If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.
It's safer (faster?) to have them horizontal, isn't it? Or is that only ODDs…
I just want internal storage because DARN if I'm going to be forced to look at third party USELESS CRAP multi-drive enclosures again.
It's safer (faster?) to have them horizontal, isn't it? Or is that only ODDs…
I just want internal storage because DARN if I'm going to be forced to look at third party USELESS CRAP multi-drive enclosures again.
I'm right there with you, not wanting 3rd party solutions. But considering the slow speed of HDD and the vast amount of data 'some pros' need access to, they just might make you use an external box.
The HDD's can be putt perpendicular since the did that in the Xserve RAID, like many others still do. Of course, those were usually placed in a server room, airco and all that. So my 'design' only holds water if they come up with a new innovative cooling system. Something they keep on tinkering with (9 fans, water cooled CPU's...)
I recently built a workstation for my neighbor. He's a graphics and video guru with his own small firm and wanted to start using a Nvidia Tesla to help speed up his render times. He's a Mac guy predominately but the Mac Pro doesn't support the Tesla or multiple graphics cards for that matter (yes even in 2013). It's been a long time since I built a machine from scratch but what I found out quickly is that even with top notch hardware I was able to build a machine that was significantly faster and cheaper then the Mac Pro. Apple Quoted us 8,000 for the system that kind of came close to what he wanted. We built a machine for 7,200 (without the three Tesla cards) and got 32 cores vs.16 cores. We opted for the new Opteron 6300 series which is a quarter of the cost of Intels newest Xeon 8 core chip the E5-4650 which costs a whopping 3,800 per chip. The AMD cost's 800 and is only marginally slower then the Intel offering but is much, much faster then the current Intel Xeon E-5675 found in the high end Mac Pro. We added 32 GB of faster ram found in the Mac Pro with lower latency, 4 1GB SAS drives at 15,000 RPM's vs 7,200, a Quadro K5000 graphics card (which by the way is friggen awesome) VS. the older Nvidia 5870 game card, a Adaptic SAS raid card, a SuperMicro SuperChasis (which is one of the best cases for workstations) with two 1800W power supply for redundancy. I bought the 3 Tesla S1070 cards for 300 a piece from Ebay. Total package deal was 8,100, a super computer in every righ. We built a Nvidia Maximus system basically, I have never seen a faster computer in my life, it renders things in Adobe Effects in matter of minutes where it would take my Macbook Pro almost an hour to do.
The moral of the story is though I love OSX and can't imagine using another OS in my workstation there just aren't enough advantages of buying a Mac Pro to make it a good investment. Apple has pretty much transitioned over to a consumer company with the them abandoning their server line, discontinuing many professional apps and stripping the others down to the point of why bother status. A person would probably be better served with buying a much cheaper iMac and then building a headless render machine. With Adobe supporting distributed computing clustering now and the Tesla cards not having to be on the host machine it might be a better and cheaper solution for graphic houses who seem to be the last people buying the Mac Pro anyway. Just food for thought, I just wish I had 8,000 to build a Nvidia Maximus system, man those things are cool. I am also happy to report that my friend has had zero issues with the build. The only complaints he has is it is to fast, things are done so quickly he finds himself clicking on a job twice thinking the command was never sent in the first place. Now that's computing. This was not written to bring any ill thoughts towards Apple as I have purchased my fair share of II FX's, Quadros and Mac Pros over the years but I think at this point Apple is just making these things as some sort of obligation it might have with Universities. I just can't imagine a firm would find value in these anymore.
It's safer (faster?) to have them horizontal, isn't it? Or is that only ODDs…
The setups I've seen on the sites pitching them, the 3.5" drives are mounted width for length, the length of the 3.5" drive for the width of the 5.25" bay. So the drives are still horizontal but reoriented to fit more drives in.
I recently built a workstation for my neighbor. He's a graphics and video guru with his own small firm and wanted to start using a Nvidia Tesla to help speed up his render times. He's a Mac guy predominately but the Mac Pro doesn't support the Tesla or multiple graphics cards for that matter (yes even in 2013).
The Mac Pro can support two graphics cards. It is even a BTO option.
The Mac Pro can support two graphics cards. It is even a BTO option.
Doesn't combine them, which is what they're after.
