It is too bad they didn't do USB 3 / FW 1600 / something exciting beyond what other manufacturers are doing, though given the focus on consumer devices, I guess I'm not shocked.
I'm not even a Mac Pro customer and i was shocked. It was a very long wait for a simple bump. My expectations where different though as i was hoping for LightPeak. USB 3 won't be in a Mac until it is free, that is part of a chipset.
I actually wonder if there was an attempt to make a more advanced machine and this Pro was the contingency plan.
Quote:
The speed bump side is true, and sadly with AMD offering no real competition to Intel at the moment, that's I guess to be expected.
That is a perception that I'm not sure is justified. AMD has very competitive chips. Especially considering that they (Apple) don't use Intels top end chips.
Quote:
(Ah, lovely P4 with 100MHz bumps... until AMD unleashed Athlon!) It's awful watching speed bumps get smaller and prices climb, but it won't change until somebody can light a fire under Intel's butt again. \
True the perception in the marketplace is that AMD can't come close to Intel in performance. The reality though is far more mixed, for many users AMD is a far greater value.
As to lighting that fire I'd have to say AMD is doing just that. Fusion is really forcing Intels hand and bringing them into the SoC age. Interestingly AMD will be presuring Intel at the low end (ATOM) and the midrange here. At the top Bulldoxer is an interesting attempt to rethink the CPU.
One thing in common with all this new silicon from AMD is that they are not playing it safe. If some of these products are successful it will be a mojor accomplishment on AMDs part. In the end they are stimulating Intel to innovate, it is just that the stuff isn't out yet.
The thing is this, what if the Bobcat based Fusion products are significantly better than Intels ATOM? It looks like that is a real possibility, which could lead to significant adoption in the netbook, tablets and maybe even notebook markets. Or flip this around and ask what if Bulldozer performs better on a wider array of apps.
A lot of what ifs you may say. That is certainly true but i do think AMD has some hits in the pipe. If they didn't i don't think we would be seeing the response from Intel that we are seeing. That being the focus on higher integration and protecting the flanks. That is the actions against NVidia. So maybe AMD hasn't impacted Intels products this year so much but I'd have to say they are impacting Intels products for the next couple of years.
I think Apple needs to bring their software in line with hardware. While not a critical deal, just think how much faster iMovie could be. It doesn't even halfway max out my new quad core Imac.
@Dave, I just don't think the fire hasn't been lit yet, but certainly hope AMD can do it again. It took a good 18 months before companies started using their chips last time, though maybe with the antitrust rulings against Intel it wouldn't take as long now.
@kpilkington, "I wish I could have sex with my iMac!" That's sort of funny, because I was just talking to your iMac when I finished banging it last night, and it was saying that you really creep it out.
Please boot into DOS, run ATIflash and dump the 5870 ROM and send it to netkas.org
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
I priced out one of the dell precision models vs. a mac pro when these were announced. It varies on what processor goes into it. It is possible to get a "precision T3500" with a w3680 6 core processor like the one apple uses on the single socket machine for $2429. I just left hard drives and ram as stock on this as I always do my own upgrades, but it's mainly the hard drive that's far behind apple on this one (320 gb). Graphics cards are workstation options throughout which can simply mean different drivers are used, but it makes it a difficult comparison there. The dell did come with a 3 year warranty standard. This was more out of curiousity as I have no intention of buying a dell. I haven't tried one of those so I don't know how overall build quality compares, but I hate Windows, so it's not going to happen. Regarding resale values, try selling a G5 now. The earlier mac pro is still supported. If this changed its value would decline far more rapidly. I like apple but they could stop cheapening what they offer at their $2500 price point.
The 6-core 3.33GHz CPU is the same on both computers.
The warranty is better on a Dell because Apple only offers 1 year. Dell doesn't let you downgrade so I couldn't modify it to match my Mac.
The RAM is the same
I had to add the option for a firewire card since my Mac has firewire.
