PowerMac Says Goodbye
 

I'm reading macrumors.com live webcast of Steve Jobs WWDC keynote and he has just announced that the PowerMac is a thing of the past. Here are the stats being initially reported on the new Intel-based MacPro workstations:

- two optical drives
- all dual core based on core 2 duo woodcrest processors (basically the Xeon chip)
- 64 bit, 128 bit vector engine, large 4 MB shared L2 cache, up to 3 Ghz
- every Mac Pro gets 2 of them
- 1.6 to 2.1x faster than the G5 quad
- less cooling in box room for 4 hard drives
- up to 2 TB of internal storage
- design of case stays the same; inside, entirely new
- All the new MacPro workstations start shipping today.

This is just the basics. It appears that pricing will be very competitive.

Engadget is also covering the keynote and has more information and pictures:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/l...-jobs-keynote/

The 256mb better be for the graphics card!

ok it is, thank god!

Good question, Evan. You are right in that assumption.

Look at this link and it should clarify your concern:

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.en...8/dsc_0433.jpg

The basic config comes with 1GB of 667 MHz FB-DIMM. Overall, the basic config is a good deal for the price.

Apple's stores are back online afer Job's keynote. Here is the direct link to the new MacPros: http://www.apple.com/macpro/

There's really only one reason for this machine.

Editing of HD video. FCP needs to step it up now...

Hey Michael,

With all due respect, I don't know what you mean. FCP has had support for HD since version 4.

Can they squish that down into a laptop? :}

Leopard too...
 

There's a sneek-peek feature tour now available on Apple's main website. Some really nifty stuff. One of my favorites has to be the support for RSS feeds inside the Mail application. Headlines to your inbox the moment they become available. Nice!

-gb-

I agree, Greg. The mail client seems like it has been greatly improved. I also like the DashCode application that will allow users to create Dashboard Widgets with a lot less coding.

There are a slew of nice new features in Leopard. I was hoping that the release date would be yet this year, but it looks like Apple is keeping to their spring 2007 promise.

Well, judging from the better than expected timeline of Intel transition, Jobs could very well show up to Macworld Expo in January and tell us that Leopard is available. You know he'll have something up his sleeve to announce. That's all I want to say before we get into Area 51 territory.

-gb-

That's true. I also see the UFOs circling overhead so we should leave any further speculations to the rumor sites. :)

So, is anyone thinking about purchasing a new MacPro any time soon? Have you already placed your order? There has been significant lag time in loading Apple's web store pages. I thought that was interesting.

I don't know much about the WWDC event, is this the only announcement Apple will be doing? If so, that's pretty weak. I'd like to see the other Mac models get upgraded to Xeons too, or at least the faster Core 2 Duo's.

What other models? iMacs? Minis? Are you joking?

The iMac and MacBook Pro will probably get Conroe shortly, within the next couple of months.

I am glad I bought my Power Mac G5 Quad, just in case there are any issues with the Intel beast. Of course, I buy a new Mac every 2-3 years, so the next one will be the next-next-gen Mac Pro!

heath

ps-But did you notice that the lowest-end is STILL a 2.0 ghz chip(s)? Apple hasn't moved past 2.0 ghz with the Power Mac/Mac Pro line since 2003!

heath

That's true. But, from what I've read, the 2 GHz Intel chips outperform the 2 GHz PPC chips. So, some improvement has been made.

All I have to say is thats one sexy machine...I will put a kidney on ebay shortly if anyone is interested.

Mike,

Weren't you the one wanting to sell your kidney for the new Canon HDV pro cameras? XH G1 or A1?

heath

Quad-core processors are due out by the end of this year and might show up in laptops in 2007. :-)

Ya, dude, you're startin' to run out of kidneys!

Nope wrong Mike. I'm satisfied with my XL2. Gotta master this thing before even thinking about HDV.

Then guys named Mike are selling kidneys across the web!

hwm

I wonder if this new Mac will/could attract many Windows loyalists.

One can buy this new MacPro and run Mac *and* Windows XP --and have the best of both worlds with no compromises.

According to their price comparisons presentation from Phil Schiller for the similarly configured Dell machine, the Mac Pro is quite a bit cheaper.

It would be funny to see someone buy this and only run Windows.

Until they get a virus, then it's probably going to be a Mac world for that person. Hopefully.

heath

Quad Xeons? Cool. Expensive, but cool. Rumor has it that 'Leopard' might be out before 'Vista'. Now if they finally add 24p support for the HD100.

No, no, no, it's not quad Xeons, it's two dual cores. Yes, there's essentially four processors (cores) going, but it doesn't perform like quad Xeons (ie. four dual cores, thus making 8 cores altogether).

There won't be quad cores until next year, most likely in the Spring which will, conveniently, coincide with Leopard's release. By then I'm sure we'll have the option of dual quad cores, thus making the 8 core dream. Of course, then they'll probably have eight core processors within the next couple of years.

As Jack pointed out, not quad Xeons, just dual... Expensive? That's relative, but go compare with any other dual Xeon workstation available right now from Dell, HP or others. These prices are not bad at all. I'm perfectly happy with my current G5 Quad so I won't be buying one right now, but looks like Apple did a fine job with the new system design and specs.

