The new cooling design is is radical and looks great, and might be a real revolution that only apple can use patents
but something on the spec of the machine tells my that either the machine is thermally limited by its own cooling capability or the ivybridge cpu non contact soldered IHS is causing issues thermally, how do I know this when I theyre not even out yet well look at the spec for the two models on apples site >
thermal limitations between models on new mac pro
notice how the hex core model has to drop 200 megahertz per core in speed from the quad core machines so effectively your loosing 1.2ghz of power over all the cores, compared to the quad core ? this to me implies its been clocked down so as to prevent high temps and high fan speeds when at the same clock speed ? ie thermally the system cant handle running 6 cores at the same clock speed as the 4 core, it just cant dissipate that heat fast enough from 6 cores at 3.7ghz without becoming noisy ? this is usual with apple in the sense, they limit fan speeds and clock speeds whilst having higher acceptable temp envelopes for more quietness, versus performance on systems with limited cooling, even then my suspicion would be that they as per usual they will prefer to run the SMC BGA CPU and GPU cores at higher temps for quietnesses sake. Compared to say a person who watercooled their PC whos looking for idle temps from 30 to 40 degrees on most components for longevity and overclock-ability headrooms sake, but since sandy bridge intel have screwed us over on getting close to 5ghz with bad IHS soldering methods. on their CPU’s in general even though the silicon sufficiently cooled can do it.
Admittedly its harder to remove heat from more cores on the same die but still … it aint great. On a PC you can upgrade the cooling since this design is centered round the cooling from a design perspective theres little you can do to upgrade it.