littleman23408
Dec 3, 03:10 PM
Some of them do but not sure do all of them. I've got several nice rides from those series but they are mainly from higher level series.
Cool, Thanks. You must be pretty far?
Cool, Thanks. You must be pretty far?
ABernardoJr
Apr 8, 12:39 AM
When you are as HUGE as best buy, and you are selling a product as huge as the iPad, it makes sense to create a demand. People do this all the time. You can't get it now, so the second it becomes available to you, you buy it in fear that you might have to wait another month. This happens all the time with a lot of products.
How does that create demand? Instead of actually getting the sale, you deny a sale and hope it "creates demand" so that they'll come back and buy it in fear? Especially considering that they could have just purchased it in the first place and avoided the whole issue. Actually selling out the product and then having no more available in stock would create demand AND generate revenue. Doing what they did would generate SOME revenue and likely cause customers to look elsewhere for iPads.
Edit: This isn't to say that I don't recognize the concept of reaching quotas for the day and saving products for the next day's quota. That's a different argument. What I'm referring to is that this is likely not about demand but about selfishly wanting to meet quotas and turning away customers in the process. Not creating demand. It's immoral, but business/retail and morality don't always work so well together.
How does that create demand? Instead of actually getting the sale, you deny a sale and hope it "creates demand" so that they'll come back and buy it in fear? Especially considering that they could have just purchased it in the first place and avoided the whole issue. Actually selling out the product and then having no more available in stock would create demand AND generate revenue. Doing what they did would generate SOME revenue and likely cause customers to look elsewhere for iPads.
Edit: This isn't to say that I don't recognize the concept of reaching quotas for the day and saving products for the next day's quota. That's a different argument. What I'm referring to is that this is likely not about demand but about selfishly wanting to meet quotas and turning away customers in the process. Not creating demand. It's immoral, but business/retail and morality don't always work so well together.
mwswami
Jul 24, 04:39 PM
Not really. Yorkfield is the 8 core follow on to Kentsfield in the Conroe class motherboard. Should be shipping by next Spring.
Next Spring??? Can you please point me to the source of that information.
I don't believe Intel can go to 8 core chip before going to a true 4 core instead of 2 dual cores on the MCM. That may have to wait till the process moves to 45nm and they have the Common System Interface worked out i.e. towards the end of 2007. This is all an educated guess on my part ... nothing concrete.
Next Spring??? Can you please point me to the source of that information.
I don't believe Intel can go to 8 core chip before going to a true 4 core instead of 2 dual cores on the MCM. That may have to wait till the process moves to 45nm and they have the Common System Interface worked out i.e. towards the end of 2007. This is all an educated guess on my part ... nothing concrete.
Tomaz
Aug 7, 04:30 PM
If you were picking on Mail.app's Stationery I'd probably agree with you.
None of the things that Time Machine have been compared to seem even close to what they are planning to do. Including my own VMS file versioning analogies. System Restore is not capable of restoring a single file, and particularly not within a running application. It seems kind of more like a system wide undo function when it comes to files...
B
I'm not comparing it to system restore but to Volume Shadow Copy from Windows Server 2003. File-by-file snapshot by MS 3 years ago!
I think Time Machine looks and probably is good, but after having seen all the pictures of the banners at WWDC mocking Vista, I expected someting REALLY NEW, not just warmed up. If they can't show the super super secret new stuff yet, then they shouldn't have used those banners. I find that arrogant...
None of the things that Time Machine have been compared to seem even close to what they are planning to do. Including my own VMS file versioning analogies. System Restore is not capable of restoring a single file, and particularly not within a running application. It seems kind of more like a system wide undo function when it comes to files...
B
I'm not comparing it to system restore but to Volume Shadow Copy from Windows Server 2003. File-by-file snapshot by MS 3 years ago!
