Mac Pro 2011 "Sandy Bridge E" everything we know

[Neodym]

This TechPowerUp article has some presentation slides with further details about SandyBridge Xeons and first performance claims ("up to 80% increase" compared to Westmere 3.46GHz, with Linpack value going as high as 2,2x compared to the Westmere baseline).

There are also informations about a new technology named Data Direct I/O Technology (DDIO) which bypasses main memory by sending data directly into the CPU cache (whatever that means in detail - slide is pure marketing so far). The presentation claims DDIO to increase I/O performance by up to 2.3 times that of Westmere, reducing latency and allowing system memory to remain in low power state. Probably needed with the highest E5-2600 SB-EP topping out at a whopping 150W TDP...

 

[derbothaus]

Very misleading slides right from Intel's mouth. I can only assume an 8 core would beat the 6. I'll wait for the real impartial stuff. Core to core estimates were only 9-10% increase vs. Westmere if you take out the 2 extra cores. No game changing unless they did something awesome as we already have i7-3930 to compare to. Turn on the extra 2 cores and viola', 150W TDP. I mean they are going to be awesome and really fast but the 8-cores are prohibitively expensive at the high clock rates for Mac Pro.

 

[Hellhammer]

A little bird told me that SNB-EP review units have been shipped to reviewers, so we should expect the launch to happen fairly soon (CeBIT at the latest).

 

[d-m-a-x]

A little bird told me that SNB-EP review units have been shipped to reviewers, so we should expect the launch to happen fairly soon (CeBIT at the latest).

hmm, maybe a couple made it to apple for a prototype

 

[Hellhammer]

hmm, maybe a couple made it to apple for a prototype

That's totally different. Apple has most likely had engineering samples for months now, otherwise it would be months before a new Mac Pro would even be a possibility. Reviewers usually get chips a few weeks early so the review is ready to be published when the actual chips launch.

 

[d-m-a-x]

That's totally different. Apple has most likely had engineering samples for months now, otherwise it would be months before a new Mac Pro would even be a possibility. Reviewers usually get chips a few weeks early so the review is ready to be published when the actual chips launch.

lets hope so

 

[barkmonster]

There are no CPU updates available really. The Mac Pro is still using the latest Xeons.

GPUs are another matter that has been pretty thoroughly rehashed on this board.

My comment was more directed at people who insist non sensibly that Apple should adopt slower/non-existant AMD/ARM/PowerPC processors just because the Xeon is no longer new shiny.



This isn't really surprising. Price per performance unit increases exponentially. Same thing with price per GB. A 3 TB hard drive might be $250, while a 2 TB is $100. Again, exponential increase, not linear. That's just the way tech is.

Apple don't pass these savings on in the form of pricing though. RAM for a 2010 Mac Pro costs a third of the RAM for a 2006 Mac Pro, hard drives have obviously become larger and cheaper but still no saving there and the CPUs themselves at the volumes Apple will buy them at is still no excuse for the systems being so expensive. Once they have SATA 6 and Thunderbolt it simply puts them inline with the other Macs in the range and STILL doesn't justify the cost of the entry level Mac Pro being any higher than around £1,500

 

[Blue Sun]

A little bird told me that SNB-EP review units have been shipped to reviewers, so we should expect the launch to happen fairly soon (CeBIT at the latest).

So, new Mac Pros by May then?

 

[Mac2012]

The 21.5" iMac?

I already have 2 monitors, I don't want to shove one in a cupboard to make space for an iMac, I don't want a glossy display or an all-in-one system that's difficult to upgrade.

The Mac Mini can take a second internal drive for definite with only a few standard drive screws and a lower flex cable for power/data. It can also take 16Gb of 3rd party RAM and it would make a fanastic media centre at a later date too. An all in one is just taking up space once you upgrade to a newer model.

Also, I like my setup with 2 screens side by side and I absolutely NEED to have an SSD as well as an ordinary internal drive to stream software synths (not some over-priced BTO drive that isn't even Sandforce based from Apple either).

For audio I'd use the 27" for my main mixer and timeline and have the others for either my VI's and FX... I use expose so 2 monitors is just fine for me because I'm pretty fast at switching windows and I don't need to go fast... my music is worth taking time on... I'm NOT on the clock! I'd use a 3rd if I was syncing to video but I put video to music and NOT into scoring so...
And the glossy monitor thing is moot unless you just have some super high powered lights in your environment... never noticed any reflections EVER because the screen is so bright. I have to say, my iMac Quad i7 beats my nehalem 2.66 Quad Mac Pro at everything... and I mean EVERYTHING! It was cheaper too! I have a UAD Apollo for my plugs... runs great.

