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Screen cap courtesy of Mac Rumors
Apple UK Store leaks out early details of the eight-core Mac Pro

Apple is preparing a dual quad-core Mac Pro according to an accidental listing on the Apple UK Store website. The listing, which Apple promptly found and removed, revealed the quad-core Mac Pro in search results when users searched for “Mac.” The quick description listed the Mac Pro as “Now quad-core or 8-core processing power. Configure yours today.”

Apple launched the Mac Pro, completing the PowerPC to Intel transition, last August. The Mac Pro featured dual Intel Xeon E5100-series processors paired with FB-DIMM memory. Shortly after the Mac Pro launch, users were able to swap in quad-core Clovertown processors without any hassle. Mac Pros ran flawlessly with dual quad-core Xeons without any BIOS updates or trickery.

At CES, Intel demonstrated its proof-of-concept V8 gaming system to counter AMD’s QuadFX enthusiast platform built from workstation parts. Intel’s V8 concept demonstrated the plausibility of a dual quad-core gaming-capable workstation.

It is unknown when quad-core Intel Xeon E5300-series processors will grace Apple’s Mac Pro.

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Pointless...
By Bonrock on 3/13/07, Rating: 0
RE: Pointless...
By kyleb2112 on 3/13/2007 4:58:17 AM , Rating: 2
A lot of 3D animators will disagree with you there. I can't wait for the day when my render farm fits in one box.


RE: Pointless...
By retrospooty on 3/13/07, Rating: 0
RE: Pointless...
By Hare on 3/13/2007 9:46:00 AM , Rating: 2
Luckily 99.99% of users out there aren't considering an expensive Apple Mac Pro 2 x Quad workstation...

For video-editong, rendering, CAD, engineering (calculations), virtual machines etc this machine would be great and the people who need this kind of power could actually end up saving money as it would take less time to do heavy processing.


RE: Pointless...
By theOracle on 3/13/2007 4:59:06 AM , Rating: 2
Not true - such a machine would be immensely useful to many people, for example the work I do involves research on simple yet resource intensive multi-threaded\parallel applications, and this one machine would easily out perform the 5-computer (all Sempron\Athlon\P4) farm I currently use.


RE: Pointless...
By derdon on 3/13/2007 7:03:00 AM , Rating: 5
I am always amused at how something would be immensely useful to many people and then give an example that worldwide a dozen people do.


RE: Pointless...
By tuteja1986 on 3/13/2007 7:05:43 AM , Rating: 2
The research type machine would more benefit if the software gets updated to use the processing power from a GPU like R580 or G80. Take a look at Folding@Home.


RE: Pointless...
By ceefka on 3/13/2007 11:01:14 AM , Rating: 2
Think about why anyone would buy the current powermac. If you do video editing or digital audio on that thing I know for sure 8 cores will make you sing and save you time (i.e. money) It will run so much more native plugins, virtual instruments, render your material so much faster, to the point where your HDD becomes the bottleneck.


RE: Pointless...
By gramboh on 3/13/2007 11:56:06 AM , Rating: 2
A dozen people?

Look, an eight core machine is not useful as a gaming/office/home office/media desktop type application that the vast majority of PC's are used for. However, there are lots of real world business/commercial and academic purposes for systems like this.

I don't think Intel is building the CPUs and OEM's building the PCs for 12 people worldwide.


RE: Pointless...
By MonkeyPaw on 3/13/2007 4:03:51 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, while only a small group of users might find it beneficial for their productivity, that doesn't mean the rest of us do not benefit at all! For example, Valve already stated that quad core was so much faster that they waited to upgrade. If Valve benefits, that means we will likely benefit through better content, cheaper products, faster turnaround, or perhaps all of the above. Considering how many millions of people support Valve's software through purchase, I'd have to say that there are more than a dozen people will see the benefit of such a product--it just won't be first-hand. Many of us "average users" are the reason that companies NEED such machines--they just serve us indirectly.


RE: Pointless...
By kkwst2 on 3/13/2007 9:30:43 PM , Rating: 2
I personally know more than a dozen people that do work along the lines described. That's just in my little field. I personally could put two dozen of these machines to work full time for the next year and still not get what I need to get done. There are lots of people who can put machines like this to good use. Are there a million? Probably not. Are there 100,000+? I'm certain of it. So orders of magnitude beyond a dozen.


RE: Pointless...
By Thorburn on 3/13/2007 5:35:21 AM , Rating: 4
Just because it's not useful for you doesn't mean its not useful.....


RE: Pointless...
By themadmilkman on 3/13/2007 8:28:45 AM , Rating: 3
What a lot of us HOPE this means is that Apple will finally release a lower-powered mini tower design, with perhaps 2 expansion slots, fewer drive bays, less horsepower than the Mac Pro, but a lower price.

A lot of us don't need the processing power of the Mac Pro, but need more flexibility than either the iMac or the Mini provide.


