I'm not trying to make it hard on anyone. But I am trying to clear things up so people know what they're getting into. Buyers remorse sucks. It would be a shame to spend 8k on a computer and find out that it competes unfavorably with a 5k iMac Pro.
This is a machine whose buyers don’t really need purchasing advice. They either have 99 percentile purchasing power, they know what they need it for, or both.
I can see giving advice for buying a base model iMac 27 versus of optioned up iMac 21.5, or maybe a used 2013 Mac Pro versus an iMac 27 (or Mac mini), or an optioned up iMac 27 versus an iMac Pro, but if someone is asking for advice on buying a 2019 Mac Pro, the advice should be an automatic no.
Not sure what Dilger is going on about in regard to this Mac Pro though, as he’s just mocking the media, which is low hanging fruit. Mocking the media is necessary, as they are a net-net negative on humanity, so I liked the article, but what it has to do with the Mac Pro, who knows.
madan said: I think the camp that benefits from the Mac Pro is probably smaller than the camps positively and negatively affected by it.
That's the reality of personal computing today vs. ten years ago. In 2009, Photoshop was viewed as software that needed high-end desktop hardware. In 2019, your new smartphone could run Photoshop. Software hasn't really kept up with the advances in hardware. Applications that used to need top of the line machines have slid down comfortably into the mass consumer area. It's only the heaviest of lifters that need the brute force of a 2019 Mac Pro. Personally, that's worked out quite well for me. I don't have to spend close to $3,000 on a desktop anymore. A low-end standard 5K iMac from 2017 blows past my old 2009 Mac Pro for my own professional work, takes up less space, costs 1/2 as much, and is far quieter and energy efficient.
Luckily I live in a free country and I'm going to give advice anyways. Judging from the replies from several posters in this thread, they may have the money to spend on this device but they certainly don't know what they're getting by buying it.
You know, come to think of it. You could get an iMac Pro, with 64 GB of RAM, a base Xeon, more storage and a Vega 56, stone the base Mac Pro over the head and it STILL COMES WITH A 5K LG MONITOR BUILT IN. How nuts is that?
Sure it doesn't come with support with 12 TB 3 lanes but srsly, you're probably not going to need that. A base Xeon wouldn't be able to handle that throughput anyways. So honestly, the iMac Pro is a better deal because in 5-6 years you just buy another iMac Pro and you get a whole new system, PLUS A WHOLE NEW MONITOR, to boot, for the same price. Like I said, the Mac Pro only makes "sense" once you start cracking the 20,000 USD threshold. Once you start putting in gpus and cpu configurations that can handle the crazy bandwidth and performance than an iMac Pro just can't touch. But the base system? A Vega 56 is 30% faster than the Mac Pro's base Radeon 580. And the system costs LESS and BRINGS A MONITOR.
No, i do not think you get what a new Mac Pro is. I have a Mac Pro 2009 running in my home studio; in 2009, i paid 3000 euros for it; it had Sata 2, USB 2, a few hard disk, and a GT120 graphic card, and an 8 core double cpu running at 2.16 Ghz. The lowest possible end. Today, it run with nvme SSD, has USB3, an RX580, and two 6 core 3.4Ghz CPU, and it still current.
All this was massively less expensive than buying the 3 iMac that has become obsolete in the same timeframe.
The Mac Pro is a PCI machine; it is evolutive, that is the whole point; of course, the stellar point is when you spend more than 20K$, but it fully make sense in a context where needs and gains evolve.
But as of today, if i had the kind of needs and money, i wouldn't buy an iMac Pro, i would buy a new Mac Pro, low end, and let it evolve in base of my needs; it would be massively less expensive, and upgradable to technologies that today not yet exists, like USB4. In ten years from now it would be still useful. An iMac Pro bought today, before a refresh, will be obsolete in about 3 years, and not upgradable.
Anyway, the point about the Mac Pro, as many poster said here, it is not a machine for gamers, it is not a machine for the masses; it is a machine for those that need it; they will reconise it.
The interesting thing about this is when inflation is accounted for, this isn’t exceptionally expensive. My Quadra 950 from late 1992 had a base price of about $6,000. No video card, no CD player, no keyboard. The keyboard was about $300. The upgrade from the 160MB hdd to the much better 320MB cost another $300. It came with a lot of ram though—8MB, and 16 slots, which I filled for another $3,600. The 2x speed CD player I bought was about $600.
The NEC Multisync 21”monitor, I forget the model number, was $3,200. The Radius graphics card I bought (the computer used the CPU for graphics, with 1MB installed, and for 24 bit color, you could get another 1MB simm) cost around $3,750.
so let’s add those costs and translate into today’s dollars.
so, that would be around $15,000, back then. As of the end of 2018, the latest full year inflation numbers I can get, would be around $27,500. Even if you loaded it with the 1.5TB it could take, for $10,000, this model still falls somewhat short. And that’s mostly priced so high because of the RAM. More reasonable amounts would be a lot lower, allowing for a higher performance graphics card, etc.
the price isn’t so out of line with other models from other manufacturers when outfitted the same way. The difference is that Apple doesn’t offer a true bare bone version as others do. Look at BOXX pricing to get a good example.
but, I was going to buy one this year, and I’ve changed my mind. We are in a minor upheaval this year, because of the imminent changeover from PCIe 3, to PCIe 4. Workstation manufacturers have to make a decision as to what they’re going to do. Right now, we are in an in between state. That is, PCIe 4 is out, sort of, but not entirely. AMD has chips announced that are just about here for 4, and Intel has chips later this year for 4 as well. But neither are really “here” in a meaningful way. So all workstations are still 3. Other things are riding on this as well. Thunderbolt 4 is late, if it will even come out as Intel promised, when they said that within a decade of Thunderbolt’s release it would be at 100GB. But PCIe 3 has been here for about 7 years now, a long time. And it’s thought that another upgrade in Thunderbolt depends on PCIe 4. Then there is the faster usb, with more integration with Thunderbolt. Also M series SSDs will have the possibility of running up to 7.2GB/s under 4. 4 is now aimed at the SSD rather than the long term focus on the HDD. Graphics cards will need half the channels for the same throughput. New security features, and other major redesign has been done to get ready for 5, which is being worked on now, and may be finished in about a year.