Not like SLI/CrossFire combine, but… actually, yeah, that's exactly what it's like, except not for games. That's what Relic wants (but does either manufacturer offer a solution like that for non-gaming purposes?).
Wake up! Seriously electronics have shrunken considerably since the Mac Pro chassis has come out.
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer. PCI expansion however can't go to external boxes with today's technology.
This is regressive thinking or frankly looking to the distant past. Even recent Mac Pros suffer from excessive space that does nothing for the platform.
Nonsense. You're saying that if you buy a Mac Pro today and max it out with 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards that there's excess space?
No, there isn't. The space is to allow proper cooling.
As I said, if Apple moves to SSDs, reduces the number of PCI cards and deletes the Superdrive it can shrink.
But saying the current case is big for no reason is incorrect. It is properly sized for what it's built to do.
It is a common mis conception that lots of space leads to proper cooling. Cooling is an engineering problem where you often get your best results by channeling air flow across the hot parts. Lots of free space in a machine like the Mac Pro can and does lead to hot spots.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
Nonsense. You're saying that if you buy a Mac Pro today and max it out with 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards that there's excess space?
No, there isn't. The space is to allow proper cooling.
As I said, if Apple moves to SSDs, reduces the number of PCI cards and deletes the Superdrive it can shrink.
But saying the current case is big for no reason is incorrect. It is properly sized for what it's built to do.
I really don't buy this idea at all. The Mac Pro was sized to handle Power PC processors that where extremely hot chips relative to what currently ships in the platform thus requiring extensive cooling systems. Thus the case is now big due to legacy issues or for no reason at all.
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only. Partnership with a company that makes a successor to the Xserve RAID
First 1100 go to project System Y.
SSD only makes little sense in this kind of setup. Have you looked at the price of ssds appropriate for large scale raid use? Typically if you're going to build a 20TB Raid with striped parity (not sure how well Raid 10 would work and a 0 is too volatile with large numbers of disks, especially without some kind of failover setup in place), you'd generally stick to enterprise grade drives. They use different firmware timings. SSDs are made for enterprise use, but they tend to be cost prohibitive, and when you're stacking up a bunch of disks, you can saturate the available bandwidth with HDDs. At that point why would you drop many thousands more on SSDs?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Q… QUAD-socket? As in the… crap, what were they called… I'll find it.
The ones that start at $1,000 per chip. You really want Apple to use those?! The board has to be huge, too…
I agree with everything but drives, UNLESS Apple starts making an XServe RAID equivalent again. I like the Mac Pro because of its ludicrously simple and Apple-approved expansion.
The XServe never went past dual cpu packages any more than any other model. People sometimes confuse the mac pro with what is referred to as "big iron", which wouldn't have anywhere near the level of one man shop ownership that has been seen with prior mac pros. Obviously those make sense in some server types. When I've looked at workloads typical to mac pros where individuals or companies have tried to keep things that drift into server like usage patterns in one box as much as possible, it seems to come down to things like data bandwidth constraints and software licensing costs. Video and rendering come up frequently enough, and I'm partly at fault for that. In that context some software can distribute calculations, but it can mean shifting around GB of data. The other problem is that licensing and interdependencies don't always allow this box to do one set of frames and this box to do another or you run into the issue of shifting a lot of data around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Yes. I wouldn't mind if the MP became more expensive. I don't think anyone would mind; you buy what you need, the cost is irrelevant. Well, that not something you'd hear in Business School, but you catch my drift. Besides, aren't the current CPU's something like $800 a piece already.
If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.
It's not a very forward thinking way to deal with the problem, and I don't think many businesses would trust Apple there. When you say $800 a piece, you're thinking of those in the dual package models. The Sandy Bridge equivalent would be E5-26XX variants. The single tops out at $600 cpus. For comparison the 2.3 quad mini uses a cpu that's listed at $378 Obviously that lacks an additional discrete graphics chip to add to the cost. The 2.6 costs the same. The 2.7 offered cto in macbook pros has a recommended customer pricing (the standard I've been using) of $568. I chose specific examples but not so much to be biased. I wanted to show that there is a range to it. The main options used by Apple rarely go far north of the $300 barrier. On the mini this year, while I don't think it's an amazing value, the middle one took on a more seemingly more expensive cpu when it dropped the gpu (unless I just misread launch cpu pricing somewhere).
