That is what I did. I would have preferred 3.3 hex, but it was impossible for me to justify since most of what I do still uses only one core. for single core 3.3 is about the same as 3.2
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MacPro Quad now or wait?
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That is what I did. I would have preferred 3.3 hex, but it was impossible for me to justify since most of what I do still uses only one core. for single core 3.3 is about the same as 3.2
You misread what I wrote. There will be NO Thunderbolt PCI card b/c it has to be part of the motherboard.
See here, specifically this section:
- CNet's live coverage reveals that there are no plans to offer Thunderbolt PCIe cards. In fact, Intel says that you will need a new computer/motherboard to get Thunderbolt. That means Mac Pro owners won't be able to add it on to their systems.
10:25 a.m. (Dong Ngo) : There won't be TB PCIe cards it seems. You'll need a new computer.
10:34 a.m. (Dong Ngo) : There won't be add-in TB adapters, you'll need a new computer/motherboard that supports TB.
Unless we hear that directly from Intel, and NOT from some random tech site, nothings clear whether there will be add on cards or not.
Just my two cents. Never trust someone who got it from someone.
I don't know if it fits well in the thread topic, but i insert also the choose of a monitor for the MP.
I exclude totally the apple display as it's glossy, i've searched a bit around the web and from what i've read i need an IPS (or eIPS) monitor, obviously always in a good price/quality ratio.
I've also to choose between 23" and 24" for their resolution 1900x1080 or 1900x1200.
My budget for the monitor is around $800 (560) and i've seen the Dell's ultrasharp 23" and 24" but i've also read about some issues with these monitors (here at macrumors forums). I've checked out also the Nec monitors but hey, there's a lot of offers that i don't know where to start!
I exclude totally the apple display as it's glossy, i've searched a bit around the web and from what i've read i need an IPS (or eIPS) monitor, obviously always in a good price/quality ratio.
I've also to choose between 23" and 24" for their resolution 1900x1080 or 1900x1200.
My budget for the monitor is around $800 (560) and i've seen the Dell's ultrasharp 23" and 24" but i've also read about some issues with these monitors (here at macrumors forums). I've checked out also the Nec monitors but hey, there's a lot of offers that i don't know where to start!
It's possible such a card will come out, but Intel does want TB to have both data and graphics data on the TB cable (TB chip does not absolutely have to be part of the main board from a technical POV - it's just easier to wire it up this way, and it's meant for laptops/portables/AIO's right now).
But for a PCIe card to be able to do this (data + graphics data = happy Intel), they need to work with graphics card makers to create some sort of standard that gets completed DisplayPort data to the TB chip (i.e. use a flexible PCB connector, such as what's used for Crossfire/SLI bridges).
Another way, is to include a TB chip on a graphics card (GPU card makers may not like this, as PCB real estate is already tight, as is the PCI bracket space, as they need to be able to put vents in it as well as the connectors).
Either way, this will take time.
Mine as well.
There's not a need for TB on it's own in a desktop with PCIe slots (existing high speed solutions, and some are designed to run faster than TB by a long shot), but would be useful for those that want to share peripherals with a laptop or portable device.
I would hardly call CNet a "random tech site." Moreover, the report was blogging live from Intel's Thunderbolt announcement. There are plenty of other corroborating stories on this. Pick your favorite site. I'm sure there is an Intel white paper too, or a video of the announcement, floating around but I'm not going to dig it up for you. If you want to doubt, doubt, just don't complain when there actually is not full featured TB card available.
You need to take a better look at the real live coverage as well as the article you're linking to. Intel has not stated that there will be no PCI-e card, it is an incorrect conclusion from cnet. Check out the following quote:
Next interesting bit is from the TB faq cnet (!) made:
And that's just about all you will find. Intel does not say yes nor say no. They're simply being vague about it. I think this is because Intel wants the industry to come up with TB products, they only want to built the chips and sell them. A question about costs hints at this:
As well as:
And:
Then there is the technical bit about TB. TB is a chip in front of the PCI-e and DisplayPort buses. You can have both signals going over 1 TB cable. They cleverly use PCI-e so they can make the OS believe it is seeing actual PCI-e cards (it's like Fusion/Parallels virtualising a USB device). Obviously a disk or a multimedia device does not need both DisplayPort and PCI-e in it for it to work. Most TB devices we see now are actually PCI-e only. The only things that use DisplayPort are the monitors (such as the ACD). Technically it is possible to make such expansion card. The question will be whether Intel wants it or not (it will fragment the TB market a bit since some devices may not work).