The V5800 is a cousin of the 5870. If you look online, they both are around the same price. Both have 1 GB memory and both have 2 DP and 1 DVI
I had to upgrade the HDD to match the 1 TB drive on my Mac
I had to upgrade the DVD drive to include a burner just like my Mac
I had to add 1 more networking card to match the two Ethernet ports on my Mac
The Dell is cheaper by $200-300. The only difference is a 3 year warranty vs Apple's 1 year. The rest of the specs are very very similar.
Actually you're right you did get closer on that than me in configurations. I skipped the hard drive and graphics card upgrades by force of habit as I'd probably swap my own in. That card also is a close, but different drivers (optimized for 3d graphics/rendering). I really can't find much info on how the drivers in mac pro graphics cards are optimized
6 core apple with matching warranty (requires applecare and it's still a longer turnaround) and the 5770 card $3948 subtotal. With the 5870 you mentioned it's $4148. That's roughly a $900 difference. I'm not sure about the quality of the internal design by comparison. Apple seems to design these things more ergonomically than I've seen from other manufacturers. A lot of details I don't know, such as which runs cooler, including hard drive temperature variance across multiple bays.
My issue has been that they've gone up in price a lot without much design innovation recently. In 2008 the 8 core of the time started at $2800 with (it seems) a pair of e5462's, with a single processor downgrade available for $2300. 2009 it went to $2500 for a much less expensive processor used (W5520). This refresh they barely updated the design at all on the lower end. The processor used went up one notch still on last year's hardware, and they assigned a really steep price to upgrades. I'd like to see apple give the mac pros some love rather than simply letting them sit as is as long as possible because their biggest point of growth is currently in mobile devices. The imac isn't a viable alternative because it's io limited and hasn't in my experience run cool enough under a heavy workload.
Why are you getting a single chip 6 core mac? You can get an 2 chip 8 total core for $3499, which is cheaper AND will likely be the same speed OR faster.
Is it because Dell doesn't offer dual chip machines? So you choose the "oddest"custom built config from Apple??
One more thing, CALL APPLE ON THE PHONE and ask for a discount that matches the educational discount. They have given me a discount on my last 4 desktops and I have bought and I didn't pretend to be a student.
The single chip 6 core is $3,379 and the 8 core dual chip is $3199. Add Apple care to the 8 core and the dell cost the same - same warranty - but no Mac OS X.
I got the 6-core mac because it will probably be faster than the (2) chip 8-core. Why ?
6 cores x 3.33 GHz > 8 cores x 2.4 GHz for general purpose applications.
8 cores is nice if your application handles multithreading well but clock speed alone will dominate if your application is not optimized to take advantage of all the cores. The Dell thing was just to show a similarly configured machine is about the same price as my Mac I purchased ( my friends were giving me crap about it ).
The 6-core 3.33GHz CPU is the same on both computers.
The warranty is better on a Dell because Apple only offers 1 year. Dell doesn't let you downgrade so I couldn't modify it to match my Mac.
The RAM is the same
I had to add the option for a firewire card since my Mac has firewire.
The V5800 is a cousin of the 5870. If you look online, they both are around the same price. Both have 1 GB memory and both have 2 DP and 1 DVI
I had to upgrade the HDD to match the 1 TB drive on my Mac
I had to upgrade the DVD drive to include a burner just like my Mac
I had to add 1 more networking card to match the two Ethernet ports on my Mac
The Dell is cheaper by $200-300. The only difference is a 3 year warranty vs Apple's 1 year. The rest of the specs are very very similar.
I have a friend/colleague who professes (and he is a university professor as well) that he to can get a better configuration that Apple offers for significantly less.
The last time I talked to him was in response to a problem he was having with his hackintosh. He couldn't call Apple of course so he called me after spending a day and a half troubleshooting his great machine.
Naturally, I couldn't help but rub it in that he would have saved himself a lot more by getting a Mac in the first place. When I asked him did he ever consider how much time/resources/money he has wasted building, supporting and servicing his hack, to which he responded that it didn't really cost him anything because of his position at the university.
Fortunately, he doesn't teach economics. Unfortunately, he has tenure.
What bugs me when I went to compare with HP / Dell workstations is that although the prices at this level are fairly similar for the spec (+10% for Apple usually), Apple should be embarrassed that they don't offer a 3 year warranty already included at those prices, like the other manufacturers do!
