Alleged quad processor Mactel

[bbloke]

I just came across this, and thought others might be curious too...

MacBidouille (in English) has posted screenshots alleged to come from a quad processor Intel-based Mac, which uses hyperthreading, and 8 "processors" are seen.

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2005-10-10/#4588

[Mikuro]

Interesting. I don't understand where the 8 comes from, though. Are these supposed to be dual-core chips? I've been drooling over the idea of dual-dualies, but QUAD-dualies...whoah.

I guess it's not too far-fetched, though. I always figured Apple probably would offer quads if was ever NOT a shortage of chips. With Intel that shouldn't be much of a problem.

[NarutoSasuke]

Well with all the news at Tom's Hardware, I can't see Intel doing that just yet, they just released Paxville (dual-core) yesterday which is only for servers and the Conroe processor achictecture is coming out in 2006 2nd quarter, which should be when the Mac's should start putting them in. That's going to be exciting!! Imagine a 2.8-3.4 GHZ processor with a shorter pipeline than even the IBM Power PC archictecture and plus a 2x2 or 4x2 MB L2 cache which will really benefit when it comes to video encoding. I know Intel is coming out with Quad-core, but not until a while and they'd hit the server market first. However, shouldn't Mac computer prices go down since Intel produces processors in such a mass quantity?

[Lt Major Burns]

Interesting. I don't understand where the 8 comes from, though. Are these supposed to be dual-core chips? I've been drooling over the idea of dual-dualies, but QUAD-dualies...whoah.

I guess it's not too far-fetched, though. I always figured Apple probably would offer quads if was ever NOT a shortage of chips. With Intel that shouldn't be much of a problem.

the 8 comes from the hyperthreading. hyperthreading is allowing effectively two processes on the same core, at the same time, sort of. it;s not quite dual core, but it's nearly there. it feels, and works like two processors. so if you have dual, dual-core hyper-threaded pentiums, you effectively have 8 logical cpu's under the bonnet. logical, not physical. there would still be only 4 physical cores working.

it's still boggling. if say, quicktime encoding was able to take into account 8 processors effectively, we could see video encoding times quartered.

[Captain Code]

Hyperthreading makes some things faster, but other things slower as well.

[fryke]

Yes. This is probably "just" a quad-xeon running the hacked 10.4.1 build. Why should it _not_ run on such a machine... Doesn't mean Apple would ever release such a beast though. Must make market sense.

[Veljo]

Either way I still really hope the Power Mac keeps dual processors, I think that would be awesome. The only time I'd see it ok to go to single would be if Apple adopted dual cores or something similar.

Still though, I think the biggest thing that needs to change is the price. The top of the line Power Mac is $4699 in AU dollars, _WITHOUT_ a monitor. A top of the line PC _WITH_ a monitor is around $2999, so you can see why only die-hard fans would ever touch a Power Mac.

[Lt Major Burns]

my machine was £2000. and that's with a cinema display.