I think Time Machine looks and probably is good, but after having seen all the pictures of the banners at WWDC mocking Vista, I expected someting REALLY NEW, not just warmed up. If they can't show the super super secret new stuff yet, then they shouldn't have used those banners. I find that arrogant...
gnasher729
Jul 28, 06:27 AM
Ensoniq, thanks so much for the useful corrections. How significant do you think that 64-bit capability will be in the future compared to not having it(say, 2-3 years time)?
64 bit is required for applications that need more than four GB of memory. For other things, it is nice to have, but not required. If you buy a MacBook today, you wouldn't be able to put more than 4 GB of memory in it for the next few years anyway, so in that respect it doesn't matter much whether you have a Yonah or Merom chip. For everything else, 64 bit software might run a bit faster than 32 bit software on a 64 bit chip, but it is not essential. So I think applications will ship as 32 bit or as combined 32/64 bit applications for quite some time.
The question for the developers would be: If I switch to 64 bit exclusively, so my code runs ten percent faster on Core 2 Duo, but 1-2 million Macintosh users cannot use it at all, how many sales will I gain because it is faster, and how many sales will I lose because 2 million people cannot use it? Three years from now, the answer will still be that you lose more sales running 64 bit only.
64 bit is required for applications that need more than four GB of memory. For other things, it is nice to have, but not required. If you buy a MacBook today, you wouldn't be able to put more than 4 GB of memory in it for the next few years anyway, so in that respect it doesn't matter much whether you have a Yonah or Merom chip. For everything else, 64 bit software might run a bit faster than 32 bit software on a 64 bit chip, but it is not essential. So I think applications will ship as 32 bit or as combined 32/64 bit applications for quite some time.
The question for the developers would be: If I switch to 64 bit exclusively, so my code runs ten percent faster on Core 2 Duo, but 1-2 million Macintosh users cannot use it at all, how many sales will I gain because it is faster, and how many sales will I lose because 2 million people cannot use it? Three years from now, the answer will still be that you lose more sales running 64 bit only.
iGary
Aug 11, 11:19 AM
I've been looking at the Treo, but they're not easy to come by for Vodafone contract, if at all.
And they suck - I had a 600, which fell into the water and was replaced by insurance with a 650, which is only marginally better.
I don't believe the rumor - Steve wouldn't blab, he just wouldn't.
We only have a month to wait, though. :)
And they suck - I had a 600, which fell into the water and was replaced by insurance with a 650, which is only marginally better.
I don't believe the rumor - Steve wouldn't blab, he just wouldn't.
We only have a month to wait, though. :)
vincenz
Apr 27, 07:58 AM
A "bug" right? ;)
Ace25
Aug 26, 04:10 PM
I am now pretty sure that new MacBooks are being released in the next few days.
I ordered one on the 17th of august and it was scheduled to ship on the 24th of august. Then for some reason it was bumped to a new ship date of august 31st, just enough time to drop a new merom processor in it!
I ordered one on the 17th of august and it was scheduled to ship on the 24th of august. Then for some reason it was bumped to a new ship date of august 31st, just enough time to drop a new merom processor in it!
ChrisA
Jul 20, 11:00 AM
.... Introduction of world's first commercial 8-core system.
Not quite the first. Sun has been shipping a commercial 8-core systems for about a year now. The T2000 has all 8 cores on one chip but each core also does four-way hyper threading so they claim 32 hardware threads. The price for an 8-core T1000 is about $8K. A system with 8 cores and 8GB RAM burns about 250W
Of course it does not run OS X but Gnome on Solaris has a very OS X -like "feel" to it.
It's a lot like a Mac Pro because Sun like Apple builds both the hardware and the OS and the machine ships with many of the same applications Both are unix based with a pretty point and click window system on top. Sun is also tranitioning to X86 but they are going much slower. So far only Sun's low-end machines have moved to AMD's Operon. All the high end stuff is still SPARC.
Not quite the first. Sun has been shipping a commercial 8-core systems for about a year now. The T2000 has all 8 cores on one chip but each core also does four-way hyper threading so they claim 32 hardware threads. The price for an 8-core T1000 is about $8K. A system with 8 cores and 8GB RAM burns about 250W
Of course it does not run OS X but Gnome on Solaris has a very OS X -like "feel" to it.
