The problem isn't what you pay at top price. The problem is how Apple nickels and dimes you on the entry level so you have to pay for more to get something decent.
32GB of ram is ridiculous as is only a 256gb SSD and a rather poor graphics card. At entry level, for a little more, these should ship with min 512 GB SSD 64 GB ram and Radeon Pro W5700X
They are also selling wheels for the Mac Pro for $100 each. Yes...$100 per wheel for a computer. Did I forget to mention the $100 wheels? Yes. Okay. Mhm.
Stop with this max price crap who cares. But for comparison here you go
HP Z8 G4 Workstation
28 cores, 2.2 GHz base frequency | Intel Xeon Platinum 8276
1.5TB (12x 128GB) of 2933MHz DDR4 ECC Registered Memory
4TB SATA3 2.5" Solid-State Drive
Slim DVD Writer
NVIDIA Quadro GV100 32GB
NVIDIA Quadro GV100 32GB
Intel X550-T2 | Dual-Port | RJ45 | PCIe 3.0 | 10GbE Network Adapter
Intel 8260 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac & Bluetooth 4.2 PCIe Card
Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
$50,175
The HP looks better value, the HP uses a $16,000 CPU. It'll also come with far better on-site service support and maintenance too.
The real issue is the Mac Pro is being marketed towards creative professionals both video and 3D professionals. Creative pros like me are buying Threadripper based workstations and filling them with nVidia GPUs. At every price point the Mac Pro is at least twice the price and slower than an equivalent PC. You often read on this forum that Professionals are not price conscious, we are especially when we can build two faster workstations for the price of one Mac Pro. Why on earth would we want to spend more and get less?
The real world is moving to PCIe 4.0, Threadrippers will be available in 48 and 64 core counts for a fraction of the price of Apple's upgrade price alone early next year. Next gen GPUs from AMD and nVidia are expect in the first half of next year which will make the mid range Vega GPUs in the Mac Pro look obsolete. Come on Apple that 580x in the base config is a rebranded 3 year old GPU! It's a sub $200 card in the real world!
I agree stop with the Max Price nonsense and look at the real comparison between the state of art in PC tech and this anachronism Apple has just released. I can see absolutely no good reason to buy the Mac Pro as a creative professional.
Stop with this max price crap who cares. But for comparison here you go
HP Z8 G4 Workstation
28 cores, 2.2 GHz base frequency | Intel Xeon Platinum 8276
1.5TB (12x 128GB) of 2933MHz DDR4 ECC Registered Memory
4TB SATA3 2.5" Solid-State Drive
Slim DVD Writer
NVIDIA Quadro GV100 32GB
NVIDIA Quadro GV100 32GB
Intel X550-T2 | Dual-Port | RJ45 | PCIe 3.0 | 10GbE Network Adapter
Intel 8260 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac & Bluetooth 4.2 PCIe Card
Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
$50,175
The HP looks better value, the HP uses a $16,000 CPU. It'll also come with far better on-site service support and maintenance too.
The real issue is the Mac Pro is being marketed towards creative professionals both video and 3D professionals. Creative pros like me are buying Threadripper based workstations and filling them with nVidia GPUs. At every price point the Mac Pro is at least twice the price and slower than an equivalent PC. You often read on this forum that Professionals are not price conscious, we are especially when we can build two faster workstations for the price of one Mac Pro. Why on earth would we want to spend more and get less?
The real world is moving to PCIe 4.0, Threadrippers will be available in 48 and 64 core counts for a fraction of the price of Apple's upgrade price alone early next year. Next gen GPUs from AMD and nVidia are expect in the first half of next year which will make the mid range Vega GPUs in the Mac Pro look obsolete. Come on Apple that 580x in the base config is a rebranded 3 year old GPU! It's a sub $200 card in the real world!
I agree stop with the Max Price nonsense and look at the real comparison between the state of art in PC tech and this anachronism Apple has just released. I can see absolutely no good reason to buy the Mac Pro as a creative professional.
