Intel 3Ghz Quad Core CPU only for Apple?

[MU_Engineer]

MU_Engineer - pearls of useless wisedom, great, now where is your 512 CPU Dell X86 cluster in the retail world, can I walk into Fry's and buy one for less than $4000?

No, it's a professional-grade cluster used for research, not a game box or a toy. But you can make a cluster of several non-Apple computers for $4000 that has a lot more processing power than $4000, and you can go into Fry's and buy those computers.

Yeah, runs hotter, tell me another one -- so where did you pull this from?

Thermal dissipation = Capacitance * voltage^2 * clock speed.

Clock speed went up, the process node or stepping is not changed -> capacitance is unchanged, and I don't think that Intel can drop the Vcore any or else that would have already done that on the Q6600 and QX6700 to drop the dissipation. So you get a higher thermal dissipation. Maybe your iCalculator Pro needs recalibrated. ANY overclocker could have told you that one, but I guess that might be foreign to Mac users as I don't think that Macs are overclockable.

Odd, they don't seem to generate any more noise than a 4 core at 3Ghz -- buy one or shut up or at least go use one.

I have briefly used a dual 2.66 dual-core and a dual 2.66 quad-core Mac Pro. The room was not very quiet, so I couldn't tell much about the noise of the cooling solution other than it wasn't glaringly obnoxious. I didn't get to exactly put the machines side-by-side and open them up, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple put larger heatsinks on the quad-cores to keep noise down. The tear-down of the Mac Pro that Anand did at Anandtech showed that the heatsinks were huge already, so maybe they were able to cope with the heat of the quad-cores already. The fastest PowerPC 970s had to be water-cooled, so perhaps Apple has water-cooled the quads. I don't think that they did, but I didn't get to look at it and Apple's site had no information about processor cooling.

And buy one? Nope, the $4000 base price is obscene, especially considering that comes with a mere 250 GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, and a 7300GT. A more reasonable setup with 4 GB RAM, a 500 GB HDD, and the only decent consumer card on there- x1900 XT- runs $5074. Over five grand for a desktop computer is obscene.

Yields suck, yeah ok, so you now work on Intel's production line (you get around). AMD humper.

If they were excellent yields, then why is Intel only shipping a limited number until the new G stepping comes out? I guarantee that people that would buy dual Xeon X5355s would spring for the X5365 if it were widely available, and they WILL once it is widely available. I don't work for Intel, but I do keep up on what's going on in the computing field. And you call me an "AMD humper" because I mention that an 8-socket Opteron with 16 cores can outdo an 8-core dual Clovertown? For multithreaded benches, 16 cores > 8 cores. You really do need to fix that iCalculator Pro.

Yeah cool sounding apps used by cool sounding professionals that gave up on command line a long time ago because it's a waste of time and space

In case you forgot, MacOS X has a command line and previous MacOS versions did not. It's the very same xterm that's in any other UNIX with X11 enabled. I guess Steve Jobs didn't think it was such a big waste of time and space as it's a new feature from previous OSes. And I don't give a rat's tail about the name of an application as long as it does what it is supposed to and runs well. Manure by any other name still smells like ****. And I have no idea what a "cool sounding professional" is, but my guess is you're talking about the 35-year-olds who are theater department or English TAs and hang out 24/7 in and around the coffee bars trying to impress 18-year-old freshmen girls with the "how cool am I?" bit. They're not cool, just pathetic. And almost all of them have Macs, the odd one will have a Sony or one of those glossy black HP dv2000s.

-- but they probably make a lot more money than you do -- hollywood and all.

No, the theater and English TAs and low-level staff are dirt poor. Saw an ad for one open position in the English department for a PhD-level staff member- $21,000. And Columbia, MO is far from Hollywood, let me tell you. And how would you know how much money I do or don't and will or won't make? You don't.

And about Hollywood, most CG movies are rendered on clusters similar to the Dell cluster on campus, or more accurately, more like the 128 CPU Itanium cluster on campus. Lots of stuff gets done on Itanium, Xeon, and Opteron clusters by the likes of HP, Dell, IBM, Sun, and SGI.

More AMD humping, get over it, AMD are dieing a rapid death. Do you even know what a sub-pixel is? Google it.

Can't you make up your mind? First you say I work for Intel and then you accuse me of being an "AMD humper." Which one is it? Secondly, AMD isn't dying a rapid death. Slow death, maybe, but certainly not rapid. Maybe if you kept up on the business news and not Hollywood you'd have noticed that.

