Two dual intel chips?

Does anybody think that Apple will put out a two, dual core 64 bit system with the intel chips? (analogus to the quad powermac G5).

I need a new computer when I graduate this June, I was going to throw together a system with 2 dual core opterons, but if Apple made such a product I may have to consider buying that. I was wondering if anyone had any speculation as to the development of such a system.

That is a very good prediction. Apple has a tendency to make computers that are TOO good. I could imagine my life if i had a quad core g5 with like 2 gigs of ram...wow *drools* but anyway i bet you they will

Intel won't have their 64-bit chips until the Fall.

intel has nothing that can currently compete with the chips in the quad powermacs. nobody does. it would be a step backwards at this point.

Berman said:

intel has nothing that can currently compete with the chips in the quad powermacs. nobody does. it would be a step backwards at this point.

Click to expand...

A Dual, Dual Core opteron will eat Quad Core G5 set up for breakfast.

Problem with the G5 and Xeon's is both CPU's share the same memory Bus also the G5 Dont support Dual Channel memory

Maximum memory Bandwidth of the Dual G5s is 6.4Gb/Sec.

Maximum memory Bandwidth od Dual Opterons is 12.8 Gb/Sec.

No competition really and factor in you can get 4X dual core opteron workstations now!! all with seperate memory bus for each CPU and a maximum memory bandwidth of 25.6 Gb/sec.

Also as mentioned in another thread
"On the Intel Road map there will be a intel core based on the Yonah with a even shorter instruction pipeline, EMT64 and hyperthread! currently code named merom (notebook), conroe(desktop) and woodcrest(server! maybe new power mac).

So like these Intel core duos in the power book and Imac will be outdated by the second half of the year. i think they will get the merom(mac book pros and Imacs Quarter 3) the power mac will have the woodcrest.

So i would not buy a Imac or mac book pro now. If you wait till the second half of the year you will have more universal apps also most likely the new hyper threaded EMT64 Intels.

But the Power Mac will for sure get a hyper threaded EMT64 conroe or most likely woodcrest."

Thats why i am so upset Apple are locked into intel

You can get some pretty nice Opteron setups but 64-bit application software is a bit scarce so you might have to run 32-bit stuff. The PowerMacs can be ordered with up to 16 GB of memory so presumably, existing apps can make use of that memory.

Intel does sell something now that can beat the G5 and Opteron but you'd be hard-pressed to find desktop applications for it. The Itanium processors are really, really fast though they cost a small fortune.

I'm not going to buy any more 32-bit machines and wish that Jobs would have been more democratic in his choice of chip companies. The Intel 64-bit stuff coming down the road is still an unknown at this point and AMD isn't standing still. They have the M2 socket coming in the first half of this year which gives you the option of swapping in a quad-core chip when they become available.

this may seem like a stupid question, but how does the new FX-60 chip by AMD stack up against any of these? it's the first dual core FX line chip; basically two FX-55 (2.6GHz) on the same die.

i was trying to use this site as a very *rough* estimation:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html

scooter said:

this may seem like a stupid question, but how does the new FX-60 chip by AMD stack up against any of these? it's the first dual core FX line chip; basically two FX-55 (2.6GHz) on the same die.

i was trying to use this site as a very *rough* estimation:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html

Click to expand...

You pay a premium for the FX designation as the the clock limitations are
removed (related to the multiplier I think). So you generally buy an FX so
that you can overclock.

If you're in this class of machine, you're better off with an Opteron than
the consumer chips because you can then put two, three or four of the
dual-core opterons together in one system. You can't do that with the
consumer X2, FX and A64 chips.

There was a benchmark shootout between the quad PowerMacs against
a quad opteron and I think that the Opteron won. In some things by a
little and in some things by more than a little. I don't recall whether or
not the PowerMacs won some of the categories. At any rate, you are
talking about some serious compute horsepower.

One other small issue is that to do a dual core duo with 64 bits when
those chips come out, you're going to need some kind of hardware to
do cache arbitration. The Opteron has on chip hardware to do this
(you can buy them with one, two or three channels I think) and this
is why you buy Opteron chips to do multi-CPU systems. The FX, A64, X2
chips don't have this so you don't have multi-CPU systems with the
consumer chips.

