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The Future of Apple's Pro Desktop Line
SB_SamuraiSam writes "WWDC is drawing nearer and ArsTechnica has a thorough look at what they think Apple's plans are for their future Pro desktop line. It's a decent read. As always Ars has a competent pulse on Apple and is more reasonable than purely speculative. From the article:
I think Apple's CPU choice is clear cut. Strange as it sounds, the Xeon 5100 series is the best fit for the Mac. If Apple wants to keep the Quad name alive, it's the only option. Dual CPU configurations are not possible with anything else in Intel land, so if Apple wants to offer two CPUs and four cores, Xeon is the only game in town. With the benchmarks we have seen, the Core 2 Duo is a clear winner for Intel, outperforming anything AMD has to offer. The Xeon? With its faster FSB and different memory, it's even faster than the Core 2 Duo."
It's pretty interesting how things have developed for Apple... It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
It seems to me that Apple might as well hold off on releasing the Pro line until CS3... I've talked to a few designers, and they are all holding out for CS3 to make the upgrade, since they work so frequently in these applications, and they take a big performance hit on the new hardware.
I think Ars made wonderful points and a well informed prediction. However, though this article is a few months old, I think that the principles behind it will still be in effect for Intel's upcoming lines, namely that a motherboard setup with a multi-core chip is in general cheaper than a roughly equivalently configured multi-chip one, and still for most applications the multi-core configuration will result in greater performance.
Falun Dafa is good!
Pure speculation here, but what's preventing Apple from using an Opteron in their Pro lines? Last I heard, AMD had the competitive edge in the high-end/server market...
Personally, I'm waiting on an Intel XServe.....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I'm guessing that apple will make their new lineup similar to their current one. A single dual-core for the low end(conroe), a faster single dual core for the midrange (conroe) and dual dual-core or the high end (woodcrest).
Apple desperately needs to update their powermac line; its embarassing when compared to any current PCs.
Apple:
Dual-core 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processor
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256MB GDDR SDRAM
$2,499.00
Dell XPS 700:
Dual-core 3.0ghz Pentium D
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
320GB Serial ATA Harddrive
16x DVD-ROM
16x Dual-Layer DVD+/-R/RW Dvd burner
Dual 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900 GS in SLI
20 inch UltraSharp(TM) 2007FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
$2503
For $4 more, you get a faster processor, 4 times the memory, more harddrive space, dual optical drives, SLI, and a 20" LCD. Apple has done a good job of making sure that they add a lot of mac only accessories (or gimmicks depending on your point of view) that make direct comparisons to a PC harder. Stuff like backlit keyboards with light sensors, integrated webcam, frontrow, firewire, small formfactor, etc.
On a tower, things like expandibility, quiet operation, and size are pretty important and apples last workstation was fairly poor by that standard. The powermac looks nice, but 2 harddrive bays and 1 optical bay aren't going to cut it in such a large case.
Apple's brand is strong enough to command some premium, but they certainly are immune to market pressure and may need to realign their pricepoints. Mac minis need to start at $500, imacs at $1000, and Mac pros at $1500. Notebooks should start at $800 and $1500 respectively.
IMHO, the author is wrong about Xeon going into Pro Macs... Core 2 Duos for the Low/Mid Range Pro Macs with Core 2 Extremes for the High-End Pro mac is much more likely... My 2 Cents
" I dont like apple using intels so im going to buy an Intel PC "
was kinda screwed up :) i mean it looked like 7 different editors had gone through it and tried to put in their own views of what the new mac pro should be. and wound up stuck in an infinite loop of just rehashing the same issues.
there are better articles out there on the new mac pro. i just haven't had a chance to read them yet.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Here's a heaping pile of salt for you:
Your suspicion is based on the erroneous assumption that all "creative pros" are people who work in graphic design, publishing, web design, etc.
Let's not forget that filmmakers are "creative pros" and a lot of them are using Final Cut Pro Studio and Shake. Musicians are "creative pros" and a lot of them are aready using UB versions of Garageband or Logic. Ableton Live is also already Universal Binary, and very widely used by laptop musicians and DJs.
In fact, a lot of musicians are even using Final Cut Pro Studio, because they loved Soundtrack Pro and their only option to upgrade was an attractively priced crossgrade offer to FCP Studio.
There are many professional creatives already working on Intel Macs to earn their daily bread.
So let's stop acting as if design pros are the only pros who are "creative". They didn't invent creativity, and judging by the current state of the majority of the web, they're not the final word in it either.
Having owned Macs going all the way back to the beginning this is the first time I have ever been faced with Apple coming out with weaker machines than they already are shipping. This whole Intel mess with Apple is enough to make me sick enough to my stomach that I am faced with the first in my life feeling of moving beyond Apple.
People like you - the PowerPC devotee - make me embarrassed to be a 20+year Mac user.
Wasn't your Quad worth the money you paid for it when you bought it? You do realize Apple has to keep revving it's product line, don't you?
Face it - Intel's latest offerings are a better than the 970FX, which is a several-year-old design. The Core 2 has longer legs than the G5 in any form.
Apple's done it's users a favor by moving to a faster, less expensive, more readily available microprocessor part. They've also done users a favor by producing an easily-portable OS and gracious backwards compatibility.
You may pine for the days when you could argue the vagaries of microarchitectures you don't understand on Slashdot, but some of us actually have work to do and look forward to faster, more productive machines - and don't mind paying a few extra dollars for Apple design and the Mac OS. We like the relative simplicity Apple has brought to the x86 platform and we'll enjoy using our faster machines while you moan about your "Four by four monster style" PowerPC.