Of course I know what a sub-pixel is. My two 20.1" 1600x1200 LCDs have exactly 11,520,000 subpixels between them. And yes, sub-pixel hinting is enabled on my computer. Where did THAT question come from? If we're asking questions, then what is an AMB and what does it do? If you are in fact running a Mac Pro, you'll have at least two of them.

No the FSX SP1 (due in May) that runs on WinXP or Vista that will support multiple cores -- but again I'm sure you knew that MacPro's run Vista and WinXP via boot camp right??

Yes, I did know that most x86 OSes will run on an x86 Macintosh because an x86 Macintosh is the same as any other computer, save for its EFI versus BIOS. I have even used iMacs that used Boot Camp to run Windows XP. The were nothing special.

Go back to your command line, it's where you seem to work best.

Is that supposed to be an insult? If it was, it just shows that you haven't done very much of a variety of work on a computer. The terminal is much faster for doing some things, whereas the GUI is better for others. Knowing both is key to being able to use a computer to its full potential as there is no one perfect way to accomplish all tasks. I understand that this is not how Steve wants things to be, but it's true. Use a variety of different computers as I have and you'll quickly see that.

 

[Deleted member 978]

Yeah and just think of the possibilities to cheat. It would be game in itself trying to out coding your OS to beat the next guy -- which is alot more entertaining than 90% of the junk 3D twitchers out there.

Thread is ABOUT stock clocked retail personal computers and how TG have one article about the Intel "Special" processor with ZERO performance tests on any applications.

It is NOT about Apple vs. PC.

It is NOT about exotic hardware from SGI nor about 512 CPU experimental units.

It's not about overclocking either -- but how many of you have a rock solid stable 3.8+ Ghz CPU (8 core) with 8-16GB of RAM working such a configuration? I have a 3.9Ghz X6800 (2 core) that will rapidly decrease in stability and peformance when I add anything more than 2GB RAM. Watercooling -- ha ha, oh please -- if you ain't at least TEC & watercooling then your still in the pond. But again, this thread isn't about overclocking.

It's about the lack of performance testing that TG have covered on the currently fastest retail processor for personal computers. Ya think TG might have wanted to test this no? They do for all other Microshaft capable hardware -- why not for the MacPro and Intel best offereing? Most likely because TG probably don't have a sinlge person on staff that knows jack about MacPros and the applications people run on the MacPro.

I don't know what deal Intel have with Apple, it seems to be good relationship. I don't know the yields either, but I do know the 8 core MacPro and it doesn't generate enough heat to even kick on the fans, the most noise still comes from the "superdrives" (aka DL DVD burner) when they spin up.

If MU_Engineering knew much about some of those applications that run on the MacPro -- i.e. Shake, he would realize it's origin and exactly why a $30,000 per user license product is now being sold to Apple customers for $500 with minor changes to run on OSX. Shake and MacPro clusters isn't anything new, but I'm sure you knew that already? But there again, I doubt MU_Engineering knows much about them fancy named Apple products...ugh! Obviously TG writers seem pretty unaware of anything outside the world of Microshaft based computers.

MU_Engineering, at least you admit you don't own either 4 or 8 core MacPro and you don't actually know the yields of the 3.0Ghz CPUs used, and you admit you don't know the heat solution used in the 8 core MacPro. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Depends on your work flow, but for most of mine Apple script works best for me or if it is more involved XCore 2.4.1 does the trick (which is free) -- repeatative command line work isn't efficient for me as I prefer to automate as much as possible.

 

[MU_Engineer]

If MU_Engineering knew much about some of those applications that run on the MacPro -- i.e. Shake, he would realize it's origin and exactly why a $30,000 per user license product is now being sold to Apple customers for $500 with minor changes to run on OSX. But there again, I doubt MU_Engineering knows much about them fancy named Apple products...ugh! Obviously TG writers seem pretty unaware of anything outside the world of Microshaft based computers.

First of all, Shake is an image compositing program that also runs on Linux. It still costs $5000 to run on Linux, which isn't surprising as Apple owns the program. But what is funny is that Apple is even offering Shake for Linux at all- why not make it Apple-specific and draw people over to using Macs? Perhaps it could be the fact that a lot of their users run Linux and would use something else other than Shake?