so we can expect 3 to disappear during 2020, while 4 rushes in. Likely 4 will be around the more expected 3 years before 5 replaces it.
so, that’s why I’ve decided to wait until late next year. I expect to have this for about 5 years, unless some unexpected new technology turns up. If I were still working, I would get this, but as I’m not, for me, it pays to wait. In the meantime I’ll either buy a fully loaded iMac, or a moderately loaded iMac Pro, which I’ll then give to my daughter next year.
madan said: I think the camp that benefits from the Mac Pro is probably smaller than the camps positively and negatively affected by it.
That's the reality of personal computing today vs. ten years ago. In 2009, Photoshop was viewed as software that needed high-end desktop hardware. In 2019, your new smartphone could run Photoshop. Software hasn't really kept up with the advances in hardware. Applications that used to need top of the line machines have slid down comfortably into the mass consumer area. It's only the heaviest of lifters that need the brute force of a 2019 Mac Pro. Personally, that's worked out quite well for me. I don't have to spend close to $3,000 on a desktop anymore. A low-end standard 5K iMac from 2017 blows past my old 2009 Mac Pro for my own professional work, takes up less space, costs 1/2 as much, and is far quieter and energy efficient.
The Mac Pro, when upgraded accordingly is great for super developers working with Davinci Resolve, Premiere or for massive rendering endeavors. It would also be great for compute farms that can take advantage of the Vega platform's affinity to FP. But for the AVERAGE professional, even affluent ones, the unupgraded <8K Mac Pro is not only a horrible, horrible deal but one that is easily outperformed by a 2019 iMac 27" (with gpu upgrade, natch)...for less WITH A MONITOR.
You know, come to think of it. You could get an iMac Pro, with 64 GB of RAM, a base Xeon, more storage and a Vega 56, stone the base Mac Pro over the head and it STILL COMES WITH A 5K LG MONITOR BUILT IN. How nuts is that?
Sure it doesn't come with support with 12 TB 3 lanes but srsly, you're probably not going to need that. A base Xeon wouldn't be able to handle that throughput anyways. So honestly, the iMac Pro is a better deal because in 5-6 years you just buy another iMac Pro and you get a whole new system, PLUS A WHOLE NEW MONITOR, to boot, for the same price. Like I said, the Mac Pro only makes "sense" once you start cracking the 20,000 USD threshold. Once you start putting in gpus and cpu configurations that can handle the crazy bandwidth and performance than an iMac Pro just can't touch. But the base system? A Vega 56 is 30% faster than the Mac Pro's base Radeon 580. And the system costs LESS and BRINGS A MONITOR.
Yes and that has been the cause for my mental agony for a long time. BUT ... The iMac Pro is old now though, you have to think it is due for an update soon. The iMac 5K tricked out has no T2 as I understand it.
The iMac Pro isn't even 2 years old. Its top of the line gpu is still about as powerful as a Navi 5700 which is midrange in gaming. It's 12.5 teraflops still outperforms a 2080 and 1080 Ti in compute and the Xeon/RAM have had less than 15% improvement in speed increases due to Intel's issues with yields. The only way you'd get a faster system from Apple is if you:
Built a FrankenMac using egpus.
Bought a 9K< Mac Pro.
So what are you going to get?
I've decided on the Mac Pro as explained and after 41 years in the business, many of them owning Apple dealerships and Graphic, Digital Editing and even Music Production studios and I am comfortable with my decision ... whatever it ends up being. At least it's only one I'll be buying these days, such decisions used to be for multiple stations in my past. I bought 10 Mac IIfxs for DTP, scanning and Pagemaker stations back in the day. Throw in a 2400 dpi postscript typesetter and 10 Barco calibrated monitors, scanners, etc. That was a $200K+ shopping spree.
madan said: But for the AVERAGE professional, even affluent ones, the unupgraded <8K Mac Pro is not only a horrible, horrible deal but one that is easily outperformed by a 2019 iMac 27" (with gpu upgrade, natch)...for less WITH A MONITOR.
It's not targeting average professionals. The presentation that Apple did to introduce the hardware was focused on the ultra high-end. I guess it's possible that some people who work professionally might not realize that they could use a standard iMac or iMac Pro instead, but I doubt that's going to amount to a large number. I think most pros will recognize whether or not it makes sense for their own workflow.
"Will Apple have to brainwash the masses to buy it?"
It's not a computer for the masses and no amount of brainwashing could change that.
At the same time it's gonna appeal to a certain segment of buyers who have needs for intense video processing or scientific applications, or a few who purchase it "just because it exists".
I don't think there is such a category as 'those that buy just because it exists' except in the minds of Android users and Apple haters that spend their entire existence finding negative things to say about Apple yet don't own or use Apple products themselves. Many of those types seem to spend a lot of time on Apple blogs considering they don't have or use Apple products, perhaps they are just drawn to Apple blogs because they exist?
Bahaha, touche. It really makes you wonder why those with a negative narrative to peddle spend so much time on Apple websites discussing products they don't even have.
Unfortunately, the Mac Pro has a distinct issue on its value curve. It's a horrible value system at its base price, that quickly ramps in value as the price becomes astronomical.