We are all harping on about what great build quality they have on these machines, and so it does rather stick in the throat that we HAVE to purchase AppleCare ( approx another 10% per unit) to get this warranty!
Not very impressive for a supposedly 'high quality' supplier - The prices on the Mac Pro's are at least inflated enough that a 3 year parts/labour warranty should come as standard at this level IMHO!
I am only interested in Hardware/parts warranty, I (and many other pro-users I imagine) do not need to talk to some 'genius' on the phone about iMovie not working....
I have a friend/colleague who professes (and he is a university professor as well) that he to can get a better configuration that Apple offers for significantly less.
The last time I talked to him was in response to a problem he was having with his hackintosh. He couldn't call Apple of course so he called me after spending a day and a half troubleshooting his great machine.
Naturally, I couldn't help but rub it in that he would have saved himself a lot more by getting a Mac in the first place. When I asked him did he ever consider how much time/resources/money he has wasted building, supporting and servicing his hack, to which he responded that it didn't really cost him anything because of his position at the university.
Fortunately, he doesn't teach economics. Unfortunately, he has tenure.
turn him in to the license cops. he is expecting support on an illegally (un)licensed machine?
Actually you're right you did get closer on that than me in configurations. I skipped the hard drive and graphics card upgrades by force of habit as I'd probably swap my own in. That card also is a close, but different drivers (optimized for 3d graphics/rendering). I really can't find much info on how the drivers in mac pro graphics cards are optimized
6 core apple with matching warranty (requires applecare and it's still a longer turnaround) and the 5770 card $3948 subtotal. With the 5870 you mentioned it's $4148. That's roughly a $900 difference. I'm not sure about the quality of the internal design by comparison. Apple seems to design these things more ergonomically than I've seen from other manufacturers. A lot of details I don't know, such as which runs cooler, including hard drive temperature variance across multiple bays.
My issue has been that they've gone up in price a lot without much design innovation recently. In 2008 the 8 core of the time started at $2800 with (it seems) a pair of e5462's, with a single processor downgrade available for $2300. 2009 it went to $2500 for a much less expensive processor used (W5520). This refresh they barely updated the design at all on the lower end. The processor used went up one notch still on last year's hardware, and they assigned a really steep price to upgrades. I'd like to see apple give the mac pros some love rather than simply letting them sit as is as long as possible because their biggest point of growth is currently in mobile devices. The imac isn't a viable alternative because it's io limited and hasn't in my experience run cool enough under a heavy workload.
i say 'who cares?'. i don't want a dell. i don't want a ugly a$$ machine and i don't want to support MS. if you want supreme mac power then go mac pro. if you want cheaper, ugly and like patching and rebooting all the time go with dell and win7....
Seriously? People got emails saying they were shipping four days ago.
Today, some of them have already arrived and people have reports and pictures posted.
Way to keep up.
AI has been too busy writing articles about antenna problems on the iPhone. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrstep
It is too bad they didn't do USB 3 / FW 1600 / something exciting beyond what other manufacturers are doing, though given the focus on consumer devices, I guess I'm not shocked. The speed bump side is true, and sadly with AMD offering no real competition to Intel at the moment, that's I guess to be expected. (Ah, lovely P4 with 100MHz bumps... until AMD unleashed Athlon!) It's awful watching speed bumps get smaller and prices climb, but it won't change until somebody can light a fire under Intel's butt again. \
It's hard for Apple to offer USB 3 until Intel's chipsets support it. Apple can't work magic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigdaddyp
Where is the headless Mac so I can have 3.5 " hard drives and real video cards that I can upgrade myself. :
It's called a Mac Pro.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WelshDog
Yep, I've got a friend with a Closed Captioning business who processes HD video all the time. She was ready for a 12 core with some other nice speed improvements like USB 3 etc. She is disappointed and will not buy the 12 core at that price. She'll either wait or go with the 8 core.
Sure, but... every Mac Pro thread has to have that complaint, so it's feeling like an unfulfilled thread-promise so far.
Sounds like you're stretching for a straw man argument. The usual comment is that the quad is way overpriced and that you can build one that's much faster and much cheaper. Which is absolutely true. The 8-12 core machines are expensive but fairly competitive although you can build those cheaper as well (but not nearly the price difference as with the quads).