In terms of buying what you need, the companies (and a few individuals) that need quad socket servers haven't filled these requirements with Macs. Even for them, cost is not entirely elastic. You jump to such a solution if it makes sense in spite of the sharp price increase. Keep in mind many of these are far more than $800. The E5-4650 is listed at $3620. Intel is reasonably consistent in their naming conventions within a given Xeon lineup. Typical XX50 means mid range relative to that specific line. Note the E5-2650. That still allows for 2 cpus and 80 PCI lanes. Here is something similar in pricing to what is used in the current single mac pro at the $3000 price point. The W3680 that is used now started off higher in price, but it came out in 2010.
It is a common mis conception that lots of space leads to proper cooling. Cooling is an engineering problem where you often get your best results by channeling air flow across the hot parts. Lots of free space in a machine like the Mac Pro can and does lead to hot spots.
In a general sense, that can be true, but I don't think it is of the Mac Pro. I don't think damaging hot spots happens with the Mac Pro given the air channeling it does, and with each channel having its own separate thermostat-controlled fan.
I really don't buy this idea at all. The Mac Pro was sized to handle Power PC processors that where extremely hot chips relative to what currently ships in the platform thus requiring extensive cooling systems. Thus the case is now big due to legacy issues or for no reason at all.
Why is it that I have several Intel workstations of varying vintages that are just as large as a Mac Pro, then? Compaq SP750, W8000, HP XW8200 are about the same size. HP's current Z820 is almost exactly the same dimensions. Granted, the Z820 can be stuffed with a few more things, but Mac Pro does have a slightly different focus of being a very quiet commercial workstation. A slow flow of a large cross-section of air can move just as much heat, quieter, than a high flow of a smaller cross-section of air. And the typically larger fans don't have to spin as fast.
I don't know what would be involved on a technical level, but I'd be happy if the next Mac Pro could accept regular graphics cards. As opposed to needing the super secret, double special Apple versions of graphics cards.
Obviously this would only work for cards where Mac drivers are available. Still, it would be nice to put any 5770 (or whatever) in, instead of needing the special version. Now that even PCs are abandoning BIOS, it seems like it should be possible.
I really don't buy this idea at all. The Mac Pro was sized to handle Power PC processors that where extremely hot chips relative to what currently ships in the platform thus requiring extensive cooling systems. Thus the case is now big due to legacy issues or for no reason at all.
Yes, and when they went Intel they doubled the number of HDD's. The case if fine as it is, it is a proven design, adopted by many manufactures. What is the problem.
SSD only makes little sense in this kind of setup. Have you looked at the price of ssds appropriate for large scale raid use? Typically if you're going to build a 20TB Raid with striped parity (not sure how well Raid 10 would work and a 0 is too volatile with large numbers of disks, especially without some kind of failover setup in place), you'd generally stick to enterprise grade drives. They use different firmware timings. SSDs are made for enterprise use, but they tend to be cost prohibitive, and when you're stacking up a bunch of disks, you can saturate the available bandwidth with HDDs. At that point why would you drop many thousands more on SSDs?
I was tinkering on the thought of putting 1 or 2 SSD's in the new MP and put all large data on external HDD's. I certainly wouldn't advise for Apple to put many TB's of SSD in the new model. That wouldn't make sense.
I think darkdefender has a light computer, not one weighing 41 pounds.
Yes I do... not only is it light... the fans are powered by a second AC line that's not connected to the PSU to minimize the stress and overall excel regular GPU and CPU performance. I can control the speed of the fan manually or let it work automatically. When I want it to be quiet I can change the voltage (high is faster, low is slower) on a switch in the bottom of the power brick. It's perfect.
I don't know what would be involved on a technical level, but I'd be happy if the next Mac Pro could accept regular graphics cards. As opposed to needing the super secret, double special Apple versions of graphics cards.
Obviously this would only work for cards where Mac drivers are available. Still, it would be nice to put any 5770 (or whatever) in, instead of needing the special version. Now that even PCs are abandoning BIOS, it seems like it should be possible.
I thought it was an issue of having full EFI support. It seems like that issue should be moot by now.