Again, Intel leaves it all to the industry, they don't want to decide what kind of devices will be using TB and if there will be expansion cards. As of now there isn't any so saying that you'll be needing a new computer is just a very logical thing to say (you'll need to buy the 2011 MBP since that is currently the only computer with TB).
And still no TB peripherals till mid to late 2011. Only one I saw was a RAID0 LaCie HDD. Could run at top speed on SATA1 1.5Gb, so who cares? If someone will RAID together new SF-2200 SSD's then I get the appeal. All you people selling your Mac's for TB is sad. Anyone here even planning on using the potential of TB and if so how? Please remember you will need to break 580MB/s in the process, at least for disk speed. So string together 3 displays and 4 externals on your TB macbook connect or what?
Exactly.
This is part of it, but they need to complete negotiations with various entities (if it fails, then there's no aftermath to deal with over broken promises = negative effect on adoption, which is key to profitability).
For example, to get the gpu data (cards with DisplayPort outputs) to a TB chip from a PCIe based card, there needs to be a means of wiring it up. So it's in Intel's best interest to get gpu makers to agree to an open standard, and create it (not that difficult from a technical POV). It's "selling" that is, as none of them would have an advantage as they would if it were proprietary to one GPU maker's products. So for an open standard to fly, it has to be beneficial (cheap to do, and use it to help sell their products).
The other potential method, is to include the TB chip on the graphics card (some technical issues with this, due to PCB real estate and GPU cooling).
This is their biggest concern. Such confusion/fragmentation this early, could reduce the adoption rate/market saturation, which needs to be high. This is what they're relying on to generate a profit, so anything that causes this to falter is seen as "enemy number one".
Not necessarily control the device types, but whether or not those devices will require full support or not since they control the IP (created the spec) and production. Thus they can limit sales to those that will comply fully with the standard (data + video) after they've signed a usage/specification compliance agreement.
Those that don't sign on, won't get parts (or will be made to wait until Intel decides that the market saturation is sufficient for it to be profitable with some products that only offer partial support).
One issue that would only be partial support (no way around it), would be ExpressSlot cards for laptops that aren't produced with a TB chip. There's no way to get a DisplayPort signal in such cases, so such a card would be data only. At least with an older PC, adding a GPU card with support for the DisplayPort signal to TB chip, the TB cable can provide both data and video. If they decide not to upgrade the graphics card, then it would be data only.
It gets a tad confusing, so it's no wonder they'd want to make sure computers with TB ports support the full specification IMO (simplifies matters, and will benefit their bottom line). Then they can decide whether or not to allow for partial support products to enter the market by relaxing the usage agreements with PC vendors (I can see it happening this way, as there are some users that use both desktops and laptop/devices they'd want to share peripherals with via TB to reduce peripheral costs).
But by not allowing this to happen (partial support), it has the potential of driving new system sales, and thusly Intel's CPU sales as well as TB chips.
Just a thought....
I think the point is to "future-proof" your purchase. Like it has been said several times already, TB isn't that big deal for Mac Pro users because fast external storage is already available, here and today. Some solutions are even faster than TB.
In other Macs, all you need is a normal mechanical HD with TB and you have already surpassed the speed of FW800. FW800 is the fastest interface in non-TB Macs (excluding some Macs with ExpressCard slot).
Yes I know, my point was replacing a 2000.00 Mac for a port to go no faster as most people buy externals that are fitted with "green" 5400RPM drives that can't even saturate FW800. It's only a big deal for portable users because Apple took away functionality from the previous line. Who cares about a 25.00 SD card reader? No one I know uses them but would love the expresscard slot back in the smaller models. Cause guess what, you could slot a media reader in there. Or anything else you desire.