It's a lot like a Mac Pro because Sun like Apple builds both the hardware and the OS and the machine ships with many of the same applications Both are unix based with a pretty point and click window system on top. Sun is also tranitioning to X86 but they are going much slower. So far only Sun's low-end machines have moved to AMD's Operon. All the high end stuff is still SPARC.
ZoomZoomZoom
Sep 19, 12:19 PM
I don't see too many laptops that are sub $1000 that offer Core 2 Duo at the moment. Alienware has one that costs just about that much. Dell's XPS is the only laptop line with C2D, which are generally more costly than the Macbook Pros, even the 17". At the very least, apple has already equipped some of their computers with 64-bit support where it would probably benefit the most. The Mac Pro will obviously be the most likely to see great benefits from it. The imac, too, will see more benefit. but seeing as how macbooks and macbook pros are just coming out of their hardware glitches, i think its better to iron out those issues before stuffing new chips into them.
Well, very technically, Dell has C2D laptops for $729 and $779 (http://revolution.engadget.com/2006/09/02/dell-stuffs-merom-into-two-more-the-inspiron-e1505-and-e1405/). Not saying that either of those are as powerful as a MBP by a long shot, but goes to show that even budget computers are getting Merom.
Well, very technically, Dell has C2D laptops for $729 and $779 (http://revolution.engadget.com/2006/09/02/dell-stuffs-merom-into-two-more-the-inspiron-e1505-and-e1405/). Not saying that either of those are as powerful as a MBP by a long shot, but goes to show that even budget computers are getting Merom.
aswitcher
Aug 6, 12:26 PM
Another sad person who is worried about their machines not being top of the line :-\
Clearly you are not a Geek!
Clearly you are not a Geek!
azzurri000
Sep 18, 11:32 PM
All I have to say is:
"what the hell is taking them so frigging long?"
This update better be bitchin!
"what the hell is taking them so frigging long?"
This update better be bitchin!
bigmc6000
Aug 11, 04:50 PM
Well now you ignorant yankie ;) Firstly the mobile phone penetration in Europe is about 99% or maybe slighly more. You should really travel a bit to get some perspective.
And secondly, GSM has user base of over 1 billion while CDMA as you said has some 60m users. Which one you think would be more interesting market to cover for a new mobile phone manufacturer? And there is really no question of "we'll see which one wins" because GSM won a long long time ago, hands down.
But you're really forgetting 1 thing. International Trade Mark/patent law is a pain in the @$$!!! I wouldn't blame Apple for 1 min to keep it in the US for at least a test run. That way they should be able to keep the patent breaker-reverse engineers off their back for a least a little while (i.e. why copy something if you can't even use it anywhere other than where it's patent protected).
If the rest of the world would get a handle on international trademarking and patent protection I don't think we'd have this issue of different standards of EU vs USA...
And secondly, GSM has user base of over 1 billion while CDMA as you said has some 60m users. Which one you think would be more interesting market to cover for a new mobile phone manufacturer? And there is really no question of "we'll see which one wins" because GSM won a long long time ago, hands down.
But you're really forgetting 1 thing. International Trade Mark/patent law is a pain in the @$$!!! I wouldn't blame Apple for 1 min to keep it in the US for at least a test run. That way they should be able to keep the patent breaker-reverse engineers off their back for a least a little while (i.e. why copy something if you can't even use it anywhere other than where it's patent protected).
If the rest of the world would get a handle on international trademarking and patent protection I don't think we'd have this issue of different standards of EU vs USA...
Liske
Aug 21, 01:28 AM
Quad G5 is only $2799 on the SAVE refurb page. Refurbs are the same as new with a new warranty. But I think that would be a poor choice compared to a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is not cheaper because you have to add more expensive RAM. But it is faster overall and Rosetta Photoshop performance isn't bad. Quad G5 will also benefit from Leopard don't forget. It's not like Leopard is going to not be written to take advantage of the 64-bit G5 as well.