At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. The base Xeon it has was about 1200 bucks (on release). It was blessed with 240 dollars of ECC RAM (on release). It had a nice, airflow-centric case to be sure. Good cases that are solid steel/aluminum are, often, 200-300 USD. Even if we counted the Mac Pro's case as a 500 dollar case, and counted its M.2 storage in the default model as 240 dollars, we'd still be sitting at 3000 dollars for the system. The Radeon 580 is a naught 200 dollar card (even on release).
That means you're paying effectively ~ 3000 dollars for a power supply and motherboard. Which is kinda nuts. I mean the power supply itself is about 200 bucks at most (actually less) and the fans can't be more than 100 bucks. So you're buying a, albeit ultra bleeding edge, motherboard for 2700 USD, which is highway robbery.
Yes, the special component of the Mac Pro isn't the CPU or the GPU (although the Mac Pro can top out with sky-high Xeons and absolutely monstrous Arcturus-precursor dual Vega 2s), it's the motherboard. The base system doesn't ship with any of that super hardware though. Yes, the motherboard accommodates 1.5 TB of ECC RAM. Yes it has the ability to run almost a dozen bus lanes for TB 3. Yes, it accommodates both power via the port and via adapter for gpus. Yes the Pro Vega 2 is a beast of a card, dwarfing the Radeon VII's already ludicrous 16 GB of HBM2. But you get NONE of that with a 6000 dollar base system.
With a 6000 dollar base system, you get an amazing motherboard, that might never be used. You get a low-end Xeon that is outperformed by most Core i9s (Xeon reliability is worth 800 dollars?!). You get a gpu that is budget by today's standards (the MacBook Pro's Vega gpu is about as fast as a 565-570 which itself is only 10-15% slower than the Mac Pro's 580...). And a bunch of super components like psus and the like that may never be used unless you upgrade them yourself down the line.
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding. Sure, it's not upgradeable with ECC RAM. Sure, it doesn't have 12 TB 3 lanes or 10 gigabit ether. No, it doesn't have a ridiculously overpowered psu for a system that draws under 300 Watts. But still, you're buying a system with such low specs all those upgradeable touches are pointless unless you spend thousands more upgrading the system anyways.
Sure, you can get a great high end Xeon and push the RAM to 1.5 TB. Yes, 2 Pro Vega 2s are absolutely nuts, with a max of 128 GB of HBM2 RAM. But that system costs 50k. The base system gets you NOTHING. And it's 6000 USD. For workflow alone, a computer 1/4 the price will do the job.
So yes, the Mac Pro may be a great machine at the high end but anyone that buys it in the low end better not convince themselves they're getting a super computer because it's a budget system, at most and they're paying between 4-10x as much for the privilege of the Apple emblem.
I agree the base config is not ideal. I am hoping it is possible for DIY RAM upgrade as I don't want to may Apple RAM prices and I am used to 64 GB in the trash can so I'd want at least that and the GPU choice is still open in my mind until I see pricing but I suspect even the base is a leap from my dual AMD Firepros. 8 or 12 core would be enough for me for sure. That all said in five years this machine will still be totally configurable an iMac Pro isn't.
You can totally upgrade the RAM and GPU yourself. The problem is anything worthy of that motherboard is going to run you thousands of dollars. Which means you're looking at an 8k system. Again, that kind of workflow lends itself to mission-critical server work, not prosumer production. The Radeon 580 is about 20% more than the D700s in the old Mac Pro. That's it. Sure, you only have one gpu so the support is probably better but a Radeon 580 is a budget card. If you move to a Pro Vega 2, you're looking at least a 1000 dollar increase in price. That's because the card is basically an up-RAMMED Radeon VII which MSRPed at 700 USD. It's basically an mi60 on steroids.
In 6 years, the system's CPU will be woefully underpowered. The GPU will be upgradeable. But you're paying almost 10,000 USD for the privilege if you do it correctly.
Won't the CPU be upgradeable, is it soldered in? That would be a shame of epic proportions.
You know, come to think of it. You could get an iMac Pro, with 64 GB of RAM, a base Xeon, more storage and a Vega 56, stone the base Mac Pro over the head and it STILL COMES WITH A 5K LG MONITOR BUILT IN. How nuts is that?
Sure it doesn't come with support with 12 TB 3 lanes but srsly, you're probably not going to need that. A base Xeon wouldn't be able to handle that throughput anyways. So honestly, the iMac Pro is a better deal because in 5-6 years you just buy another iMac Pro and you get a whole new system, PLUS A WHOLE NEW MONITOR, to boot, for the same price. Like I said, the Mac Pro only makes "sense" once you start cracking the 20,000 USD threshold. Once you start putting in gpus and cpu configurations that can handle the crazy bandwidth and performance than an iMac Pro just can't touch. But the base system? A Vega 56 is 30% faster than the Mac Pro's base Radeon 580. And the system costs LESS and BRINGS A MONITOR.
No, i do not think you get what a new Mac Pro is. I have a Mac Pro 2009 running in my home studio; in 2009, i paid 3000 euros for it; it had Sata 2, USB 2, a few hard disk, and a GT120 graphic card, and an 8 core double cpu running at 2.16 Ghz. The lowest possible end. Today, it run with nvme SSD, has USB3, an RX580, and two 6 core 3.4Ghz CPU, and it still current.
All this was massively less expensive than buying the 3 iMac that has become obsolete in the same timeframe.
The Mac Pro is a PCI machine; it is evolutive, that is the whole point; of course, the stellar point is when you spend more than 20K$, but it fully make sense in a context where needs and gains evolve.
But as of today, if i had the kind of needs and money, i wouldn't buy an iMac Pro, i would buy a new Mac Pro, low end, and let it evolve in base of my needs; it would be massively less expensive, and upgradable to technologies that today not yet exists, like USB4. In ten years from now it would be still useful. An iMac Pro bought today, before a refresh, will be obsolete in about 3 years, and not upgradable.
