The Apple community's been waiting for this. It's been rumored that an eight-core Mac Pro is in the works, now it's a rumor no more. The Apple 8-core Mac Pro is finally here.

Back when the 8-core Mac Pro was still a rumor, it was said that it was going to be released later this year, possibly November. It was released earlier than everyone expected. This newly launched Mac Pro is the world's first 3.0 GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. We can't help but get swayed by the tagline on the Apple site: "Consider the bar officially raised."

Mac Pro 8-core boasts advanced performance on workstation graphics, and "unparalleled" expansion in many possible configurations. Simply put, at 3.0 GHz the quad-core Mac Pro runs two times faster than Power Mac G5 Quad. Expansion-wise, it 8-core Mac Pro can accommodate up to four drives and 3TB of storage, eight DIMM slots to fill up with 16 GB of RAM, two Super Drives.

That's a lot of power. We are sure the programmers and software developers are going to be happy with the functions of this one.

   
 

This lucky person certainly did get a new Mac Pro. Not only was this brand new Mac Pro owner kind enough to share his experience with the world, he also ran his new machine through a gamut of benchmarks and real world application-based tests to prove its mettle. I think the fact that this guy took the time to provide us with usable information about the new Mac Pro makes his post different than the average all photography and no substance box openings that populate the web.

This particular machine has two 2.Ghz Dual Core processors (2 Xeon woodcrest processors- for a total of 4 logical processors), 1GB of ram, a 7300gt graphics accelerator, and a 250GB Seagate hard disk. As unbelievably powerful as that machine sounds, the specs for the test machine are not anywhere near the top of the line for the Mac Pro. Keep in mind that this test machine has but 1GB of ram. 1GB of ram, inside a machine that has the capacity for an astonishing 16GBs of ram total, is not a whole lot. In fact, 1GB is the minimum amount of ram that you should have when using a dual processor system as powerful as this one.

Geekbench provides an entire page full of test results that indicate the actual performance potential of this particular Mac Pro. The generous new Mac Pro owner also ran a Photoshop test, a timed compressor test, a Rosetta test and an encoding test. Of course, this extremely giving person also blessed us with a variety of near pornographic shots depicting the new machine in intimate detail. I must admit, when I look at the pictures of our lucky Mac Pro owner opening that box, my heart begins to race and my mind wanders off to think of the things that I could do if I had one.


Photoshop Test:
Test 1: 80% memory allocation, 20 history states = 3min 52secs

Test 2: 90% memory allocation, 1 history state = 3min 4secs

Test 3: (more a test of raw CPU) Radial blur 100, best quality on Eagle Image in test
Mac Pro= 29 secs
Quad G5 = 42 secs


Compressor:
source: 5min HDV 1080i60 clip (export from FCP timeline)
output: Compressor default 16:9 120min fast encode
results:
G5 2ghz 2.5gb ram: 34min
Mac Pro: 12min


Handbrake:
h.264 main profile
1000kbps Average Quality
2-pass encoding
128kbps AAC audio
Donnie Darko disc (not image on HD) 65fps average.

Geekbench:
297.9


Rosetta test:
194.8

I remember debating, about a decade ago, the sensitive issue of "x86 versus PowerPC performance" with my fellow nerds while dealing with dandruff.

So look at where we are now. I still have dandruff, but the Apple Mac Pro is getting a whopper of a processor that promises to send professional desktop consumers to high heaven on fluffy clouds of cheddar (for the Apple noobs, the "cheddar" joke refers to the "cheesegrater-like appearance" of the Mac Pro casing - look at the picture above).

The Mac Pros are getting 64-bit dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors. With 4MB L2 cache (for the non-technical, that just means the processor has a lot of built-in space to do extra things). Top speed? 3GHz. For those Appletons not familiar with the Xeon, the Xeon series of microprocessors are Intel's server-class PC microprocessors. They are usually used for multiple-processor PCs. And now, for multiprocessor Macs, because Apple is putting two (that's 2) of those Xeon beauties in each Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro definitely promises to be better than the G5. While this is more or less what was previously anticipated, the details about the cheesy insides are just yummy: it has room for four (that's 4) internal HDDs, although the basic Mac Pro will "only" have a 250GB HDD. And 1GB RAM. And the NVIDIA GeForce 256MB 7300GT. And a 16x SuperDrive. That sounds about right for a powerful office server.