Go complain up a rope.
I use Quad G5 desktop.
The problem is Applications. I keep monitoring Applications CPU usage, I see many of them use single CPU, mencoder like open source stuff uses single CPU while iDVD happily uses all 4 CPUs (360% CPU usage)
Legendary mac shareware uses single CPU while saving TIFF files. To use all CPUs you need professional applications and they are expensive.
Photoshop CS, AVID comes to mind.
Games are just beginning to use SMP and can't expect 4 CPU.
There is advantage of Quad CPUs but don't expect too much.
Also as a person used Xeon systems, Xeon is not a top of the line game/ordinary application performer. It is optimised for corparate/server usage from the start.
.. except that Cell is completely unsuitable for use as a desktop CPU.
For games consoles with dedicated software? Perhaps.
For scientific computing and HPC? Sure.
As an off-board number cruncher and accelerator chip? Yup.
As a desktop? Heck no, a multi-core x86 or indeed PPC knocks it in to a cocked hat.
BTW, I own both a dual 2GHz G5 and a dual-1.8 iMacIntel. The intel box smokes the G5 by a long distance.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
It's the U of Michigan?'s study on different ways of displaying content. It works quite well in firefox and terribly in IE (which they tell you at the onset. It's kinda slick as you can set different moderation thresholds for how you view posts. So you can read all of the 5s (and their replies) or just see the first line of the 1s (which you can then click to expand). I'd like to see the controls just be embedded in preferences rather than floating on the page, but beggars can't be choosers.
Anyone not buying a Mac because it contains an Intel?
... again.
I'm curious because I have several friends that will not buy one now because it contains a Intel.
Some point out that the real reason Mac picked Intel over AMD was for the simple fact of marketing.
It was sighted that one of there reasons for picking Intel was the heating issue of the CPU. They thought Intel was better at controlling heating issues. What I hear on the news now and from one friend this has happened to is the new Macs are reporting over heating issues, even exploding and catching fire.
What I remember from talking to other friends and colleague is that it was Intel that had the notorious reputation for over heating issues and that AMD was better.
Some friends wish Mac would have offered choices instead.
The Intel fan could have a Mac with Intel or the AMD fan an AMD CPU inside the Mac.
One friend pointed out they thought this was just another blunder Mac is famous for making. They shot themselves in the foot
By not offering choices they have alienated a huge section of potential buyers.
???
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
As a 20 year Mac user myself, I want to agree with you except for one thing.
I bought a Mac Mini specifically for FrontRow and specifically so I could stream my video collection from iTunes, and I have never been more embarrassed or dissatisfied with a piece of Apple hardware in a very very long time.
The *only* thing this machine is doing is running iTunes & FrontRow.
More often than not iTunes is pegged at 100% CPU that the entire machine becomes so unstable that I have to pull out the power cord because I can't even shut the machine down gracefully!
2x faster my ass. My older 800MHz iMac G4 was more stable and faster than this Intel crap.
It's too bad they aren't willing to look at the new AMD Opteron 4x4 and 8x8, mentioned recently. That would allow the system to keep the quad (and beyond) name and run cool and efficiently (compared to the Xeon).
".. except that Cell is completely unsuitable for use as a desktop CPU.
For games consoles with dedicated software? Perhaps.
For scientific computing and HPC? Sure."
Yes but that is only with the current core that IBM is using.
The SPE could be tired to a full PPC core with out of order execution.
To be honest unless you have programed the Cell I am not so sure that even those first three statements are facts. Until we see some machines that use the Cell it really is just one big maybe. Maybe IBM can work compiler magic that will make programing the Cell not a complete and total nightmare. Maybe the PPC core they are using is fast enough that the lack of out of order execution isn't as big of an issue as you and I think it is.
I am not a Mac user but I am sad to see Apple jump on the the X86 bandwagon. I had high hopes for PPC and now the PPC is only going to live in Workstations, servers, and the embedded space.
Hell when I heard that Microsoft was going to use the PPC in the new X-Box I actually imagined that WindowsXP was going to be available for the PPC and that we where finally going to see a migration away from Intel.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The parent's post had nothing to do with single core chips. What he was getting at is that intel is likely to release a quad-core chip to fill the role that the dual Xeons have filled. Therefore, as far as the apple linup goes, dual 2-core processors will be a very short lived technology depending on how long they wait to release thier pro line.
I am getting sick of pure mac zealots praising Intel since WWDC announcement.
.Mac service and you claim the parent being "devotee".
= userpage&username=Ilgaz
= teamstats
I also see you pay $100 yearly to
Apple does not announce professional workstation line because there is NOTHING from x86 (Intel) to have Quad G5 specs right now.
People becoming Intel fanatic after WWDC calling concerned Quad G5 owners make me sick indeed.
You call a 64 bit, RISC processor having vector processing unit several year old design... When will Intel reach Altivec specs? SSE3?
Please don't comment about professional workstations, they have nothing to do with your consumer grade shareware applications or games.
Did you watch World Cup Excerpts? Quad G5 is designed for such usage and those people using them does not come to slashdot to comment.
Apple kinda gave up the computer business, they offer stylish Intel whiteboxes with some stylish OS to keep the "computer company" image. You really want the truth? Quad G5 is the LAST true Macintosh coming from Apple.