Anyway, the point about the Mac Pro, as many poster said here, it is not a machine for gamers, it is not a machine for the masses; it is a machine for those that need it; they will reconise it.
Maurizio
Oh? I don't get what a Mac Pro is? Fill me in.
In 2009, for one of my studios, I bought an iMac 27" with a quad core Core i5 (faster in single-threaded ops than your cpu but slower in parallelized), a 4850 (4.5 times faster than your 120) and 1 TB of storage.
It cost me 1800 without AppleCare. For an extra 1800 TODAY, I could go out and buy a 2017 27" iMac with a Core i7 8 core, 16 GB of RAM and a 580x...and I'd have spend only a hair more than you and have TWO monitors to show for it. Actually, I could've sold the first iMac (I never sold it, it's a baseclient now) and applied money towards the purchase of the new system and walked away with...a monitor for free for the same performance.
You don't have to buy a Mac Pro to be "pro" or to have lots of expandability options.
My current computer Is a Mac Mini with M.2 storage, 32 GB of RAM and a Core i7 married to a Radeon VII via a Razer Core X. It has 10 Gig Ether that I have connected to 10 TB of work storage. That is separate from my own Ryzen home media build with another Radeon VII that has 25 TB of dedicated personal storage.
I can assure you that I understand just fine what expandability and nice machines are. The issue isn't expandability because 10 gig ether and TB 3 render that moot. And the point isn't gpu upgrades because egpus also render that moot. The point is that for 8k, you're getting a 1500 dollar system. That's it. The end. Beyond that, you can do whatever you want. Go buy the Pro. But I was just warning people of what to expect when they bought their new Mac Pros and ran into a brick wall when they realized that they had 0-15% performance improvement over a 5 year old computer. That's because the Pro is basically a 2-3 year old computer. And it was MIDRANGE when it was initially conceived.
Now if you plan on buying 2 Vega Pro Duos. Congrats. You're spending 15k and you're probably running weather simulations or advanced financial modeling and you need that kind of teraflop performance. The Mac Pro makes perfect sense.
But then you shouldn't be offended by someone like me warning base-entry purchasers from avoiding the system anyways.
Unfortunately, the Mac Pro has a distinct issue on its value curve. It's a horrible value system at its base price, that quickly ramps in value as the price becomes astronomical.
At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. The base Xeon it has was about 1200 bucks (on release). It was blessed with 240 dollars of ECC RAM (on release). It had a nice, airflow-centric case to be sure. Good cases that are solid steel/aluminum are, often, 200-300 USD. Even if we counted the Mac Pro's case as a 500 dollar case, and counted its M.2 storage in the default model as 240 dollars, we'd still be sitting at 3000 dollars for the system. The Radeon 580 is a naught 200 dollar card (even on release).
That means you're paying effectively ~ 3000 dollars for a power supply and motherboard. Which is kinda nuts. I mean the power supply itself is about 200 bucks at most (actually less) and the fans can't be more than 100 bucks. So you're buying a, albeit ultra bleeding edge, motherboard for 2700 USD, which is highway robbery.
Yes, the special component of the Mac Pro isn't the CPU or the GPU (although the Mac Pro can top out with sky-high Xeons and absolutely monstrous Arcturus-precursor dual Vega 2s), it's the motherboard. The base system doesn't ship with any of that super hardware though. Yes, the motherboard accommodates 1.5 TB of ECC RAM. Yes it has the ability to run almost a dozen bus lanes for TB 3. Yes, it accommodates both power via the port and via adapter for gpus. Yes the Pro Vega 2 is a beast of a card, dwarfing the Radeon VII's already ludicrous 16 GB of HBM2. But you get NONE of that with a 6000 dollar base system.
With a 6000 dollar base system, you get an amazing motherboard, that might never be used. You get a low-end Xeon that is outperformed by most Core i9s (Xeon reliability is worth 800 dollars?!). You get a gpu that is budget by today's standards (the MacBook Pro's Vega gpu is about as fast as a 565-570 which itself is only 10-15% slower than the Mac Pro's 580...). And a bunch of super components like psus and the like that may never be used unless you upgrade them yourself down the line.
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding. Sure, it's not upgradeable with ECC RAM. Sure, it doesn't have 12 TB 3 lanes or 10 gigabit ether. No, it doesn't have a ridiculously overpowered psu for a system that draws under 300 Watts. But still, you're buying a system with such low specs all those upgradeable touches are pointless unless you spend thousands more upgrading the system anyways.
Sure, you can get a great high end Xeon and push the RAM to 1.5 TB. Yes, 2 Pro Vega 2s are absolutely nuts, with a max of 128 GB of HBM2 RAM. But that system costs 50k. The base system gets you NOTHING. And it's 6000 USD. For workflow alone, a computer 1/4 the price will do the job.
So yes, the Mac Pro may be a great machine at the high end but anyone that buys it in the low end better not convince themselves they're getting a super computer because it's a budget system, at most and they're paying between 4-10x as much for the privilege of the Apple emblem.
What you're describing is a recurring problem with well-architected products and solutions, i.e., products designed to support specific quality attributes such as modularity, modifiability, upgradability, performance scalability, etc. Everyone wants all of the values that a well-architected product or solution provides, but they don't want to pay for it when the base-level implementation is really a starting point for acquiring the potential value that the product's quality attributes can deliver. But just like potential energy, potential value is not realized until it is exploited to provide a benefit, which in the case of the Mac Pro is when you start exercising the potential by upgrading components, scaling up the performance, adding massive storage, etc. So yeah, you're paying for the architecture at the entry level but if you don't need the architecture or don't plan to exploit its attributes you may end up spending a lot more than you need to.