RE: Pointless...
By slashbinslashbash on 3/13/2007 9:59:02 AM , Rating: 2
I'm hoping for this too, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm looking for two big things:

1) Multiple RAM slots for cheap RAM (no FB-DIMMS like in the Mac Pro)

2) A couple of PCI-E x16 or x8 slots for multiple graphics cards to drive a multi-monitor setup.

Plus at least 3 HDD slots and an easily-upgradable SATA optical drive.

I love my MacBook but hate its limitations. I've maxed out the RAM and still feel like I could use more (2GB gets cut down fairly quickly when you use Parallels to run a WinXP install). I put in a 160GB HDD and have an external 250GB but still feel limited. An iMac would just be more of the same. The lack of upgradability (RAM beyond 2 slots, video card, multiple internal HDDs) makes it a non-starter for me. A consumer-level mini-tower is just what I need.

Come on, Apple. Give me a Core 2 Duo in a Mac Pro-styled mini-tower with 4 DDR2 slots, 3 or 4 HDD spaces, 1 optical drive, 2 PCI-E x16 and 2 PCI-E x1. Make it $1000 for the base configuration and I'm ready to buy.


RE: Pointless...
By TheDoc9 on 3/13/2007 10:53:15 AM , Rating: 3
Man that's sad, hoping for these things that have been standard in pc's for years. It reminds me of why I only build pc's in the first place.

Do macs still come with a one button mouse standard. I think it's interesting what people will settle for.


RE: Pointless...
By Zandros on 3/13/2007 11:50:44 AM , Rating: 2
Huh? They're standard in the Mac Pro, too, it's just that some people are too cheap to buy it.


RE: Pointless...
By TomZ on 3/13/2007 12:43:04 PM , Rating: 1
A one-button mouse is stupid and shouldn't even be offered, IMO. Even the most dirt-cheap free-after-rebate non-Apple mice have two buttons.


RE: Pointless...
By Quiksel on 3/13/2007 2:16:34 PM , Rating: 3
Since the introduction of the Mighty Mouse nearly two years ago all new Macs have had the wired Mighty Mouse included as standard equipment. They phased out the single-clickers a LONG time ago.

What's all this jive talkin' about single clickers out there?


RE: Pointless...
By Shadowself on 3/13/2007 2:21:18 PM , Rating: 3
Apple has shipped their multi-button mouse as standard with their desktops for quite a while now. The "Mighty Mouse" name is rather stupid, but it is a multi-button mouse (four "buttons" IIRC) and two direction scroll (up/down & right/left) is included too.


RE: Pointless...
By slashbinslashbash on 3/13/2007 3:10:59 PM , Rating: 2
I have been a Mac user for years now but ditched the one-button mouse when I got my first Mac with USB. I agree, the one-button mouse is stupid and, aside from the one-button-ness, I even hate all of Apple's USB mouse designs (the last of the old ADB mice were pretty good). They just don't fit the hand well at all. So I have been using normal PC USB mice since my B&W Power Mac G3.

I agree, it's kind of sad. I also build PC's and have a nice gaming rig. But I simply prefer OS X over Windows. There's a whole philosophy that's different from anything that's ever come out of Microsoft's OS division. I'm not an MS hater either; I use MS Office on my Mac, and I'm typing this on a MS keyboard hooked up to my Mac. I have XP Media Center Edition on my PC.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't make the argument that any company is perfect. I prefer to *use* a Mac, but I get aggravated at the all-in-one hardware sometimes (and yes, I'm too "cheap" to buy a Mac Pro, but at the same time I have to acknowledge that it's generally a good deal for what you get, but I really have no need for quad Xeon power nor for the ungodly expensive FB-DIMMs.). I don't think that Microsoft is evil either, I just think that they're stuck in a bad situation with respect to hardware and software compatibility that makes it really hard to make any real progress in the OS business. The closed hardware environment lets Apple churn out the (significant) OS updates on an almost-yearly basis. XP went by basically unchanged for what, 5 years? And Vista has dropped several of its more exciting features. Again, it's hard to blame Microsoft for the situation that they've kind of backed into as the top-selling OS in the world. But those are the facts as I see them, and they're not going to change anytime soon, so for now I prefer Mac OS X.


RE: Pointless...
By daftrok on 3/13/2007 3:12:55 PM , Rating: 2
Hahahaha, its so sad and at the same time so true. Here's Apple in a nutshell: simple, elegant, but too expensive to be worth it.


RE: Pointless...
By themadmilkman on 3/13/2007 8:21:35 PM , Rating: 2
I build my own PCs as well. I'm typing from one right now. I use a MacBook at school, and a windows-based PC at home.

A mini tower Power Mac with the options that I want, though, would end my building days in a heartbeat.


RE: Pointless...
By soydios on 3/13/2007 10:53:18 AM , Rating: 2
they should make a Core2Duo-based Cube


RE: Pointless...
By burnttoy on 3/13/2007 8:29:50 AM , Rating: 1
I could use 8 CPUs for audio processing... if the software isn't readily available I'll write it!


