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Ivy Bridge Mac Mini
- Thread starter ranny2
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While Intel officially sells the dual-core Ivy Bridge CPUs from June or even later, there's quite a possibility that Apple gets them earlier. With such a huge volume the buy (even if it's just in the base Mac Mini), such a deal shouldn't be a problem. Remember, they even got a custom developed CPU for their first MacBook Air.
while apple has put gear out with advanced cpus more then once They are also weighing in mountain lion. Apple has always been good about giving you a second osx if you are close to the update.
Last year was a case in fact they gave macbook pro buyers in the month of may? snow and then let them have a free upgrade to lion. So if you had an earlier sandybridge macbook pro from spring you ended up with a second osx for free. They delayed the mini until after lion.
Makes money sense since giving away a free osx upgrade cost money so they may as well restrict it to the hi end hi cost gear (macbook pro) not the low cost gear mac mini. My guess is they will wait for mountain L to give the new mini.
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Well, I don't think that bit of traffic through the Mac App Store would cost Apple any relevant amount of money, so this may be a reason, but I don't believe it stops them from putting out new Macs before Mountain Lion. Even more probable that Mountain Lion will be released at the end of summer and just gets a sneak peek at WWDC so no reason to delay the Mini so long.
At this point I think Apple will just wait until WWDC to announce their entire refreshed mac product line- hence "the week we've all been waiting for."
When will the Mac mini get thinner I wonder? Personally I like it the way it is now though feel it is inevitable.
If they change over to the mSATA as in the MBA they could cut down the thickness some.
If they do it'll be very small indeed.
The question is: Do you want a thinner Mini or one with more power? They could use the space very well indeed by putting in a GeForce GT 640M or something like that.
Me personally? I am not a heavy graphics guy so it doesn't matter to me. Quad core for virtualization matters more for my needs.
I do recognize I'm an atypical user though so I realize most would prefer higher end graphics with dedicated memory.
Yeah, I personally would take a higher end graphics over a smaller mini anytime. It's not like the Mini is big or something. But yeah, if they don't pull in a better graphics card, hell, make it smaller - or at least do anything to use the space you got by removing the SuperDrive, Apple!
Oh, and yeah, I really hope for the Core i7-3612QM in the next Mini - this way it could have Quad-Core and a graphics card.
The buyers guide product status are entirely calculated by the time since last refresh in comparison to average number of days between refreshes. It doesn't take into account things like processor release dates.
EDIT: I thought I was replying to the last post. Completely missed a page!
That would be great, probably not gonna be a standard option.
Best case it is the i7 upgrade for the mid model, like the i7 2.7 dual core is now. It all kind of depend which graphics they are gonna use for that model i think.
Anyway we will probably have to wait for late June/ early Juli until the mini's are released.
Interesting debate this.
I hope Apple will adopt USB3, but personally I do not expect it any time soon, but not for the reasons above.
I think it has more to do with Apple placing its bets on Thunderbolt. Apple want everyone to be using TB, and adding USB3 ports to Macs wont help adoption of TB one iota. They would *like* to leave USB3 out, of that I am sure.
The question is, can they afford to? They will have to balance the desire to leave out USB3, with the fact that this makes their devices *slightly* less desirable. How many new Mac Mini would-be purchasers would decide not to buy a new 2012 Mini if it doesn't have USB3? Some.
So is it worth it to Apple to miss out of a few sales (and how many exactly?) in order to promote TB? I think that's what it's about, and in my view they will fall on the side of leaving out USB3.
It's not conclusive proof, but supporting evidence for this is that they could have added USB3 support last year for just pennies, and yet they chose not to. Yes, it would have needed an additional chip on the board, but really that was pennies. No USB3 in the 2011 devices was imho about promoting TB and not about cost or anything else. I don't see the situation being any different in 2012.
If Apple leaves USB 3.0 out in their next refresh, there will be a massive uproar. To exclude USB 3, Apple will have to go out of their way to inhibit a feature that is provided out of the box by Ivy Bridge. It will require more effort to exclude it than to include it.
