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I wondered for years why Macs always had low clocked CPUs compared w/ PCs. But is there any evidence to support that high clock speeds decrease the life of notebooks and AIOs?

I did notice one thing on the PC side of things, if you're not gaming and just doing basic productivity clock speed will mean very little. This may also explain why Macs aren't gaming platforms (although now you have the occasional title you get from EA or id software)

Just thought I'd make a discussion out of it.

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Macs have had lower clocked CPU's because Apple uses Mobile parts in their Desktop systems (Mac Mini, iMac) only the Mac Pro uses real desktop class processors and those are XEON's which cost a lot of money (4x more in some cases then a similar clocked consumer chip from the same architecture).

And the reason Apple has used so many Mobile CPU's in its desktop systems is because they have a lower TDP and a higher PPW which basically means they use less power and for each bit of power they get they really make it count. Apple like to make computers that are very thin, small and quiet and to do that you need a CPU that runs cool and doesn't take a lot of power.

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Macs have had lower clocked CPU's because Apple uses Mobile parts in their Desktop systems (Mac Mini, iMac) only the Mac Pro uses real desktop class processors and those are XEON's which cost a lot of money (4x more in some cases then a similar clocked consumer chip from the same architecture).

And the reason Apple has used so many Mobile CPU's in its desktop systems is because they have a lower TDP and a higher PPW which basically means they use less power and for each bit of power they get they really make it count. Apple like to make computers that are very thin, small and quiet and to do that you need a CPU that runs cool and doesn't take a lot of power.

You make it sound so sexy. :laugh:

I'm all for being energy efficient and quiet computing. IMO that just sounds like Apple has the right idea in making a computer to begin with, It's making every bit of the computer working more for the consumer in other areas.

Next year I'll be deciding between a Macbook Pro,an iMac or a PC, I'm leaning toward the Mac because I'm liking the way OS X does its widgets (it just seems natural and seamless) among the use of screen real estate.

btw Even the XEONs are clocked low; 2.26Ghz (I haven't used a Xeon before so I don't know what performance yield I'd see)

edit: I just realized that's for the octa-core model.

Edited by Providence.
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Previously Apple used PowerPC processors which were entirely different from x86 processors. Now that they're using Intel processors, clock speeds are comparable to Windows/Linux computers. The general trend with processors nowadays is towards more cores/more efficiency and less clock speed; it's why you don't see 4 or 5 Ghz CPUs.

Other than that, yeah, if you take two processors that are otherwise the same but have different clock speeds, the one with the higher clock speed will produce more heat. More heat means more wasted energy, which is bad when you're trying to run a computer off a battery. However, having hot-running computer isn't really going to affect longevity as long as it's not overheating.

I'm all for being energy efficient and quiet computing. IMO that just sounds like Apple has the right idea in making a computer to begin with, It's making every bit of the computer working more for the consumer in other areas.

My MacBook Pro is regularly hot to the touch and the (noisy) fans kick in regularly. They're not all they're made out to be.

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btw Even the XEONs are clocked low; 2.26Ghz (I haven't used a Xeon before so I don't know what performance yield I'd see)

edit: I just realized that's for the octa-core model.

As I said in my first post XEON's cost a lot of money. Sometimes 4x the cost of a consumer processor. The only reason that Apple start the Mac Pro off at 2.26GHz is due to the cost of the XEON processors. For a 2.93GHz XEON it is $1,400 USD. Compared to for example a Core i7 940 which is also 2.93GHz at $510 USD. Both of these processors are based on the same architecture and perform pretty much identically except the XEON is designed for a Dual or Quad socket system whilst the Core i7 is for single socket systems (Which is why it is so much cheaper).

To compare the Mac Pro XEON clock speeds you have to compare it to other XEON machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo. If you did so you would find that Apple ship the exact same processors at the exact same clock speeds. Apple however do not have a Core i7 consumer system. It's either Mobile Core 2 Duos or XEONs.

My MacBook Pro is regularly hot to the touch and the (noisy) fans kick in regularly. They're not all they're made out to be.

Do you have one of the old classic designed MacBook Pros? My 17" Unibody idles at 48c and isn't even warm to the touch. Positively cold and completely silent. I run it on the 9400m when I turn on the 9600GT the temperature rises to 60c idle

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To compare the Mac Pro XEON clock speeds you have to compare it to other XEON machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo. If you did so you would find that Apple ship the exact same processors at the exact same clock speeds. Apple however do not have a Core i7 consumer system. It's either Mobile Core 2 Duos or XEONs.

True. That and you have QPI and SMT which I completely disregarded.

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The new Nehalem Xeon's (which Apple uses in the Mac Pro and Xserve) also do some powersaving magic. If your computer or server (being a Mac, Lenovo, Sun or whatever) is not doing much (like playing solitaire) it throttles back to just one core and a lower speed. Power-/heatsaving is something that will become more important since the costs for power and cooling is increasing. It's a way of managing datacentre costs as well as saving the environment (what actually is not saving but just reducing the mess we already made). The other thing would be the MHz myth (nowadays it's more the GHz myth :p), you don't need a lot of MHz to be fast, if you're very efficient you can do with a lot less MHz. The industry is already making and selling such cpu's and Apple as well as others are using those cpu's.

So yes, today it's really all about how you use every clockcycle, it's about efficiency which leads to things as less heat, less power and more powerful machines. Software can help and that's what Grand Central is for (make multithreading easy to implement so the machine is used to it's full power).

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That quote is about multi core CPU's in general, not a policy Apple have with underclocking their systems (which they don't)

There's a reason the entire industry is moving towards multi-core systems, and that's because you can build them simpler and get better performance out of them (even if all your apps are single threaded, you aren't only ever running one at a time, you'll have like 50 open at one point)

And a simpler chip can run on less power, and less power means less heat, some old CPU's ran as hot as a nuclear reactor (relative with size, you've got something a few centimetres large putting out 80c of heat)

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