Rest are locked down, DRM chip having Intel white box crap. You use x86 generic computer and you can't even decide what brand of x86 to use.
Want more truth? I bet you bought a "macbook" pro (!), there is a multiplatform game in hand "World Of Warcraft" which is coded by Blizzard. Use bootcamp , run game on both OS'es and compare fps.
Also read some sites like http://www.power.org/about/faq/ before claiming PowerPC is old arch.
Oh check this too: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype
As there are no Mactel folding@home right now, I wonder how Team Mac OS X is number 11 with these "old" CPUs
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype
I'm willing to hazard a guess on the nature of the redesigned enclosure.
Have you noticed how Apple likes a certain symmetry between applications (iTunes brushed aluminum, Safari brushed aluminum) and the Pro enclosure (G5 brushed aluminum)? Apple seems to be experimenting with a lighter, smooth metal theme as seen in the current Mail.app. I hereby conjecture that the new Pro Mac enclosure will likewise be a very light-colored, smooth metal with a similar look.
I'd highly suggest returning the machine to Apple for repairs, there is clearly something wrong. Right this moment, I am encoding a 4 GB .MOV (MPEG-4 and AAC) to DVD Format with FFMpegX, have iTunes running on Shuffle playing my music, typing this from inside Camino, talking to friends on Adium and using X-Chat Aqua,Coreduotemp monitoring my CPU temp, and it is still running comfortably. Are you using the Core Solo or Duo? How much RAM is in it? I have the Core Duo Mini w/ 1 Gig of RAM. My Mom's 20" iMac Core Duo w/ 2 GB of RAM knocks the socks off of my old Powermac G4 1.4 GHz (upgraded with Mercury Extreme processor). Have you tried re-installing OS X? Trust me, it is not normal for your Mini to be acting like that. Yesterday, I had FFMpegX encoding another file and was using FrontRow to watch videos at the same time and it worked fine.
This might be nitpicky, but it seems like your problem is software, not hardware. Maybe iTunes is just crap: you wouldn't be the first person to think so. iTunes likes to catalog your whole library, this often means it goes really slowly, and for some reason takes lots of CPU power. iTunes is a CPU- and RAM-hungry beast, there's no question about that. One hardware problem you may be having is a network issue, rather than a CPU issue. I've had huge problems running iTunes over any kind of network, and I've give up because of it. Now, some people will jump all over this and say that they've had great success, etc, but clearly not everyone shares that. The Intel-based mini has had (wireless) network problems from day one. Couple that with iTunes trying to catalog your library over a network, and you've got a recipe for trouble.
You can disable it by clicking on "preferences" then "comments" and then checking "normal" instead of "U of M testing".
You're only supposed to get it if you agreed to be a part of the survey and then went through a little tutorial on it. At least, that's how I got it. I guess slashdot just changed it for everyone now?
I've found the interface to be fairly buggy. It has some great potential, but sometimes the scripts freeze up and the sometimes show controls is there, sometimes it's not. I hope they work it out, because it could make slashdot a lot better if they do it right.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
IIRC, the "Cell" CPU is based on the PPC 4xx/5xx-series core.
No Mac has ever used a PPC chip that primitive. The original PPC Macs used 6xx-series chips.
The cell is approximately equivalent to 8 Gamecube processors all strapped into a single die and pumped to a faster clock rate. You don't want a desktop based on that.
The Xeon 5100 series chips are Core 2 (Conroe) based. These chips are code named Woodcrest and started shipping in June. See the page 2 of the article. You must be thinking of the older Intel roadmap.
It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
There's no evidence for this. You can buy a Dell or HP that has the exact same components as a Mac Pro.
It doesn't need to be a professional analyst to figure why IBM wouldn't , won't bother with Apple Inc.
:)
IBM sold their desktop/laptop business to China. They don't want to bother with end users one by one anymore.
IBM is not "hurt" by Apple giving up PowerPC, PowerPC is not "dead" because Apple gave it up. PowerPC 970 (G5) is only a single, feature cut model of PowerPC line.
As you guys worked at IBM and working at IBM does not care to tell these simple facts, we feel urge to say it. See there are people who think PowerPC was "Apple" CPU and it "died" after Steve Jobs became Mhz comparing Intel fanboy.
Gentoo PPC on the dual CPU powermacs is great. And it is getting better. I recently purchased a used Powermac G5- it's a fast machine. Compiled KDE-base and other KDE apps together in well under an hour. Wireless airport card works now with 2.6.17 kernel. I love it.
The PPC970 has somewhat respectable FPU performance. It has poor integer performance. Using 64-bit code degrades performance significantly. If what you need cannot be optimized for AltiVec there's little point in bothering with the platform. A dual Woodcrest configuration will hand your quad G5 its ass. You can obtain them right now if you want. Intel's dual core Pentium M has been handing the PPC970 its ass for anything but specialized fp tasks.
So basically your post boils down to "wah wah wah, wah wah, I hate Intel, wah."
Please don't comment about professional workstations, they have nothing to do with your consumer grade shareware applications or games.
I believe that there are more professional workstations using intel products than that of the G5. I would even venture a guess that there are more workstations running SPARC than either x86 or POWER, because of the age of the SPARC and scientists don't always upgrade their computers. At least that is what I have observed.
I haven't used an Apple product for quite a while. Our lab has been using intel based motherboards due to the cost savings and performance when compared to Apple's offerings.
