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Quadcore iMacs

iMacmatician said:
I think clock speeds and other info are known (either from Intel or from leaks) a few months before release.
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Thanks. Maybe when that info is announced there will also be a tidbit about a major OEM hoarding them for use in its flagship consumer desktop ;)

One other question - is the performance increase from Penryn to mobile Nehalem (and I guess now Westmere) expected to be as impressive as Core i7 over Penryn? Or do people just not know anything concrete at this point?
 
Ambrose Chapel said:
One other question - is the performance increase from Penryn to mobile Nehalem (and I guess now Westmere) expected to be as impressive as Core i7 over Penryn? Or do people just not know anything concrete at this point?
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Mobile Nehalem will lack the 3-channel RAM and QuickPath support of Core i7 and Gainestown. But, since Arrandale will go straight to 32 nm (rather than 45 nm), that'll help its performance.
 
I am going to be using my mac for audio programs. I will be using pro tools most of the time, should i wait for the quads in the imac or would it be fine to get one now?
 
iMacmatician said:
Mobile Nehalem will lack the 3-channel RAM and QuickPath support of Core i7 and Gainestown. But, since Arrandale will go straight to 32 nm (rather than 45 nm), that'll help its performance.
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Thanks for the info. I guess now the only thing left to do is wait and see what Apple decides to do. Though if Clarksfield arrives and there's no iMac refresh, it'll be a pretty safe bet that we'll be waiting for Arrandale. Hopefully I can tolerate my G5 until then...and hopefully it'll last!
 
Tallest Skil said:
The fact that Intel will stop producing dual-core processors in the next few years.
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I can't see why they would do that. Of course depends did you mean 2-4 years or 6-9 years with "few years". For people who just uses email and surfs in the web there's no need for quad-core or better. There are still PCs with single core sold in the stores...
 
Reading this thread, amongst others, it really would be beneficial if someone such as Tallest Skil or iMacmatician could do a definitive guide (possibly as a sticky Mods?) to the differences, definitions and technical specs of the future chips / chip sets. It seems, and I include myself in this, that we all get cross wires on the definitions of Nehalem, Core i7, Clarksfield, Arrandale chips which kind of confuses the matter.

Just a thought?
 
iMacmatician said:
2011. Mid-2010 at the earliest.

Dual-core.

Except that Clarksfield is 45/55 W (35/45 W in Penryn terms) and the 3.07 GHz Penryn used in the 2008 iMac is 55 W. So I don't see any technical reason why the iMacs can't handle some sort of quad-core, now or next year.

I think Apple is purposely holding back on quad-core for some reason, since quads have been available since last year.
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The only reason would be that it would directly compete with the Power Mac Quad Core, it would bring the price pretty close less a monitor.
 
spcdust said:
Reading this thread, amongst others, it really would be beneficial if someone such as Tallest Skil or iMacmatician could do a definitive guide (possibly as a sticky Mods?) to the differences, definitions and technical specs of the future chips / chip sets. It seems, and I include myself in this, that we all get cross wires on the definitions of Nehalem, Core i7, Clarksfield, Arrandale chips which kind of confuses the matter.

Just a thought?
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It's the Intel Mobile Road Map (MacRumors Guide), but the last time it was updated was…well…in August 9 of last year by…me. :eek:

I'll update it now. EDIT: Updated. Feel free to add more stuff to it since I don't have time to include a lot of details in it. EDIT 2: Created Intel Workstation Road Map article.

JeepGuy said:
The only reason would be that it would directly compete with the Power Mac Quad Core, it would bring the price pretty close less a monitor.
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Could be. I wonder if the SP Mac Pro would even exist if half or all the iMacs went quad-core in one form or another.
 
Thanks Tallest Skil for your informative posts :cool:

I got to admit that at least at the moment, for general usage / everyday computing there is very little advantage that I have been able see in Quad Core processing.

Actually with the advancements in 10.6 it seems, at least imho - that the road forward is offloading processing to video graphic processors and therefore harnessing their power. Quad Core or > may be important for Pro App users and video / renderers but that's really where their usefulness seems to end.

Intel is innovating and moving onto more cores, they have to. They're a business and they must keep proving themselves - whether or not the market really needs... Oct Core processing... :D
 
Intel presently offers quad-core processors that are of the same 'family' that the current iMac uses. However, they top out at 2.53 GHz. Apple hasn't been a big fan of releasing more cores at slower speed. And 500 MHz is quite a speed cut.

As for future roadmaps? Sorry, can't talk about those. I know nothing about what Apple is doing; but I can't even speculate on general Intel release schedules. (Of course, as we know from recent experience, it's possible that Apple could get things early (Nehalem-EP in the Mac Pro a month before anyone else,) or they could release them four months after everyone else (the original Quad-core CPU-equipped Mac Pro.))
 
Tallest Skil said:
The power draw is too high...
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iMacmatician said:
Except that Clarksfield is 45/55 W (35/45 W in Penryn terms) and the 3.07 GHz Penryn used in the 2008 iMac is 55 W...
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Bingo. Actually all the processors in the iMac are 55W TDP.