I assume that the PowerMac stuff has hardware to address this given
that IBM probably has done multi-CPU systems for quite some time.
So there would have to be some hardware to do this if you wanted to
paste multiple core-duo chips into one system. If you don't have
cache arbitration, then you'd have to slow down the system somehow
so that one processor didn't do a read from cache for a memory location
that another processor just updated. I suppose that you could just
lock the memory location but then a processor would have to wait for
the memory to be unlocked.

At any rate, it's clear that Opteron and Power already have this problem
solved. I don't know if there's an existing solution for Core Duo on the
same issue. Note that Core Duo does some really interesting cache stuff
between the two cores in the chip. But I'm pretty sure that they can't
do this off chip.

The progression we're in the middle of is

P4
P4 + HyperThreading
Dual core P4
Dual core P4 + HyperThreading each
Quad core P4
Quad core P4 + Hyperthreading each

And somewhere along there - post Vista - Intel should announce something like "Super HyperThreading" - meaning many virtual processors available for usage.

Why so many cores ?

Last I heard the big push was for Vista (or a variant) is to effectively be able to run true separate partitions simultaneously - why - because IT departments want to cut costs --- effectively running these separate partitions IT can own and lock down a Vista session/partition ensuring that users can always run their core office / biz software and the user cannot load Sw or foul up the image. Meanwhile the user will have their own partion "session" where they have some control over the open partition - and the 2 partitions shall never meet.

On the home front its a similiar story - one vista partition can be locked down by the folks to be very stable and used for general usage - each of the kids can have a vista partition and if they screw it up or get infected - the rest of the family is still ok - also consider dedicating one core to multi-medai - one to gaming ect.

I have no idea how / if Apple is planning on using the ability to run separate multiple images

Of course this will also require memory and I/O bandwidth from h3ll - but there are new highspeed serial buses in the works

Pentium 4 is dead.

There will be a later MP version of Yonah called Sossaman that will allow you to hook up multiple Core Duo chips together. I don't know if they're going to come up with a 32-bit version but I doubt it.

mmoy said:

You can get some pretty nice Opteron setups but 64-bit application software is a bit scarce so you might have to run 32-bit stuff. The PowerMacs can be ordered with up to 16 GB of memory so presumably, existing apps can make use of that memory.

Intel does sell something now that can beat the G5 and Opteron but you'd be hard-pressed to find desktop applications for it. The Itanium processors are really, really fast though they cost a small fortune.

I'm not going to buy any more 32-bit machines and wish that Jobs would have been more democratic in his choice of chip companies. The Intel 64-bit stuff coming down the road is still an unknown at this point and AMD isn't standing still. They have the M2 socket coming in the first half of this year which gives you the option of swapping in a quad-core chip when they become available.

Click to expand...

Intels new stuff will basically be a core Duo with EMT64, shorter pipeline and hyper thread ( i think hyper thread will only be in premium models like the extreme) So still the opteron will kill it.
Also nearly all opteron Dual workstation support 16GB Ram and can use it no problems and they use the more stable ECC Registered RAM.

The Opteron can support more then 16 GB RAM can support 64 Gb on a 4 way system

Here, WOW!

Most games on the XBOX are made on the 64Bit version of Softimage XSI 5 on 64Bit Windows that supports the whole 16GB i dont know any Apple App.that can support 16GB even though the G5 can support it!??? (if there is such a App. link me to it, i would like to know about it dont just assume they do)
I know After Effects 7 on Mac can only support 4GB on the Mac.

Dont even bring the itanium into this!! its not for consumers or workstations!!
you cant buy a itanium mainboard with PCI-E 16x.
Infact say you had $50.000 to build a server the Opteron one will kill the itanium one (even if the opteron $50.000 set up has more CPUs on it then the itanium $50.000 setup.. dollar for dollar you cant beat a opteron solution)
For Enterprise, workstation and consumer the best you can buy is the Opteron!!

The G5 is finished and intel are going to bring out something in the second half of the year that is better then the G5( dual capable core duos with EMT64 and HT) and that wont still be as good as the Opteron.

macanal said:

Maximum memory Bandwidth of the Dual G5s is 6.4Gb/Sec.

Maximum memory Bandwidth od Dual Opterons is 12.8 Gb/Sec.

Click to expand...