It usually comes down to making intelligent and informed decisions about what you're buying while taking into consideration the intended lifecycle of the product or solution. Too often people, teams, and organizations will make the wrong decision because they're applying short term considerations to longer term problems. Or vice versa. They'll look at the price of the architected solution, balk at the price in terms of their current budget, and cheap out on the purchase. A year later, or when the regime changes, they'll realize they didn't buy what they really needed for long term value and revisit the whole process and end up spending more in the long run and inciting churn. Of course it works the other way too. It's not an easy decision, but for people and organizations that apply sound economic justification for their purchases, taking into all factors like depreciation and salvage value, it SHOULD be a data-driven decision and not an emotional one. These are exactly the kinds of decisions that organizations make every day around all manner of personnel and capital expenditures from computers to upgrades of production machinery. I imagine many buyers of Mac Pros will apply these same sort of decisions.
But this is why I'm posting here. I think the camp that benefits from the Mac Pro is probably smaller than the camps positively and negatively affected by it. There are going to be haters that think that the system is overpriced at 50k, when it's packing 4 Vega 2 chipsets capable of pushing 60 teraflops of data compute. Conversely, you're always going to have the misinformed fanboys that work out of a mom and pop copy shop that think that they need a 7000 dollar budget system to do "pro" work when that system is inherently a *horrible*, *horrible* deal. As I said, this system isn't meant to be bought for less than 9-10k. If you buy it at base config, you don't need it and you're buying a bad system for your needs.
While I don’t expect this be selling the 100,000 plus numbers a year of this Mac Pro the way they did with the older Mac Pro cheese grater models, I’m willing to bet they’ll sell in the tens of thousands a year, and that not bad. Workstations don’t sell in very high numbers. But I think you’re selling this short. This is a very versatile machine, with a very sophisticated mobo. In fact, it’s the most sophisticated mobo I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot over the years. There’s more involved too, but I’m not really in the mood for a long post right now.
I'm not trying to make it hard on anyone. But I am trying to clear things up so people know what they're getting into. Buyers remorse sucks. It would be a shame to spend 8k on a computer and find out that it competes unfavorably with a 5k iMac Pro.
Unfortunately, the Mac Pro has a distinct issue on its value curve. It's a horrible value system at its base price, that quickly ramps in value as the price becomes astronomical.
At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. The base Xeon it has was about 1200 bucks (on release). It was blessed with 240 dollars of ECC RAM (on release). It had a nice, airflow-centric case to be sure. Good cases that are solid steel/aluminum are, often, 200-300 USD. Even if we counted the Mac Pro's case as a 500 dollar case, and counted its M.2 storage in the default model as 240 dollars, we'd still be sitting at 3000 dollars for the system. The Radeon 580 is a naught 200 dollar card (even on release).
That means you're paying effectively ~ 3000 dollars for a power supply and motherboard. Which is kinda nuts. I mean the power supply itself is about 200 bucks at most (actually less) and the fans can't be more than 100 bucks. So you're buying a, albeit ultra bleeding edge, motherboard for 2700 USD, which is highway robbery.
Yes, the special component of the Mac Pro isn't the CPU or the GPU (although the Mac Pro can top out with sky-high Xeons and absolutely monstrous Arcturus-precursor dual Vega 2s), it's the motherboard. The base system doesn't ship with any of that super hardware though. Yes, the motherboard accommodates 1.5 TB of ECC RAM. Yes it has the ability to run almost a dozen bus lanes for TB 3. Yes, it accommodates both power via the port and via adapter for gpus. Yes the Pro Vega 2 is a beast of a card, dwarfing the Radeon VII's already ludicrous 16 GB of HBM2. But you get NONE of that with a 6000 dollar base system.
With a 6000 dollar base system, you get an amazing motherboard, that might never be used. You get a low-end Xeon that is outperformed by most Core i9s (Xeon reliability is worth 800 dollars?!). You get a gpu that is budget by today's standards (the MacBook Pro's Vega gpu is about as fast as a 565-570 which itself is only 10-15% slower than the Mac Pro's 580...). And a bunch of super components like psus and the like that may never be used unless you upgrade them yourself down the line.
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding. Sure, it's not upgradeable with ECC RAM. Sure, it doesn't have 12 TB 3 lanes or 10 gigabit ether. No, it doesn't have a ridiculously overpowered psu for a system that draws under 300 Watts. But still, you're buying a system with such low specs all those upgradeable touches are pointless unless you spend thousands more upgrading the system anyways.
Sure, you can get a great high end Xeon and push the RAM to 1.5 TB. Yes, 2 Pro Vega 2s are absolutely nuts, with a max of 128 GB of HBM2 RAM. But that system costs 50k. The base system gets you NOTHING. And it's 6000 USD. For workflow alone, a computer 1/4 the price will do the job.
So yes, the Mac Pro may be a great machine at the high end but anyone that buys it in the low end better not convince themselves they're getting a super computer because it's a budget system, at most and they're paying between 4-10x as much for the privilege of the Apple emblem.
What you're describing is a recurring problem with well-architected products and solutions, i.e., products designed to support specific quality attributes such as modularity, modifiability, upgradability, performance scalability, etc. Everyone wants all of the values that a well-architected product or solution provides, but they don't want to pay for it when the base-level implementation is really a starting point for acquiring the potential value that the product's quality attributes can deliver. But just like potential energy, potential value is not realized until it is exploited to provide a benefit, which in the case of the Mac Pro is when you start exercising the potential by upgrading components, scaling up the performance, adding massive storage, etc. So yeah, you're paying for the architecture at the entry level but if you don't need the architecture or don't plan to exploit its attributes you may end up spending a lot more than you need to.
