Intel's Core 2 Quadro Kentsfield in a Mac Pro?

[LMarkoya]

Anyone know if this is really a drop in? Can i get a Mac Pro now and put in the quad cores as soon as they are available and not bank breakers?
Thanks

 

[Guest]

Anand review

I think somewhere they talk about it!

 

[kukito]

Not Kentsfield but the server version, Clovertown (Xeon 5300 series.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#5300-series_.22Clovertown.22

 

[Grimmy]

Now there's something you wouldn't ever to expect to see in a... Mac

Whats Inside the Mac Pro?

:lol: . o O (da.. daaa. daaa.. da... intel inside sound)

Edit: geesh you have to go to their site to see the image. . o O (ah, its trying to open it as a gif file from here... strange)

 

[cbk780]

I'm interested in building a dual Xeon workstation that is upgradable to use the Clovertown processor in the future.

I've been puzzling about what Mobo would be the best to "ensure" compatibility.

Since the Mac was able to use dual Clovertowns, it seems like the chipset on the Mac motherboard is a good one to consider. Does anyone know what motherboard was used for this?

Charlie

 

[cbk780]

I thought it was true too. But one of the commerical DAW builders on another board says he has a couple of samples and they do not run on current Intel motherboards.

I don't have any details.

I'm frustrated because I would like to build (actually have built) this workstation but the whole purpose is to start with a Dual Core Xeon and eventually upgrade to Dual Clovertowns. If the mobo doesn't support it then the whole strategy is crumped.

So I think I'll have to wait until the chips are out and boards are certified. An unwelcome delay.

Charlie

 

[kukito]

It appears that there is already an Intel 2P-quad core that will accept two quads as drop ins on a the DT

Boot camp and off you go.

And with SLI! Hopefully Crossfire support will come too although that wouldn't be in AMD's interests (unless they want Intel to continue to fund the ATi acquisition).

 

[Guest]

The chipset is the one found on the 5000 series. I pretty sure that's what mac use.

I know for a fact that this board does support Woodcrest, this chipset was released this summer and should last a while. I dont exactly know about the Clovertown but I think it's safe to assume it does, since thtas probably what Mac Pro are using@

Intel link

Go a dual Xeon config based on that board: Intel® Server Board S5000PSL.
To bad we got netburst Dual core, still pretty cool to see the 8CPu in task manager because of HT, would be sweeter if they were not logical cores =), but then again the machine is already overkill!

Nice board, works like a charm, downside: no floppy and only a handfull of USB supported device! You have to boot with the CD they provide and I think you will save a lot of troubles that I had with it!

That should give you something to start investigating JumpingJack!

Edit this link is for the 5000 Xeon series, Im tired so I wont look it up but I beleive the 50XX are Netburst, 51XX are Woodcrest, and so on...Still the board you want to use are stated down there! cheers

 

[MarkPatterson]

I too am interested in building a dual core quadro 'workstation' so I have been looking for an ATX Mb (I have found about 2) and one that offers SATA II connections.

Im was going to buy a dual 2.66 Xeon Woodcrest setup but have decided to wait a few months for the release of Clovertown.

Hopefully ill be able to build a system this side of the new year? or perhaps not?

 

[gentrinity]

Something I hope people here realise is what theyre getting themselves into with Xeons.

The actual processor is awesome, the Woodcrests are as good as the Conroes, but its everything else thats the problem.

If you buy a Woodcrest compatible MOBO, you have to get FBDIMM Ram, which is pretty slow compared to the fast DDR2 modules that are available for socket 775, plus FBDIMM is more expensive. If youre going to do mostly rendering, then its not too bad, but any memory sensitive app will take a performance hit, and most apps are. Video rendering is only a small % of actual workflow, considering how you have to spend long hours editing or creating your work before a final render.

link

I too was contemplating getting a dual Xeon Woodcrest config. But I realised that the Quadro would be more than enough considering that I wont do too much rendering, and that itll be alot cheaper, plus the RAM is a better performer. Im better off spending the money on 8GBs of RAM than getting 8 cores, like some are suggesting here, but thats just me, I mostly use memory intensive apps and im sure that an OCed Kentsfield at 3.3GHz like here in THG will be more than sufficient for my needs, and mostly everyone elses I think. I am just waiting for 2GB sticks, unbuffered, that are DDR2 667 and DDR2 800, so I can at least raise the FSB to 1333 and above.

The first thing yall should state is what type of workstation. Video, 3D, Image Editing, CAD, audio, etc;

Because each type has its own needs and I have done a fair amount of research on that.

