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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

eames posted:

Yeah, I just realized that. For a second I thought it’s a pure CPU benchmark but that wouldn’t make any sense at all looking at the scores and CPUs. :downs:

If those MBAs were plugged in, then they were probably turboing at an operating frequency much closer to the i7 in the MBP on the right. Also, the 2.67 GHz first-gen Core i7 mobile CPU has lower performance per clock and is a dual-core chip with a less-awesome Turbo Boost function and lower performance per clock.

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
16, 8 per side of the SoDIMM.

What are the MacOS memory management policies, anyway? Windows does a lot of ahead-of-need allocation and caching from disk, which means that more RAM is always a benefit even if marginally. Does MacOS do anything similar?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I haven't seen anyone punished for pimping their own sales, so I think this is okay? I'm selling my old mid-2007 Mac Mini (with upgrades) in SA Mart for $300. Link.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Bob Morales posted:

SATA III becomes more important when you're going to do RAID.

Why? Each SATA channel gets its own bandwidth. Unless you're talking an external box with a port multiplier.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

SourKraut posted:

I'm not quite sure you understand just how amazingly-sexy black Apple notebooks are. I really, really wish Apple still had them (even if just offered as BTO at an additional cost).

They're aluminum, right? Strip 'em down and re-anodize 'em.

... Suddenly I want a blue Macbook Air more than I have ever wanted any computer in my life. (e: ^^^ posted from my ThinkPad, at that)

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

ColorWare's got you covered.

Welp, that's right out of my price range.

:negative:

How can I make $2400 fast? Difficulty: I'm just starting law school. Anyone need blood? A lot of blood?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Ganon posted:

Noooo.

It's in the top 25 and I have a T14 transfer solicitation for 2L. I knew what I was getting into. I'm feeling okay about it. I mean, I've got a blue Macbook Air waiting on the other side. :v:

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Choadmaster posted:

Yeah, the same TV and HDMI cable that worked fine with my old G4 Mini, and my 2009 Mini, and this 2010 Mini for past nine months.

:bang:

I'm now waiting for it to kernel panic again whilst connected via my XBox's HDMI cable, then I will call corporate and ask for a replacement.

Believe it or not, I had an HDMI cable give my Windows PC huge weird errors and even a bluescreen after I accidentally crimped it one day moving my desk. Swapped the cable and everything went back to absolutely fine.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

MaverickEX posted:

Hmm. So what'd be a good alternative to a Mac Pro, if we're never gonna see another? Building a Hackintosh seems like more than I want to do, but I'd like to have a robust machine for my own development work.

If Apple drops the Pro, it looks like the options might be fairly bare:

1) Just get an iMac. If the workload demands and allows, use a render farm for heavy lifting. Definitely doesn't work for everyone.

2) Hackintosh, but compatibility might be spotty or even lovely if there's no official Patsburg/SNB-E support. Obviously subpar.

3) Transition to Windows or Linux workstations from Dell, Lenovo, some other vendor, or even whitebox workstations. Obviously kinda sucks if you've got a platform investment in OSX of any kind.

But I think the writing has been on the wall for a while that Apple has been focusing on consumer hardware/software/services and finding a lot of money in it. The Apple ecosystem really works best as a consumer money siphon. A workstation doesn't print cash the way an iOS device does. Even if the workstations are profitable, it may just be more profitable to focus on other things.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Fayk posted:

What about high end iMacs? They might not match what a super duper new Mac Pro would do, but I'm pretty sure the 8-core ones etc would be competitive, and I don't think the high end ones are still mobile chipsets.

As someone who owns a (few years old, but was upper-mid range model at the time) Mac Pro, they've never aggressively had the TOP END video cards really. I even upgraded to one of the later ones -w hich was lagging behind Windows equivalents (price:performance).

I'm not a video professional though!

The high end iMacs aren't 8-core, they're 4-core with hyperthreading. Mac Pros are 12-core with hyperthreading, a full 24 logical processors. A top-end SNB-E update would be 16-core with hyperthreading, 32 logical processors. That's four times the CPU of an iMac. Hell of a difference.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Binary Badger posted:

I just wish Apple would go back to discrete-only GPUs. And maybe giving us nVidia or ATI chips again? Can't understand why they jigger the entire system into offloading all graphics work including the GUI to the GPU (brilliant) and then start using GPUs from a company that hasn't figured how to make good ones yet (retarded).

You'd prefer ATI over AMD? AMD bought ATI in 2006.