A very small number of the physicists (here) still used the Mac Pros, but its mainly because they can port their Unix based code to console OS X and have a nice GUI. Their programs may take advantage of the Altivec specs, but I don't think it's a feature they can't do without. I will say that one of the physicists in question has no desire to change, simply because what he has works and not because of any deficiencies of the Intel platform.
We tend to use FPGAs to perform accelerated calculations, so the existance of Altivec within a CPU is a non-issue. FPGAs are far more flexible. By that I mean while it can be used to accelerate vector calculations, I tend to use them for General I/O that interface with our lab/flight components. This flexibility gives us more bang for the buck, and VHDL experience can be used in both computational domains (Math & I/O).
On the x86 side of things, I've been interested in the Opteron line from AMD, since there is a FPGA available that will operate within the other CPU slot. Does anybody know if such a thing exist for Xeon line? Since I am mostly in the I/O arena, I uses PCI based FPGA boards.
Quad G5 is designed for such usage and those people using them does not come to slashdot to comment.
Well we never get moderated to more than 1 or 2...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Wow! So Steve Jobs managed to convince Ken Kutaragi, Satoru Iwata and Steve Ballmer to use PPC chips in their new consoles, thereby removing IBM's incentive to make PPCs for desktop computers and to make any kinds of improvements to their PPCs during the next five years since consoles don't need faster chips? Interesting!
But... Why in the world did he do that?
To what? A PS3?
I am getting sick of pure mac zealots praising Intel since WWDC announcement.
.Mac service and you claim the parent being "devotee".
.Mac isn't the best hosting/email/sotrage value in the world, but it is nicely integrated with the Mac OS, comes with some free spiffs every month, and is a tiny cost of doing business overall. I use it for it's ease of posting password-protected files for clients.
Where did I praise Intel? I'm just glad Apple is offering competitive boxes again.
I also see you pay $100 yearly to
I admit that
Apple does not announce professional workstation line because there is NOTHING from x86 (Intel) to have Quad G5 specs right now.
Care to back that up with anything beyond your ironclad assurance? You come off as a tad defensive in your post, and somehow neglected to post any actual, you know, facts to bck up your claims. A Folding@home score does not mean that my database sort will go any faster, or that Apple will be able to get a faster or larger allocation of chips from IBM - who are having fab troubles of their own. The switch to Intel was a smart one from a cost, performance, and availability standpoint.
Also read some sites like http://www.power.org/about/faq/ before claiming PowerPC is old arch.
I didn't say it was an old architecture, just that it is no longer competitive in the General Purpose CPU space. PowerPC is a very competitive architecture in particular market segments - but general purpose CPUs are no longer a space IBM or Freescale want to play in. Maybe you can write them a similarly-reasoned letter and get them to reconsider.
The only thing I disagree with is the death of the PowerPC remarks. I expect Apple to keep at least one G5 in its product line (e.g. the dual 2.3, perhaps a single CPU dual core 2.5) to support those needing fast PowerPC boxes until all key software, such as Adobe's product line, has migrated.
The Cell CPU is based upon a PowerPC Processing Element* (PPE), and 8 vector units that have nothing to do with PowerPC at all (SPU).
* this is not based off of PPC4xx or 5xx, but appears to be a new PowerPC core that also has two-thread SMT and VMX128, an extended register set version of Altivec/VMX. XBox360 has three of these cores, and the PS3 has one, but possibly an updated variant that will perform better.
The Gamecube's Gecko processor is based upon the PPC750 core, with added SIMD instructions, custom for Nintendo AFAIK.
The whole point of Dev Kits is so software can be ready for hardware when it comes out.
Although, I sometimes get the feeling that Apple has intentionally withheld information about the Intel switch from it's development partners to give Apple's own products an edge as far as having universal binaries is concerned.
Mmmm.. Donuts
It's not necessarily "bungling," either. Apple simply did not spend enough money with IBM for it to be worth it to IBM to spend R&D on Apple products. IBM can expect Microsoft to buy as many as 50 million XBox360 CPU's over the next five years. Sony may buy as many as 50 million Cell processors over the next five years.
How many G5's has Apple bought? Three million? There's no 3GHz G5 because Apple's orders would not cover IBM's investment in creating it.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
iTunes is fucking garbage and as soon as I find another player that does all the things that it does that I actually use, I'm going to can it. I actually use it on Windows because I really love the interface. I tried that open-source competitor, the one based on Mozilla; it was even crappier, slower, chunkier... But when it spins up I gleefully look forward to ditching iTunes.
Don't blame the Mini for iTunes' failings. The mini is a gutless, non-expandable, IO-poor unit, but it's more than capable of playing music. If you don't use iTunes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That wasn't his point. The whole conversation here is a discussion of the benifits / drawbacks of intel vs PPC platforms for Mac. We're talking about the hardware. He was pointing out how outdated and overpriced the current Mac PPC Desktops are now.
I forgot to mention... can we not mod the parent 'insightful'?
He just definitively informed us that real creative professionals are waiting for the intel powermac to use garageband, and that using Final Cut Pro is the norm with recording musicians.
Han shot first.
Thay are planing HTX slot based accelerater cards as well. So be on the look out for FPGA HTX cards
Nope, they have BETTER specs. Woodcrest reaches higher Mhz, it has twice times as much L2-cache, it uses faster RAM, they run cooler (where is that G5 PowerBook?).... When Apple releases Quad MacPro, it will completely and totally whip the G5 Quad.
