JWL, will you be buying this? I'm a bit sobered by the price. I thought it might weigh in at the normal Apple high-end model price of about 3,300 dollars. And I wouldn't be surprised if it drops to this by the end of the year.

Also, as that time elapses, Logic 8 "whatever it's called" will likely be in view, Leopard will clarify the memory usage, and the hardware around the cores may improve to make more available the power we're getting in real-world terms.

I'd risk missing these half-year improvements and buy now, had the octo premiered at 3,200. 4,000 has me tentative. We have three required upgrades here: the chips, the PCI e card, and the memory. This computer would cost a VSL user at least 6,000 dollars. (Currently, Crucial's price on 4 GB of Power Mac RAM is 765.99, and I'm assuming we'd want 9 GB total.)

What say you?

Also, if Christian might contribute, I'd like to hear his thoughts on putting an eight core configuration in a computer designed for four or less cores. As VSL users, where's the hidden danger, the "gotcha's"?

I'm wondering if the release of this model is a stopgap until the entire MacPro line is revamped - - perhaps by the time of WWDC in June when Leopard is likely to be released. It also seems possible that at least a working beta of whatever the new version of Logic is to be called will be shown at NAB (April 14-19). I wouldn't leap until things become more clear.

Steve, I doubt Apple will release redesigned Mac Pros at WWDC in June. A 2-months lifespan for these 8-core Mac Pro seems very short to me.

Jerome

@Another User said:

Also, if Christian might contribute, I'd like to hear his thoughts on putting an eight core configuration in a computer designed for four or less cores. As VSL users, where's the hidden danger, the "gotcha's"?

I'd love to get Christian's take on this, too. At first glance, all MacPros (quads and 8-core) currently have the same front side buss and L2 cache (4MB per processor). But-- yes: the devil is indeed in the details.

oohooo - if i go to the apple shop and select *buy now* on the octo core page ... i'm directed to the *old* quad cores ... seem to be not yet available here ...
they mention the processors to be clovertown, so i'd assume this are not the L-models and so will need about 150 Watts each (how many Watts has the power supply?) ... quite a bunch of heat to be taken away ...

last week or so i've read a test where AMD and INTEL design has been compared regarding throughput from the memory bus to the processor - unfortunately the only thing i remember is that INTEL won, but i forgot the absolute numbers - this could easily become the next bottleneck.

anyway, lets wait for shipping dates - intel has not announced the 3 GHz quadcores so far ...
christian

JWL:

You can probably make an arrangement with MacConnection to exchange the Quad Core for the Eight Core. They are a very nice company to do business with. The reason I suspect revamped MacPro's may lie in the not too distant future is that the basic industrial design of desktop Macs has remained the same since 2004 (G5s).

As far as Apple is concerned, I've learned that anything is possible. I ordered my G5 in June 2004 along with Logic 6.4.2, but, as I asked that they be shipped at the same time, neither the computer nor Logic arrived for months (due to dearth of 2.5GHz G5 processors) - not until slightly more than 2 weeks before the release of Logic 7. Apple, of course, did not ask me in advance if I wanted to wait until Logic 7 was released and they refused to offer me an upgrade at less than the going price - - it would have been different, an Apple representative said, if the computer and software had arrived within 2 weeks (i.e. not 17 days) of Logic 7's release (I missed the "deadline" by three days.) A rather memorable experience of customer service at its best. In contrast, MOTU sent me the DP 4 to DP 4.5 upgrade (complete with an updated 700+ page printed maual) without my asking - - because I had purchased an upgrade to DP 4 "only" two and half months prior to the release of 4.5.

@Another User said:

...Apple, of course, did not ask me in advance if I wanted to wait until Logic 7 was released and they refused to offer me an upgrade at less than the going price - - it would have been different, an Apple representative said, if the computer and software had arrived within 2 weeks (i.e. not 17 days) of Logic 7's release (I missed the "deadline" by three days.) A rather memorable experience of customer service at its best. ...

That sort of thing is the very reason why I never buy directly from Apple any more. I bought a computer from an Apple Store in Florida once to have it shipped to my home in California. Wouldn't you know, they charged me tax in BOTH states? Plus, it was a lower model than I paid for. I've never returned anything so quickly in my life. I love their computers, but I detest they way they do business sometimes.

Congrats on the new computer, JWL. I value any report on your experiences, as I've persistently wondered just how much more powerful a quad 3 is contrasted to an aging G5.

"A 2-months lifespan for these 8-core Mac Pro seems very short to me." Indeed, short, but remember, the current line is all quads, with only one octo at the very high end. Steve's thoughts about a stopgap may be correct. I think Apple could not afford to lose the bleeding edge customers in the short run. They were facing a pent-up octo demand from a sliver of loyal, high-end customers, and waiting until WWDC was ill-advised. I consider this more of a mollifying than a full-blown roll-out, particularly after reading Christian's comments.