 

[goMac]

Apple don't pass these savings on in the form of pricing though. RAM for a 2010 Mac Pro costs a third of the RAM for a 2006 Mac Pro, hard drives have obviously become larger and cheaper but still no saving there and the CPUs themselves at the volumes Apple will buy them at is still no excuse for the systems being so expensive. Once they have SATA 6 and Thunderbolt it simply puts them inline with the other Macs in the range and STILL doesn't justify the cost of the entry level Mac Pro being any higher than around £1,500

But the Mac Mini vs. Mac Pro comparison is also meaningless for a lot of other reasons. If you need four cores, and a good discrete GPU, the Mac Mini isn't even an alternative. It's not even an option.

It's like comparing a bicycle to a car based on MPG.

 

[Apple Corps]

Hellhammer - let us hope that lil birdie was perched on a good limb with a great view of the Intel / Apple pipeline

 

[goMac]

Hellhammer - let us hope that lil birdie was perched on a good limb with a great view of the Intel / Apple pipeline

I'd expect that the closer we get to a new Intel CPU launch, the better the chances of the Mac Pro surviving are. Intel will be significantly drawing down production of older CPUs, meaning that if Apple was interested in cutting the Mac Pro, it is more likely to happen before the new generation of chips launches.

Not a solid guarantee, but a good sign.

 

[Nostromo]

Nobody really doubts that there will be a new Mac Pro.

Thanks for supporting, anyway.

PS: After PowerMac and Mac Pro, what will the next generation be called?

 

[goMac]

Nobody really doubts that there will be a new Mac Pro.

Tons of people on this forum do. Macrumors (the main page, not the forum) official prediction was that it would be cut last month, actually.

Not that I believe them. But not "nobody" believes the Mac Pro will be cut.

 

[barkmonster]

But the Mac Mini vs. Mac Pro comparison is also meaningless for a lot of other reasons. If you need four cores, and a good discrete GPU, the Mac Mini isn't even an alternative. It's not even an option.

It's like comparing a bicycle to a car based on MPG.

My comparison isn't Mac Mini vs Mac Pro, it's Mac Pro vs Mac Pro. I just included the Mac Mini to illustrate my point about their pricing by including their lowest end system.

I could just as easily have used the iMac as an example. Both the iMac and the Mac Mini have grown in spec with CPU advances along with steadily increasing standard RAM and hard drive capacity and yet the price has remained roughly the same or even lowered with each revision bringing significant gains in both raw power and value over the previous models.

The Mac Pro range doesn't absorb any of the lowered costs of other components such as RAM and hard drives with each revision. This is inexcusable and leaves only the used market if you're looking for a tower with under £2,000 to spend and even then, a brand new 2010 Mac Pro with a Quad 2.8Ghz Xeon is barely faster than a 2011 iMac with a 2.7Ghz Core i5 and £750 more!

Ignoring the iMac entirely. Before the Mac Pro was the G5, they offered single CPU versions for £1,399 at the low end in the very last revision.

It's a pricing issue, not a low end vs high end issue.

I know used 8 core Harpertown Mac Pros sell for around £1,200 and that model would slightly exceed the CPU performance of a brand new 2.7Ghz Core i5 iMac of approximately the same price but there should be a Mac Pro model in their new range that fills the gap between without offering less CPU power than the high end iMac as a compromise.

 

[-hh]

A little bird told me that SNB-EP review units have been shipped to reviewers, so we should expect the launch to happen fairly soon (CeBIT at the latest).

CeBIT: 6-10 March, 2012

(for those that needed to go look it up)

My comparison isn't Mac Mini vs Mac Pro, it's Mac Pro vs Mac Pro. I just included the Mac Mini to illustrate my point about their pricing by including their lowest end system.

The question is in the relevance of that comparison. To abuse automotive analogies, it is like saying that the average car's horsepower improvements doesn't justify the high cost of a Porsche 911 Turbo. Unfortunately, CPUs don't work like internal combustion engines, where one can often add 50% more cylinders and get 50% more power.

The Mac Pro range doesn't absorb any of the lowered costs of other components such as RAM and hard drives with each revision. This is inexcusable...

We don't really know that for sure.

We do know that the desktop has declined in popularity, and that manufacturing & product development both have variable + fixed costs ... it is quite possible that the savings in variable costs of things like RAM have been offsetting higher fixed costs to keep the current price from being even higher.

Before the Mac Pro was the G5, they offered single CPU versions for £1,399 at the low end in the very last revision.

Very last revision = end of lifecycle where fixed cost amortization risks are lowest. Plus the PowerMac was the last to be converted to Intel, so there would have been inventory to "clear out". Either makes it a bad comparison.

It's a pricing issue, not a low end vs high end issue.