@nanofrog: Once TB takes off there will be some other problems. If you look at the Lacie Little Big Disk that was used for the TB demo's you'll notice 2 TB ports and the power port. There is no firewire, no usb, no eSATA. This either requires adapters (TB -> fw800 for example) or a machine with TB. Users are going to love it if they can use things like disks on non-TB hardware as well.
You could feed the mDP port back into the TB expansion card but this is a very bad and ugly way of solving it. The best way would indeed be support from manufacturers who actually put it on their products (like a video card).
@Hellhammer: don't forget the PCIe expandability the Mac Pro has! If you need additional usb/firewire ports or something with eSATA you can buy a PCIe card and put it in the MP.
@derbothaus: there are more people using sd cards and card readers than there are people using ExpressCards. We once had pcmcia because not everything was built into the laptop/notebook. Today almost everything is already built in, even gps receivers. Things that aren't built in either use usb or bluetooth (or wifi like those wifi hotspot devices). The only ones actually using ExpressCards are power users who use them for eSATA or a cf card reader (there are usb and even firewire card readers). Most people will be using sd anyway because it is the most widely used memory card (a lot of dslr's are switching to sd). Getting an ExpressCard version of something is actually quite hard, they don't sell that many.
You could feed the mDP port back into the TB expansion card but this is a very bad and ugly way of solving it. The best way would indeed be support from manufacturers who actually put it on their products (like a video card).
@Hellhammer: don't forget the PCIe expandability the Mac Pro has! If you need additional usb/firewire ports or something with eSATA you can buy a PCIe card and put it in the MP.
@derbothaus: there are more people using sd cards and card readers than there are people using ExpressCards. We once had pcmcia because not everything was built into the laptop/notebook. Today almost everything is already built in, even gps receivers. Things that aren't built in either use usb or bluetooth (or wifi like those wifi hotspot devices). The only ones actually using ExpressCards are power users who use them for eSATA or a cf card reader (there are usb and even firewire card readers). Most people will be using sd anyway because it is the most widely used memory card (a lot of dslr's are switching to sd). Getting an ExpressCard version of something is actually quite hard, they don't sell that many.
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The people who don't need fast external storage will most likely not buy a new Mac, at least not solely because of TB. In your previous post you said it's sad that all we are selling our Macs for TB. Who exactly are these people then? How many have you seen and have you heard their reasoning?
iMac has NEVER even had an ExpressCard slot. FW800 has always been the fastest external interface in it. I would bet that the biggest reason why someone buys the base Mac Pro is that he or she wants/needs more fast storage as base Mac Pro is as fast as the high-end iMac but more expensive. Now that TB is here, this is possible. iMac users will no longer be limited to FW800.
FYI, even these 5400rpm drives can provide more than 80MB/s which is FW800's maximum, as long as we are talking about higher capacity drive.
That is exactly what I meant. One can buy an eSATA card and get fast external storage. The cost is minimal and there is no waiting involved since everything is already on the shelves.
That second TB port on the peripheral devices is there for daisy chaining others (can have up to 7 devices on one TB chip).
As a result, TB isn't entirely PCIe + DisplayPort on one cable, as PCIe does not support daisy chaining at all. So they had to modify the spec and protocol to handle this (invisible to the user).
As per USB, FW800, and eSATA, they can produce a bridge device (i.e. system vendors decide to eliminate these ports and solely use TB, this would be absolutely necessary for users to use existing peripherals based on these ports).
This would be a bad idea IMO, as it increases the chance of actually exceeding the bandwidth available via TB (stated at 10Gb/s, but overhead reduces it to 800MB/s). It's also sort of stupid due to the mess it would create (TB cable + bridge device + peripheral/s scattered all over the workspace). Granted, it's only one more device and cable (assuming only one), but it's still more crap in the way, and it's not cost effective for users (it would be beneficial financially speaking for the manufacturers that would produce these bridge devices <more stuff they can sell> and system vendors <due to reduced costs by eliminating the other ports>).
It wouldn't be any different from an SLI/Crossfire bridge (flexible PCB/cable connected to both the TB card and graphics card; nothing to do with the actual PCIe slots at all).