The only type of workstation that will get a real performance boost from so many cores are heavy rendering workstations. CAD would benefit a bit more with a low to mid range pro card, more CAD than 3D. Any image editing scenario benefits more from lots of RAM, at least 4GBs, video cards play no major role in image editing, a X1900XT would more than suffice. If you will be doing heavy multitasking like me, then more than 4GBs might be helpfull. Heavy video would benefit from a real time hardware accelerator. You get the idea. There are cheaper alternatives to increase performace.

Consider how expensive an 8 core system would entail and depending on your needs and budget, you might find that there are rigs that can perform just as well if you configure it specifically to your needs, rather than getting the "best".

Hope this helps.

 

[MarkPatterson]

My machine has to do alot rendering and alot of CAD + stress analysis...takes ages... - after alot of consideration in regards to the video card, Nvidia Quadro cards just dont seem worth it, I have been down this path before and after a giant debate over at cgtalk.com most pro's from ILM or other large hollywood 3D houses just cant justify the cost or the performance against a standard Geforce, id rather have more CPU cycles.

In regards to the ram, the performance difference is messured in 100ths of a second, does it matter?

the price on 2 dual 2.66 WC xeons was around £800, not a bad price to be honest, if I can get 2 clovertowns for a similar cost id be happy, or I might just go for a single quadro and shove a big dual SLI Geforce 8 series setup into my rig (for games)

 

[LMarkoya]

Thank you everyonwe for making this a valuable thread. Since my main use is 3D and video rendering and the Toms preview on the 8 cores halved rendering times, I felt this was the way to go (albeit expensive).
I also thought the Mac Pro was perfect with Boot Camp offers the beat of all worlds and access to whatever software I want....including finding which platform runs better on the SAME software (Modo, Lightwave, After Effects, etc. I just wanted to know if the upgrading will be possible....I'd prefer to find an Mac Pro box with no processers now.
Pick up some fast dual cores abd wait till the quads are out and prices level.
Thanks Again

 

[jkflipflop98]

In regards to the ram, the performance difference is messured in 100ths of a second, does it matter?

1/100th of a second is an eon to your ram and cpu.

 

[MarkPatterson]

I was considering the same option but finding an empty (no CPU's, No RAM, NO Gpu) Mac Pro box could be tricky - the Mac RAM is expensive aswell, I could buy my own for alot less.

My only problem with the Mac Pro is its alot cheaper to just build my own. but I lose access to the Mac OS, not to fussed about that tho to be honest.

 

[MarkPatterson]

am I going to notice the difference - will my render times increase for example?
a few seconds loss to slightly slower ram will be offset against an extra 4 cores I expect.

 

[Guest]

These are really good point Genitry! For MarkPatterson and LMarkoya if you have'nt the other two article at anandtech I suggest you do so

Genitry is right FDimm is expensive but if you fill the 4 channels, you can get decent performance, thats if you use one stick in each channel, it will allow you to maximize the amount of ram you have and some applications are more 'ammount" sensitive than speed sensitive, you gotta know what's right for you!

If you are looking at application that are really sensitive to the speed of ram, well the 4X4 might end up being a good solution, who knows! Im sure BM will make some strong point at some point 8) !

 

[gentrinity]

Thanks, I really appreciate the comments made, since you are a regular here and Im still a noob. Ill look into the links you provided.

@everyone
Ill highlight what I read, which concurs wiht my previous statements

Sysmark 2004

Thanks to its high latency FB-DIMM memory subsystem, the Mac Pro is about 10% slower than our Core 2 Extreme test bed in the Office Productivity tests. It's not a huge reduction in performance but there will definitely be times where there is a noticeable performance drop compared to a similarly equipped Core 2 system.

This is in line with what I mentioned.

Anandtech conclusion

If you're running applications that are particularly well threaded, then a four core Mac Pro will obviously have an advantage over a single socket dual core system under any OS. It's particularly in latency sensitive applications such as audio/video encoding and 3D games that the Mac Pro's FB-DIMM memory subsystem really holds it back.

See, you have to make sure what processes are the main ones you want to increase performance in because like the article states, you will have a trade off. In some cases, a Core 2 Duo can perform right on par with Quad Cores, all because of the latency of the FBDIMMs and lack of multithreading. FBDIMM memory is designed for server use, and heavy multithreaded workstation use, to the majority of users like us, itll hold the performance of the Quad config back, HOWEVER, if all you care about is doubling your rendering performance, first make sure that the process you plan on running is multithreaded, if your using Adobe Premier then you will easily see an 80% increase in performance. SO Get it!!! You will love the video rendering times, but be prepared because you will suffer a bit of a performance hit in other apps.