Altivec was better at some things (IIRC, 128bit floating point) whereas, SSE is better in others (like 64bit FP). Core Duo 2 and Woodcrest reach and handidly beat Altivec. The vector-units are seriously beefed up, allowing them to do 128bit floating-point in single clock-cycle instead of two (I believe that was the last major benefit Altivec had over SSE).
I find it funny that we still have people telling us about the "superiority" of PPC, when in REALITY PPC was getting it's arse kicked by Intel and AMD in real-life apps. It's like that line in "Hackers". "Oh yeah, RISC is good....". Keep deluding yourself, RISC-boy.
So, because they switched CPU's, Apple is no longer a computer company? Are you saying that Mac Mini was a "True Macintosh", but the Intel-Mini was not, even though it ran the exact same OS and apps and it even looked the same? Sae thing with iMac? Is THAT what defines that what is a computer and what is not? The CPU? Suppose that I replace this 1.25GHz G4 Mac Mini with one of those Core Duo Mac Mini's. What would I be using then? According to you, it wouldn't be a computer.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Although the reviews of Core2 seem pretty compelling so far remember that AMD isn't out of the game just yet.
;)
Their K8L looks interesting, and that's quad-core. According to TheInquirer benchmarks are starting to trickle out, so there must be a few engineering samples floating around - I'm guessing that means production might happen sooner than you'd think.
Of course Apple might introduce a loss-leader high-end box as a stop-gap, in low volumes
Weird. I love my mini. It sits happily by my TV serving up a little over half a terabyte of hard disks, running bittorrent, playing the occasional movie and participating in a mini cluster with my MBP. The only problem I've had is when I installed Windows and made the mistake of using IE.
Note that Jobs jumped on the Intel boat after Intel jumped off the "MHz is good" boat. The Core/Core 2 lines are clearly NOT meant to impress on MHz ratings. Note how the Core 2 benchmarks (if you trust them, which is a different matter altogether) has lower speed Core 2 processors smoking higher speed Athlon 64 processors.
>>uppose that I replace this 1.25GHz G4 Mac Mini ....According to you, it wouldn't be a computer.
It's not a computer. It's an iTunes Appliance that happens to also run Word. And in case you're thinking about it, no you can't have mine. I will defend that desk-saving, hearing-sparing, piece of productivity with a pointed stick if necessary.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Your DRM comment is a non-sequitur, and laughable. First, it's not there int he way you hysterically claim it is. It supports DRM if apps want to use it, but since apparently you're doing "real" work I don't think scientific/engineering apps will have DRM, dipshit. Or maybe you want to download latest Brittney Spears video and share with your friends?
Finally, you have the gall to act as if a folding@home list means something. You are truly stupid. Here's a clue: If I had been running folding@home for 1 day with a quad G5 and for 5 years with a dozen pentium II's, who do you think would have the higher ranking? You are either stupid or you think everyone else is. I vote "a lot of column A, a little of column B".
Humm, sounds to me like something someone would use to control slashdot comments....
And this is an Apple article...
You might look into adding Microsoft Small Business Server to your list of server options for "small-ish" companies. It includes a file, print, web and mail server (and optional SQL server)... plus you have flexibility in hardware choice.
From the consultants point of view it's not as good as Mac hardware because your clients have a lot more flexibility in finding another consultant if they don't like you. The advantage of Macs are that you've locked in the clients as there are many fewer Mac consultants that they can go to.
Downside to Windows SBS is that they licensing is per-user... but in 12 to 15 user range it's actually cheaper than the x-server license as you can be the CALs as needed. OS-X server forces you to buy a unlimited license.
If your clients are on Windows... the NTFS file security model and Outlook integration are pretty slick...and way better than SAMBA (what OS-X offers) and Sendmail.
The point was that the quad core is not that fast in real world performance, that not many apps at all play its strengths. Its a very valid point, because Apple people can say "look, 4 cpus! FAST!" while it gets its arse handed to it by a dell or what have you.
Some just dont have all the money in the world to play around with.
---
I'm considering either the macmini or the imac (both intel). Which do you think would be faster, given an equal amount of ram? I'll be doing mostly audio work, and some video.
Thanks!
Trying to match the configs as best I could...
PowerMac G5
Dual 2.5ghz dual core Power PC
4 gb 533 mhz ECC memory
2 500 GB SATA HDD
1 Quadro FX 4500 video card
Dell 690 Workstation
Dual 2.66 GHZ Woodcrest Xeon 5150
4 gb 533 mhz ECC memory
2 500 GB SATA HDD
1 Quadro FX 4500 video card
Apple's price: $6924
Dell's price: $6887
Now Dell only offers Quadros and Fire GLs while Apple has a history of offering a consumer grade video card, so they may well offer an NVidia GeForce 7900 as the low end option. Buy your RAM from Crucial or Newegg, save a few hundred more. You can have a pretty badass Apple system for $5k'ish, which is what you'd expect to pay for a badass Apple system.
I have no doubt that Parallels could run Windows XP as fast or faster on a Quad 2.66 core Woodcrest machine as it does on my single core P4 3.2ghz machine.
Basically, I get all the fun of commandline BSD, all the polish of OS/X, and my old PC running in a window faster than it ever did... if I can afford the price, sign me up.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Apple has been building OS X for intel from day-one of the public beta. The move was planned, and it was only a matter of time. Quit bitching, and enjoy a faster machine, no matter what chip is inside.