But I would not recomend a G5 Quad to anyone at this point. I'm pondering a Mac Pro purchase myself. But I'm going to try and hold out for a refurb or even see if I can wait for Clovertown. But I'm likely to be one of the first to snag a Mac Pro refurb when they hit the SAVE page in November-December. By then I may even be thinking about waiting for the January 9th SteveNote. Quad G5 is no slouch. But Mac Pro is faster overall.
What I most would like to know is how does the 2GHz Mac Pro stack up to the Quad G5.
And I thought you were married to your quad last week ......
But I would not recomend a G5 Quad to anyone at this point. I'm pondering a Mac Pro purchase myself. But I'm going to try and hold out for a refurb or even see if I can wait for Clovertown. But I'm likely to be one of the first to snag a Mac Pro refurb when they hit the SAVE page in November-December. By then I may even be thinking about waiting for the January 9th SteveNote. Quad G5 is no slouch. But Mac Pro is faster overall.
What I most would like to know is how does the 2GHz Mac Pro stack up to the Quad G5.
And I thought you were married to your quad last week ......
hulugu
Mar 23, 12:19 AM
Although I backed the implementation of a no-fly zone a few weeks ago, I wouldn't describe my position as one of wholehearted support. More a queasy half-hearted recognition that something had to be done and that all alternatives lead to rabbit holes of some degree or another. When all is said and done, my usual fallback position is an intense weariness at the evil that men do.
For the record, I actually supported (if silence is considered consent) both Gulf wars at the start; I believed in the fictional WMD, I believed it when Colin Powell held his little vial up at the UN... but I, like many was tied down with work and other concerns and was only paying cursory attention to the news at the time. Like Obama, I also initially supported the war in Afghanistan, or at least the idea of it, initiated by a Republican president, but since then it seems to have become a fiasco of Catch-22 proportions.
Slowly discovering the real agenda and true ineptness of the Bush administration was a pivotal point in my reawakening political understanding of US current affairs after reading Hunter Thompson for so many years. Disgusted and appalled at the casual way in which we all were lied to, I'm quite happy to hold my hands up and say 'I was wrong'.
Thing is about Obama, I never had any starry-eyed notion about him being a peace-maker. He's an American president, the incentives are cemented into the role as one of using power and protecting wealth. Not that many conservatives were paying attention at the time, but he stood up in front of the Nobel academy when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize and laid out a justification for war.
Since the second Gulf War, the entire circus has been one of my occasional interests, because I've never seen a political process elsewhere riddled with so many bald-faced liars, grotesque characters and half-baked casual hate speech. What power or the sniff of it does to people, twisting them out of shape, is infinitely more interesting and has more impact on us than any other endeavour, except for possibly the parallel development of technology.
I used you as an example more out of rhetoric than anything else. However, I think your essay is spot on.
I didn't believe the Bush administration's call for war in Iraq because I was reading Hans Blix's reports and I was suspicious of the whole endeavor: the Bushies struck me as a group wholly unprepared for the difficulty of governing a foreign country after a military invasion. I did hope, like Tom Friedman, that an Iraq without Saddam might be a powerful symbol in the Middle East, but I was deeply concerned about the war.
Reading Anthony Shadid's reporting on Iraq told me that the situation was, days in, already spinning out of control. Once it became apparent that looters were able to steal artifacts from the museums, office chairs pilled with computers from the bureaus and weapons from Iraq's hundreds of ammunition dumps I knew we were in trouble.
Libya is more like Bosnia than Iraq. A moment of force has the potential to change the scope of the conflict, hopefully for the positive, in a way that a full-blown invasion would merely complicate. That's the central part that fivepoint, who is merely interested in making another partisan screed, is ignoring.
We have complicated thoughts about the use of force in the world, which leads us to appear hypocritical when all things are made to appear equal to make straw.