Also consider that a Kentsfield is just around the corner, thus giving you the 4 cores with faster memory, so itll perform better than a quad mac with FBDIMM. Not to mention you can easily OC the Kentsfield.

Now, the interesting thing about the MAC is that you will have an upgrade path where you can have 8 cores AND regular unbuffered RAM if you can have the two Kentsfield like they stated in the article. That would be freakin awesome, BUT it isnt comfirmed yet whether you will be able to do this 100%, because from what I understood, the 8 core macs are a bit too far off to know for sure if you will have 100% compatability.

Think things wisely. If all you care about is rendering performance, I recommend you wait and make sure you will be able to upgrade to the 8 cores in the future. I personally dont need 4 cores, although a 25% performance boost in Photoshop shouldnt be taken lightly. My main problem is that I would like 8GBs of RaM, but the overall latency is holding me back, because like I stated before, I use a lot of memory sensitive apps. More over, FBDIMM memory becomes slower the more sticks you use

... the more FB-DIMMs you have in your system, the higher access latencies will be to those additional FB-DIMMs.

What we then end up with is a tradeoff between more bandwidth and higher latency, so which route do you take? We've done a lot of testing and most of our tests seem to favor the four dual-rank FB-DIMM module configuration, but the number/configuration of modules really depends on your particular needs. We're still testing to figure out what the tangible real world performance differences are between the multitude of memory configurations, but for now just know that if you need maximum bandwidth you'll want 8 dual rank FB-DIMMs, but if you want lower latency you'll want fewer modules. Whether or not you'll see a performance difference will depend mostly on the application(s) you're running.

If 4 sticks is optimal performace, and its still slower than regular RAM, then ill stick to a Kentsfield if I ever decide to go 4 cores.

Dont get me wrong, I would love to go 8 cores, I would absolutely love it, but as of right now, my main concern is RaM, and until Xeons dont broaden their memory options, im sticking with the Core 2s and regular DDR2. Its up to you.

 

[ltcommander_data]

And with SLI! Hopefully Crossfire support will come too although that wouldn't be in AMD's interests (unless they want Intel to continue to fund the ATi acquisition).

Well you may be in luck since the latest rumours are that nVidia is working on their own workstation Xeon DP motherboard with SLI support.

Now, while the Clovertown production version is expected to be the standard 2.66GHz CPU with 1333FSB, Intel seems to be more open now towards the idea of 'special HPC performance editions' of its server CPUs. Essentially a server/workstation equivalent of its Extreme Edition on the desktop, these could also be multiplier-unlocked, and, combined with high-performance chipsets such as the upcoming 2x16 SLI Nvidia dual FSB offering, reach further performance through water cooling, for instance - that dual 4GHz Clovertown (or its 5GHz variety once the 45nm process kicks in) becomes very real then.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35245

This seems logical since nVidia is particularly strong with their Quadro cards (over ATI) and Intel finally has some decent server processors. If Intel is planning to release multiplier unlocked Clovertons (more unlikely than nVidia making workstation chipsets) then this is really the secret counter 4x4 platform. the performance of FB-DIMMs is still a problem, but with nVidia in the game it's likely their workstation platform will offer decent overclocking and perfhaps bring EPP to FB-DIMMs allowing for DDR2 667 with 4-4-4 timings or DDR2 800 (or DDR3 800) with 5-5-5 timings. Lower timings are unlikely though because of power concerns and the need for stability.

 

[pausert20]

Think things wisely. If all you care about is rendering performance, I recommend you wait and make sure you will be able to upgrade to the 8 cores in the future. I personally dont need 4 cores, although a 25% performance boost in Photoshop shouldnt be taken lightly. My main problem is that I would like 8GBs of RaM, but the overall latency is holding me back, because like I stated before, I use a lot of memory sensitive apps. More over, FBDIMM memory becomes slower the more sticks you use

Bad Axe 2 is coming out from Intel soon. The 975X chipset which the Bad Axe 2 board is built from supports up to 8GB of NonECC or ECC DDR2 800 Memory.

Since the main reason for its existence is to match it with a Kentsfield you can get the higher speed memory at up to 8GB if you can find the DDR2 677 2GB Dimms and want to pay the cost there along with 4 cores from a Kentsfield processor.