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Posted on 09/13/2006 7:48:04 PM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
For the performance of Clovertown you'll have to wait a bit longer as we're not allowed to disclose it just yet, but we wanted to let you know that so far it's looking like you'll be able to upgrade your Mac Pro to 8 cores in the not too distant future.
(Excerpt) Read more at anandtech.com ...
I must say, this is not the Apple I used to know. The Apple I used to know would do something to the BIOS to purposely lock it out. Like for example, how they locked out quite a few later G4 machines so they would not boot OS9.
This is a step in the right direction if they "let this slide".
Or they'll start soldering the chips in as they do on the MacBook Pros. Can't upgrade them (Mini's ya can)
bttt
I can't see Apple going that far. I've not hid my disdain for apple from fellow freepers but come on now. In the laptops they've got a legit reason to do that. In the desktops they don't.
The BIOS thing I could see, because they've already done such a thing and history repeats itself.
But............ we'll see.
LOL!
Would that be the 667MHz Fully buffered error correcting DIMMs that are required to be used with the 1.33GHz front side bus of the Woodcrest family of processors used in the Apple Mac Pro??? What would you replace them with?
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Well my new Mac Pro just arrived and was still sitting in a box by the front door when I heard about this. So now I'm anxious to try it out (what? start swapping parts out on my new machine already? Luckily I can't actually get my hands on the Quad Core cpu's yet, not to mention that the price will probably be prohibitive as an upgrade)
But anyway, I need an ADC-DVI cable first for the new machine or I can't use it! I'm so sad. My old machine gets one more night to live.
Would that be the 667MHz Fully buffered error correcting DIMMs that are required to be used with the 1.33GHz front side bus of the Woodcrest family of processors used in the Apple Mac Pro??? What would you replace them with?
I've read reports that the FB-DIMM architecture forced on everyone by Intel is nothing to write home about. Some speculate that a Core 2 Duo properly implemented might come darn close to a Xeon with the FB-DIMMs.
Anand addresses it here
Look at the previous pages to see 1 Core2Dou beat 2 Xeons inside the mac because of the slow memory used by apple...
i'd send that Mac Pro back if you can and get the Quad-Core(8 cpu's) in a few months..
That's strange... the Intel XEON® 51XX "Woodcrest" family of processors are the Intel Core 2 Duos... and they not only come "close" but are kicking butt against the last generation XEON® processors, the "Dempsey" 50XX line.
In head to head benchmarks, the XEON® 5150, the mid-range 2.66GHz version is 30-45% faster than the fastest "Dempsey", the 3.76GHz 5080. One reason for this is the "Woodcrests" have a 1.33GHz front side bus... while the "Dempsey" has only a 667MHz front side bus.
Intel XEON® "Woodcrest" Benchmarks v. "Dempsey" and AMD Opteron 285
since DDR2 1066 is rather new its still on the pricy side so just regular DDR2 800 is still faster than FB-DIMM 667
and a little bit cheaper also...
do we have to post Anand's benchmarks here?
Why? Just link to them. It looks to me as if it matters what you are doing whether the Core 2 Extreme PC or the Intel Core 2 Duo Apple Mac Pro comes out ahead.
doesnt matter to me, I would just like to see Apple selling their fans the best hardware they can thats all, I hope they follow Anand's advise.
As we mentioned and proved in our previous articles, the number and configuration of FB-DIMMs in your Mac Pro can affect performance. The Intel 5000X chipset in the Mac Pro features two 144-bit FBD branches, each being the width of two FB-DIMMs (effectively giving the chipset four "channels"). Therefore you need at least two FB-DIMMs in the system (the width of a single FBD branch), but ideally you'd need at least four to have a hope of attaining peak bandwidth.
So... make sure If you get a Mac Pro that you have at least 4 memory modules in it...
Give them time. Conroe will be incorporated soon enough.... but power consumption is a problem.
As you can see, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 consumes a bit more power compared to other members of the Core 2 Duo lineup, but not as much as we were expecting. However, when overclocked on an Intel 975X motherboard, we saw power consumption levels of over 300W at peak loads, so this chip can consume quite a lot of power when voltage levels are raised.
And that's just ONE of them...
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