George W. Bush is responsible for another calamity: me posting in PRSI, one of my many occasional weaknesses.
Me too. I wandered in here by accident as a new member and haven't left.
For the record, I actually supported (if silence is considered consent) both Gulf wars at the start; I believed in the fictional WMD, I believed it when Colin Powell held his little vial up at the UN... but I, like many was tied down with work and other concerns and was only paying cursory attention to the news at the time. Like Obama, I also initially supported the war in Afghanistan, or at least the idea of it, initiated by a Republican president, but since then it seems to have become a fiasco of Catch-22 proportions.
Slowly discovering the real agenda and true ineptness of the Bush administration was a pivotal point in my reawakening political understanding of US current affairs after reading Hunter Thompson for so many years. Disgusted and appalled at the casual way in which we all were lied to, I'm quite happy to hold my hands up and say 'I was wrong'.
Thing is about Obama, I never had any starry-eyed notion about him being a peace-maker. He's an American president, the incentives are cemented into the role as one of using power and protecting wealth. Not that many conservatives were paying attention at the time, but he stood up in front of the Nobel academy when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize and laid out a justification for war.
Since the second Gulf War, the entire circus has been one of my occasional interests, because I've never seen a political process elsewhere riddled with so many bald-faced liars, grotesque characters and half-baked casual hate speech. What power or the sniff of it does to people, twisting them out of shape, is infinitely more interesting and has more impact on us than any other endeavour, except for possibly the parallel development of technology.
I used you as an example more out of rhetoric than anything else. However, I think your essay is spot on.
I didn't believe the Bush administration's call for war in Iraq because I was reading Hans Blix's reports and I was suspicious of the whole endeavor: the Bushies struck me as a group wholly unprepared for the difficulty of governing a foreign country after a military invasion. I did hope, like Tom Friedman, that an Iraq without Saddam might be a powerful symbol in the Middle East, but I was deeply concerned about the war.
Reading Anthony Shadid's reporting on Iraq told me that the situation was, days in, already spinning out of control. Once it became apparent that looters were able to steal artifacts from the museums, office chairs pilled with computers from the bureaus and weapons from Iraq's hundreds of ammunition dumps I knew we were in trouble.
Libya is more like Bosnia than Iraq. A moment of force has the potential to change the scope of the conflict, hopefully for the positive, in a way that a full-blown invasion would merely complicate. That's the central part that fivepoint, who is merely interested in making another partisan screed, is ignoring.
We have complicated thoughts about the use of force in the world, which leads us to appear hypocritical when all things are made to appear equal to make straw.
George W. Bush is responsible for another calamity: me posting in PRSI, one of my many occasional weaknesses.
Me too. I wandered in here by accident as a new member and haven't left.
ten-oak-druid
Apr 25, 01:59 PM
Good. Hopefully Apple takes action to change this and set up an open process for monitoring what is tracked. The lawsuit would hopefully be dropped at that point.
This isn't good and has to stop.
This isn't good and has to stop.
bushido
Apr 11, 04:27 PM
i got the iPhone 4 but also got a new Android because i'm sick of the same old school UI after 3 iPhones and i LOVE my android experience, sure i still use my iPhone 4 for some apps i can't get on the android, but apps r really the only thing that still saves the iPhone. of course its stupid to argue about that on a "mac"rumors site, so i'll just ***** up ^^
33scottie33
Aug 27, 02:06 PM
That is interesting because I ordered a Macbook on Tuesday (the 22nd) and mine is also scheduled to ship on the 31st. It is suspiciously strange and hopefully it means that we'll get Meroms because I was waiting for the Merom MBP when I decided to just order a Yonah MB.
I ordered a 17" MBP on Thursday and it originally had a ship date for the 31st. Then today I got an email with a tracking number saying that it shipped today.:confused: I was hoping that mine would be a Merom too, but it does not look like it. The delivery date is now the 30th; I'll try to not open it for a couple of days or until I hear some new news.
