Investing in new Apple Hardware

[fantomaz]

To all who are in the process of buying new Macs: WAIT!

After a year of using my MacBookPro C2D at 2.53MHz it was time

to replace it with a new one. The days before Eastern i bought a new

MacBookPro with the i7 proc with Sandybridge at 2.0 GHz.

Since last Tuesday i was in a tight deadline and decided to let the

MacBookPro render some frames too, to support the overall prozess.

Hey, this Mac beats all!

Scene: 1024x576, AA at 4x4-2x2, GI with 650 rays, 500k polys, Photons with 150k rays

iMac i7 at 2.8 8GB - 2min/frame

MacPro Nehalem Quad at 2.66 -2.10min/frame

MacPro 1.1 Quad (the first ever built) at 2.66 8GB - 3.30min/frame

MacPro Nehalem Octo at 2.26 16GB - 2.05min/frame

and now look:

MacBookPro i7 Sandybridge at 2.0 (!!) 8GB - 78sec/frame

So lets wait for the new MacPros with this kind of processor inside!

Alex

[FelixCat]

Good to know Alex, thanks. I need to buy a new machine and this specs justify the waiting...

Great.

FelixCat

[edecker]

Alex,

Funny you mentioned this. I have a couple older machines I use for a render farm and just this morning I decided that while my daughter was at school I would load a couple cameras on her new MacBook Pro 13 inch with 2.3 Ghz i5. Wow what a difference! The little thing speeds through renders faster than any of my machines.

Don't tell my daughter though!

Eric

[Juanxer]

I wonder about those new Mac Pros. It seems it's not clear yet what sort of Xeon-class processors Intel will derive from the Sandy Bridge family. My guess is we won't see anything new until next year (unless Intel refreshes the current hexacores with speedier ones and Apple uses them in all its range, dropping the quad/octocores).

[Tomas Egger]

Ola,

I would like to change my home Mac Pro in the end of this year.. :)

Thanks

Tom

[Guest supernova]

its still going to be about how many cores you have.

a 4 core machine is still going to have to be twice as fast in theory as an 8 core.... most of us do animation and need many many frames... so we weigh speed with cores.

not sure how a multithreaded camera will affect this... but im guessing the more cores the better.

a faster 4 core may approach a 6 core or 8 core machine.... but until that time I think you are waiting for nothing special.

now... im not great at math but my 3.2ghz 8 core zeon is still pretty quick. for me... or any of you to want to replace your towers or machines... you would need at least another 8 core machine with the new chips.... problem is with apple as of late... your not getting that for the same 3k i spent... your NOW spending closer to 5k for that performance. We are actually at a time here where apple is no longer jumping forward in speed VS price that much.... I could have 2 8 core machines for what apple will likely charge for one of these new ones. I love apple to death... and have 21yrs of macs to show for it... but until they come out with an 8 core sandy bridge with thunderbolt for around the 3k mark... then its nice but not really that great. Im even maxing out my Ram and going 64 bit on my system now because the price curve is so skewed. My 27inch 2.8ghz i7 quad core with hyper threading and 16 gigs of ram PLUS the hd screen is under 3k... and after effects sees 8 cores on it!! so would camera.... so ill put my 8 core imac up against your faster and twice as expensive sandy bridge mac any day... and it better have 8 cores or my imac will STILL hang with it on a 300 frame animation...

[jakev]

its still going to be about how many cores you have.

a 4 core machine is still going to have to be twice as fast in theory as an 8 core.... most of us do animation and need many many frames... so we weigh speed with cores.

not sure how a multithreaded camera will affect this... but im guessing the more cores the better.

a faster 4 core may approach a 6 core or 8 core machine.... but until that time I think you are waiting for nothing special.

now... im not great at math but my 3.2ghz 8 core zeon is still pretty quick. for me... or any of you to want to replace your towers or machines... you would need at least another 8 core machine with the new chips.... problem is with apple as of late... your not getting that for the same 3k i spent... your NOW spending closer to 5k for that performance. We are actually at a time here where apple is no longer jumping forward in speed VS price that much.... I could have 2 8 core machines for what apple will likely charge for one of these new ones. I love apple to death... and have 21yrs of macs to show for it... but until they come out with an 8 core sandy bridge with thunderbolt for around the 3k mark... then its nice but not really that great. Im even maxing out my Ram and going 64 bit on my system now because the price curve is so skewed. My 27inch 2.8ghz i7 quad core with hyper threading and 16 gigs of ram PLUS the hd screen is under 3k... and after effects sees 8 cores on it!! so would camera.... so ill put my 8 core imac up against your faster and twice as expensive sandy bridge mac any day... and it better have 8 cores or my imac will STILL hang with it on a 300 frame animation...

I'm coasting with a G5 at home til the next hardware upgrade on towers. This reflects what I'd been reading about tower vs iMacs. Apple has to know this. I "assume" Apple will come up with a configuration that keeps their desktop towers at the top of the game. But, it's not really even close to their bread and butter (iPhone/iPad/MacBooks). I wonder if the incentives are too diminished for Apple in this sector?

edit, looks like the whole line up may be getting Sandy Bridge in the coming months (you probably have heard this, but here's a link)

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/04/supply_chain_sources_say_all_remaining_macs_to_receive_update_in_coming_months.html