Not complaining though. Good to see progress.

Christian, can we expect VSL to give us specific benchmarks for an 8-core computer in the near future?

@Another User said:

...and waiting until WWDC was ill-advised. I consider this more of a mollifying than a full-blown roll-out, particularly after reading Christian's comments.

It's clearly not a full-blown roll-out-- there would have or should have been much more fanfare on this at the January Conference. Instead we got lots of nice, small appliances. It's clear that Apple has been working overtime to have gotten the 8-cores out the door since then.

Mollifying? Good word.

Question:

cluster craze and clock constraint... coincidence? What is it about 3 Ghz? Jobs had promised this would be surpassed on G5's three years ago. Lots have happily happened since, but it sounds as if it's been a victory harder won than expected.

Good links. Thanks.

"The Mac Pro outperforms the Power Mac G5 when it comes to integer calculations and scalar floating point calculations, while the Power Mac G5 outperforms the Mac Pro when it comes to vector floating point calculations and standard library memory performance."

Now, if only I knew how and to what extent that impacted our VI / EXS performance. Time will tell.

Do you suppose 8 core preocessors would be good enough to run MIR?

@Plowman said:

Good links. Thanks.

"The Mac Pro outperforms the Power Mac G5 when it comes to integer calculations and scalar floating point calculations, while the Power Mac G5 outperforms the Mac Pro when it comes to vector floating point calculations and standard library memory performance."

Now, if only I knew how and to what extent that impacted our VI / EXS performance. Time will tell.

Keep in mind that some of the things they used for testing might have been running under Rosetta or Boot Camp or whatever the heck it's called. Many more things are Universal Binary now, so the numbers may very well be up on the Intels. Apparently, it's had a positive impact on VI/EXS.

this is what I found at the bottom line after configuring my dream mac:

$14,258.00

:=(|)

However if you didn't buy hard drives, RAM or monitors from Apple it would be considerably less.

8 Core Mac Pro with airport card and ATI1900XT graphics: $4295
16GB RAM from Other World Computing $2049
4 500GB Wester Digital RE 16 SATA drives from NewEgg computer: $620
or 4 750GB Seagate SATA drives from NewEgg computer: $1240
If you want a 30" monitor you can get a Dell 3007WFP-HC for $1499 instead of the Apple 30" for $1799.

Thus you could get an Octo MacPro equipped with 16GB of RAM, 2TB of storage and able to drive two 30" monitors for $6964. Still not cheap, but less... but no doubt, you want the fibre channel stuff too in the "dream" machine?

http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/04/05/mac.pro.special.xeon/

That's the chip they're using.

By the way, it's worth spending a little more for the Apple 30" display if you stare at these things all day long. When it first came out it was way too expensive, but I got mine a year ago (when it was considerably more than it is now but considerably less than when it first came out) and am extremely happy with it.

i've been long thinking about going fibre or not (not only on a mac) but finally there is only little improvement compared to gigabit etherent.
having to lay new cabeling, purchasing new switches, several incompatibilities (i Gbit, 2 Gbit, 4 Gbit speed) made me look more into iSCSI ...
christian

if you want to do something really good to your eyes ... http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/S2411W/index.asp unfortunately up to 24" currently

@Another User said:

I doubt Apple will release redesigned Mac Pros at WWDC in June. A 2-months lifespan for these 8-core Mac Pro seems very short to me.

To me it seems like the way this was quietly introduced as just another build-to-order option rather than a new model makes me think you're right, although I remember reading something about another event coming up in a couple of weeks; maybe this is a subtle statement that the 8-core machines people have been anticipating at that event aren't the big news.

But really the question we need to be asking is what this means to musicians. The idea of having eight processors to handle plug-ins (both instrument and processing) is appealing, but is that going to happen? I've read lots of conflicting reports about how this works - that the OS handles it automatically and it will make a big difference, that it does very little and won't make a difference, that developers can address individual cores, that they can't...I have no idea what it means.

@cm said:

if you want to do something really good to your eyes ... http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/S2411W/index.asp unfortunately up to 24" currently

any price ?

@Another User said:

But really the question we need to be asking is what this means to musicians. The idea of having eight processors to handle plug-ins (both instrument and processing) is appealing, but is that going to happen? I've read lots of conflicting reports about how this works - that the OS handles it automatically and it will make a big difference, that it does very little and won't make a difference, that developers can address individual cores, that they can't...I have no idea what it means.

Yeah, it required an update to Logic Pro to use 4-cores, and for what I know they're still not being used all the time... so how's 8-cores going to help us, that's a good question!

J.