It usually comes down to making intelligent and informed decisions about what you're buying while taking into consideration the intended lifecycle of the product or solution. Too often people, teams, and organizations will make the wrong decision because they're applying short term considerations to longer term problems. Or vice versa. They'll look at the price of the architected solution, balk at the price in terms of their current budget, and cheap out on the purchase. A year later, or when the regime changes, they'll realize they didn't buy what they really needed for long term value and revisit the whole process and end up spending more in the long run and inciting churn. Of course it works the other way too. It's not an easy decision, but for people and organizations that apply sound economic justification for their purchases, taking into all factors like depreciation and salvage value, it SHOULD be a data-driven decision and not an emotional one. These are exactly the kinds of decisions that organizations make every day around all manner of personnel and capital expenditures from computers to upgrades of production machinery. I imagine many buyers of Mac Pros will apply these same sort of decisions.
But this is why I'm posting here. I think the camp that benefits from the Mac Pro is probably smaller than the camps positively and negatively affected by it. There are going to be haters that think that the system is overpriced at 50k, when it's packing 4 Vega 2 chipsets capable of pushing 60 teraflops of data compute. Conversely, you're always going to have the misinformed fanboys that work out of a mom and pop copy shop that think that they need a 7000 dollar budget system to do "pro" work when that system is inherently a *horrible*, *horrible* deal. As I said, this system isn't meant to be bought for less than 9-10k. If you buy it at base config, you don't need it and you're buying a bad system for your needs.
While I don’t expect this be selling the 100,000 plus numbers a year of this Mac Pro the way they did with the older Mac Pro cheese grater models, I’m willing to bet they’ll sell in the tens of thousands a year, and that not bad. Workstations don’t sell in very high numbers. But I think you’re selling this short. This is a very versatile machine, with a very sophisticated mobo. In fact, it’s the most sophisticated mobo I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot over the years. There’s more involved too, but I’m not really in the mood for a long post right now.
But I said that already. I said that the motherboard was what is special about this computer, at the start of this thread. It's certainly not the CPU, M.2 storage or the like. That can be had anywhere. The problems begin when people buy them for the wrong reasons. A base-level system is horrendously overpriced. The base Mac Pro ships with the same gpu as a 2017 iMac. So my point has been, if you have to spend 10k, plus, this might be worth your while. But if you don't intend to upgrade it immediately, *know that you're buying a budget system*. And that's just a fact.
Who knows, maybe they cut the prices. I love that motherboard. I do. But unless you plan on taking advantage of 12 TB 3 lanes and multiplexed giga ether, you're just not the target demographic for this machine. Large compute farms or development/render complexes are.
I'm not trying to make it hard on anyone. But I am trying to clear things up so people know what they're getting into. Buyers remorse sucks. It would be a shame to spend 8k on a computer and find out that it competes unfavorably with a 5k iMac Pro.
Except that other in your own mind, it doesn’t.
? A base Mac Pro has a slower CPU than an iMac Pro. Fact. It has a slower GPU. Also fact. It has less storage. Also fact. I suppose people can delude themselves if they want. That won't change reality.
Remember that it's 5999 PLUS TAX and Apple Care. With those additions, that computer almost hits 7000. If you upgrade the RAM yourself and the storage (the measly 256 GB) yourself, you're looking at another 500 dollars MORE. And that's BEFORE you even look at a real graphics card. The Mac Pro's 580 is only 30% faster than the AMD APUs in higher level 3400Gs. 30% over integrated graphics isn't "powerful". So by the time you sink another 1000+ in a Vega 2 card, you're looking at least 8500 dollars (probably closer to 9000).
And even then, you could build a Mac with 90% that performance for a quarter of the price.
That is something I don't understand. How a device that starts at $6K have only a year of warranty, while workstations from companies like HP, even their low-end models, include a 3-yr warranty with onsite service.
At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. [...]
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding.
Not kidding, just ignorant. Please post your $1500 DIY version of equal performance. Then add additional cost for assembly, and support, which your DIY model doesn't have.
The interesting thing about this is when inflation is accounted for, this isn’t exceptionally expensive. My Quadra 950 from late 1992 had a base price of about $6,000. No video card, no CD player, no keyboard. The keyboard was about $300. The upgrade from the 160MB hdd to the much better 320MB cost another $300. It came with a lot of ram though—8MB, and 16 slots, which I filled for another $3,600. The 2x speed CD player I bought was about $600.
The NEC Multisync 21”monitor, I forget the model number, was $3,200. The Radius graphics card I bought (the computer used the CPU for graphics, with 1MB installed, and for 24 bit color, you could get another 1MB simm) cost around $3,750.
so let’s add those costs and translate into today’s dollars.
so, that would be around $15,000, back then. As of the end of 2018, the latest full year inflation numbers I can get, would be around $27,500. Even if you loaded it with the 1.5TB it could take, for $10,000, this model still falls somewhat short. And that’s mostly priced so high because of the RAM. More reasonable amounts would be a lot lower, allowing for a higher performance graphics card, etc.
the price isn’t so out of line with other models from other manufacturers when outfitted the same way. The difference is that Apple doesn’t offer a true bare bone version as others do. Look at BOXX pricing to get a good example.