Well talking this in thought, they might have a TB of SSD which is very likely. This also leading to a 3TB HDD and 1/5 TB fusion drive option bringing flash to a higher point(over IMac options, with a whole lot of ram.
Then the Mac Pro is an admonition if I need to plug in a serial cable?
PS: I still need to use a serial cable every single day but I don't complain that entire machine is now a pointless piece of crap because I have to use a USB adapter to plug something in.
So why don't you buy a SATA PCIe card? You can get one for under $30.
So why don't you buy a SATA PCIe card? You can get one for under $30.
Because he's happy with his iMac? And not a nerdy nit picker?
I'm hoping the Mac Pro comes out this year. Hopefully 1st half 2013. Pro fans are long suffering. But they hang onto their machines by expanding the crap out of it. Goody for them. However, by the time they've done that...there's a new iMac that's eating 'more' of it's lunch every 3 years.
And comes with a £899 (according to Apple) screen included. The 680mx is 11th on the 'juicy' gpu chart. And 8 threads is plenty good via i7 for 3D.
Sure, you can buy a Pro from Apple that will be 3x faster on 3D? But you'll bend over for it. Just like I bent over for my BTO iMac...
The iMac is a work of art.
You don't need 'donkeys' or dinosaurs to do 'most' computing these days. The iPad is proof of that with its 9/10 computing platform for the rest of us in a way the Mac could never achieve. One gives way to the other.
Intel doesn't seem that bothered with workstation CPUs anymore. Doesn't seem to be in a race to get them out.
Maybe Apple could release a value workstation machine care of an AMD processor? *shrugs.
For many, an iMac is all the workstation you'll ever need.
Sure, people like their trucks. But there are far less of them...and not enough for Apple to break their neck to release one.
Pro sales are way below 100k and have been for a very, very, very long time.
Sure, Apple could try to democratise the Pro with pricing rational to what they had in the past. But they've become greedy b*stards over the years. Part of this is Intel pricing on Xeons.
But Apple don't need to have Xeons for an entry Pro. And they don't need to start at an eye watering £2000. Taking the p*ss and a joke. Add a studio display and it's £3k for a relic from the past.
And I love the Pro design.
But the last time I bought a pro tower was the Power Mac clone back in '97. £2k to get started. £1200 for the D2 monitor. £500 for 120 megs of extra ram. £400-500 for a 2D only gpu card. Don't get me started on the Adobe suite I bought...or the scanner...the A3 printer etc. Thousands upon thousands for what? It was overkill then. It's over kill now. Save for a rump of a pro market that Apple has long grown past.
The iMac covers 90% of that market, the consumer desktop market, the prosumer, the desktop, the photoshop, the 'moderate' 3D market, casual to mid gaming...all with a boutique design. Sales seems to indicate that Apple has it right. 1,000,000 iMacs vs what? 59k Pro macs? Vs 200k Mac Minis? The iMac is p*ssing over the pro's lunch. 8 out of 10 Apple cats prefer the iMac when it comes to desktops...
How long before we see a 6 or 8 or 10 core iMac in the next 5 years? How long before the next Thunderbolt port worthy of the name?
The Pro will be lucky if it sees one more revision...that will take it to 2016?
By then what's left of its lunch will be powned by iMac.
Comments
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.
It's safer (faster?) to have them horizontal, isn't it? Or is that only ODDs…
I just want internal storage because DARN if I'm going to be forced to look at third party USELESS CRAP multi-drive enclosures again.
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
The HDD's can be putt perpendicular since the did that in the Xserve RAID, like many others still do.
Well, I'm all for 14 hard drives inside any future Mac Pro I get.
Thrappa, thrappa, thrappa...
Lemon Bon Bon.
