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New MP in March? 3.3ghz Release Date 3/12 ?
- Thread starter slughead
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Nobody knows. Just because a new processor is being released o/a a certain date doesn't mean Apple will immediately update their machines with it.
Of course, maybe Apple has had advance deliveries? They do work closely with Intel after all...
To be honest, I would not expect an update till at least a full Q after the official release and expect stock to be low as it feeds into the supply chain.
If you had bought your Mac Pro when you needed it, you would have had the use of it for the best part of a year before an upgrade was available. Instead, you have been doing without or managing on older gear till now.
To be honest, I would not expect an update till at least a full Q after the official release and expect stock to be low as it feeds into the supply chain.
If you had bought your Mac Pro when you needed it, you would have had the use of it for the best part of a year before an upgrade was available. Instead, you have been doing without or managing on older gear till now.
True, but I couldn't justify the hefty price tag for such old tech (in Australia, the base Mac Pro is $500 more expensive than it is in the US, even though our dollar is worth more).
I'd like to verify what others have said. apple has gotten early productions of cpus before from intel. Also, this 3/12 date I only saw on wikipedia, not anywhere else yet. If someone wants to do some google-fu, that'd be great, otherwise ill do it when I get home tonight
The March date on wikipedia comes from the rumours that Intel will launch it around CeBIT which is being held from the 6th to the 10th of March.
http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-t...core-sandy-bridge-ep-at-cebit-2012/14506.html
http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-t...core-sandy-bridge-ep-at-cebit-2012/14506.html
Yeah bought the current model as a refurb in Oct. - made use of a 0% offer on my credit card (so have 6 months to pay it back). It would have been nice, but id rather have more oompf than what i was using at the time, a macbook pro for editing.
I also bought a imac g5 (1st mac) 2-3 weeks before the intel launch - i didnt really care, just wanted the imac after seeing my freinds. It lasted around 3 years before i went to the powerbook g4 then macbook pro. The intel mac was also £300 more expensive (new tech / adopters price) so even when it came out, wasnt bothered at all.
Yes but it is still the fastest in the Mac fleet. Faster than 6870 and on par with 6950, 6970 in DX9, DX10. It is slower in DX11 which is expected. Unless Apple releases 7970 there is still nothing to upgrade to. Even flashing PC cards.
Can any help this ignorant fool understand what the main avantages of these Sandy Bridge E processors are over the current offerings in the Mac Pro line.
Is it just Sandy Bridge but designed for enterprise/server use or am I missing something?
Is it just Sandy Bridge but designed for enterprise/server use or am I missing something?
This happened once or twice early on, now everyone expects it all the time. In one case Apple took a batch of chips that the others passed on due to higher tdp rating (the mac pro had the space to cool them). Don't expect any preferential treatment here.
Australia gets ripped off hard on electronics. It's kind of ridiculous. They seem to have set the precedent at a time when the Australian dollar was weak, and at this point they're just coasting on that.
You mean as opposed to what is in the imac? They're different sockets essentially. I don't think you'll see both the 3.2 and 3.33 sold. It's too little performance increase for a much larger chunk of change. If you're setting up something to handle heavy computing tasks, it can hit a point where it just makes more sense to own an extra machine rather than upgrading one for that final 5%. Given that this is Apple, I wouldn't be surprised to see the rest of their line move onto Ivy Bridge cpus before Sandy Bridge E makes it into these machines. The guys who bought in 2009 apparently timed it best given the ability to update those cpus.
Apple will start telling people that the Mac Pro is "too big", "too bulky", and non-economical and give all excuses for you to get an iPad and a MacBook Air.
This seems to be the direction Apple is headed with the iOS ecosystem starting to dominate things. I think Apple still has future in the Mac but Apple is going on this road of "Thinner, lighter, more portable" and iOS-capable, etc, and the Mac Pro seems to be none of these things.
The people (like me) that have a Mac Pro like them because they are extra-expandable, extra, upgradable, and extra-reliable, a solid tower machine that never seems to break down, crash, or give up. We like the Mac Pro because it has the power and "future power" to handle anything we want to throw at it, and can run internal RAID-arrays, SSDs, PCIe cards and the like, as well as have massive amounts of RAM.
Apple will probably argue on these points and say that the future ultra-mobile computers will be able to do all of this and more in a micro-fashion and that the future of design is not with these "massive beasts" but with tablets and the like, touchscreens.
Apple may or may not deliver a new Mac Pro in the coming months this year, but you can count my words that the days of the Mac Pro are numbered, and yes, it will be extinct and discontinued eventually whether you like it or not.
This seems to be the direction Apple is headed with the iOS ecosystem starting to dominate things. I think Apple still has future in the Mac but Apple is going on this road of "Thinner, lighter, more portable" and iOS-capable, etc, and the Mac Pro seems to be none of these things.