but, I was going to buy one this year, and I’ve changed my mind. We are in a minor upheaval this year, because of the imminent changeover from PCIe 3, to PCIe 4. Workstation manufacturers have to make a decision as to what they’re going to do. Right now, we are in an in between state. That is, PCIe 4 is out, sort of, but not entirely. AMD has chips announced that are just about here for 4, and Intel has chips later this year for 4 as well. But neither are really “here” in a meaningful way. So all workstations are still 3. Other things are riding on this as well. Thunderbolt 4 is late, if it will even come out as Intel promised, when they said that within a decade of Thunderbolt’s release it would be at 100GB. But PCIe 3 has been here for about 7 years now, a long time. And it’s thought that another upgrade in Thunderbolt depends on PCIe 4. Then there is the faster usb, with more integration with Thunderbolt. Also M series SSDs will have the possibility of running up to 7.2GB/s under 4. 4 is now aimed at the SSD rather than the long term focus on the HDD. Graphics cards will need half the channels for the same throughput. New security features, and other major redesign has been done to get ready for 5, which is being worked on now, and may be finished in about a year.
so we can expect 3 to disappear during 2020, while 4 rushes in. Likely 4 will be around the more expected 3 years before 5 replaces it.
so, that’s why I’ve decided to wait until late next year. I expect to have this for about 5 years, unless some unexpected new technology turns up. If I were still working, I would get this, but as I’m not, for me, it pays to wait. In the meantime I’ll either buy a fully loaded iMac, or a moderately loaded iMac Pro, which I’ll then give to my daughter next year.
All excellent points. Good to hear from you on this. To me, the cost is as expected for what it is. As you say it is in fact historically right in line or better. I agree with everything you say about waiting but I am so damn bottlenecked by my I/O on the 2013 Mac Pro (and my MBP can transcode to H256 10 times faster) I have to make a move soon.
It's common to hear that Apple's global sales -- at Average Selling Prices that are often several times that of its rivals -- are just a matter of the company being able to fool people into thinking that they need something that is wildly overpriced and should actually be half the cost, and really should have been delivered two years ago.
This paragraph describes the AI comment sections in spades. How often are we treated to screeds declaring Apple is just a marketing company? How often are Apple users labelled iSheep or Sheeple? How often do we slog through voluminous paragraphs issuing demands that Apple do this or that to survive?
Once again Dilger has hit a nerve.
For crying out loud, all I see are defensive posts like yours. Where are all the hostile anti-Apple posts in here? Were they removed before I got to the comment section? These preemptively defensive posts remind me of meat eaters preemptively bashing vegans on Bored Panda.
One person here got blasted for “2K+ anti-Apple posts”, and the poster doing the blasting had quoted a perfectly rational and reasonable comment as an example. [throws hands up in the air]
No, the Apple cult is NOT dead. Like the USA’s biggest religious group, the Apple cultists just seem to have decided to take the role of the oppressed, despite being the majority in all spaces where they post and complain about so-called anti-Apple commentary.
I’ve seen commentary critical of Apple, and it was legit, measured commentary. I’m one of the people who get targeted for making such criticisms. As for the claimed illogical and arbitrary hate, that’s not me and neither is it most of the minority of criticism expressed by a tiny minority of people here.
The defensiveness speaks volumes. The occasional jerky anti-Apple comment does not in any way justify this level of defensiveness, nor does the media attitude at large justify these extremely wordy and defensive editorials.
Luckily I live in a free country and I'm going to give advice anyways. Judging from the replies from several posters in this thread, they may have the money to spend on this device but they certainly don't know what they're getting by buying it.
Inversely, besides not having the money for this kind of computer you likely also don't have the knowledge of why people like Macs and prefer them to cheaper DIY boxes. Hint: your point of "But I could build one for less!" has been argued perhaps ten thousand times on this very website. You have introduced zero new information.
As for rights, no one has claimed you don't have the right to spout nonsense. Certainly it's your right to troll us with this very old trope, it just isn't very meaningful.
Comments
I can see giving advice for buying a base model iMac 27 versus of optioned up iMac 21.5, or maybe a used 2013 Mac Pro versus an iMac 27 (or Mac mini), or an optioned up iMac 27 versus an iMac Pro, but if someone is asking for advice on buying a 2019 Mac Pro, the advice should be an automatic no.
Not sure what Dilger is going on about in regard to this Mac Pro though, as he’s just mocking the media, which is low hanging fruit. Mocking the media is necessary, as they are a net-net negative on humanity, so I liked the article, but what it has to do with the Mac Pro, who knows.
I have a Mac Pro 2009 running in my home studio; in 2009, i paid 3000 euros for it; it had Sata 2, USB 2, a few hard disk, and a GT120 graphic card, and an 8 core double cpu running at 2.16 Ghz. The lowest possible end.
Today, it run with nvme SSD, has USB3, an RX580, and two 6 core 3.4Ghz CPU, and it still current.
All this was massively less expensive than buying the 3 iMac that has become obsolete in the same timeframe.
The Mac Pro is a PCI machine; it is evolutive, that is the whole point; of course, the stellar point is when you spend more than 20K$, but it fully make sense in
a context where needs and gains evolve.
But as of today, if i had the kind of needs and money, i wouldn't buy an iMac Pro, i would buy a new Mac Pro, low end, and let it evolve in base of my needs; it would
be massively less expensive, and upgradable to technologies that today not yet exists, like USB4. In ten years from now it would be still useful.
An iMac Pro bought today, before a refresh, will be obsolete in about 3 years, and not upgradable.
Anyway, the point about the Mac Pro, as many poster said here, it is not a machine for gamers, it is not a machine for the masses; it is a machine for those that need it; they will reconise it.
