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Apple Launches New Magical Trackpad, 12 Core Macs
theappwhisperer writes "The Magic Trackpad is basically a larger version of the MacBook Pro touchpad, with 80% more surface area for all your swiping and pinching. The entire surface acts as a button, so it's also a possible mouse replacement. And all of the expected gestures are here: two-finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, fingertip rotation, and three- and four-finger swipes. You can enable and disable gestures at your discretion from System Preferences." They also launched 12-core Mac Pros coming in August.
I have an 8-core Mac Pro. It's currently running a 4 core Windows 2008 server VM with 6GB of RAM, a dual core Windows 7 VM with 1.2GB of RAM, a couple app servers natively in Mac OS X, an a host of other applications. This machine has replaced my need for separate development and test servers, and gives me power to spare for the rest of my tasks. Yes it cost probably $4-5k once you count in the 13.5TB of drives, etc., but I use it to get work done. I rarely see my CPUs pegged at 100% for a long time, but it does happen.
I had a very nicely specced quad core that I built before I bought my Mac Pro, and the Mac Pro absolutely blows that computer out of the water. When you have real work to do, of the type that the Mac Pro is built for, it's an awesome machine and worth every penny. If you don't need the power, then of course it's more than you need.
www.clarke.ca
Sure, you have +50% cores (12 instead of 8). Now in terms of productivity, how much are you likely to gain?
I recently tried to spec out a render node for a graphics artist friend of mine. I was trying to convince him that a single CPU mid-range Nehalem based Xeon system might be more cost effective in the long run. His plan was to build a single CPU Extreme Edition Core-i7 system. This was based on Netrender's benchmark utility placing this single CPU system ahead of the dual C2Q systems by a large margin, and even way ahead of dual Nehalem systems.
My logic failed to win the argument. I simply can't spec a dual quad-core Nehalem that can beat a single i7-EE. Even cost over time, it looks more cost effective to build two i7-EE systems instead of a single dual CPU system.
So, to answer the question directly, I would guess my friend is looking at gaining perhaps ~1hr a day in rendering time. That might be huge.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Exactly. Say a very good artist makes $50/hour. Cost to his company (Health insurance, his desk, power to his desk, 401k, taxes) is roughly double that: $100/hour.
If one of these new duodeccore processor computers is $12k. As soon as it saves the user from 120 hours of rendering, it's paid for itself. I can easily see someone hitting that in a year. Between opening a 20MP RAW to saving, to applying filters, etc.
Now these machines aren't going to be used for just a single year. Figure 3 year life span, at which point it's resold for $2,000 and the user is upgraded to the viginticore.
The 'machine' cost $10,000. They can subtract depreciation from taxes. Saved countless hours (one second at a time) of their artists.
/ These numbers are made up to be round. I have no clue what graphic artists make, so don't get on my case about that. Adjust numbers accordingly. //I also don't know Latin. I just copied wiki.