mac pro going away:o

[derbothaus]

Yes. My W3680 can't rip iTunes music as fast as an i7-2600 but it is 30% faster using Logic Pro. Anything fully multithreaded the 6-cores win, otherwise they don't as the i7 has a higher clock and better core execution compared to Westmere.
Apple never speed bumped the 6-core to W3690 because the gains are like 1-3% on the 133MHz clock bump and they would have to pay top dollar vs keeping the W3680 and making an extra 400.00 profit on each 6-core sold. (Assumption)

 

[wallysb01]

Yes. My W3680 can't rip iTunes music as fast as an i7-2600 but it is 30% faster using Logic Pro. Anything fully multithreaded the 6-cores win, otherwise they don't as the i7 has a higher clock and better core execution compared to Westmere.
Apple never speed bumped the 6-core to W3690 because the gains are like 1-3% on the 133MHz clock bump and they would have to pay top dollar vs keeping the W3680 and making an extra 400.00 profit on each 6-core sold. (Assumption)

Right, but now you're talking about the Mac Pro and Xeons, we'd shifted to desktop processors. So the choice is really between the 990X and 2600. The shift to the workstation platform changes the equation a bit too much. I don't think anyone is saying 6 cores is pointless, its probably just not smart to have a 6 core iMac with the currently available processors. Full utilization of the tunderbolt port would certainly help that too, since the iMac is so limited in hard drive options. The RAM issue of course won't go away.

 

[derbothaus]

Right, but now you're talking about the Mac Pro and Xeons, we'd shifted to desktop processors. So the choice is really between the 990X and 2600. The shift to the workstation platform changes the equation a bit too much. I don't think anyone is saying 6 cores is pointless, its probably just not smart to have a 6 core iMac with the currently available processors. Full utilization of the tunderbolt port would certainly help that too, since the iMac is so limited in hard drive options. The RAM issue of course won't go away.

I use 990x and W3690 interchangeably as they are so similar in performance and price. Dual QPI's (X variants) are more but singles are pretty close. But yeah if the choice is between current pricing 990x @999.00 and i7-2600K @ 350.00. No contest, get the 2600K unless you are all multithreaded in workflow and then you might as well be in the Xeon camp as your needs are not consumer.

 

[thekev]

Which is exactly what I do. I work as Director of Engineering for Gurobi Optimization. We develop software for mathematical optimization. In the world of scientific computing, everything is parallelized. So I've got a very good idea of what I need, thanks.

While I realize that most Mac users aren't doing scientific computing, many of us run virtual machines for testing. With more cores, you can run a virtual machine in the background while still having the computer available for basic tasks like web and email. 8-12 cores is probably overkill for this, but 6 isn't.

It wasn't meant as a personal attack there. I just found it slightly surprising that you'd want exactly 6. Seeing as you're running VMs it makes more sense to me now as it's just a couple extra cores to run a VM or two in the background without slowing the rest of the system down right? I'm truly wondering what they are going to do with the mac pro line. The update pattern over the past couple years is comparable to what companies do before killing off a line. They've minimized hardware expenses dropping the baseline 4 and 8 core models to some of the cheapest parts available in their respective processor classes, and they've inched the starting prices up over the last couple refreshes. I'm kind of worried it'll go away without a replacement

 

[macbook pro i5]

It wasn't meant as a personal attack there. I just found it slightly surprising that you'd want exactly 6. Seeing as you're running VMs it makes more sense to me now as it's just a couple extra cores to run a VM or two in the background without slowing the rest of the system down right? I'm truly wondering what they are going to do with the mac pro line. The update pattern over the past couple years is comparable to what companies do before killing off a line. They've minimized hardware expenses dropping the baseline 4 and 8 core models to some of the cheapest parts available in their respective processor classes, and they've inched the starting prices up over the last couple refreshes. I'm kind of worried it'll go away without a replacement

See this is what I am trying to say the things they have done to lion have proved that MP good go soon

 

[wallysb01]

...get the 2600K unless you are all multithreaded in workflow and then you might as well be in the Xeon camp as your needs are not consumer.

Exactly, that's basically my point. If you need 6 cores, and exactly six cores, are happy with 16 GB of RAM (while 32 is possible, its a bit impractical to use a 4x8 configuration right now) and 2 HD bays, then I think you're a pretty small part of the market. Basically, if you're using the 990X, and you want to outfit an iMac to be as Mac Pro-ish as you can, with 32 GB of RAM and say 2 2TB HDDs, you're looking at maybe close to $4500. At that point you should really just be buying workstations with Xeons.