macnn.com — Apple's updated Mac Pro uses a special version of Intel's Xeon workstation-class processor, the semiconductor company said in an e-mail note. The 3GHz quad-core CPU at the heart of the fastest system is currently an unannounced model that sits at the top of the company's performance range and is presently used only by Apple
Apr 5, 2007 View in Crawl 4
twitchsterApr 6, 2007
I used to fix Macs for a living, the vast majority of my clients were Design professionals, either Video or Photoshop users.For these guys price was not an issue. They would upgrade thier machines every time a new upgrade was released. Processor upgrades every 6 months, System Memory would be Maxed out. I don't know if the graphic design places are still in a computing power arms race, but I wouldn't be surprised.This market is why companies like sonnettech exsisted.
timseeApr 6, 2007
Did anyone else notice that Clovertown processors shipped in PC workstations from HP and Dell 5 months ago? WTF took Apple so long?
shank2001Apr 6, 2007
For those of you who do not understand why anyone would need this kind of power... think about 3D rendering, where one frame can take an hour of render time, even on a Core 2 Duo! Why do you think Industrial Light and Magic, and Pixar have literally THOUSANDS of CPUs in render-farms to render 3D graphics? In fact ILM has one of the fastest supercomputers in the world because of their render-farm. It doesn't matter how many cores you throw at it, 3D rendering can always use more, it is one of the ultimate applications for multi-core processors. For smaller 3D graphics businesses, an 8 core Mac Pro is just what the doctor ordered, and while you can get a pretty decent one from Apple for ~4,500 dollars, even $16,000 is a drop in the bucket for the performance increase you get with 3D rendering. Personally I am thrilled this kind of power is coming to the desktop! And this is coming from a PC user (currently anyway).
shank2001Apr 6, 2007
Sure... here are two biggies, 3D rendering, and Video editing! 3D rendering can take advantage of thousands of CPUs.
stepnw1fApr 6, 2007
3d Rendering, video, audio....?
stepnw1fApr 6, 2007
lol....
chaersiApr 7, 2007
It would not be in Intel's best interests to supply any one company, particularly one as small(in volume) as Apple. Intel couldn't afford a major player (ie Dell, HP, Lenovo) to be upset by not getting the best, because they could just as easily switch over to AMD chips. Apple may get these things to market before anybody else, but I'm sure we'll see others with them soon. At a better price too, most likely.
angelbunnyApr 7, 2007
at least osx doesn't bottleneck like windows does. ;)oh and btw, i can understand liking amd more then intel, but putting your bias ahead is not productive. i'm a major amd fan myself, but intel is leading right now. if i had the option for a new computer i would get intel, even if i like amd more as a company
streakApr 7, 2007
@LeonardNimrod, OS X can not run 64-bit apps if they are GUI. Tiger only supports 64-bit apps as command line apps. Apple kinda had you there with their slick 64-bit marketing, it seems. We'll have to wait for Leopard to be able to run both 32-bit and 64-bit GUI apps under Mac OS X. (Vista X64 runs both 32-bit and 64-bit GUI and CLI apps, as does Linux for X64).