I’m interested to see how many workstations from Dell, HP, and Lenovo will be shipping with Threadrippers.
Thats for the 2P, for the 1P the price is just 4.5k.
good catch!
Intel's prices are just way out of line here. I can imagine that Apple might make heavy use of AVX512 in much of their first party software, and perhaps Adobe and others making software for the high-end video market do as well. But even so -- Rome has AVX2 (256 bit rather than 512 bit), so with 64 cores, Rome ought to be competitive with the 28 core Xeon, even in SIMD work. If Intel cut its prices in half, then going Xeon here would make more sense.
And the funny thing is -- Intel did recently cut prices in half for new Cascade Lake chips competing with Threadripper. Just not these chips, apparently.
Note -- I'm not really blaming Apple here. I'm sure they made their design choices a year or more ago, and it was prudent at that time to be skeptical regarding AMD, and AVX512 probably is a legit benefit for Apple. But the way things have played out, 20-20 hindsight says that either (1) Rome would be better than Xeon in this machine or (2) Intel should have offered Apple much lower prices on these Xeons.
Apple should hold Intel accountable for this and start using AMD CPUs in at least some Macs (or, just dump x86 altogether and roll their own)
That RAM price is crazy. Just checked MacSales and they've already added a product holder for up to 1.5TB of RAM. I'm guessing their price will be 50-70% of Apple's letting you get the Afterburner for free!!!!!
I still want to see this monster run some TOP500 supercomputer benchmarks. If it comes in the top 1000, it would be worth the price.
Their RAM price is actually less crazy than it seems. Six 128GB sticks from Hewlett Packard Enterprise is just under $38k. The same $38k at Apple will get you twelve sticks and the shipping carton is a Mac Pro with a 28-core processor.
Flash Update!! MacSales just announced the price of the new Mac Pro RAM and it's a very good price. $2K for a single 128GB module, $20K for twelve 128GB modules for 1.5TB. Time for HP lovers to find a different RAM supplier. They're also, as usual, backed by OWC lifetime warranty. This is 75% of Apple's price so more than my guess of 50-70% but you can also get a rebate from MacSales for the original Apple 4x8GB ECC RAM so it would drop the price down a little more. Is a $5K savings worth it? That pays for the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo upgrade or for the Afterburner, 4TB SSD and wheels with money left over or for that matter, all but $2K of the 28-core upgrade.
The HP looks better value, the HP uses a $16,000 CPU. It'll also come with far better on-site service support and maintenance too.
The real issue is the Mac Pro is being marketed towards creative professionals both video and 3D professionals. Creative pros like me are buying Threadripper based workstations and filling them with nVidia GPUs. At every price point the Mac Pro is at least twice the price and slower than an equivalent PC. You often read on this forum that Professionals are not price conscious, we are especially when we can build two faster workstations for the price of one Mac Pro. Why on earth would we want to spend more and get less?
The real world is moving to PCIe 4.0, Threadrippers will be available in 48 and 64 core counts for a fraction of the price of Apple's upgrade price alone early next year. Next gen GPUs from AMD and nVidia are expect in the first half of next year which will make the mid range Vega GPUs in the Mac Pro look obsolete. Come on Apple that 580x in the base config is a rebranded 3 year old GPU! It's a sub $200 card in the real world!
I agree stop with the Max Price nonsense and look at the real comparison between the state of art in PC tech and this anachronism Apple has just released. I can see absolutely no good reason to buy the Mac Pro as a creative professional.
This guy made a hackingtosh which is even faster than the nnMP. Only $3400
That RAM price is crazy. Just checked MacSales and they've already added a product holder for up to 1.5TB of RAM. I'm guessing their price will be 50-70% of Apple's letting you get the Afterburner for free!!!!!
I still want to see this monster run some TOP500 supercomputer benchmarks. If it comes in the top 1000, it would be worth the price.
Their RAM price is actually less crazy than it seems. Six 128GB sticks from Hewlett Packard Enterprise is just under $38k. The same $38k at Apple will get you twelve sticks and the shipping carton is a Mac Pro with a 28-core processor.