I do agree that THG is very much Microsoft-based, but they are particularly a gaming hardware site and thus software vs. software isn't really their thing and games mostly run on Windows. OS comparisons are done occasionally, here is one. Here is another one. And another one. Just Google around, they are out there. The general consensus of the benchmarks is that OS X is slower at most things than Linux is, using the same programs on the same hardware. It is particularly bad at being a database server.

You'll probably mention using native Apple applications versus the native applications on other platforms. This would make for an interesting comparison, but there are far more variables to be accounted for than in the OS vs. OS tests. This mostly deals with the fact that on Linux, things can be easily compiled and tweaked if you want to. I could easily slave over a highly-modified version of an application so that it screams on Linux and pit it against an old PowerPC binary version of a corresponding application on an x86 Macintosh. Or if I wanted the Mac to win, compare a native binary of a highly-optimized and polished application versus something that's in alpha on SourceForge for Linux. Oh, and compile it with no optimization CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS at all to make sure performance is suboptimal. Do you see what I'm getting at? It would be neat but probably just start this in the forums.

 

[Deleted member 978]

True, you can modify Linux all you like to cut out the fat but at some point you reach a usable minimum. OSX is pretty good about not running too many other non-essential threads/services (as compared to anything Windows) but until Leopard is out the 8 core CPU benefits will be very application dependent -- 10.4.9 just isn't good a dealing with 8 cores without application specific support.

Shake is still used in current big production movies on MacPros and other *nix based systems. Shake development has stopped, there is never going to be a "next" version. If you look at FCS 2, you'll see some very Shake like elements incorporated. So Shake has reached the end of it's road, but it's rebirth in FCS 2 makes a lot of sense. Round trip processing gets in the way of my workflow, the more FCS 2 can do the better.

Found some test results here:

http://www.barefeats.com/octopro1.html

I disagree "Tom's Hardware" -- focus should be and always has been on hardware -- the gaming element is there because the assumption is that game software is the only software that can push hardware CPU and GPU.

The reality is that current game software is pretty brain dead about threading on mulitple cores as compared to rendering and real time applications like Shake, FCS 2, Logic Pro, etc. etc. These applications really do push the CPU and now that there is real time rendering in FCS 2 the GPU is getting a workout also.

It will be some time before game developers figure out how to effectively use multiple cores -- it's not a trivial task but it does have a solution. John Carmack seems to be the leader in multi-core gaming -- Quake 4 was certainly capable of showing some real benefits from 8 core vs. 4 core. Too bad I've been out of my 3D twitcher phase for some time, but I did get Quake 4 (and UB patches) just to see how it works on OSX.

Please don't tell me your an Oracle fan too? There is only one company that I consider worse than Microsoft in terms of leverage and bend over and take it in A -- that is Oracle. OMG, I've worked extensively with Oracle consultants and they are the most pretensious SOBs on the planet -- they couldn't apply common sense even if it were required to save their life. There is no such thing as a simple solution for them.

But back to what this thread is about, TG's lack of performance testing on Intel's current best processor that just so happens to be only available on MacPros. Short term situation or not, TG should have picked this up and apply the same "new go faster stripes" testing they do with all other hardware. Sure Apple's computer marketshare isn't massive, but it's certainly strong enough to rank just below Dell/HP in the #3 spot and has been growing significantly since the introduction of Intel based Macs.

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

I don't work for Intel, but I do keep up on what's going on in the computing field. And you call me an "AMD humper" because I mention that an 8-socket Opteron with 16 cores can outdo an 8-core dual Clovertown? For multithreaded benches, 16 cores > 8 cores. You really do need to fix that iCalculator Pro.

LMAO... iCalculator..lol

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

Well that's like going to CompUSA or Fry's electronics and asking for advice -- the guy/gal makes min wage maybe a little more, if they have "knowledge" they wouldn't be doing retail.

Ranman68k -- dang, and the search didn't find this on TG, so much for the search function. "8 core MacPro" -- still no performance comparisons -- ashamed to seeVista and/or XP crash an burn a death? Odd considering TG will post anything remotely better when applied to Microsoft humpers.

ElMoIsEvil - Temporary or not, why no performance tests by TG? Too busy with ads for Vista?

