot more snappier in general when the machine is loaded.

I think what people mean my "not multi threaded" is true in a way; for example most filters and operations in Photoshop will use just one core to saturation, while the rest sits idle.

If you have applications that can split their processing easily, it's great (try encoding a DVD with Handbrake, it's impressive!) but not /all/ applications can do that easily, OpenCL or no OpenCL...
 
BusError said:
If you have applications that can split their processing easily, it's great (try encoding a DVD with Handbrake, it's impressive!) but not /all/ applications can do that easily, OpenCL or no OpenCL...
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True, but my point is that Snow Leopard isn't going to magically change that - only the applications themselves can.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
True, but my point is that Snow Leopard isn't going to magically change that - only the applications themselves can.
Click to expand...

Very true - the key here is the GC and OpenCL are different beasties.

GC is better utilisation of cores. With Leopard they were pushing hard for use of the design method that you create an operation and hand that to the OS. The OS then runs with the operation which then looks after the threading. In short a class-weight threading task so you didn't need to create your own threads per say - this may be related to GC (my assumption).
In OSX there's no real OS-provided inter-thread communication mechanism either which doesn't make it easy either! I spent blinking ages sorting that one!

OpenCL, in it's initial guise, is not aimed at threading but rather parallel data transforms. The implementation by Apple/nVidia will then deliver the transformation using the best hardware the machine has got.
It's a very thin veneer currently but Apple/Intel/etc will use it as a starting point to build their own technologies. I've been involved with GPGPU (precursor to OpenCL) for a while.

For me it'll allow me to concentrate on the important things (the camera is attached to a wireless rover):
http://www.adrenalin-junkie.net/srvOne/colour.png
http://www.adrenalin-junkie.net/srvOne/Run2.png
 
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