I got the 6-core mac because it will probably be faster than the (2) chip 8-core. Why ?
6 cores x 3.33 GHz > 8 cores x 2.4 GHz for general purpose applications.
8 cores is nice if your application handles multithreading well but clock speed alone will dominate if your application is not optimized to take advantage of all the cores. The Dell thing was just to show a similarly configured machine is about the same price as my Mac I purchased ( my friends were giving me crap about it ).
although westmere is claimed as triple channel there is some discussion that it is in fact a dual channel. not sure which is right. but knowing exactly makes a big difference in how you should spec out your RAM!!
some key points from above:
"Think in 3s:
1x3 per socket is 1333 MHz memory (if the processor supports that speed)
2x3 per socket is 1066 MHz memory (lose 8.5 percent memory bandwidth)
3x3 per socket is 800 MHz memory (lose about 22 percent more memory bandwidth)
Select the DIMM size that gets you the capacity you want and the price you want (1 GB DIMMs, 2 GB DIMMs, and 4 GB DIMMs)
Note: You may not get the exact memory capacity you want."
the question that needs answering is does Westmere (the above is for Nehalem) resolve/solve these performance 'hits' as you add dimms??
It's hard for Apple to offer USB 3 until Intel's chipsets support it. Apple can't work magic.
It's not hard at all, nor "magic". There are plenty of PC mobos with usb3 already (and sata 3 which I'd consider even more important - there are single drives that will saturate the sata on these brand new machines). Apple just wouldn't be able to limit themselves to the stock intel mobo designs - and for the prices they are charging, they shouldn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Then buy a USB 3.0 card.
You don't think something is fishy when with a $5k mac you have to spend even more money and waste a PCI slot get the USB speed that is available on PC mobos that cost under a hundred bucks?
The kind of users who really need USB3 speeds are the same kinds of users who likely need the slots for other things. Seriously, how can anyone defend apple not updating something so simple and inexpensive on their supposedly high end "pro" machine?
Sounds like you're stretching for a straw man argument. The usual comment is that the quad is way overpriced and that you can build one that's much faster and much cheaper. Which is absolutely true. The 8-12 core machines are expensive but fairly competitive although you can build those cheaper as well (but not nearly the price difference as with the quads).
@kpilkington, "I wish I could have sex with my iMac!" That's sort of funny, because I was just talking to your iMac when I finished banging it last night, and it was saying that you really creep it out.
Comments
It is too bad they didn't do USB 3 / FW 1600 / something exciting beyond what other manufacturers are doing, though given the focus on consumer devices, I guess I'm not shocked.
I'm not even a Mac Pro customer and i was shocked. It was a very long wait for a simple bump. My expectations where different though as i was hoping for LightPeak. USB 3 won't be in a Mac until it is free, that is part of a chipset.
I actually wonder if there was an attempt to make a more advanced machine and this Pro was the contingency plan.
The speed bump side is true, and sadly with AMD offering no real competition to Intel at the moment, that's I guess to be expected.
That is a perception that I'm not sure is justified. AMD has very competitive chips. Especially considering that they (Apple) don't use Intels top end chips.
(Ah, lovely P4 with 100MHz bumps... until AMD unleashed Athlon!) It's awful watching speed bumps get smaller and prices climb, but it won't change until somebody can light a fire under Intel's butt again.
True the perception in the marketplace is that AMD can't come close to Intel in performance. The reality though is far more mixed, for many users AMD is a far greater value.
As to lighting that fire I'd have to say AMD is doing just that. Fusion is really forcing Intels hand and bringing them into the SoC age. Interestingly AMD will be presuring Intel at the low end (ATOM) and the midrange here. At the top Bulldoxer is an interesting attempt to rethink the CPU.
One thing in common with all this new silicon from AMD is that they are not playing it safe. If some of these products are successful it will be a mojor accomplishment on AMDs part. In the end they are stimulating Intel to innovate, it is just that the stuff isn't out yet.
