“For the second time in as many years, Mac maker Apple Inc. is awaiting the official nod from chip supplier Intel Corp. before announcing a brawny update to its Mac Pro workstations aimed at media professionals,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“The new systems will represent the first architectural overhaul to the Mac Pro family since Apple introduced the Intel-based Power Mac successor at its August 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference. They’ll also be amongst the first machines from any PC manufacturer to employ chips from Intel’s upcoming Penryn family of 45-nanometer (nm) microprocessors — specifically the upcoming Hi-k Xeons, which will be available in dual- and quad-core variants for workstations with front-side bus speeds of either 1333MHz or 1600MHz,” Jade reports.
“Confirming reports filed by the Inquirer earlier this month, people familiar with the matter say the new Mac Pro line lineup will top out with an 8-core configuration that employs two top-of-the-line quad-core ‘Harpertown’ chips. The top-bin Xeons, which offer the faster 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache, will start trickling in around mid-November at speeds of up to 3.2GHz,” Jade reports.
“Speaking at Intel’s Beijing developer forum earlier this year, Intel senior VP Pat Gelsinger said Harpertown Xeons will offer an approximate 45 percent speed increase for bandwidth-intensive applications compared to the Clovertown Xeon chips available in today’s Mac Pros,” Jade reports.
More in the full article here.
When do the FunkyTown chips come out?
Yeah yeah yeah … lovely … but what’s the graphics card?
Sweet machines… but must be sold at same price points as todays line or else I ain’t interested.
Rin tin tin
Good news. Here’s hoping that they come with some new video card options. How about some nVidia 8×00 support?
I also agree that a consumer tower, something the power of the iMac but upgradable, is a needed addition to the apple lineup.
Wonder when they will start offering a flash drive option.
Not that it matters yet, but when we get read/write capability with ZFS, if one of the drives offers faster access than the others will we still be able to specify that we want that one to be the OS boot drive?
It won’t be long now til nVidia optimizes their new boards for the mac line first. Intel knows already whois on the cutting edge.
Firsties in the engineering and out out the production door
theyre not going to make a mac in between the mac pro and the imac. theres no need. but a low end mac pro or a high end imac.
@razor
@Ryan
The cutesy iMac sucks for a mid-professional (Graphics, CAD, etc.) and gamers, the Mac Pro is overkill and overly expensive. No corporation, professional nor gamer is going to consider either of them. Even the bottom Mac Pro model when equipped with a better video card and adequate RAM+Hard Drive will cost $3,000 plus.
Jeff makes a perfect argument. I am a self employed Architect who would love to upgrade every 2 years, but with Apple’s options my only choices are to wait 4 years to upgrade or wait for Linux and buy a PC, which I would hate to do but will do when it is viable.
I love Macs, but making a living takes priority.
Oh, for Ryan, I’m not so sure switching to Intel was such a great idea: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2134418,00.asp
Yo Dextroamphetamine
No, no, you have it all wrong. You WANT the Mac Pro to become self-aware, so it can finish all that work for you!
My Mac Pro keeps sending me outside to check on its AE-35 antenna module. Should I worry?
@Reality Check
What kind of freelancer can’t afford a $3,000 business expense every two years? I bill that in a week.
Do you bill your clients in money or do you barter for eggs?
@Ernesto
Lets see…I have a life. Do you? When I buy a new tower I max it out with RAM, hard drives and best video card available. Additionally I have to upgrade my software(s) at least once a year as well as expand my back up drives to keep up with my archives.
The cheapest Mac Pro (which hasn’t been upgraded in 15 months, which is pathetic) goes for $2,500. By the time you upgrade it to do what I need it to do I am close to $4,000.
1. I can’t justify it every 2 years.
2. I won’t justify it.
Rather than attacking me, try to see we have fewer options than ever at higher costs. Don’t forget we continue to pay a very high premium for anything that relates to the Mac.
“No corporation … is going to consider either of them.”
You can’t make that claim, unless you work with EVERY corporation and know what they will and will not buy.
A corporation that I freelance for is upgrading my dual G5 to a Quad Mac Pro. Matter of fact, they’re purchasing six of them for their L.A. office alone.
We do high level creative stuff. That kind of write off is on par with our budgets. And if we’re up for it, others are as well.
What kind of freelancing do you do ernesto? I would like $3000 per week too.
@Reality Check
Did you even read the article you posted about the Power6 processors? Those are enterprise server chips. IBM was doing great things back in the PPC days, too – it just didn’t ever make it down to the desktop chips, and the couldn’t make a decent performing low-power/dissipation to save their lives. PowerBook G5, anyone?
Quote:
Mauri said IBM will offer Power6 in several midrange systems that will appeal to both high-end enterprise customers as well as small and midsize businesses looking to run a single application within a smaller data center. In addition, IBM is giving customers who already use the Power5+ in a system the ability to upgrade to Power6.
In terms of pricing, Mauri said that the base price for a two-socket system will be about $60,000, although different configurations will change the price accordingly.
when will 45nm penryn chips come to the iMac? anybody?
Yeah, this is the same IBM that always used Intel CPUs instead of ther own raging infernos. I trust those clods as much as I do MicroSoft. I think Steve Jobs knows how to make these decisions.
What’s up with that damn ringtone ad that you can’t click out of. Death to MDN!!!!
just got 2, 8 core Mac Pros for the office with 30 in monitors and apple care
the only way to fly!!!
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@ecrabb
I did read the article. The G5 was based on the Power5 chip from IBM. With the article I linked I wanted to show Intel was not necessarily the best path. We don’t need a Power6 chip, but a G6, just as the G5, would have been a scaled down version of the high end one, an awsome one at that.
My argument (obviously not clear) was and is that during the PowerPC days we had very slow to come processor upgrades and, or so we were told, due to economys of scale the prices were high. The longest we went in that era was 9 months +/-. Well, Apple transitioned to Intel chips successfully. Other than the top model the Mac Pros have not been updated in 15 months +/- and the prices have not been dropped as they used to be if no upgrade was made in 6 months or so.
Where are the benefits of the economys of scale from the huge Intel market? Apple isn’t even making the motherboards anymore, Intel is. Where are all the new products the new Intel platform promised? Why do we have fewer Video Card options now than we ever did? We should have access to thousands of formerly PC only products, after all for most of them it is simply a matter of writing the drivers. Why then don’t we have more options?
All I have ever owned are Apple computers, I love them. I am however a rational and objective person with a long memory. I don’t like what I see from Apple in terms of offerings, pricing, value.
Hey “Steve Ballmer”… look here: http://www.eofw.org/bench/
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…Still my Mac (with basic standart config!) at the top!
And this result will just be replaced when the next buyers of NEW MacPro send their benchmark test!
How about a 2U rackspace?
I’m with those that are asking for a more condensed computer, physically. Workers don’t like these extra big towers taking up space on their desks, and I refuse to let employees put them on or on roller trays just above dusty floors, with their intakes sucking up filth all day. (Our janitorial services leave much to be desired in cleaning and they don’t want to be responsible for damage for moving computers to clean around them.)
The old G4’s that the previous IT let them have on the floor were just coated with greasy thick dust on all the motherboards, RAM chips and insides. Even canned air wouldn’t take it all off the boards. And I’ve seen towers on floors at people’s homes just as gross.