RE: Pointless...
By kingpotnoodle on 3/13/2007 11:17:01 AM , Rating: 2
MS Office and games don't use all those cores no... but a multitude of professional applications do/can.

For Joe Bloggs at home surfing the web and writing a letter to complain about something before firing up a game this would be a retarded posturing purchase on a par with buying a Ferarri for the school run - totally unsuited for purpose, this user would be better with a Dell PC (some idiot will do it though I'm sure, there's always one).

For a professional designer or similar user of Mac published specialist software (the only people who really buy Mac Pros anyway) this has definite benefits and is far from pointless - its a niche market but one Apple are important in.


RE: Pointless...
By Behlal on 3/13/2007 11:43:34 AM , Rating: 2
Ok, perhaps not a common use, but as a full time developer, every core is of great benefit. XCode is very good at distributing the build across multiple cores, pretty much compiling one file per Core in parallel. Switching to 8 cores therefore would be of great benefit to Mac developers! Given that some of my applications take up to 45 minutes to compile (I work for a large software company), dropping the build time would be great!


All for a mere
By FITCamaro on 3/13/2007 6:34:03 AM , Rating: 2
Guessing with it being an Apple this will probably run around $4,500 starting price and quickly ramping to $10,000. Heck their dual dual-core quickly runs up to $8500. Starts at $2500 for 2 2.66GHz Xeon's, a whopping 1GB RAM, a single 250GB hard drive, and an amazing 256MB 7300GT.

I love their graphics upgrades too. 1 7300 GT, 2 7300GTs, 3 730GTs, 4 7300GTs, X1900XT, or a Quadro FX 4500.




RE: All for a mere
By Ralph The Magician on 3/13/2007 6:55:26 AM , Rating: 2
It's the same story with other OEMs. In terms of base price, Apple's Mac Pro was actually signifigantly cheaper than Dell's Percision or HP's xw Xeon workstations. Their upgrades are sometimes a little more expensive, but they are expensive from all vendors. OEMs make the bulk of their money on the "upgrades".

As far as graphics upgrades, they seem to make sense to me. The only thing people ever need on Mac workstations is more displays.


RE: All for a mere
By getalot681 on 3/13/2007 1:28:15 PM , Rating: 2
Instead of trying to be funny by jumping on the 'Apple is overpriced' bandwagon, you could read the article and you'd see that the leaked price was £1,699.00, which is roughly $3,280 USD.


confusing title...
By TSS on 3/13/2007 4:31:29 AM , Rating: 2
actually the title's correct only when you read dual quad core something just doesn't seem right :P

technology sure moves fast. who woulda figured a server with 8 CPU's (well cores but in essence 8 CPU's) would be possible for a very low price (compared to 8 single cores of old) in 2007.

though this all does make me wonder, as soon as native octocore comes out (say gesher in 2010) this server could possibly double to 16 cores. that's alot of computing power especially because it's 2 architectures away so it'll be more performance then where even used to now. not to mention the production process of 32nm maybe 22nm. aren't we going too fast? i mean in my life time i've seen procs go from like 4 MHz to 4 cores of nearly 4GHZ (slap a water cooler on there and with a little luck...)

i turn 20 in a few days....




RE: confusing title...
By PlasmaBomb on 3/13/2007 6:00:57 AM , Rating: 2
If gesher is a native octocore then intel will probably stick two of them in the one package (giving 16 cores), and in the 2S arena you will be able to have a workstation with 32 cores. A small supercomputer in a box :D


as the article said
By ForumMaster on 3/13/2007 6:26:07 AM , Rating: 2
anandtech did this way way back in sept. 12, 2006:

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=6

as for not enough available software, that people that are going to order an 8-core computer aren't going to be playing with it. they'll run multi-threaded software such as 3D Max that is optimized for multi-cpu computer such as this one. i imagine the performance will be amazing.




RE: as the article said
By PlasmaBomb on 3/13/2007 6:31:32 AM , Rating: 2
I know they did, kinda makes me wonder why it has taken apple so long (heck they haven't even done it yet!). Maybe they were waiting for the recently anounced 50W low power Xeons?


For Professionals...
By Adsski on 3/13/2007 7:11:55 AM , Rating: 2
A performance review of this potential config was carried out last year.

See http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000193,39284700,0...

For most home users this is simply not going to be a realistic proposition, however a friend of mine who works in TV production on macs would love to see these kind of reductions in processing for true multi threaded apps. Think about reduced render/encode times on final cut HD and how much these guys get paid! The increase in productivity vs watching the egg timer should quickly pay for itself.




RE: For Professionals...
By Choppedliver on 3/13/2007 2:01:18 PM , Rating: 2
I'm amazed how everyone thinks you have to be a 3d animator to get use out of this. How many processes is your Mac running in the background? Those are separate tasks, and each can run on a different core, thus reducing the load on my main application I happen to be running. And I usually am running several.

Everything runs faster because there are more resources.

This isn't rocket science.


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