I recently built a workstation for my neighbor. He's a graphics and video guru with his own small firm and wanted to start using a Nvidia Tesla to help speed up his render times. He's a Mac guy predominately but the Mac Pro doesn't support the Tesla or multiple graphics cards for that matter (yes even in 2013). It's been a long time since I built a machine from scratch but what I found out quickly is that even with top notch hardware I was able to build a machine that was significantly faster and cheaper then the Mac Pro. Apple Quoted us 8,000 for the system that kind of came close to what he wanted. We built a machine for 7,200 (without the three Tesla cards) and got 32 cores vs.16 cores. We opted for the new Opteron 6300 series which is a quarter of the cost of Intels newest Xeon 8 core chip the E5-4650 which costs a whopping 3,800 per chip. The AMD cost's 800 and is only marginally slower then the Intel offering but is much, much faster then the current Intel Xeon E-5675 found in the high end Mac Pro. We added 32 GB of faster ram found in the Mac Pro with lower latency, 4 1GB SAS drives at 15,000 RPM's vs 7,200, a Quadro K5000 graphics card (which by the way is friggen awesome) VS. the older Nvidia 5870 game card, a Adaptic SAS raid card, a SuperMicro SuperChasis (which is one of the best cases for workstations) with two 1800W power supply for redundancy. I bought the 3 Tesla S1070 cards for 300 a piece from Ebay. Total package deal was 8,100, a super computer in every righ. We built a Nvidia Maximus system basically, I have never seen a faster computer in my life, it renders things in Adobe Effects in matter of minutes where it would take my Macbook Pro almost an hour to do.
The moral of the story is though I love OSX and can't imagine using another OS in my workstation there just aren't enough advantages of buying a Mac Pro to make it a good investment. Apple has pretty much transitioned over to a consumer company with the them abandoning their server line, discontinuing many professional apps and stripping the others down to the point of why bother status. A person would probably be better served with buying a much cheaper iMac and then building a headless render machine. With Adobe supporting distributed computing clustering now and the Tesla cards not having to be on the host machine it might be a better and cheaper solution for graphic houses who seem to be the last people buying the Mac Pro anyway. Just food for thought, I just wish I had 8,000 to build a Nvidia Maximus system, man those things are cool. I am also happy to report that my friend has had zero issues with the build. The only complaints he has is it is to fast, things are done so quickly he finds himself clicking on a job twice thinking the command was never sent in the first place. Now that's computing. This was not written to bring any ill thoughts towards Apple as I have purchased my fair share of II FX's, Quadros and Mac Pros over the years but I think at this point Apple is just making these things as some sort of obligation it might have with Universities. I just can't imagine a firm would find value in these anymore.
The setups I've seen on the sites pitching them, the 3.5" drives are mounted width for length, the length of the 3.5" drive for the width of the 5.25" bay. So the drives are still horizontal but reoriented to fit more drives in.
The Mac Pro can support two graphics cards. It is even a BTO option.
Originally Posted by JeffDM
The Mac Pro can support two graphics cards. It is even a BTO option.
Doesn't combine them, which is what they're after.
Not like SLI/CrossFire combine, but… actually, yeah, that's exactly what it's like, except not for games. That's what Relic wants (but does either manufacturer offer a solution like that for non-gaming purposes?).
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Wake up! Seriously electronics have shrunken considerably since the Mac Pro chassis has come out.
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer. PCI expansion however can't go to external boxes with today's technology.
This is regressive thinking or frankly looking to the distant past. Even recent Mac Pros suffer from excessive space that does nothing for the platform.
Nonsense. You're saying that if you buy a Mac Pro today and max it out with 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards that there's excess space?
No, there isn't. The space is to allow proper cooling.
As I said, if Apple moves to SSDs, reduces the number of PCI cards and deletes the Superdrive it can shrink.
But saying the current case is big for no reason is incorrect. It is properly sized for what it's built to do.
It is a common mis conception that lots of space leads to proper cooling. Cooling is an engineering problem where you often get your best results by channeling air flow across the hot parts. Lots of free space in a machine like the Mac Pro can and does lead to hot spots.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
Nonsense. You're saying that if you buy a Mac Pro today and max it out with 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards that there's excess space?
No, there isn't. The space is to allow proper cooling.
As I said, if Apple moves to SSDs, reduces the number of PCI cards and deletes the Superdrive it can shrink.
But saying the current case is big for no reason is incorrect. It is properly sized for what it's built to do.
I really don't buy this idea at all. The Mac Pro was sized to handle Power PC processors that where extremely hot chips relative to what currently ships in the platform thus requiring extensive cooling systems. Thus the case is now big due to legacy issues or for no reason at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only. Partnership with a company that makes a successor to the Xserve RAID
First 1100 go to project System Y.