I ordered a 17" MBP on Thursday and it originally had a ship date for the 31st. Then today I got an email with a tracking number saying that it shipped today.:confused: I was hoping that mine would be a Merom too, but it does not look like it. The delivery date is now the 30th; I'll try to not open it for a couple of days or until I hear some new news.
notabadname
Mar 31, 06:35 PM
What a concept, Apple should consider this concept, for a more consistent and stable OS . . .
oh, they do
oh, they do
goobot
Mar 31, 07:18 PM
i heard that ios 4.3 is more open than the current android os :p
Hawaga
Apr 5, 05:31 PM
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; fr-fr) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)
Well, if it's a dramatic improvement, I may start looking into it...
...A proud Avid user ;)
Well, if it's a dramatic improvement, I may start looking into it...
...A proud Avid user ;)
Porchland
Aug 7, 04:18 PM
I'm real excited for the new iChat and Spaces, along with these new "top secret features..." They better be good!
The finder is definately my bet for something to be revamped, along with probably iLife which will be revamped for leopard.
Edit : Also something more with virtualization (boot camp area) as they did not touch that really.
My bets are on some kind of Boot Camp-ish feature that will allow for native installation of Windows applications -- without Windows -- right into OS X. It would obliterate the need for applications to be written for both Windows and Mac.
<ducks and waits for flamers to whine about how impossible this is>
The finder is definately my bet for something to be revamped, along with probably iLife which will be revamped for leopard.
Edit : Also something more with virtualization (boot camp area) as they did not touch that really.
My bets are on some kind of Boot Camp-ish feature that will allow for native installation of Windows applications -- without Windows -- right into OS X. It would obliterate the need for applications to be written for both Windows and Mac.
<ducks and waits for flamers to whine about how impossible this is>
NebulaClash
Apr 27, 10:08 AM
Really? The posters on here that say there was no issue are correct?
I guess Apple fixing certain bugs related to this is whimtime.
I guess it's all a matter of what part of the issue you deem important. The tracking, the retention or the ability to opt out
Yes, the Apple fans were more correct than the anti-Apple folks. What we heard over the last week is that your personal data was being sent to Apple (it wasn't), that Apple is evil (it isn't), that Steve Jobs is lying (he isn't).
Strip away the hyperbole and you have a bug that is going to be fixed, data that is anonymized and not trackable to you unless you physically possess someone's Mac, and a story that made news last year and should never have gotten so big this time around. So yes, the Apple fans were more correct while the hype machine was wrong (as usual).
I guess Apple fixing certain bugs related to this is whimtime.
I guess it's all a matter of what part of the issue you deem important. The tracking, the retention or the ability to opt out
Yes, the Apple fans were more correct than the anti-Apple folks. What we heard over the last week is that your personal data was being sent to Apple (it wasn't), that Apple is evil (it isn't), that Steve Jobs is lying (he isn't).
Strip away the hyperbole and you have a bug that is going to be fixed, data that is anonymized and not trackable to you unless you physically possess someone's Mac, and a story that made news last year and should never have gotten so big this time around. So yes, the Apple fans were more correct while the hype machine was wrong (as usual).
epitaphic
Aug 18, 11:46 PM
So you think they put an extra processor in across the line just to be able to say they had a quad? Even the AnandTech article you used as a source showed here (http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2816&p=18) that PS took advantage of quad cores in Rosetta
Yes under some specific results the quad was a bit faster than the dual. Though with the combo of Rosetta+Photoshop its unclear what is causing the difference. However, if you compare the vast majority of the benchmarks, there's negligible difference.
Concerning Photoshop specifically, as can be experienced on a quad G5, the performance increase is 15-20%. A future jump to 8-core would theoretically be in the 8% increase mark. Photoshop (CS2) simply cannot scale adequately beyond 2 cores, maybe that'll change in Spring 2007. Fingers crossed it does.
Your points about latency and FSB are not separate negatives as you have made them. They are redundant theoretical concerns with implications of unclear practical significance.