As for why Apple would use both the Intel IGP and a discrete chip, the answer is really, really simple: better battery life without sacrificing the option of more horsepower.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Nope. Those only go to single-link DVI, which maxes out at 1920x resolutions.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Can he wait until Monday? That's when at least quad core and ULV Ivy Bridge parts are being released.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

canada jezus posted:

This monday the 23th? I thought that was still a week and yeah i think so. I've been hounding him to wait but its deadline time and i don't really know how much work he has to do still. Also we don't have an official apple store in the country just various resellers.

Well, no guarantee that MBPs will get refreshed right when the CPUs come out, but yet, Ivy Bridge drops this Monday.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Are you driving it as an independent display? If you're cloning the Macbook's display, you'd be limited to Macbook's maximum resolution.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
What refresh rate are you working with, 60 Hz? If it's much higher than that, you might be up against the adapter's signal limits; in that case, dropping the refresh rate should open up higher resolutions.

Er... I just Googled around a bit, and this seems to be a moderately common issue. Some folks have reported that Apple support told them it's not something they were going to fix, either, given the outdatedness of VGA.

I'd wait for someone else to chime in. I'm not so hot on troubleshooting Macs, and this doesn't seem like something easy.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
And for you, there's the Macbook Air.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Depends on the workload. Sometimes it's a tad slower, sometimes it's about 30% faster. But hyperthreading is definitely not a replacement for more actual cores.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
E: Never mind, this is a dumb derail.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Get a third Thunderbolt device and stick it between the TB display and the DP display. Macworld did it.

Argali posted:

One more question - I have a 2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac that I bought new five years ago now I think. Is it possible to replace this thing's 250 GB hard drive with something larger? If so, what do you recommend, brand-wise and model?

It is, it just takes a standard 2.5" laptop drive. A Western Digital Scorpio Black would be a good choice, and you can get a 320GB, 500GB, or 750GB drive. If you want to go balls-to-the-wall on speed, get a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB drive - it includes some SSD caching on the drive that works automatically.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 16:06 on May 29, 2012

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Oh nuts, I misread as Mac Mini. :doh:

The 750GB Momentus drive sucks very few balls. It's the 500GB one that really gargles. But for an iMac, yeah, desktop drives. Western Digital, Seagate, and those are really the only major players (yay duopoly).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
All hard drives fail at roughly equal rates. A lot of people go through a drive failure, buy another guy's drive, and when it doesn't fail they assume the problem was the manufacturer and not that hard drives just fail.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

You Am I posted:

Showed or released? Cos it is one thing to show the product, but no release date...

For sale in Asia, Engadget says a few weeks for the US.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Lexicon posted:

Wow, ok, big difference. So why haven't other manufacturers of displays and laptops moved en mass to MDP, especially when Apple made the spec widely available? It's been out for years at this point.

There's more consumer call for HDMI and DVI, and mDP has only been a part of the official DP spec since DP 1.2, which is only supported by the Radeon 6000 and 7000 series and GeForce 600 series (most of which use mDP liberally). Additionally, for the few models with full-size DP ports, why not wait for Thunderbolt to re-engineer them? DP models are fairly high-end anyway, so they're good candidates for TB, so why spend engineering resources to sell something only for a few months between mDP becoming official and TB replacing it?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Sounds like Ivy Bridge E, with a few months for volume availability of IVB-E Xeons.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
If you check the photo gallery in that article, it looks like the UI elements are just double sized, as every resolution is doubled and then scaled to the panel (e.g. "1920x1200" is a 3840x2400 screenshot).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Ziploc posted:

Anyone have dimension comparisons between the current 15 and 13 inch MBPs?

It still says 15.4inch diagonal screen right? Since it's taller at 4:3 doesn't that mean it's not as wide as a 15inch MBP?

Where are people getting the idea that it's a 4:3 screen? It's 16:10 with 16:10 resolutions.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Bad driver? Failing hardware? Rubbed your testicles too vigorously on the vents and clogged the fan with a pube?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Depends on the task. The newer kit will be mostly better, otherwise competitive, and will completely annihilate on certain specialized tasks (like AES encryption).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Plus NAND doesn't get slower as its write cycles get used up. It just stops working.