SSD only makes little sense in this kind of setup. Have you looked at the price of ssds appropriate for large scale raid use? Typically if you're going to build a 20TB Raid with striped parity (not sure how well Raid 10 would work and a 0 is too volatile with large numbers of disks, especially without some kind of failover setup in place), you'd generally stick to enterprise grade drives. They use different firmware timings. SSDs are made for enterprise use, but they tend to be cost prohibitive, and when you're stacking up a bunch of disks, you can saturate the available bandwidth with HDDs. At that point why would you drop many thousands more on SSDs?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Q… QUAD-socket? As in the… crap, what were they called… I'll find it.
The ones that start at $1,000 per chip. You really want Apple to use those?! The board has to be huge, too…
I agree with everything but drives, UNLESS Apple starts making an XServe RAID equivalent again. I like the Mac Pro because of its ludicrously simple and Apple-approved expansion.
The XServe never went past dual cpu packages any more than any other model. People sometimes confuse the mac pro with what is referred to as "big iron", which wouldn't have anywhere near the level of one man shop ownership that has been seen with prior mac pros. Obviously those make sense in some server types. When I've looked at workloads typical to mac pros where individuals or companies have tried to keep things that drift into server like usage patterns in one box as much as possible, it seems to come down to things like data bandwidth constraints and software licensing costs. Video and rendering come up frequently enough, and I'm partly at fault for that. In that context some software can distribute calculations, but it can mean shifting around GB of data. The other problem is that licensing and interdependencies don't always allow this box to do one set of frames and this box to do another or you run into the issue of shifting a lot of data around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Yes. I wouldn't mind if the MP became more expensive. I don't think anyone would mind; you buy what you need, the cost is irrelevant. Well, that not something you'd hear in Business School, but you catch my drift. Besides, aren't the current CPU's something like $800 a piece already.
If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.
It's not a very forward thinking way to deal with the problem, and I don't think many businesses would trust Apple there. When you say $800 a piece, you're thinking of those in the dual package models. The Sandy Bridge equivalent would be E5-26XX variants. The single tops out at $600 cpus. For comparison the 2.3 quad mini uses a cpu that's listed at $378 Obviously that lacks an additional discrete graphics chip to add to the cost. The 2.6 costs the same. The 2.7 offered cto in macbook pros has a recommended customer pricing (the standard I've been using) of $568. I chose specific examples but not so much to be biased. I wanted to show that there is a range to it. The main options used by Apple rarely go far north of the $300 barrier. On the mini this year, while I don't think it's an amazing value, the middle one took on a more seemingly more expensive cpu when it dropped the gpu (unless I just misread launch cpu pricing somewhere).
In terms of buying what you need, the companies (and a few individuals) that need quad socket servers haven't filled these requirements with Macs. Even for them, cost is not entirely elastic. You jump to such a solution if it makes sense in spite of the sharp price increase. Keep in mind many of these are far more than $800. The E5-4650 is listed at $3620. Intel is reasonably consistent in their naming conventions within a given Xeon lineup. Typical XX50 means mid range relative to that specific line. Note the E5-2650. That still allows for 2 cpus and 80 PCI lanes. Here is something similar in pricing to what is used in the current single mac pro at the $3000 price point. The W3680 that is used now started off higher in price, but it came out in 2010.
In a general sense, that can be true, but I don't think it is of the Mac Pro. I don't think damaging hot spots happens with the Mac Pro given the air channeling it does, and with each channel having its own separate thermostat-controlled fan.
Why is it that I have several Intel workstations of varying vintages that are just as large as a Mac Pro, then? Compaq SP750, W8000, HP XW8200 are about the same size. HP's current Z820 is almost exactly the same dimensions. Granted, the Z820 can be stuffed with a few more things, but Mac Pro does have a slightly different focus of being a very quiet commercial workstation. A slow flow of a large cross-section of air can move just as much heat, quieter, than a high flow of a smaller cross-section of air. And the typically larger fans don't have to spin as fast.
I don't know what would be involved on a technical level, but I'd be happy if the next Mac Pro could accept regular graphics cards. As opposed to needing the super secret, double special Apple versions of graphics cards.
