[icegreentea]

In general, the MacPro loses out in single-thread performance only, since Xeons are typically one architecture behind. When the Haswell based Xeons come out, Apple will refresh the Mac Pro line, and you'll get parity single-thread performance.

[smackfu]

Except that the consumer lines will have moved on by then.

[seabrookmx]

Do we know that though? Historically speaking, the Mac Pro doesn't get updated nearly as often as Intel releases a new architecture.

[rsynnott]

It actually did for a long time; then they skipped a few iterations. Maybe they'll do that again, maybe they won't; we'll see.

[sliverstorm]

What are the odds the Haswell Xeons will use the same socket as the current Xeons?

[wmf]

Zero since Haswell-EP uses DDR4.

[duskwuff]

That being said, I wonder what the chances are that Apple will use the same socket for the Haswell-EP CPU daughterboard. Is there anything obvious that'd prevent them from doing that (e.g, chipset compatibility)?

[wmf]

Yes, I would expect the system design to stay as similar as possible for the next five years or so.