The thing is this, what if the Bobcat based Fusion products are significantly better than Intels ATOM? It looks like that is a real possibility, which could lead to significant adoption in the netbook, tablets and maybe even notebook markets. Or flip this around and ask what if Bulldozer performs better on a wider array of apps.
A lot of what ifs you may say. That is certainly true but i do think AMD has some hits in the pipe. If they didn't i don't think we would be seeing the response from Intel that we are seeing. That being the focus on higher integration and protecting the flanks. That is the actions against NVidia. So maybe AMD hasn't impacted Intels products this year so much but I'd have to say they are impacting Intels products for the next couple of years.
Dave
I'm ready for software to outpace the hardware...
@kpilkington, "I wish I could have sex with my iMac!" That's sort of funny, because I was just talking to your iMac when I finished banging it last night, and it was saying that you really creep it out.
I haven't tried one of those so I don't know how overall build quality compares, but I hate Windows, so it's not going to happen.
If it helps, I've generally found the build quality of workstation-type computers to be very high. However, I haven't tried a Dell-branded one yet.
I priced out one of the dell precision models vs. a mac pro when these were announced. It varies on what processor goes into it. It is possible to get a "precision T3500" with a w3680 6 core processor like the one apple uses on the single socket machine for $2429. I just left hard drives and ram as stock on this as I always do my own upgrades, but it's mainly the hard drive that's far behind apple on this one (320 gb). Graphics cards are workstation options throughout which can simply mean different drivers are used, but it makes it a difficult comparison there. The dell did come with a 3 year warranty standard. This was more out of curiousity as I have no intention of buying a dell. I haven't tried one of those so I don't know how overall build quality compares, but I hate Windows, so it's not going to happen. Regarding resale values, try selling a G5 now. The earlier mac pro is still supported. If this changed its value would decline far more rapidly. I like apple but they could stop cheapening what they offer at their $2500 price point.
I just tried building a similar computer at Dell again :
- Dell Precision T3500, CMT, Standard Power Supply, C2 Motherboard
- Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate, No Media, 32-bit, English\t
- Six Core Intel® Xeon® W3680 3.33GHz, 12M L3, 6.4GT/s\t
- 3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD On-Site Service
- 3GB, 1333MHz, DDR3 SDRAM, ECC (3 DIMMS)
- Mini-Tower Chassis Configuration w/ 1394 Card\t
- 1GB ATI FirePro V5800, Triple MON, 2 DP & 1 DVI
- C1 All SATA or SSD drives, No RAID for 1 Hard Drive
- Integrated Intel chipset SATA 3.0Gb/s controller
- 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™\t
- 16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™/Roxio Creator™, No Media\t
- Broadcom NetXtreme 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet controller
Starting Price\t\t$3,550.00Instant Savings\t\t$315.00
Subtotal\t\t$3,235.00
The above is a close configuration to my Mac Pro.
Let's ignore the operating system and case.
The 6-core 3.33GHz CPU is the same on both computers.
The warranty is better on a Dell because Apple only offers 1 year. Dell doesn't let you downgrade so I couldn't modify it to match my Mac.
The RAM is the same
I had to add the option for a firewire card since my Mac has firewire.
The V5800 is a cousin of the 5870. If you look online, they both are around the same price. Both have 1 GB memory and both have 2 DP and 1 DVI
I had to upgrade the HDD to match the 1 TB drive on my Mac
I had to upgrade the DVD drive to include a burner just like my Mac
I had to add 1 more networking card to match the two Ethernet ports on my Mac
The Dell is cheaper by $200-300. The only difference is a 3 year warranty vs Apple's 1 year. The rest of the specs are very very similar.
Actually you're right you did get closer on that than me in configurations. I skipped the hard drive and graphics card upgrades by force of habit as I'd probably swap my own in. That card also is a close, but different drivers (optimized for 3d graphics/rendering). I really can't find much info on how the drivers in mac pro graphics cards are optimized
6 core apple with matching warranty (requires applecare and it's still a longer turnaround) and the 5770 card $3948 subtotal. With the 5870 you mentioned it's $4148. That's roughly a $900 difference. I'm not sure about the quality of the internal design by comparison. Apple seems to design these things more ergonomically than I've seen from other manufacturers. A lot of details I don't know, such as which runs cooler, including hard drive temperature variance across multiple bays.