Not good enough you say? Can't grate the cheese you say? Well, you can opt for up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of disk space (for noobs who don't know what a "TB" is, let me just say that one "TB" or terabyte is roughly one trillion bytes, one million megabytes, or one thousand GB). Now that's some serious cheese.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm now waiting for the Mac Pro to get the quad-core processor so I can calculate the meaning of life. And yes, I'm still dealing with dandruff.

Intel's quad-core (4 full execution cores) processors known as 'Kentsfield' and 'Clovertown' could ship before the end of the year instead of the first quarter of 2007. After a disappointing Q2 FY2006 results, Intel said it was pushing the launch of its first quad-core processors for high-end desktops and server earlier into the fourth quarter of 2006.

Mansfield is expected to ship in a multi-chip package in order to avoid low yields due to huge die sizes. Clovertown, the server version of the quad-core, is expected to be pin-compatible with the 'Woodcrest' dual-core Xeon DP 5100 family of server chip the company launched earlier. Clovertown is believed to have a TDP of 120W. Official specs of the quad-core CPUs have not been released by the Intel.

The company also said its upcoming Xeon MP 7100 series server processor, Tulsa, was already shipping to server vendors in preparation for its launch.

On Monday, Intel, the largest chip manufacturer, took the sheets off its new dual-core Xeon Processor 5100 series. The chips, codenamed Woodcrest, are high-volume server and workstation chips which are capable of 135% performance improvement, and 40% power reduction over their previous server products. Power consumption will start at 40 watts for lower models, going up to 65 and 80 watts for the faster processors.

This is very important for Apple's view of things, aside from the obvious inclusion in future products, this would most certainly mean cheaper and lower prices for the current range of processors used in Apple machines.

The new Core micro-architecture is being implemented, which is based on the a power sensitive blueprint design. It is expected that this design will be used in two forthcoming chips for the desktop and notebook called Conroe and Merom. These are expected in July and August, but we all know about delays that can be involved. The 5100, will be shipped at speeds up to 3.0Ghz, with 1333Mhz front side bus and 4 MB of shared L2 cache. The chips are compatible with the current Bensley Platform, which means that they can be dropped in with the current pin format. The platform uses faster and more reliable memory technology, FB-DIMMs, Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Active Server Manager and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology.

"Simply put, the Core micro-architecture is a technical marvel that is driving a new era of power efficiency without compromising on what can only be described as eye-popping dual-core 64-bit performance," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of IntelÂ?s Digital Enterprise Group.

Pricing will start at $209 to $851 in 1000 unit quantities, and Intel expect the family of processors to be the fastest-ramping ever. However, they are still loosing ground to the AMD range of processors, and are aiming to rectify things with Woodcrest, Merom and Conroe.

Intel is planning to deliver Woodcrest (the code-named successor to its Xeon server processor) this month, and sources at Apple confirm a July release the first Intel-based Xserve.

In the meantime, Apple's Power Mac systems are making the transition to Intel processors with the Core 2 Duo which has been code-named Conroe.  Intel is planning to make these processors available in July as well. Industry scuttlebutt has it that new pro systems will come out in conjunction with Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, which takes place in early August.

If Apple follows through, it would not be the first time its Xserve has outdone the Power Mac performance-wise.  Apple started started shipping Xserve units with 2.3GHz Power PC G5 processors on the sly when the Power Mac still topped out at 2GHz.

On a related topic, Intel sources report that Merom, the laptop-friendly version of the Core 2 Duo, is still planned for an August release. A new MacBook Pro may arrive soon afterwards, depending on when Apple to install the new chip in its products.