For typical consumer workloads, you're looking at literally a decade of heavy desktop use (downloading games, installing programs, shuffing movie files around, etc.) before a modern drive from a good manufacturer kicks the bucket.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
It was patched for LAA/PAE at 1.3.10 and so can use 4GB all by itself, actually. 2GB is the maximum for 32-bit software without LAA/PAE (almost all games and 32-bit software), and 4GB is the limit for 32-bit software with LAA/PAE support (Skyrim, 32-bit Adobe software, maybe a few other things).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Get a GeForce 670 instead. A 580 would have to pretty much be the one and only expansion card in order not to overtax the power supply. A 670 is faster and quieter and priced similarly anyway.

I know people have definitely used them in the Hack thread.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
The system is rendering 9.2 megapixels at 60 frames per second and then scaling that to 2880x1800. That's an incredible amount of work, more single-screen work than any current-gen GPU is designed for (never mind the fact that it has to run on Intel HD 4000), and far more than a piddling 3 megapixel, non-scaled iPad. And without machines like the MBPR, there never would be a GPU designed for resolutions like that until 4K cinema started hitting consumer price points in, oh, 2021.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
For a bit more detail, you don't even have to drain it all at once. 100% worth of draining per month is fine, even if it's 10% per day across ten days.

Actually, not draining the battery fully each charge cycle is a bit less wear than spreading it out is, even.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

chupacabraTERROR posted:

Rumors have it that Apple will be launching a 13in Retina Macbook Pro sometime in the Fall. They say it will have integrated graphics. Can someone who understands these things a little better than I do shed some light on how well an integrated graphics chip will be able to push so many pixels? Tech blogs seem to indicate the HD4000 is a big jump over the HD3000, so maybe games would be possible? I really only play Civ5. I just think the 15in is too big for me.

I had a Mac Mini running an HD3000 integrated graphics chip and was able to do two 1900x1200 monitors (4.56m pixels) under normal conditions easily, though games were a no-go. A retina 13in screen, if they use the Air's 13in resolution of 1440x900 but make it retina, would have 5.18m pixels. Without any technical knowledge of how these integrated GPUs work, it seems like the difference of .5m pixels shouldn't be too big of a deal. Someone with some technical knowledge please shed some light~

GPU performance scaling doesn't directly line up with the number of pixels rendered for all workloads. For just rendering a desktop, you'd have to go way over 5 megapixels to have any performance issues. People (even ITT, I think) have run an MBPR with two Thunderbolt displays (~12.5 megapixels) with no change in user experience.

Where the MBPR is somewhat infamously cocking up is that the scaling options for non-native resolution involve an Apple-custom scaling algorithm that runs on the CPU. Native GPU-based scaling wasn't high enough quality for them, and for whatever reason they didn't implement the custom scaling as a GPGPU program.

Gaming is another story. Game scenes are much more difficult to render than a desktop, because you have a lot more going on that requires processing. Long story short, with modern games, HD 4000 is indeed a huge upgrade from HD 3000, but it's still a low-end, low-resolution, low-detail gaming GPU. It's just too limited in execution resources and memory bandwidth to shuffle around a modern video game's large amounts of textures and geometry. Even the GeForce 650M is decidedly midrange. On a 1920x screen, Thunderbolt display, or Retina screen, you will always have to pick a smaller-than-native resolution and/or lower details to rock bottom in order to play with acceptable framerates.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

greatZebu posted:

According to anandtech's review, Apple's custom scalers run on the GPU (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/7). Typically, resolution scaling happens in fixed-function hardware, so even a custom GPU implementation is slower than the default scaling.

Huh. Why is it pegging CPU cores when scrolling, then?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

penneydude posted:

The MBPr also has an IPS panel, which is nice if you're dealing with stuff that needs decent color-correctness and contrast ratios (which is assumed for designers) and you don't have an external monitor.

Quick correction: the 1680x1050 high-res 15" display has a better color gamut (full sRGB plus a bit, vs. a bit under sRGB) and slightly better calibrated delta-E (though MBPR is still better-than-the-eye-can-see good). The MBPR's contrast is indeed better, though.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

a bad poster yall posted:

This is slightly upsetting.

That a processor running at half the electricity and 70% the clock rate only performs at parity?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
The hardware is expensive, and it's difficult to write proper hot-plug drivers since PCIe is not a hot-plug interface by itself. Compare that to slapping down a $5 plug and interface designed for hot-swap which your engineers have been hooking up and writing drivers for for years.

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Shaocaholica posted:

Why did some older Mac video cards come with the ADC connector? Was it for USB data and video only? Surely they didn't actually pipe power through the video card to power the display did they?

They sure did, 100W of it. The cards had an extra batch of pins near the slot hole for additional power. The only reason Apple stopped was that the 30" Cinema Display needed more than 100W.

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