My issue has been that they've gone up in price a lot without much design innovation recently. In 2008 the 8 core of the time started at $2800 with (it seems) a pair of e5462's, with a single processor downgrade available for $2300. 2009 it went to $2500 for a much less expensive processor used (W5520). This refresh they barely updated the design at all on the lower end. The processor used went up one notch still on last year's hardware, and they assigned a really steep price to upgrades. I'd like to see apple give the mac pros some love rather than simply letting them sit as is as long as possible because their biggest point of growth is currently in mobile devices. The imac isn't a viable alternative because it's io limited and hasn't in my experience run cool enough under a heavy workload.
Why are you getting a single chip 6 core mac? You can get an 2 chip 8 total core for $3499, which is cheaper AND will likely be the same speed OR faster.
Is it because Dell doesn't offer dual chip machines? So you choose the "oddest"custom built config from Apple??
One more thing, CALL APPLE ON THE PHONE and ask for a discount that matches the educational discount. They have given me a discount on my last 4 desktops and I have bought and I didn't pretend to be a student.
The single chip 6 core is $3,379 and the 8 core dual chip is $3199. Add Apple care to the 8 core and the dell cost the same - same warranty - but no Mac OS X.
I got the 6-core mac because it will probably be faster than the (2) chip 8-core. Why ?
6 cores x 3.33 GHz > 8 cores x 2.4 GHz for general purpose applications.
8 cores is nice if your application handles multithreading well but clock speed alone will dominate if your application is not optimized to take advantage of all the cores. The Dell thing was just to show a similarly configured machine is about the same price as my Mac I purchased ( my friends were giving me crap about it ).
I just tried building a similar computer at Dell again :
- Dell Precision T3500, CMT, Standard Power Supply, C2 Motherboard
- Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate, No Media, 32-bit, English\t
- Six Core Intel® Xeon® W3680 3.33GHz, 12M L3, 6.4GT/s\t
- 3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD On-Site Service
- 3GB, 1333MHz, DDR3 SDRAM, ECC (3 DIMMS)
- Mini-Tower Chassis Configuration w/ 1394 Card\t
- 1GB ATI FirePro V5800, Triple MON, 2 DP & 1 DVI
- C1 All SATA or SSD drives, No RAID for 1 Hard Drive
- Integrated Intel chipset SATA 3.0Gb/s controller
- 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™\t
- 16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™/Roxio Creator™, No Media\t
- Broadcom NetXtreme 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet controller
Starting Price\t\t$3,550.00Instant Savings\t\t$315.00
Subtotal\t\t$3,235.00
The above is a close configuration to my Mac Pro.
Let's ignore the operating system and case.
The 6-core 3.33GHz CPU is the same on both computers.
The warranty is better on a Dell because Apple only offers 1 year. Dell doesn't let you downgrade so I couldn't modify it to match my Mac.
The RAM is the same
I had to add the option for a firewire card since my Mac has firewire.
The V5800 is a cousin of the 5870. If you look online, they both are around the same price. Both have 1 GB memory and both have 2 DP and 1 DVI
I had to upgrade the HDD to match the 1 TB drive on my Mac
I had to upgrade the DVD drive to include a burner just like my Mac
I had to add 1 more networking card to match the two Ethernet ports on my Mac
The Dell is cheaper by $200-300. The only difference is a 3 year warranty vs Apple's 1 year. The rest of the specs are very very similar.
I have a friend/colleague who professes (and he is a university professor as well) that he to can get a better configuration that Apple offers for significantly less.
The last time I talked to him was in response to a problem he was having with his hackintosh. He couldn't call Apple of course so he called me after spending a day and a half troubleshooting his great machine.
Naturally, I couldn't help but rub it in that he would have saved himself a lot more by getting a Mac in the first place. When I asked him did he ever consider how much time/resources/money he has wasted building, supporting and servicing his hack, to which he responded that it didn't really cost him anything because of his position at the university.
Fortunately, he doesn't teach economics. Unfortunately, he has tenure.