I don't see how USB and TBolt would be competitors, except for simple external storage (USB will have a clear cost advantage). TBolt will give you the ability to use an external box with its own PCI cards, whereas USB only gives you... well, USB.
I guess you could always get a 3rd-part TBolt device with a USB3 controller built in.
If Apple leaves USB 3.0 out in their next refresh, there will be a massive uproar. To exclude USB 3, Apple will have to go out of their way to inhibit a feature that is provided out of the box by Ivy Bridge. It will require more effort to exclude it than to include it.
I don't see how USB and TBolt would be competitors, except for simple external storage (USB will have a clear cost advantage). TBolt will give you the ability to use an external box with its own PCI cards, whereas USB only gives you... well, USB.
I guess you could always get a 3rd-part TBolt device with a USB3 controller built in.
Ivybridge is a processor and has nothing to do with USB3 support. That's provided by the chipsets, which may or may not support it. And even if the chipset does support it, the board manufacturer still has to implement it and provide connectors. So it's not like Apple would have to in some way restrict the product to not have USB3 - they just not need to actually implement it.
Also - and perhaps slightly off topic - PCI-Express devices via TB. TB has a 10GB/s bandwidth. USB3 is 5GB/s. Basically very similar. You might argue that double is not similar, but I would differ. 10x is markedly different in my view, 2x is not.
A 1-lane PCI-Express connector (in current form) has a 16GB/s bandwidth. i.e. it doesn't fit on Thunderbolt. That's 1 lane. A graphics card is 16 lane and 128GB/s *in each direction*.
Hanging PCI-Express devices off a Thunderbolt connection is a plainly daft idea.
Chippy:
By convention upper case B indicates Bytes, lower case b indicates bits.
As far as it being a daft idea, it depends on how much data you are trying to push through. I'd have no problems hooking an x1 card off of Thunderbolt for disks as the fastest SSDs are barely capable of saturating a PCI-e 2.0 lane.
Gfx? Dunno -- to be honest with you I'm not much into the graphics side of things.
I could see a SATA or SAS interface and a USB 3.0 hanging off of 2 PCI-e 2.0 cards in a chassis as an expansion possibility.
Sloppy of me, granted.
I can't see any point in such a device. You might as use a TB-Sata adapter (as indeed all the manufacturers have done so far). Why go TB-PCIe-Sata when you can go TB-Sata? I don't see a role for remote PCI-express 1x.
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The Ivy Bridge 7-series chipset has native USB 3.0 support. Sure, I suppose Apple could just pair Ivy Bridge chips with the older 6-series chipsets, but that would be a lame move in and of itself.
Graphics cards are not the only PCI cards you'd want to put in an external bay. For example, a PCI-e audio interface would be perfect for an external TB dock. Also video capture cards, TV tuners, etc.
As for speed- keep in mind that most Macs (except the Air) have two-channel TB ports, and TB is 10GBps per channel.
No worries. Just wanted to be clear for other parties, we both knew what you were talking about but others might not.
More ports, especially if it is SAS. Even with an array of SSD you are unlikely to saturate the bus constantly.
remember all mobos for macs are custom they have built in t-bolt and very few pc/window mobos do. Apple could put 4 t-bolt ports and no usb3 on a mobo if they want. imacs have 2 t-bolt ports as is. If apple said we belive in t-bolt and expanded the ports in lieu of usb3 what would many mac users do? They would stick with mac.
Well, it depends whether they want to include USB3. If they don't they might well not use the Panther Point chipsets. To be honest, I can't see what advantages the new chipsets bring, apart from USB3. They are the same bus interface, same bus speed, same sata. The only thing I can see is they produce a little more heat, and will probably be a few bucks more expensive. So if you weren't bothered about USB3, you might well give them a miss.
As an aside, it's a little ironic that none of the Intel chipsets include native Thunderbolt support - not even the new Panther 7 series.
No, they do not. Ivy Bridge runs cooler than SB at stock settings. It runs hotter than SB when over-clocked.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5763/undervolting-and-overclocking-on-ivy-bridge