Apple Ships 8-Core MacPro

ivan1024 writes "The Apple website is announcing the availability of an 8-core Mac Pro. The machine will ship with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 processors. Older models with the Dual-Core chips remain available. Base model with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon processors start at $3997, (albeit with unacceptably minimal RAM or HD space; fully spec'd with dual 30" monitors and tons o' RAM/HD still over $10K... bummer)"

Comments

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[thegnu]

look:
http://www.sharbor.com/products/TYNN5450004.html

There are already several people running Windows, Linux, and BSD on a dual quad-core setup. They just don't have to pay a premium for specialty molded plastic. Or spend $299 on 2 sticks of 512MB DDR2. Or $329 for an unnamed brand of 500GB SATA 3GB/s drive.
-Nathan

Re:Advantage?

[ady1]

Shouldn't they be named like iMacQuadDual8CoreProDigitalMediaEdition3D or something?

I don't understand why someone would buy Apple

[C_Kode]

Sure, I will get modded down by Apple zealots.

I can't understand why someone would buy an Apple for anything other than a normal home desktop. I just interviewed with a small growing company. Every single desktop they had were Apple. It didn't matter what it was doing, they were all Apple. Considering they could have had *just as good* for cheaper that did the same thing (and more depending on what you needed it to do) I think it was a very dumb and wasteful thing to do; especially for a small company. The only thing I saw that was from Apple that was a VERY good choice was their XServer RAID that was running not OS X, but OpenFiler (openfiler.org) project. They were using for off site replication from their NetApps which IMHO is absolutely brilliant.

BTW, Apple's XServer RAID is a rebranded LSI Logic RAID. Very cheap compared to other options and slapping OpenFiler on top of it is a very powerful and cheap setup. I recommend it to anyone looking for mass storage on the cheap side.

Re:Advantage?

[GreenHead]

What? This is pure bull. Avid is almost exclusively run on PC; any large Avid install run with a Lanshare has to be run on PC. Adobe Premiere is being used more and more these days for their openness to various codecs and mostly for their cineform support. Premiere can't be run on a mac. That leaves FCP systems, which the majority of their installs are for low end shops, like the one that I work on. Macs have just as many config problems as pcs, if not more. I was at a highend contractor for ESPN (this was a muti-million dollar facility by the way), and there was not a single mac in the building. Maya, 3ds max both run better on PCs. Apple only owns video production in peoples basements, and not even that. There are no high end finishing tools for the mac, like avid symphony or descreet smoke. The PC has won this battle and Apple is left to catch up. Pure bull.

Re:Quick Mac Buying Tip

[iroll]

Don't get your panties in a knot; he's not lying. You are just reading it wrong.

Bust all the little plastic pieces off and see if they replace them. Short something out, or give it a good blast of static electricity and see if they honor that warranty. That's what GP was talking about.

Cost vs. Performance

[Kuvter]

My biggest gripe with Mac is the cost. I could make a PC for half the cost and the same system specs.