We are all harping on about what great build quality they have on these machines, and so it does rather stick in the throat that we HAVE to purchase AppleCare ( approx another 10% per unit) to get this warranty!
Not very impressive for a supposedly 'high quality' supplier - The prices on the Mac Pro's are at least inflated enough that a 3 year parts/labour warranty should come as standard at this level IMHO!
I am only interested in Hardware/parts warranty, I (and many other pro-users I imagine) do not need to talk to some 'genius' on the phone about iMovie not working....
Can't wait!!!
I have a friend/colleague who professes (and he is a university professor as well) that he to can get a better configuration that Apple offers for significantly less.
The last time I talked to him was in response to a problem he was having with his hackintosh. He couldn't call Apple of course so he called me after spending a day and a half troubleshooting his great machine.
Naturally, I couldn't help but rub it in that he would have saved himself a lot more by getting a Mac in the first place. When I asked him did he ever consider how much time/resources/money he has wasted building, supporting and servicing his hack, to which he responded that it didn't really cost him anything because of his position at the university.
Fortunately, he doesn't teach economics. Unfortunately, he has tenure.
turn him in to the license cops. he is expecting support on an illegally (un)licensed machine?
Actually you're right you did get closer on that than me in configurations. I skipped the hard drive and graphics card upgrades by force of habit as I'd probably swap my own in. That card also is a close, but different drivers (optimized for 3d graphics/rendering). I really can't find much info on how the drivers in mac pro graphics cards are optimized
6 core apple with matching warranty (requires applecare and it's still a longer turnaround) and the 5770 card $3948 subtotal. With the 5870 you mentioned it's $4148. That's roughly a $900 difference. I'm not sure about the quality of the internal design by comparison. Apple seems to design these things more ergonomically than I've seen from other manufacturers. A lot of details I don't know, such as which runs cooler, including hard drive temperature variance across multiple bays.
My issue has been that they've gone up in price a lot without much design innovation recently. In 2008 the 8 core of the time started at $2800 with (it seems) a pair of e5462's, with a single processor downgrade available for $2300. 2009 it went to $2500 for a much less expensive processor used (W5520). This refresh they barely updated the design at all on the lower end. The processor used went up one notch still on last year's hardware, and they assigned a really steep price to upgrades. I'd like to see apple give the mac pros some love rather than simply letting them sit as is as long as possible because their biggest point of growth is currently in mobile devices. The imac isn't a viable alternative because it's io limited and hasn't in my experience run cool enough under a heavy workload.
i say 'who cares?'. i don't want a dell. i don't want a ugly a$$ machine and i don't want to support MS. if you want supreme mac power then go mac pro. if you want cheaper, ugly and like patching and rebooting all the time go with dell and win7....
Seriously? People got emails saying they were shipping four days ago.
Today, some of them have already arrived and people have reports and pictures posted.
Way to keep up.
AI has been too busy writing articles about antenna problems on the iPhone. Sorry for the inconvenience.
It is too bad they didn't do USB 3 / FW 1600 / something exciting beyond what other manufacturers are doing, though given the focus on consumer devices, I guess I'm not shocked. The speed bump side is true, and sadly with AMD offering no real competition to Intel at the moment, that's I guess to be expected. (Ah, lovely P4 with 100MHz bumps... until AMD unleashed Athlon!) It's awful watching speed bumps get smaller and prices climb, but it won't change until somebody can light a fire under Intel's butt again.
It's hard for Apple to offer USB 3 until Intel's chipsets support it. Apple can't work magic.
Where is the headless Mac so I can have 3.5 " hard drives and real video cards that I can upgrade myself. :
It's called a Mac Pro.
Yep, I've got a friend with a Closed Captioning business who processes HD video all the time. She was ready for a 12 core with some other nice speed improvements like USB 3 etc. She is disappointed and will not buy the 12 core at that price. She'll either wait or go with the 8 core.
Then buy a USB 3.0 card.
http://www.directron.com/u3pci1.html?gsear=1
Problem solved.
(I can't believe anyone is seriously going to pass on this computer simply because they're unwilling to spend $30 for a USB 3 card.
I just tried building a similar computer at Dell again :
The Dell is cheaper by $200-300. The only difference is a 3 year warranty vs Apple's 1 year. The rest of the specs are very very similar.