Granted, placing a TB chip on the graphics card is cleaner looking internally, but the PCB real estate and cooling issues for a GPU are significant (think of the rear of such a card - they need vents for air flow as well as fit the monitor interconnects). PCB wise, they're already tight, and another chip could reduce the efficiency of the GPU cooler as well.
These aren't trivial matters, and should not be under-estimated (not impossible, but the other way is far cheaper, easier, and faster to implement - simple modification of a PCB edge).
Hey, just to back in topic, can't no more buy a MP from tomorrow!!!
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//#Mac_Pro
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//#Mac_Pro
Hey, just to back in topic, can't no more buy a MP from tomorrow!!!
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//#Mac_Pro
Hmmm... I wonder if they will do a new mac pro introduction with the new version of final cut... for some reason this makes sense....
I know and that wasn't my point. The point still is that the Lacie Little Big Disk can only be used with TB. If you don't have TB in your machine you have a problem. In that case it needs to be converted to something you do have like fw800 or usb2.
Devices will speak in TB amongst themselves. The computer will translate it into PCIe/DisplayPort if you explain it very simplistically.
You don't seem to be understanding what I'm talking about. It's not about performance but about being able to access the device in the first place. You'd want to have access to your data from other machines as well. Performance does not matter much, it's a luxury in this case. Again, this is meant for machines without TB that need to access TB-only devices such as the Lacie Little Big Disk.
Yeah, that would be a better and neater way of doing it.
Hey, just to back in topic, can't no more buy a MP from tomorrow!!!
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//#Mac_Pro
It is only listed as such because the average wait has been reached. Once it passes average it goes into "Don't Buy" AFAIK.
I actually did get this fact, but I'll reiterate the point I was trying to get across...
It's foolish to try and use a TB peripheral with a system that does not have a TB port (particularly if there's no way to get a TB port in the system). The point of using TB based data storage systems is speed rather than convenience. Cost is another factor (TB is new, so perhipherals won't be cheap - think of it this way; LaCie TB disk v. say FW800 or eSATA if there's an ExpressSlot).
Single disks on TB is also foolish (can't come anywhere near saturating the TB interconnect). USB 2.0, FW800, or eSATA will be cheaper and are readily available already (LaCie is the only single disk units on TB right now).
If you've noticed the literature from Intel on TB, it's they're aiming it at video and audio professionals working on laptops. There are others that would like it, but these targeted areas can actually utilize the bandwidth (i.e. software usage is fine with 4 core CPU's, but disk I/O on laptops has been an achilles heel).
I just typed "invisible to user" to keep it simple.
Are you talking about using multiple laptops (some pre TB manufacture) with newer laptops that do have TB ports with the same peripherals?
I guess this could happen on rare occasion, but for a single user, why would they be on multiple laptops?
And if it's a company with multiple employees, why would they all be trying to use the same peripheral (presuming laptops = separate locations per employee)?
When I think of sharing TB peripherals, I think of it occuring between a laptop (or device, such as a smart phone) and desktop. So getting a PCIe card out is of some importance (it's also more cost effective on the peripherals since they can be shared = saved time that can be used to increase a bottom line).
I was sarcastic.
I was trying only to put back in topic the thread in a gentle way!
I will not decide to buy or not to buy a MP (now or later that will be) only or mainly for the presence of a TB port!
Seems that at the moment isn't so necessary and there are as much reliable alternatives, how people did/worked as today?
How much i can gain with this new technology in the short term?
How much will cost related gear?
As always new technologies require more investment that will go down with time, so i don't think that's vital at the moment to have a TB port on the MP.
Could be a plus, maybe it's essential to the all in one apple computers as it will define a new standard of expandability but we will have to wait for new compatible devices, prices decrease...all things that requires at least 1 or 2 years, not 1 or 2 months.
Obviously that's my opinion and said this i renew my question about a good price/quality IPS monitor to put over a MP!
(Let me know if i have to open a new thread in another forum if this don't fit this thread and this forum!)
Are you sure OP that the 27" iMac isn't a go? The heat is perfectly safe. They're great machines and very compact. I'd grab the new 27" iMac when it comes out... it'd serve you pretty well I think.
Read what i wrote here please:
Post 8
PS:
Don't mind about the TB port, will be or not will be isn't vital to me, i've already started a fire mentioning TB!