My only complaint is that they really need some better options for video cards. The FX4500 is fine for those who want to pay the price premium, but why no nVidia 7800 or 7900 options? Their ATI X1900 option is fine, I'd just like to see some more.. What's up with the nVidia 7300? Did they strike a deal with nVidia or one of their OEMs to buy all the crap cards that the PC market refused to buy? ;-)

The new machines look great, but Apple is only claiming a 2x speed bump from the quad G5's, and the speed comparisons the published for the earlier Intel machines were evidently a bit optimistic. Will be interested to see some benchmarks with the pro apps... have been busy for the last few days so I haven't been keeping up with things.

For the time being, my dual 2.5 G5 which I bought in February 2005 is still doing everything I want. I'm just gonna stick with it until I have some compelling reason to upgrade... maybe another year? By then we should really be seeing some incredible machines from Apple.

But we're going to need to get some sort of a decent machine here at work so an artist visiting from Italy can edit video for one of our operas. Heh, maybe that will be a good excuse to get the company to buy me one of those babies ;-)

Yeah Boyd, work it, work it. ;>)

-gb-

I'm a (former? we'll see) windows loyalist... but I may buy one of these things and never let XP touch it. =P

My question is, why are the ram upgrades so expensive? They seem to be about double the price of what I can find for 'standard' price on the same type of ram everywhere else.

Ram upgrades are almost the only thing this box needs to be a solid HD editing computer, and that's where apple seems to padding for extra profit.

Typically, Apple does charge more for ram upgrades but there are other vendors for ram. Mine came from the local big box electronics store and it's their store brand. Same with hard drives. They are asking $400 for a 500gb drive with the same specs as the one I just bought for my Imac at a local big box store and I got it for $249.

Unlike the old days, you can upgrade your Apple system with non-Apple supplied parts that are less expensive.

-gb-

I don't know how much of a speed increase it is vs. the Quad PPC. And like the G5 Quad, it is indeed dual dual-cores (two dual cores), making it four.

Quad-core (1 chip, 4 processors) is something AMD is working on and, if I understand correctly, Intel will be putting something out soon after.

heath

I know it's not actually quad, but 2 dual. Just got in a hurry.
Not going to consider one until they have proper support for my camera. But when they do...tempting.

Great info. I've just talked to some local resellers and, and the ones that deal specifically with camera / digital video equipment say they usually quote based on the lowest prices they can get for parts direct from the factories, rather than direct from apple. The specific shop I'm looking at deals primarily with the same manufactures as apple, but direct. Ram specifically, they say for the G5 PPCs they were getting almost half the price for ram and hard disk -- he didn't have any specifics for the Mac Pro yet.

Apple is charging roughly 3000 (Canadian) for 7gb (more) ram, and that seems a bit much. One of my local stores sells exactly the same type / quantity of ram (fully buffered, ECC, 667 etc) for about 1600-1800 Canadian. However, they are PC retailers.

Is there any difference between PC RAM and Mac RAM in this case? It doesn't look like it, but I'm a Mac Newb.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...cture=Kingston

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...cture=Kingston

Would that type of RAM be compatible with the Mac Pro?

Thank you,


Evan

It's always this way with Apple (and many other big-name system vendors like IBM and HP). Plan to buy your RAM from a third-party vendor, but don't go too cheap. Be sure to buy quality stuff like Crucial, Corsair, etc.. From a good vendor, you'll still pay less than half of what Apple charges for good quality RAM. Hard drives are also a good thing to buy from an aftermarket source. Apple is placing a $95 premium on those 500GB drives right now.

Other than that, the pricing on these new systems is very reasonable... I'd order one in an eye-blink if I needed another system right now. Actually, I need a new notebook, but I'm trying to hold off for the 64bit Merom Core 2 Duo CPU to be integrated into the MacBook Pro before I buy... ...Hopefully in the next few weeks. :)

Hard Drive Bandwidth???
 

Does the ProMac have enough hard drive bandwidth to edit Uncompressed HD? Can it compete against some of the Medea and Huge Systems products?

It would be amazing if they could get a sustained speed of 250Mb/s.

It's looking very likely, providing you put fast drives in all 4 bays (and of course RAID them)

How can you raid them? Do you need a raid controller for that or software raid will work as well?

Is the graphics PCIe or PCIx? Does the new Mac support PCI express at all?

The only problem with the 4 drive raid-0 is the fact that this same raid-0 will also contain the OS, program files and any other garbage you put on there. It is never a good idea to share a media drive with the OS. I really wish Apple would have put in 5 bays. 1 for the OS and garbage and 4 for the raid-0.

With that said I'm sure 8bit HD would work fine but I don't know about 10bit HD. It might work for awhile but you will find on a 4 drive raid-0 that you can only get to about 50% full when the drives slow down past the point where they drop frames. If you add fragmented OS and projects files this may be even worse.

I do know that with the Mac you can set the raid-0 where you partition it off based on the faster part of the disk. What you might be able to do is keep the fastest section as one partion just for HD video and use the slowest part for the OS. With that said you will never get 2TB of uncompressed HD storage with the four 500 GB drives. You may only get 1 TB or maybe a little bit more depending on the form of HD you will work with. 8bit YUV 1080i HD actually only uses 120MB/s Which is much lower than the max for 10bit RGB.