The iMac would definately be faster. The iMac uses 3.5" hard drives, whereas the Mini uses the slower 2.5" drives. The Core Duo on the low end iMac is 130 MHz faster than the Core Duo on the high end Mini. (Whatever you do, don't go with the Core Solo Mini, it is too slow for what you want to do). The Mini uses an integrated video card (Intel) and borrows main system memory, whereas the iMac has a much better ATI Radeon X1600 (I think) card with dedicated RAM.
The iMac also has integrated iSight, Mic, a much larger harddrive (160 GB standard on 17", 250 GB on 20", upgradeable on both). The only thing that is better on the Mini is an extra USB port compared to the iMac, however, USB hubs are cheap and small.
For my needs, the Mac Mini was good enough. If you want to do audio and video work, go with the iMac, preferably the 20".
Whoops, forgot to add this at the end of my comment. You could also just wait and go with a new Intel Tower (Mac Pro...MacTower...whatever they call it????), which would give you a lot better expandability than both the Mini and the iMac.
DNC, YHL, DNHAND.
You call names, i can, too. Failed abortion.
Because apples are so known for gaming, you asshat, right?
Take a look at the benchmarks of stuff workstations really do.
Have you seen how annihilated the k8 architecture was in stuff like compiling/photoshop/media encoding and even rendering (in 3dsmax as well as in cinemabench?). Thats the stuff people buy workstations for, and thats exactly where AMD is losing it.
Maybe YOU are the g4m3r here, because it seems you have no fucking clue about the whole situation.
IN fact, explaining to you just why the conroe|woodcrest design is superior, and why the architecture of the k8 is slowly becoming depricated (besides some miner tweekings the core is still the k7, designed 8 years ago) would be a futile exercise, like trying to teach a turd to dance.
Just get a clue.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I'm a little surprised that Conroe is still a single processor only option. I guess it makes sense though, there are a whole lot of dual CPU servers sold, so they'd like to keep those markets separated... still it seems wasteful to buy Xeons for a workstation.
While reading the Ars article, it sounded eerily like Apple needed the AMD 4x4 platform concept - which is basically releasing Athon64's that can do dual-cpu but without the "server" chip premium. How AMD plans to prevent dual CPU servers based on A64's is another matter...
Anyway, while I doubt that Apple would split their CPU supplier contracts at this time, there's not much downside to doing it. Heck, even Dell is about to do it. Why not keep pressure on Intel to compete for future business?
"You're completely full of shit. Intel has surpassed Altivec, benchmarks prove it. I don't know what you're babbling about the world cup for. Does Quad G5 excel at playing soccer?"
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Real life having people watched soccer, billion+ plus. The excerpts from World Cup relied on 4 Quad G5s, a mission critical (paid content) and time critical job. Like I gave the clue, Workstations have different things to do. It does 1080p suitable (likely 2k) RAW editing, real time and serves them in at least 4 formats to recipients. Got me now? That is first time so many formats and so many platforms exist for distributing such content. First time they are paid content in some platforms such as 3G.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/06/22/worldcup/
"Finally, you have the gall to act as if a folding@home list means something. You are truly stupid. Here's a clue: If I had been running folding@home for 1 day with a quad G5 and for 5 years with a dozen pentium II's, who do you think would have the higher ranking? You are either stupid or you think everyone else is. I vote "a lot of column A, a little of column B".
I get HD content here and downsample them to SDI, once I had to output to Betacam SP which wouldn't allow a single frame loss. You consumer grade Intel fanboys are really don't know what you talk about.
Folding@home means very much. It is a real life , highly advanced scientific computation which does use whatever it can. It is the benchmark of benchmarks. Also it is not very popular in Mac community since many Macs are used in professional applications which really doesn't like something running idle at background.
Next time speak about machines you can afford and don't bitch/comment about professional workstations. Even Intel preferring professionals laugh at you since the machines they use has NOTHING to do with your Intel Core Duo crap. Go check http://www.tyan.com/ for a clue.
I didn't forget about answering to DRM. You just can't figure what it means putting a TPM/DRM chip to a computer by default. Also it includes your very polite , new Apple Intel cheap whitebox customer profile like name calling "dipshit". I would answer that but that time you would feel like calling FBI.
Also next time , dare to post your own nick and uid OK? It is lower than posting with AC.
"iTunes is fucking garbage and as soon as I find another player that does all the things that it does that I actually use, I'm going to can it. I actually use it on Windows because I really love the interface."
:)
That's good stuff right there.
KeS
I paste a line from my own spec here:
;) With such "community"
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
That is called FSB in Intel x86 area. You will get a clue if you compare FSB levels. PowerPC gives that FSB for years and it reaches 16GB Max RAM in my model.
When Intel does something like that, keep dreaming it will fit to a laptop box.
Dell fanboys were enough, now Mactel Steve Jobs cult zealots. I love my machine, it does my tasks great but I hate this community. Just for the record...
When PowerPC does not suit my needs , even after a dedicated HDI capture card and a better SA-SCSI external disk, you know what will I buy? An AMD. I will also install the latest available Windows on it since they really know better how to code for x86 CISC. Years of experience you know.
That time, Apple computers won't exist anyway.
And which broadcasts go out in 1080p anywhere in the world, just out of curiosity? "likely 2k"? Hahaha. Was that realtime film scanning and developing, too? Or are you just playing Final Cut buzzword bingo?