Obviously this would only work for cards where Mac drivers are available. Still, it would be nice to put any 5770 (or whatever) in, instead of needing the special version. Now that even PCs are abandoning BIOS, it seems like it should be possible.
Yes, and when they went Intel they doubled the number of HDD's. The case if fine as it is, it is a proven design, adopted by many manufactures. What is the problem.
I was tinkering on the thought of putting 1 or 2 SSD's in the new MP and put all large data on external HDD's. I certainly wouldn't advise for Apple to put many TB's of SSD in the new model. That wouldn't make sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
I think darkdefender has a light computer, not one weighing 41 pounds.
Yes I do... not only is it light... the fans are powered by a second AC line that's not connected to the PSU to minimize the stress and overall excel regular GPU and CPU performance. I can control the speed of the fan manually or let it work automatically. When I want it to be quiet I can change the voltage (high is faster, low is slower) on a switch in the bottom of the power brick. It's perfect.
I thought it was an issue of having full EFI support. It seems like that issue should be moot by now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Then the Mac Pro is an admonition if I need to plug in a serial cable?
PS: I still need to use a serial cable every single day but I don't complain that entire machine is now a pointless piece of crap because I have to use a USB adapter to plug something in.
So why don't you buy a SATA PCIe card? You can get one for under $30.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
So why don't you buy a SATA PCIe card? You can get one for under $30.
He was probably referring to a serial port (RS-232) not SATA. I don't know if it's possible to install a serial card in a MacPro.
Joster
Quote:
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
So why don't you buy a SATA PCIe card? You can get one for under $30.
Because he's happy with his iMac? And not a nerdy nit picker?
I'm hoping the Mac Pro comes out this year. Hopefully 1st half 2013. Pro fans are long suffering. But they hang onto their machines by expanding the crap out of it. Goody for them. However, by the time they've done that...there's a new iMac that's eating 'more' of it's lunch every 3 years.
And comes with a £899 (according to Apple) screen included. The 680mx is 11th on the 'juicy' gpu chart. And 8 threads is plenty good via i7 for 3D.
Sure, you can buy a Pro from Apple that will be 3x faster on 3D? But you'll bend over for it. Just like I bent over for my BTO iMac...
The iMac is a work of art.
You don't need 'donkeys' or dinosaurs to do 'most' computing these days. The iPad is proof of that with its 9/10 computing platform for the rest of us in a way the Mac could never achieve. One gives way to the other.
Intel doesn't seem that bothered with workstation CPUs anymore. Doesn't seem to be in a race to get them out.
Maybe Apple could release a value workstation machine care of an AMD processor? *shrugs.
For many, an iMac is all the workstation you'll ever need.
Sure, people like their trucks. But there are far less of them...and not enough for Apple to break their neck to release one.
Pro sales are way below 100k and have been for a very, very, very long time.
Sure, Apple could try to democratise the Pro with pricing rational to what they had in the past. But they've become greedy b*stards over the years. Part of this is Intel pricing on Xeons.
But Apple don't need to have Xeons for an entry Pro. And they don't need to start at an eye watering £2000. Taking the p*ss and a joke. Add a studio display and it's £3k for a relic from the past.
And I love the Pro design.
But the last time I bought a pro tower was the Power Mac clone back in '97. £2k to get started. £1200 for the D2 monitor. £500 for 120 megs of extra ram. £400-500 for a 2D only gpu card. Don't get me started on the Adobe suite I bought...or the scanner...the A3 printer etc. Thousands upon thousands for what? It was overkill then. It's over kill now. Save for a rump of a pro market that Apple has long grown past.
The iMac covers 90% of that market, the consumer desktop market, the prosumer, the desktop, the photoshop, the 'moderate' 3D market, casual to mid gaming...all with a boutique design. Sales seems to indicate that Apple has it right. 1,000,000 iMacs vs what? 59k Pro macs? Vs 200k Mac Minis? The iMac is p*ssing over the pro's lunch. 8 out of 10 Apple cats prefer the iMac when it comes to desktops...
How long before we see a 6 or 8 or 10 core iMac in the next 5 years? How long before the next Thunderbolt port worthy of the name?
The Pro will be lucky if it sees one more revision...that will take it to 2016?
By then what's left of its lunch will be powned by iMac.
Lemon Bon Bon.