Maurizio
The NEC Multisync 21”monitor, I forget the model number, was $3,200. The Radius graphics card I bought (the computer used the CPU for graphics, with 1MB installed, and for 24 bit color, you could get another 1MB simm) cost around $3,750.
so let’s add those costs and translate into today’s dollars.
so, that would be around $15,000, back then. As of the end of 2018, the latest full year inflation numbers I can get, would be around $27,500. Even if you loaded it with the 1.5TB it could take, for $10,000, this model still falls somewhat short. And that’s mostly priced so high because of the RAM. More reasonable amounts would be a lot lower, allowing for a higher performance graphics card, etc.
the price isn’t so out of line with other models from other manufacturers when outfitted the same way. The difference is that Apple doesn’t offer a true bare bone version as others do. Look at BOXX pricing to get a good example.
but, I was going to buy one this year, and I’ve changed my mind. We are in a minor upheaval this year, because of the imminent changeover from PCIe 3, to PCIe 4. Workstation manufacturers have to make a decision as to what they’re going to do. Right now, we are in an in between state. That is, PCIe 4 is out, sort of, but not entirely. AMD has chips announced that are just about here for 4, and Intel has chips later this year for 4 as well. But neither are really “here” in a meaningful way. So all workstations are still 3. Other things are riding on this as well. Thunderbolt 4 is late, if it will even come out as Intel promised, when they said that within a decade of Thunderbolt’s release it would be at 100GB. But PCIe 3 has been here for about 7 years now, a long time. And it’s thought that another upgrade in Thunderbolt depends on PCIe 4. Then there is the faster usb, with more integration with Thunderbolt. Also M series SSDs will have the possibility of running up to 7.2GB/s under 4. 4 is now aimed at the SSD rather than the long term focus on the HDD. Graphics cards will need half the channels for the same throughput. New security features, and other major redesign has been done to get ready for 5, which is being worked on now, and may be finished in about a year.
so we can expect 3 to disappear during 2020, while 4 rushes in. Likely 4 will be around the more expected 3 years before 5 replaces it.
so, that’s why I’ve decided to wait until late next year. I expect to have this for about 5 years, unless some unexpected new technology turns up. If I were still working, I would get this, but as I’m not, for me, it pays to wait. In the meantime I’ll either buy a fully loaded iMac, or a moderately loaded iMac Pro, which I’ll then give to my daughter next year.
I've decided on the Mac Pro as explained and after 41 years in the business, many of them owning Apple dealerships and Graphic, Digital Editing and even Music Production studios and I am comfortable with my decision ... whatever it ends up being. At least it's only one I'll be buying these days, such decisions used to be for multiple stations in my past. I bought 10 Mac IIfxs for DTP, scanning and Pagemaker stations back in the day. Throw in a 2400 dpi postscript typesetter and 10 Barco calibrated monitors, scanners, etc. That was a $200K+ shopping spree.
In 2009, for one of my studios, I bought an iMac 27" with a quad core Core i5 (faster in single-threaded ops than your cpu but slower in parallelized), a 4850 (4.5 times faster than your 120) and 1 TB of storage.
It cost me 1800 without AppleCare. For an extra 1800 TODAY, I could go out and buy a 2017 27" iMac with a Core i7 8 core, 16 GB of RAM and a 580x...and I'd have spend only a hair more than you and have TWO monitors to show for it. Actually, I could've sold the first iMac (I never sold it, it's a baseclient now) and applied money towards the purchase of the new system and walked away with...a monitor for free for the same performance.
You don't have to buy a Mac Pro to be "pro" or to have lots of expandability options.
My current computer Is a Mac Mini with M.2 storage, 32 GB of RAM and a Core i7 married to a Radeon VII via a Razer Core X. It has 10 Gig Ether that I have connected to 10 TB of work storage. That is separate from my own Ryzen home media build with another Radeon VII that has 25 TB of dedicated personal storage.
I can assure you that I understand just fine what expandability and nice machines are. The issue isn't expandability because 10 gig ether and TB 3 render that moot. And the point isn't gpu upgrades because egpus also render that moot. The point is that for 8k, you're getting a 1500 dollar system. That's it. The end. Beyond that, you can do whatever you want. Go buy the Pro. But I was just warning people of what to expect when they bought their new Mac Pros and ran into a brick wall when they realized that they had 0-15% performance improvement over a 5 year old computer. That's because the Pro is basically a 2-3 year old computer. And it was MIDRANGE when it was initially conceived.
Now if you plan on buying 2 Vega Pro Duos. Congrats. You're spending 15k and you're probably running weather simulations or advanced financial modeling and you need that kind of teraflop performance. The Mac Pro makes perfect sense.
But then you shouldn't be offended by someone like me warning base-entry purchasers from avoiding the system anyways.
Except that other in your own mind, it doesn’t.
Who knows, maybe they cut the prices. I love that motherboard. I do. But unless you plan on taking advantage of 12 TB 3 lanes and multiplexed giga ether, you're just not the target demographic for this machine. Large compute farms or development/render complexes are.
? A base Mac Pro has a slower CPU than an iMac Pro. Fact. It has a slower GPU. Also fact. It has less storage. Also fact. I suppose people can delude themselves if they want. That won't change reality.
Not kidding, just ignorant. Please post your $1500 DIY version of equal performance. Then add additional cost for assembly, and support, which your DIY model doesn't have.
One person here got blasted for “2K+ anti-Apple posts”, and the poster doing the blasting had quoted a perfectly rational and reasonable comment as an example. [throws hands up in the air]
No, the Apple cult is NOT dead. Like the USA’s biggest religious group, the Apple cultists just seem to have decided to take the role of the oppressed, despite being the majority in all spaces where they post and complain about so-called anti-Apple commentary.
I’ve seen commentary critical of Apple, and it was legit, measured commentary. I’m one of the people who get targeted for making such criticisms. As for the claimed illogical and arbitrary hate, that’s not me and neither is it most of the minority of criticism expressed by a tiny minority of people here.
The defensiveness speaks volumes. The occasional jerky anti-Apple comment does not in any way justify this level of defensiveness, nor does the media attitude at large justify these extremely wordy and defensive editorials.
As for rights, no one has claimed you don't have the right to spout nonsense. Certainly it's your right to troll us with this very old trope, it just isn't very meaningful.