The people (like me) that have a Mac Pro like them because they are extra-expandable, extra, upgradable, and extra-reliable, a solid tower machine that never seems to break down, crash, or give up. We like the Mac Pro because it has the power and "future power" to handle anything we want to throw at it, and can run internal RAID-arrays, SSDs, PCIe cards and the like, as well as have massive amounts of RAM.
Apple will probably argue on these points and say that the future ultra-mobile computers will be able to do all of this and more in a micro-fashion and that the future of design is not with these "massive beasts" but with tablets and the like, touchscreens.
Apple may or may not deliver a new Mac Pro in the coming months this year, but you can count my words that the days of the Mac Pro are numbered, and yes, it will be extinct and discontinued eventually whether you like it or not.
I meant as opposed to what's in the current Mac Pro, but I pretty much figured out the stupidity of that question lol.
Oh so 2009-2010 Mac Pros can be upgraded to Ivy? It's the same socket for both?
No. 2010 is end of life board. Best proc created for it is W3690, X5690, socket LGA1366, X58 chipset.
Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge use socket LGA2011 and X79 chipset. New Mac Pro's will use (pretty sure)
Regular consumer Sandy Bridge uses Z68 chipset and LGA1155. That is what they use in iMac's not Mac Pro's.
Nooo... I think Ivy is where they're transitioning socket types. What I meant earlier was that with the imacs, those cpus aren't compatible, and Sandy Bridge E is the direct successor to what is currently used in the Mac Pro. I don't know how much of an Ivy Bridge release we'll see on the Mac Pro. Desktop cpus aren't seeing any major gains. They're adjusting the wattage ranges somewhat. Ivy Bridge is supposed to bring usb3 and PCIe 3.0.
I think we're in for a disappointing upgrade overall. I think it'll be new cpus and new gpus, but that would be enough for me. The 6 core pricing today was based on a higher staring price point on that cpu, and the gpu options are old, so I'd pay quite a lot for a machine, then pay several hundred more to upgrade to the new gpu after a couple months. That is entirely unappealing to me. I wanted to stagger the upgrade with an interim laptop upgrade, but non thunderbolt IO (not buying a new NAS), OpenGL performance, and inability to really maintain benchmark stats consistently are downsides for me (by that I mean they can't maintain turbo boost which is one of the things that makes them look so fast in benchmarks).
I was under the impression that Ivy Bridge would be using a different chipset, although every tech site says something a little different, and they're mainly focused on the consumer grade cpus as a lot of gamers browse those sites. I've been looking for some better information on this.
They don't just "look" fast, they are that fast. Turbo is for single threaded tasks. If the proc has thermal headroom and the software can only send it single threads it will overclock in specified intervals (depending on generation of chip) to finish the task as soon as possible. It is not a gimmick or trick. It is, for lack of a better term, managed over-clocking.
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Ivy "may" have a different chipset but socket will be the same.
Well OpenGL performance and lack of native eSATA or comparable were bigger downsides. I don't like the thunderbolt options and the dongles are several hundred dollars with short warranties (which makes me nervous on a first generation product). 16GB of ram would be manageable, but again I didn't expect the delay to go on quite this long
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Interesting.. So when the 2012 Mac Pro is upgrade it will have (more than likely) SB E? What are the advantages of the enterprise edition over normal SB CPU's?
Sorry for all the questions, I could probably just google it, but you guys seem to know a good amount.
Sorry for all the questions, I could probably just google it, but you guys seem to know a good amount.
Well OpenGL performance and lack of native eSATA or comparable were bigger downsides. I don't like the thunderbolt options and the dongles are several hundred dollars with short warranties (which makes me nervous on a first generation product). 16GB of ram would be manageable, but again I didn't expect the delay to go on quite this long
Its not the HW, it's the SW. Apple has dropped some OpenGL ball lately.
My test numbers from sig:
Cinebench r11 OpenGL:
Win 7: 69.14
10.6.8: 35.01
The CPU tested out the same on both OS's.
Why do you need native eSATA? PCI works just fine for a couple bucks. I have seen no indication Apple is even entertaining eSATA, ever. TB is available to the masses and more purchase options should be available soon enough. I'm not too worried.
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Basically allows more performance for a single system. More cores, more processors, more memory, more PCI-Express, more storage I/O.
For Mac Pros it will mean Apple systems that can use DIMMs bigger than 8GB, more than 4 DIMMs (probably only on Dual Processor systems) more than 4 cores, lots of PCI-E lanes.
Oh I use PCI currently. I didn't wish to spend a lot on the TB dongle currently available if I switched to a laptop as an interim thing until a new mac pro hits, but again it was just one item in a list against that strategy. Yes I get that we'll have more stuff soon. I'm saying this is why I didn't make that move a few months ago (and again I thought we'd hear something about a new mac pro by this point).
Thanks, very informative stuff.. I still don't think I would ever need it, but then again who knows once (if) the software catches up.