Sounds like something my Avid DS Nitris suite does. Except it can do it in realtime, with 10bit, 4K film, and multiple RT effects. Funnily, though, when I look at the spec sheet for Avid, it doesn't run on on G5's, it runs on *gasp shock quelle horreur* Xeon boxes. Not that I'd necessarily need Nitris. Stupid question though - humour me here - if you're outputing to TAPE why would it need to be RT, with no frame drop?
Folding@Home is a toy application - the calculations it does are simple and straightforward - they're not advanced in any way shape or form, though I'll grant you they are complex. The F@H project is also a niche - no-one really cares how much Team Mac OS X has scored because that's /utterly irrelevant/ to anything but "how many people care enough to even want to do it", rather than "OMG, Altivec BURNS your Intel!"
I like Macs, and stuff - we have plenty around here, but you take zealotry to a new level.
Woodcrest has 1.33GHz FSB. And it has very advanced memory prefech-system, reducing the load of mem-access on the FSB. And it has twice as much L2-cache than G5 does, further reducing the load of the FSB. So what were you saying again? "But G5 is RISC!"
Dell has announced workstations that use Woodcrest. And those workstations can have 64GB of RAM. So what were you saying again? Last time I checked, 64GB is A LOT more than 16GB is. "But but.... G5 is RISC!". Heh, dream on RISC-boy.
Whereas with PPC you could have it in a laptop? Again: Where is that G5 PowerBook? Want to compare "FSB levels" of those laptop-CPU's? I believe that with Intel you can have 667Mhz FSB, whereas those kick-ass PPC's were stuck at blazingly-fast 166Mhz FSB.... Oh yes, those PPC's sure do kick ass!
I think that by now, it's pretty safe to say that you are a fucking moron who has zero clue what he's talking about. I bet that you are about to throw your CV at me any minute now. But you CV does not change the fact that you are a retard.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
PowerPC G5 had 1 Ghz FSB in 2003.
Macbook "pro"'s have heat problems. Wonder why?
You used "Dell" and "Workstation" at same paragraph, I decided to ignore you. You have a serious language problem but it is usual for trailer living Intel fanboys so I forgive for now.
Keep playing with your hacked OS X OK Intel fanboy?
You really shouldn't criticize others' language, seeing as your command of English is even worse than your knowledge of computer hardware.
So? Opterons had 800Mhz bus with integrated mem-controllers. And since when did we start to talk about the past? Or is it nicer for you to live in the past, back when G5 was good, instead of being aerely "OK-ish"? If you want to talk about the past: In 2002 P4 had 533Mhz bus, whereas G4 was still stuck at 166Mhz. Or are you now going to say "but that does not count!"?
Design-errors on Apple's part, since other laptop-manufacturers seem to have no issues with Core Duo's. I wonder what kind of heat-problems they would be having if they tried to cram that "superior" G5 in there....
Be my guest. Fact is that quad-core machine with up to 64 gigs of RAM is a workstation. And Dell DOES sell workstations. Just like Apple sells hi-end workstations, and low-end consumers-machines. But hey: I guess it's just easier for you to ignore me, than face the fact that you REALLY have no idea what you are talking about. Enjoy your ignorance.
I have OS X running on genuine Mac Mini with 1.25GHz G4. I also have a PC-tower with Athlon64 (running Linux), which I don't use that much. I have no Intel-hardware.
You seem to be having some serious problems admitting the fact that PPC (G4 and G5) was getting it's ass whipped by x86. G5 was "competetive", but that's it, and it was completely unsuitable for laptops. G4's did fit nicely in a laptop but they were simply performance-limited (they just didn't scale high enough), and they were using that 166Mhz retard-bus, whereas x86-CPU's were on buses that were about four times as fast, if not faster. Admitting your ignorance is the first step on your road towards enlightenment. But I'm not holding my breath as far as you are concerned.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Who really cares about laptops in pro segment? Which laptop including creatures by Alienware was suitable for workstation class data manipulation?
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G4 had a problem and Apple could not dare to order better models because people couldn't afford them.
CPU is there if you want:
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview
G5 (ppc970) is lower end model of Power5 processor arch. If we are speaking about workstations having huge power, there if you can afford:
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/powe
Don't make fun of yourself comparing it to your precious "Dell Workstations". First learn what CATIA V5 is.
"And which broadcasts go out in 1080p anywhere in the world, just out of curiosity? "likely 2k"? Hahaha. Was that realtime film scanning and developing, too? Or are you just playing Final Cut buzzword bingo?"
/utterly irrelevant/ to anything but "how many people care enough to even want to do it", rather than "OMG, Altivec BURNS your Intel!""
Japan. You really work in video business? Since even end user , consumer nowadays knows editing and fixing is never done on exact output resolutions intended. E.g. if you intend to air max 1080p, you work higher resolution, apply needed effects , cuts, downsample to HDTV resolution.
"Sounds like something my Avid DS Nitris suite does. Except it can do it in realtime, with 10bit, 4K film, and multiple RT effects. Funnily, though, when I look at the spec sheet for Avid, it doesn't run on on G5's, it runs on *gasp shock quelle horreur* Xeon boxes. Not that I'd necessarily need Nitris. Stupid question though - humour me here - if you're outputing to TAPE why would it need to be RT, with no frame drop?"
Because an accident happened and we had hurry, only thing in hand was betacam SP. Real life, real TV, real schedules, real advertising contracts. hear me now?
