Re: Working Over the weekend... NOW: Back to Mac Pro speculation

[Jeremy Garchow] "I was wondering if I was missing something. It's pretty much just speed bumps, and maybe a GPU update? I can't remember. There's also some more movement in that sector. The jump from Core Duo, to Core 2 Duo, to quad core. But maybe I am missing something crucial!"

You're not. Your comment prompted me to look back at the minor bumps, and they do tend to be CPU bumps. Maybe during the Core2Duo era there was a GPU bump or two since it went on so long. But as far as I can tell, architectural leaps in recent Macs like 6G SATA or higher bandwidth RAM is almost always tied to major CPU generational shifts. This is no doubt a byproduct of Intel revving the rest of its components which Apple also makes extensive use of.

The one exception with the Mac Pro is GPUs. No other Mac has a GPU as a user-replacable card, and I have no idea what it is that keeps AMD and NVIDIA from shipping drivers for OS X on more of their products. The work isn't worth the tiny market share? Do they only do it when Apple subsidizes it? Whatever it is, the GPU gap on Mac Pros vs generic PC towers really sucks. Lots of other card OEMs don't bother writing OS X drivers either, despite maintaining various Linux and Unix drivers.

Best,
Andy