MU_Engineer - pearls of useless wisedom, great, now where is your 512 CPU Dell X86 cluster in the retail world, can I walk into Fry's and buy one for less than $4000? Yeah, runs hotter, tell me another one -- so where did you pull this from? Odd, they don't seem to generate any more noise than a 4 core at 3Ghz -- buy one or shut up or at least go use one. Yields suck, yeah ok, so you now work on Intel's production line (you get around). AMD humper. Yeah cool sounding apps used by cool sounding professionals that gave up on command line a long time ago because it's a waste of time and space -- but they probably make a lot more money than you do -- hollywood and all. More AMD humping, get over it, AMD are dieing a rapid death. Do you even know what a sub-pixel is? Google it.

No the FSX SP1 (due in May) that runs on WinXP or Vista that will support multiple cores -- but again I'm sure you knew that MacPro's run Vista and WinXP via boot camp right?? Go back to your command line, it's where you seem to work best.

Rob.

THG is a PC Enthusiast website. There is no such thing as a MAC enthusiast. MAC users are individuals who have traditionally preffered style over substance. Sorta like 80's pop Music. MAC users are those people in High School who always wear the new "trendy" cloths. Most Male MAC Users are indeed more feminine (Metro Sexual) then Male PC Users who are traditionally known as Uber Intelligent Geeks and Nerds.

But as time has gone by, with the advent of High PErformance PC's and overclockers, PC's now have the hot chicks (Both babes) because unless you've been hidding in a box somewhere it's now "cool" to be a self confessed geek (Thanks to the OC among other "trendy" shows).

So MAC Users are still stuck up and PC users are still smarter. Nothing has really changed cept that now it's PC users that get the girl in the end. :lol:

 

[Deleted member 978]

ElMoIsEviL,

PC = Personal Computer of which Apple sell in the form of MacBooks, MacPros.

So you claim to have knowledge of what a typical Mac User is? Let me guess, you have friends of friends that used to own a Mac and they beat you when you were a child? Oh wait, you still a child.

But there again, you laughed at the iCalculator reference so I'll wage a guess movies like Jack-Ass made you laugh.

Since when has a Geek been interested in "Cool"?

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

ElMoIsEviL,

PC = Personal Computer of which Apple sell in the form of MacBooks, MacPros.

So you claim to have knowledge of what a typical Mac User is? Let me guess, you have friends of friends that used to own a Mac and they beat you when you were a child? Oh wait, you still a child.

But there again, you laughed at the iCalculator reference so I'll wage a guess movies like Jack-Ass made you laugh.

Since when has a Geek been interested in "Cool"?

Nah man... stereotypes.

See if my grandmother was looking for a computer I'd build her a MAC. If my less intelligent friends whom specialize in more artistic talents wanted a computer i'd build them a MAC.

MAC's are for individuals who's needs are more basic. It's hard to say this without insulting a MAC user but basically MAC's are for n00bs. Yes they really are. PC's CAN be for n00bs but more intelligent n00bs. I mean even AOL is harder to use, more advanced and more feature rich then a MAC.

With a MAC you get a complete package enabling you to do all the basic computing tasks you'd want. With a PC you get a Machine that can be custom built, custom programmed and custom tailored to meet each individuals needs albeit with a larger learning curve.

You don't see too many people who own MAC's for dummies books out there now do you? That's because MAC's are for dummies who couldn't understand the Windows/Linux for Dummies books in the first place. 😛

MU_Engineer pointed it out... PC users especially those on Tom's Hardware are more along the lines of enthusiasts and I'm sorry to inform you but how a MAC performs under imovie or iwhatever really doesn't interest us that much.

 

[MU_Engineer]

I disagree "Tom's Hardware" -- focus should be and always has been on hardware -- the gaming element is there because the assumption is that game software is the only software that can push hardware CPU and GPU.

I'd like to see it benched too, just because. Maybe you can make a case to one of the THG reviewers to test out one. They'd want to run games on it for sure, but an x86 Macintosh with the BIOS emulator has exactly the same capabilities as any other x86 computer, so it would be certainly doable.

The reality is that current game software is pretty brain dead about threading on mulitple cores as compared to rendering and real time applications like Shake, FCS 2, Logic Pro, etc. etc. These applications really do push the CPU and now that there is real time rendering in FCS 2 the GPU is getting a workout also.