I beg to differ. If an app or game is memory intensive, faster memory access does matter. Barefeats (http://barefeats.com/quad09.html) has some benchmarks on dual channel vs quad channel on the Mac Pro. I'd personally like to see that benchmark with an added Conroe system. If dual to quad channel gave 16-25% improvement, imagine what 75% increase in actual bandwidth will do. Besides, I was merely addressing your statements that Woodcrest is faster because of its higher speed FSB and higher memory bus bandwidth.
I am not worried. Everything anyone has come up with on this issue are taken from that same AnandTech article. Until I see more real-world testing, I will not be convinced. Also, I expect that more pro apps such as PS will be able to utilize quad cores in the near future, if they aren't already doing so. Finally, even if Conroe is faster, Woodcrest is fast enough for me ;).
Anandtech, at the moment, is the only place with a quad xeon vs dual xeon benchmark. And yes, dual Woodcrest is fast enough, but is it cost effective compared to a single Woodcrest/Conroe? It seems that for the most part, Mac Pro users are paying for an extra chip but only really utilizing it when running several CPU intensive apps at the same time.
I think you misread that. They were comparing Core 2 Extreme (not Woodcrest) and Conroe to see whether the increased FSB of the former would make much difference.
You're absolutely right about that, its only measuring the improvement over increased FSB. If you take into account FB-DIMM's appalling efficiency, there should be no increase at all (if not decrease) for memory intensive apps.
One question I'd like to put out there, if Apple has had a quad core mac shipping for the past 8 months, why would it wait til intel quads to optimize the code for FCP? Surely they must have known for some time before that that they would release a quad core G5 so either optimizing FCP for quads is a real bastard or they've been sitting on it for no reason.
Yes under some specific results the quad was a bit faster than the dual. Though with the combo of Rosetta+Photoshop its unclear what is causing the difference. However, if you compare the vast majority of the benchmarks, there's negligible difference.
Concerning Photoshop specifically, as can be experienced on a quad G5, the performance increase is 15-20%. A future jump to 8-core would theoretically be in the 8% increase mark. Photoshop (CS2) simply cannot scale adequately beyond 2 cores, maybe that'll change in Spring 2007. Fingers crossed it does.
Your points about latency and FSB are not separate negatives as you have made them. They are redundant theoretical concerns with implications of unclear practical significance.
I beg to differ. If an app or game is memory intensive, faster memory access does matter. Barefeats (http://barefeats.com/quad09.html) has some benchmarks on dual channel vs quad channel on the Mac Pro. I'd personally like to see that benchmark with an added Conroe system. If dual to quad channel gave 16-25% improvement, imagine what 75% increase in actual bandwidth will do. Besides, I was merely addressing your statements that Woodcrest is faster because of its higher speed FSB and higher memory bus bandwidth.
I am not worried. Everything anyone has come up with on this issue are taken from that same AnandTech article. Until I see more real-world testing, I will not be convinced. Also, I expect that more pro apps such as PS will be able to utilize quad cores in the near future, if they aren't already doing so. Finally, even if Conroe is faster, Woodcrest is fast enough for me ;).
Anandtech, at the moment, is the only place with a quad xeon vs dual xeon benchmark. And yes, dual Woodcrest is fast enough, but is it cost effective compared to a single Woodcrest/Conroe? It seems that for the most part, Mac Pro users are paying for an extra chip but only really utilizing it when running several CPU intensive apps at the same time.
I think you misread that. They were comparing Core 2 Extreme (not Woodcrest) and Conroe to see whether the increased FSB of the former would make much difference.
You're absolutely right about that, its only measuring the improvement over increased FSB. If you take into account FB-DIMM's appalling efficiency, there should be no increase at all (if not decrease) for memory intensive apps.
One question I'd like to put out there, if Apple has had a quad core mac shipping for the past 8 months, why would it wait til intel quads to optimize the code for FCP? Surely they must have known for some time before that that they would release a quad core G5 so either optimizing FCP for quads is a real bastard or they've been sitting on it for no reason.
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