Yeah, I'm frustrated too...but

High end technologies always falls victim to the Law of Diminishing Returns: it isn't easy/cheap to get the last 10% of performance.

Add to that that it isn't going to be a high volume mainstream product and your amortization of fixed costs becomes a larger percentage of the final price ... which further marginalizes your customer base in a vicious circle.



-hh

 

[Bubba Satori]

PS: After PowerMac and Mac Pro, what will the next generation be called?

iPad Pro.

 

[Topper]

iPad Pro.

Yep, after 20 years of big, powerful Apple computers, I know my life is complete when I end up with an iPad Pro.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Yep, after 20 years of big, powerful Apple computers, I know my life is complete when I end up with an iPad Pro.

16 years ago I had just put together funding to get one of these.
Then the clones were killed and I sure as hell wasn't going to bend over for
Apple for an extra $500 to get less memory, a slower CPU, a junk GPU
and a tiny HD for the honor of having an Apple name on the case.

 

[Topper]

16 years ago I had just put together funding to get one of these.
Then the clones were killed and I sure as hell wasn't going to bend over for
Apple for an extra $500 to get less memory, a slower CPU, a junk GPU
and a tiny HD for the honor of having an Apple name on the case.

Image

I attended all the Boston MacWorld Expos. Great fun!
I bought a Mac clone (Umax) also.

 

[Neodym]

Very last revision = end of lifecycle where fixed cost amortization risks are lowest. Plus the PowerMac was the last to be converted to Intel, so there would have been inventory to "clear out". Either makes it a bad comparison.

The PowerMac G5 ran from 2003 - 2006. The MacPro ran even longer (so far) from 2006 - 2012 and had only 2 major revisions internally (Core: 2006-2008 and Nehalem/Westmere: 2009-2010 onwards), so one could argue that it's fixed cost should be (maybe even more than) amortized by now.

If the MacPro should be massively redesigned in 2012 Apple would also have inventory for a "clear out". In either case i find barkmonster's comparison quite valid.

To me it's a purely "political" business decision to not offer either a higher Mac mini or a lower Mac Pro in order to protect the iMac price range. And imho a questionable one...

 

[itsamacthing]

I gave up on this thread 6 months ago and got a Mac Mini, supped it up with an SSD and 8GB of Ram to sit and wait and forget about the Mac Pro. In day to day chores, it's just as fast as my 2010 Mac Pro that I sold. Obviously, if I need to compile or do something core related, it' takes longer...but I'm not doing a lot of that work right now. I still think it's going to be a while before the new MP comes out... the thread should be changed to MP 2012 SB or maybe 2013... haha - they will def release the new MP before the new iMac, but with only sandy bridge architecture....it will not have USB 3, only thunderbolt. So again, when the iMac is released with it's Ivy Bridge and USB3 supported natively at the chip sets, then Mac Pro will again be playing catch up to the iMac and more... obviously, this is Intel road maps that Apple is stuck with

 

[goMac]

So again, when the iMac is released with it's Ivy Bridge and USB3 supported natively at the chip sets, then Mac Pro will again be playing catch up to the iMac and more... obviously, this is Intel road maps that Apple is stuck with

I don't get why people say this sort of thing. A six core Mac Pro is in no way "playing catch up" with the current iMac.

 

[itsamacthing]

I don't get why people say this sort of thing. A six core Mac Pro is in no way "playing catch up" with the current iMac.

The iMac is about 2 years ahead of the MP in technology ... mostly due to the Intel roadmap. Thunderbolt ports, USB 3, Sandy/Ivy Bridge Performance... The Mac Pro should be leading the way yet here we are nearly 2 years after it's release and it's still shipping...without the latest technology surrounding the cores. Sorry, but this is not a one legged race down the tech highway...so don't go pointing at all the cores . You want to buy a MP today and add your external HDs via the USB 2 or FW800? Or maybe go buy an eSata card... how exciting... You go for it... pathetic state that MP is in.

 

[wallysb01]

You want to buy a MP today and add your external HDs via the USB 2 or FW800? Or maybe go buy an eSata card... how exciting... You go for it... pathetic state that MP is in.

But, how is FW800 a bad choice? Particularly on a Mac Pro that houses at least 4 drives internally? If you use the optical bays, and get something like this: http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2799&RequestTimeOut=500

then you could have up to 10 HDs in your Mac Pro. Very few people really need external storage for more than a back up on the Mac Pro. So, why does a few extra MB/sec really matter with USB 3.0 compared to Firewire 800, if you can even get that, since FW800 usually saturates slow external drives?

Of all the things to be impatient about regarding the Mac Pro, this one I just don't understand. I'm much more excited about the extra memory controller, and the hope Apple lifts the 96 GB limit OSX can recognize, and the thought of a 16 core Mac Pro.