I just did a comparison:
Hyundai Elantra
BMW 5 series
Both have 4 doors
Both have 4 wheels plus a spare
Both have 6 cylinder engines
Both seat 5 (a little crowded) or 4 comfortably
Both are available in silver with leather interior
But the BMW is more expensive.
Isn't it amazing the conclusions you can reach when you ignore quality and service?
Sure, but... every Mac Pro thread has to have that complaint, so it's feeling like an unfulfilled thread-promise so far.
Sounds like you're stretching for a straw man argument. The usual comment is that the quad is way overpriced and that you can build one that's much faster and much cheaper. Which is absolutely true. The 8-12 core machines are expensive but fairly competitive although you can build those cheaper as well (but not nearly the price difference as with the quads).
links?
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...989255&page=18
That's the first page with one arriving (early yesterday), the posts about it shipping go back a few pages and a few days.
NO amount of money can reproduce what apple does
HARD AND SOFT ware wise that is .
That's only true if you ignore hackintosh.
turn him in to the license cops.
There are no license cops. Sure, he's violating the shrinkwrap EULA but there are no real enforcement options against individuals.
I got the 6-core mac because it will probably be faster than the (2) chip 8-core. Why ?
6 cores x 3.33 GHz > 8 cores x 2.4 GHz for general purpose applications.
8 cores is nice if your application handles multithreading well but clock speed alone will dominate if your application is not optimized to take advantage of all the cores. The Dell thing was just to show a similarly configured machine is about the same price as my Mac I purchased ( my friends were giving me crap about it ).
good info for questions about RAM
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/0...Configurations
although westmere is claimed as triple channel there is some discussion that it is in fact a dual channel. not sure which is right. but knowing exactly makes a big difference in how you should spec out your RAM!!
some key points from above:
"Think in 3s:
1x3 per socket is 1333 MHz memory (if the processor supports that speed)
2x3 per socket is 1066 MHz memory (lose 8.5 percent memory bandwidth)
3x3 per socket is 800 MHz memory (lose about 22 percent more memory bandwidth)
Select the DIMM size that gets you the capacity you want and the price you want (1 GB DIMMs, 2 GB DIMMs, and 4 GB DIMMs)
Note: You may not get the exact memory capacity you want."
the question that needs answering is does Westmere (the above is for Nehalem) resolve/solve these performance 'hits' as you add dimms??
It's hard for Apple to offer USB 3 until Intel's chipsets support it. Apple can't work magic.
It's not hard at all, nor "magic". There are plenty of PC mobos with usb3 already (and sata 3 which I'd consider even more important - there are single drives that will saturate the sata on these brand new machines). Apple just wouldn't be able to limit themselves to the stock intel mobo designs - and for the prices they are charging, they shouldn't.
Then buy a USB 3.0 card.
You don't think something is fishy when with a $5k mac you have to spend even more money and waste a PCI slot get the USB speed that is available on PC mobos that cost under a hundred bucks?
The kind of users who really need USB3 speeds are the same kinds of users who likely need the slots for other things. Seriously, how can anyone defend apple not updating something so simple and inexpensive on their supposedly high end "pro" machine?
Sounds like you're stretching for a straw man argument. The usual comment is that the quad is way overpriced and that you can build one that's much faster and much cheaper. Which is absolutely true. The 8-12 core machines are expensive but fairly competitive although you can build those cheaper as well (but not nearly the price difference as with the quads).
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...989255&page=18
That's the first page with one arriving (early yesterday), the posts about it shipping go back a few pages and a few days.
That's only true if you ignore hackintosh.
There are no license cops. Sure, he's violating the shrinkwrap EULA but there are no real enforcement options against individuals.
then continue to support the moron. i wouldn't.
The price of the 12 core model is insane though ($5,000)! Even for small businesses this model is expensive as hell. Don't like it
Post some benchmark please when you have them...
@kpilkington, "I wish I could have sex with my iMac!" That's sort of funny, because I was just talking to your iMac when I finished banging it last night, and it was saying that you really creep it out.
Not too familiar with irony, Einstein?