Technically speaking, the Radeon 4850 they are offering as a BTO option has a TDP of 110W. Now I'm guessing Apple's underclocked that a bit, but that's still going to be a very high (for the iMac) TDP, showing us that the iMac can handle some hot parts. There's nothing obvious stopping Apple from updating in Fall/Autumn and using say a quad-core Penryn processor (65W TDP) with the new 40nm Radeon 4770 (70W TDP).

ehurtley said:
Intel presently offers quad-core processors that are of the same 'family' that the current iMac uses. However, they top out at 2.53 GHz.
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If you're talking about the S series quad-cores, they actually top out at 2.83 GHz with a juicy 12 MB L2 (up from 6 MB) and 1333 MHz FSB (up from 1066 MHz). They just have a 10W TDP increase.

Here's a list of 'em for your reading pleasure.

  • Q8200S - 2.33 GHz, 2x 2 MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz ($245, may be phased out or dropped to $213)
  • Q8400S - 2.66 GHz, 2x 2 MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz ($245, about to be released)
  • Q9400S - 2.66 GHz, 2x 3 MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz ($320, may drop to $277)
  • Q9550S - 2.83 GHz, 2x 6 MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz ($369, may drop to $320)
 
txnoob said:
I'll agree with you there. Look at this:

http://houston.craigslist.org/sys/1090553168.html

Guy is asking $1500 for a G4 450Mhz, 1.5 G of RAM, original 30GB and a 175GB hard drive, along with a 21" CRT, Zip drives. Loaded with design software but no disks included.

People are seriously smoking something.
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LOL!!!!!!! Someone would have to be seriously dumb to buy this thing. For the same money ($1499) you can get the 24" iMac which would have far better performance and specs.

Just because people try to SELL macs for high prices doesn't mean they are finding buyers for these machines. I know from personal experience that macs do lose value (if you want to find a buyer at least in a reasonable time frame). Don't get the impression that if you buy a $1500 machine now you'll be able to take no more than a $100 hit. It will probably be more like a $400-$500 hit (sure its less than PCs, but its substantial).

Anyway, I think quad cores are coming sooner than later. Probably with SL or soon after so that its more of a splash (steal the spotlight from Windows 7)
 
Macole said:
they did it with the 2.26ghz Mac Pro.
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However they have the fastest speed available as CTO. In this case, they have just lowered the 'entry' point for a system that is likely to be CTO more often than bought stock.

Yes, it has happened, but most often when switching cores. Switching from the current Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz to the current Core 2 Quad 2.53 GHz will be a 500 MHz drop, but no 'core' improvement in speed. So single and dual-thread apps will be noticeably slower. On the move from the previous Xeon to the Nehalem-EP Xeon, even the 2.26 GHz Nehalem-EP is roughly equal to the previous entry-level 2.66 GHz system. And the new 2.93 GHz Nehalem-EP blows the old 3.2 GHz out of the water by a mile.

For example, Apple seemed hesitant to move from the single-core 2.7 GHz G5 to the 2.5 GHz dual-core G5. And when the dual-capable G4s were out, they didn't *replace* the faster single processor rig with the slower dual processor; they added the dual-processor in. (Dual 500 MHz vs. single 800 MHz, IIRC.)
 
I really wonder if a quad-core iMac (or Mini, or MB, or MBP) will even be needed if Snow Leopard can really leverage the 9400m's gpu for general computing tasks. After all, it has 16 processing cores - who'd need a puny little quad-core cpu? :)

(And this is why Intel and nVidia are in court - nVidia's kicking their proverbial @$$.)
 
Cave Man said:
I really wonder if a quad-core iMac (or Mini, or MB, or MBP) will even be needed if Snow Leopard can really leverage the 9400m's gpu for general computing tasks. After all, it has 16 processing cores - who'd need a puny little quad-core cpu? :)

(And this is why Intel and nVidia are in court - nVidia's kicking their proverbial @$$.)
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Except the 9400M isn't for "general computing" tasks. It can do a limited set of tasks well, but others... Not so well. Some scientific computing, video transcoding, and encryption/decryption, yes. As well as, obviously, rendering graphics. I haven't yet seen a public ray-tracer that uses a GPU acceptably well.

On the tasks it does well, it does them *VERY* well. For example, I occasionally run the distributed computing application "distributed.net". A Core i7 overclocked to 3.8 GHz gets about 40 million keys per second. A fully-loaded four-socket, six-cores-per-socket server at work (a $20,000+ server, four Xeon X7460s at 2.66 GHz,) gets me in the neighborhood of 150 million. However, a $600 nVidia GeGorce GTX 295 gets me about 1 billion. So I know where GPGPU works. (GPGPU = General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit)

But there are just some tasks that truly *CANNOT* be performed on a GPU as it stands now.
 
Cave Man said:
I really wonder if a quad-core iMac (or Mini, or MB, or MBP) will even be needed if Snow Leopard can really leverage the 9400m's gpu for general computing tasks. After all, it has 16 processing cores - who'd need a puny little quad-core cpu? :)

(And this is why Intel and nVidia are in court - nVidia's kicking their proverbial @$$.)
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Not even close to the same thing. GPUs, unlike CPUs, are not general purpose processors so the number of cores is not at all comparable.

For most people quad cores wouldn't give any real performance improvements since most programs can't use all cores properly and also don't need to do so. Thus there is little need for Apple to include them on the iMacs. People who truly need quad core power are the target audience for the Mac Pro.
 
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