The current G5's use 128-bit DDR533, yielding a bandwidth of 8.5GB/sec.

macanal said:

i dont know any Apple App.that can support 16GB even though the G5 can support it!??? (if there is such a App. link me to it, i would like to know about it dont just assume they do)
I know After Effects 7 on Mac can only support 4GB on the Mac.

Click to expand...

As far as I know, only Mathematica takes advantage of 64-bit addressing on the Mac. (Among commercial applications; some open-source apps are as well.) AfterEffects, on both platforms, is 32-bit.

technologist said:

As far as I know, only Mathematica takes advantage of 64-bit addressing on the Mac. (Among commercial applications; some open-source apps are as well.) AfterEffects, on both platforms, is 32-bit.

Click to expand...

Link me to it! i would love to know what if any Apps On Mac can take advantage of 16Gb or More memory.

Also remember even though the G5 currently use 128-bit DDR533, yielding a bandwidth of 8.5GB/sec. (thanks for the correction)

The latancy is shocking it is in fact it is faster to use DDR400 at CS2 then it is to use DDR533 at CS4 as it was for the intels that support DDR533 and faster, the AMDs using DDR 400 were still faster.

Once the DDR2 and so on get down to a decent latancy like CS 2.5 or so that will be better.

To tell the truth im sick of saying negative things!!
As it stands i have a Dual G5 with 2 gig RAM and a 9800.
Although i think the G5 is better then the current intel offerings (maybe on a par with the core duo( and yes the quad cores still blow away the core duo)
I am sad Apple is looked into intel because i would prefer AMD or ever the tripple core power PC CPUs (like in the Xbox) then intel

mmoy said:

There was a benchmark shootout between the quad PowerMacs against
a quad opteron and I think that the Opteron won. In some things by a
little and in some things by more than a little. I don't recall whether or
not the PowerMacs won some of the categories. At any rate, you are
talking about some serious compute horsepower.

Click to expand...

They came out about even, maybe 10% in favour of the Opterons but they were killed by the lack of serious software. The big downside was that the cheapest quad opteron system comes in at 50% more than the quad G5.

Oh and yes the PowerMacs did win some of the categories, in particular those that the Pro Imaging guys use daily like rendering.

Amen-Moses

macanal said:

Link me to it! i would love to know what if any Apps On Mac can take advantage of 16Gb or More memory.

Click to expand...

According to those lying *******s at Apple ALL of their pro apps can. :dummy:

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses said:

They came out about even, maybe 10% in favour of the Opterons but they were killed by the lack of serious software. The big downside was that the cheapest quad opteron system comes in at 50% more than the quad G5.

Oh and yes the PowerMacs did win some of the categories, in particular those that the Pro Imaging guys use daily like rendering.

Amen-Moses

Click to expand...

I think that in general, you will see Power doing better in FP and Opteron with Integer. We also have the FX-60 available now which wasn't available at the
time of that past review.

The Opteron is not really a consumer chip so you will pay through the nose but it is pretty easy to get some really big configurations on Opteron systems from companies like HP. They sell Opteron systems with 16 GB memory modules and I think that you can toss in 64 GB without too much trouble.

For now it doesn't matter as Apple has made its choice.

Ex_PC_Puke said:

I have no idea how / if Apple is planning on using the ability to run separate multiple images

Click to expand...

I believe that is where Apples whole virtualization project comes into play. The idea is to be able to run multiple instances of the same or a different OS (think OSX, Vista and Linux) simultaneously and be able to use a fast user switching type of interface between them. Supposedly they would be able to share common partitions, but not boot partitions, and no reboot would be required to switch between OS's or start/stop other virtual sessions.

baggss said:

I believe that is where Apples whole virtualization project comes into play. The idea is to be able to run multiple instances of the same or a different OS (think OSX, Vista and Linux) simultaneously and be able to use a fast user switching type of interface between them. Supposedly they would be able to share common partitions, but not boot partitions, and no reboot would be required to switch between OS's or start/stop other virtual sessions.

Click to expand...

This sort of thing would be very difficult to do seamlessly around the area of devices. I looked at installing VMWare a while ago but lack of device driver support was a concern of mine. Having to share a device that may or may not be designed to be shared isn't always easy to resolve.

My guess is, it won't be released until it works pretty seamlessly....