Many games are single-threaded, but there are an increasing number of multithreaded games coming out. The applications you've listed are more multithreaded than most games are and will put a heavy toll on the system as a whole. The RT stuff puts a big load on the OS, particularly in scheduling. So if you wanted to stress the computer as much as possible, you're right, production applications and the like are better than games in stressing computers with many cores. Those results would be interesting to see, but it's just academic because the people here at THG care much more about how their computer runs a specific application. Thus it would be one of those "nice to know but not critical" bits and might not make the cut.

Please don't tell me your an Oracle fan too? There is only one company that I consider worse than Microsoft in terms of leverage and bend over and take it in A -- that is Oracle. OMG, I've worked extensively with Oracle consultants and they are the most pretensious SOBs on the planet -- they couldn't apply common sense even if it were required to save their life. There is no such thing as a simple solution for them.

Nope. I've not had nor used Oracle. I haven't dealt with huge databases and such something like MySQL or PostgreSQL has worked fine.

But back to what this thread is about, TG's lack of performance testing on Intel's current best processor that just so happens to be only available on MacPros. Short term situation or not, TG should have picked this up and apply the same "new go faster stripes" testing they do with all other hardware. Sure Apple's computer marketshare isn't massive, but it's certainly strong enough to rank just below Dell/HP in the #3 spot and has been growing significantly since the introduction of Intel based Macs.

Again, I agree they should bench it. Apple has a larger market share than a lot of the little boutique shops that occasionally have wares tested in here, not that the fact means anything. Perhaps e-mail pschmid or somebody and ask that it get tested. Other sites that also review a lot of Macintoshes in addition to the usual fare (cough *Anandtech* cough) haven't gotten one yet and I would think that they would bench one as soon as they can. The 3.00 GHz X5365 model just got announced, so hang tight for a week or two as I am sure somebody would bench it, even if it is not here.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Nah man... stereotypes.

See if my grandmother was looking for a computer I'd build her a MAC. If my less intelligent friends whom specialize in more artistic talents wanted a computer i'd build them a MAC.

Too bad that you can't really "build" a Macintosh. 😀

MAC's are for individuals who's needs are more basic. It's hard to say this without insulting a MAC user but basically MAC's are for n00bs. Yes they really are. PC's CAN be for n00bs but more intelligent n00bs. I mean even AOL is harder to use, more advanced and more feature rich then a MAC.

The computer is really only as dumb or as smart as the user. There are untold millions of stupid Windows users out there as well as some really smart and savvy ones. Ditto for Macintosh users. There probably aren't very many UNIX users that are complete dolts as the OS is not generally pre-installed on consumer machines and the learning curve to successfully install and configure the OS is high enough to frustrate them to leave the OS alone. I wouldn't exactly say that's something to brag about as some things are a little more obfuscated than they could be, but it's true.

With a MAC you get a complete package enabling you to do all the basic computing tasks you'd want. With a PC you get a Machine that can be custom built, custom programmed and custom tailored to meet each individuals needs albeit with a larger learning curve.

Yes, a general computer can be custom-assembled from parts. But I'd wager to say that just about any OS is programmable as any other as there are supposedly decent and comparable dev tools present for both OSes. I'd also say that the learning curve isn't vastly different between Windows and MacOS X. Both are relatively easy to log onto and find the necessary tools to do work. So is an average GNOME or KDE install on Linux or UNIX. They're all more similar than different.

I know of several people who are pretty big geeks and do significant technical work on a Macintosh using OS X. Granted, they use a lot of the UNIXy stuff in it and have and have pretty much converted the machine to a more traditional UNIX distribution in the process, but it's what they chose for various reasons. I'm fine with that, if it's what makes them happy and can get work done doing it. I just don't like people to preach that something is completely superior in every situation for everything because nothing is. I'm a big Linux fan and advocate but still dual-boot my desktop with XP so that I can take advantage of playing games.

You don't see too many people who own MAC's for dummies books out there now do you? That's because MAC's are for dummies who couldn't understand the Windows/Linux for Dummies books in the first place. 😛

The campus bookstore has about as many MacOS X books as Windows books and I know people who have either kind of book.

 

[clue69less]

Well that's like going to CompUSA or Fry's electronics and asking for advice -- the guy/gal makes min wage maybe a little more, if they have "knowledge" they wouldn't be doing retail.

That's an overgeneralization. I know some CompUSA techs that are very technically solid. One of the local CompUSA stores has a guy that is more informed about Macs than any of the clowns at the Apple store.