Flash Update!! MacSales just announced the price of the new Mac Pro RAM and it's a very good price. $2K for a single 128GB module, $20K for twelve 128GB modules for 1.5TB. Time for HP lovers to find a different RAM supplier. They're also, as usual, backed by OWC lifetime warranty. This is 75% of Apple's price so more than my guess of 50-70% but you can also get a rebate from MacSales for the original Apple 4x8GB ECC RAM so it would drop the price down a little more. Is a $5K savings worth it? That pays for the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo upgrade or for the Afterburner, 4TB SSD and wheels with money left over or for that matter, all but $2K of the 28-core upgrade.
Manufacturers (whether HP or Apple) almost always charge more for the upgrades that 3rd party.
I’m interested to see how many workstations from Dell, HP, and Lenovo will be shipping with Threadrippers.
Wow you got me there I forgot only Dell, HP and Lenovo build workstations.
You are the one that mentioned HP first, and commented on their support. Most production houses are going to go to those three vendors (and Apple) first for workstations for obvious reasons. Don’t keep changing the goal posts to make your point.
Yes there are video professionals who use smaller companies or build their own. However that is 0.01% of the market, and a market Apple isn’t initially focused on with this Mac Pro.
In addition many professionals prefer to edit on macOS. I know several who have switched to Windows and really want to go back and will be purchasing for this reason exclusively. There’s only one way you are going to get that...
So what OEM’s are selling ThreadRipper workstations?
Comments
It's actually pretty cheap compare to almost equivalent custom build workstation price.
The real issue is the Mac Pro is being marketed towards creative professionals both video and 3D professionals. Creative pros like me are buying Threadripper based workstations and filling them with nVidia GPUs. At every price point the Mac Pro is at least twice the price and slower than an equivalent PC. You often read on this forum that Professionals are not price conscious, we are especially when we can build two faster workstations for the price of one Mac Pro. Why on earth would we want to spend more and get less?
The real world is moving to PCIe 4.0, Threadrippers will be available in 48 and 64 core counts for a fraction of the price of Apple's upgrade price alone early next year. Next gen GPUs from AMD and nVidia are expect in the first half of next year which will make the mid range Vega GPUs in the Mac Pro look obsolete. Come on Apple that 580x in the base config is a rebranded 3 year old GPU! It's a sub $200 card in the real world!
I agree stop with the Max Price nonsense and look at the real comparison between the state of art in PC tech and this anachronism Apple has just released. I can see absolutely no good reason to buy the Mac Pro as a creative professional.
Intel's prices are just way out of line here. I can imagine that Apple might make heavy use of AVX512 in much of their first party software, and perhaps Adobe and others making software for the high-end video market do as well. But even so -- Rome has AVX2 (256 bit rather than 512 bit), so with 64 cores, Rome ought to be competitive with the 28 core Xeon, even in SIMD work. If Intel cut its prices in half, then going Xeon here would make more sense.
And the funny thing is -- Intel did recently cut prices in half for new Cascade Lake chips competing with Threadripper. Just not these chips, apparently.
Note -- I'm not really blaming Apple here. I'm sure they made their design choices a year or more ago, and it was prudent at that time to be skeptical regarding AMD, and AVX512 probably is a legit benefit for Apple. But the way things have played out, 20-20 hindsight says that either (1) Rome would be better than Xeon in this machine or (2) Intel should have offered Apple much lower prices on these Xeons.
Apple should hold Intel accountable for this and start using AMD CPUs in at least some Macs (or, just dump x86 altogether and roll their own)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXg9sMuGxB0
Yes there are video professionals who use smaller companies or build their own. However that is 0.01% of the market, and a market Apple isn’t initially focused on with this Mac Pro.
In addition many professionals prefer to edit on macOS. I know several who have switched to Windows and really want to go back and will be purchasing for this reason exclusively. There’s only one way you are going to get that...
So what OEM’s are selling ThreadRipper workstations?