AVID doesn't run on G5? Or you just checked their never updating site? I have no clue how you got your AVID but normally they offer turnkey based solutions via some distributor/importer with extensive support agreement. AVID does run with G5 based solutions just people like you can't afford them nor AVID or any professional video company really, really care about people browsing on web for AVID shopping.
There are G5 based studios and all happy with their "overpriced" "heating" workstations.
I can even use old good Amiga 4000 with Genlock in such a critical situation. In fact, did once. For titles.
"Folding@Home is a toy application - the calculations it does are simple and straightforward - they're not advanced in any way shape or form, though I'll grant you they are complex. The F@H project is also a niche - no-one really cares how much Team Mac OS X has scored because that's
Protein Folding is a TOY Application?
I was stupidly copying/pasting and replying to that point. Toy? With Stanford funds? Get a life, jerk.
Just to prove I am wrong, you dare to speak shit about a scientific simulation. Steve, meet your new customer profile.
No, Japan does not broadcast 1080p. It (NHK)has demonstrated the possibility, and has broadcast cameras that can give a 1080p feed, but it's not put out OTA. An uncompressed 1080p stream is around 3Gbps. Compressed with all sorts of lovely codecs, you could probably get it down around 36Mbps. Not exactly ideal for wholesale air transmission. Cable at some point, perhaps. Also note that HDTV standard is only MPEG 2, MPEG4 and H.264 would be proprietary implementations. While your point is accurate, again you say "if you intend to air max 1080p"
You might want to re-read a bit more closely. Express Pro, Mojo and all manner of systems from Avid run on G5s. The NITRIS suite is Windows only . Although they have updated it now to let you run it on Opteron, not Xeon CPUs. Then check out the specs on systems like Xpress Pro - whilst Avid is bad at updating their site, I think they'd not neglect a minor detail like "that six digit product works on Mac, too!". "People like you can't afford them" - because you know all about me. Clue: Express Pro, Mojo, all those entry level Avid systems run around US$10,000-$US20,000 (give or take). A DS Nitris suite starts at US$150,000 and by the time you add in HD preview monitors and such, forgetting for a moment a fully fledged tape bank, storage network, etc, you're not going to get much change out of a half-mil.
I will grant you, the Amiga was a gorgeous system, especially with the Video Toaster and Scala. Shame it died :(
Again, read it again, more closely this time. Protein folding is not a toy application. Folding @ Home however, is, in the sense that it's a community thing. The results generated by your PC have to be checked and verified and such for use - although I will clarify that it's not as bad as SETI@home, where effectively people were just rechecking data that had already been processed.
oh yes, another Freescale-CPU.... Every time Freescale seems to come up with some marvellous CPU, only to be outperformed by x86. Happened every time. And are those dual-core CPU's even available yet? Intel is moving fast to quad-core CPU's already.
And if you can afford, you could get a x86-workstation with 16 cores. Who cares what hi-end POWER-CPU's are like, since Apple wouldn't use them in the first place? What matters are the CPU's Apple would use.
I'm comparing the Dell to the PowerMac you fucking moron, not some IBM workstation. Dell is the company Apple is constantly comparing their products to.
A software-suite. What this has to with workstations is beyond me. Or do you think that only machines that run CATIA are workstations, and rest are not? And besides, CATIA runs on x86 and Windows, so it would run on that Dell just fine. Funny thing is, it doesn't seem to run on OS X. Again: What were you saying again?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
It's not necessarily "bungling," either. Apple simply did not spend enough money with IBM for it to be worth it to IBM to spend R&D on Apple products.
Then maybe IBM shouldn't have promised 3 ghz 970's within a year, three years ago.
IBM can expect Microsoft to buy as many as 50 million XBox360 CPU's over the next five years.
And Apple ships about 4 million machines a year, some with multiple processors. So we'll say 25 million for the same time period. And everyone who keeps throwing around the "50 million cell processors" assumes that both a Cell and a 970 have the same profit margin for IBM. I don't know what they are either, but I doubt IBM makes more per Cell because it's going in a game console, and console parts have to be cheap. If a 970 nets twice as much money, Macs and the Xbox are now on even footing, profit wise. And there's no reason IBM couldn't do what Nvidia does - crank out crazy fast chips and charge crazy prices and make a tidy profit. Apple's pro market would happily plunk down ten grand on a machine with dual quad core 970's running over 3 ghz in speed. Finally, IBM uses the 970 in blade servers, so slacking off on the production of the chip is hurting them, too.
Sony may buy as many as 50 million Cell processors over the next five years.
Not if they don't stop tying to make the PS3 stillborn upon launch.
How many G5's has Apple bought? Three million?
Would have been a lot more if they had a mobile 970 to stick in their laptops and Mini's.
There's no 3GHz G5 because Apple's orders would not cover IBM's investment in creating it.
No, there is no 3 ghz G5 because IBM dropped the ball, period. Maybe in a couple years we'll be hearing the excuse that Sony was "too small a customer" for IBM to crank out as many Cell's as needed.
I do believe he was commenting on the fact that the Mac BOOK Pro was the fastest windows laptop for over a month, because the Mac BOOK Pro and Apple had access to the Core Duo chips months before all other vendors. you should read the thread a bit before you make such strong comments.
You are correct that the Xeon is available on PCs, however as noted further up the thread the Apple machine may be a little faster at the get go because it will be a clean install. No bloat will have been installed by the vendors etc.
As you can tell from my sig, I'm a Mac user, and will likely be one for a long time. I converted in College after I found myself trying to "fix" my windows machine all the time and never getting any work done.
BobMacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows