VRing

AppleInsider said:

After the second test, each additional run would cause the iMac Pro to thermal throttle when the CPU reached roughly 94 degrees celsius, which caused the clock speed to drop from 3.9GHz to about 3.6GHz for a second or two. This allowed the CPU to drop below 92 degrees, and the clock speed to rise back to the maximum 3.9GHz. Interestingly, instead of ramping up the fan speed to keep this from happening again, the iMac Pro just kept this cycle going.

Mike Wuerthele said:

coxnvox7 said:

Would love to see Logic Pro X test running as many 3rd party orchestral VIs as possible at 48kHz and maybe 96kHz...does AI ever do any tests like that, or is it all video/graphics type tests? Peace.

I'll pass your requests to our review team.

AMD Threadripper 1950X (16 cores / 32 threads) + ASRock X399 Taichi [$970]
Corsair H80i [$80]
32 GB Samsung DDR4 ECC [$400]
1 TB Samsung 960 EVO [$450]
AMD Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition 16 GB HBM2 (Vega 64) [$790]
Corsair RM850x [$110]
ASUS XG-C100C 10 Gbps [$100]
Phanteks Enthoo Pro [$100]

Total for hardware: $3000

That leaves $2000 to budget on a display, OS, keyboard and mouse.

The display preference will vary depending on the industry and use case for this machine. You might need a display with high color accuracy/reproduction or you might need multiple displays, etc.

The DIY build above is a lot better than the entry $5000 iMac Pro.

kevin kee said:

VRing said:

macxpress said:

randominternetperson said:

Anyone know the price breakdown for the major components of this?  $5K is huge money, and critics will be all about the "Apple tax."  It would help to know that the processor costs $x, the video card costs $x, the 1TB SSD costs $x, etc.  Presumably Apple is earning a margin of near 30%, so I expect these components are surprisingly expensive (adding up to well over $3000).

Many have tried to build a similar PC and have failed to do a fair comparison. The graphics cards in them are brand new (I think the reason for the Dec availability) as well as the Xeon processors are also new. Those alone are quite expensive. Since people cannot get their hands on these new AMD Vega/Vega Pro graphics they're trying to compare a PC with dual 1080TI graphics cards and thats not really a fair comparison in the end. Same goes for the CPU...many are just comparing the highest end current Core i7 which again, isn't a fair comparison. Even then, they come to about $4500 if I remember correctly. Again, that doesn't count in the design costs, assembly, shipping, sales costs, support costs, etc.

Apple did one during the keynote with an HP Workstation and it was over $7,000. I think we'll have to wait a little bit when the parts become fully available for the public.

What many fail to factor in when calculating a cost is the R&D, engineering, making the software all work efficiently, the OS, and any apps included, assembly, shipping, retail, support costs, etc. These are all factored into the cost of any product, yet people just go on PC Part Picker and price out the parts and think thats a fair comparison when its not.

Apple iMac Pro ($5000)

Intel Xeon (8 core / 16 thread)
32 GB DDR4-2666 ECC
1TB SSD
Radeon Pro Vega 56 - 8 GB HBM2

DIY PC ($3090 - everything except for a monitor, keyboard, mouse and OS)

AMD Threadripper 1950X (16 core / 32 thread)
32 GB DDR4-2133 ECC 
1TB Samsung 960 EVO
Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (Vega 64) - 16 GB HBM2

pcpartpicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NGV9sJ

The DIY build has a better CPU and GPU than the iMac Pro.

By the time the iMac Pro launches, there will be even more price drops and other new products only a month or so away (look to CES).

Actually the DIY does not necessarily have better CPU and GPU, since Xeon and Vega both are still unavailable commercially. They might be closer in terms of performance, but I bet the new ones have higher efficiency.

chia said:

VRing said:

Thunderbolt 3 isn't nearly that important when you have a motherboard with that much expansion and 64 PCIe lanes.

2x 10 Gb/s Ethernet can be added for $175 extra in the PCIe x1 slot, which might not be needed.

The display is left out because it gives the option to choose a display or multiple displays that best suite your needs.

You seem to be shirking out of the responsibility of choosing a suitable display to make your system equivalent in the comparison with the iMac Pro.

If there was an iMac Pro in the workplace that needed to be replaced and you told the boss “I can get the equivalent for cheaper”, you’d be expected to get everything so that the equivalent system is immediately usable, not plonk a box on the desk and tell the boss “go choose a monitor you like”. Also as you are comparing, the monitor should be at least as good as the display on the iMac Pro, otherwise you’re not comparing like with like.

Another thing with the workplace scenario is that Thunderbolt 3 will be very useful for quickly detaching and attaching external drive arrays from an old faulty machine and to the new replacement. With PCI storage you’re limited to how many slots and the physical size within the computer’s case. There’s also the harassment of opening and unplugging the cards should anything go wrong with that computer.
Thunderbolt 3 removes those limitations.

macxpress said:

chia said:

VRing said:

Thunderbolt 3 isn't nearly that important when you have a motherboard with that much expansion and 64 PCIe lanes.

2x 10 Gb/s Ethernet can be added for $175 extra in the PCIe x1 slot, which might not be needed.

The display is left out because it gives the option to choose a display or multiple displays that best suite your needs.

You seem to be shirking out of the responsibility of choosing a suitable display to make your system equivalent in the comparison with the iMac Pro.

If there was an iMac Pro in the workplace that needed to be replaced and you told the boss “I can get the equivalent for cheaper”, you’d be expected to get everything so that the equivalent system is immediately usable, not plonk a box on the desk and tell the boss “go choose a monitor you like”. Also as you are comparing, the monitor should be at least as good as the display on the iMac Pro, otherwise you’re not comparing like with like.

Another thing with the workplace scenario is that Thunderbolt 3 will be very useful for quickly detaching and attaching external drive arrays from an old faulty machine and to the new replacement. With PCI storage you’re limited to how many slots and the physical size within the computer’s case. There’s also the harassment of opening and unplugging the cards should anything go wrong with that computer.
Thunderbolt 3 removes those limitations.

Exactly my point with Thunderbolt 3...its also extremely versatile where as PCIe isn't always. 

When you add in a display with the same quality as the iMac/iMac Pro, you're back up to the price of the iMac Pro so did you really gain much in the end, other than possibly a faster processor? Sure, maybe you can upgrade it later on, but eventually its not going to make a difference. I'd like to know know many Professional actually get into their Mac now and upgrade it assuming they have one that makes this possible? I'm not talking about the Photographer who does this on the side...I'm talking about the person who is extremely serious and this is the day job, maybe even has their own company. Do you just buy what you need and need for the future and then when it doesn't suit your needs you just a new Mac, or do you upgrade it?

StrangeDays said:

VRing said:

foggyhill said:

VRing said:

baederboy said:

VRing said:

AppleInsider said:

Huawei and fellow Chinese phonemakers Oppo and Xiaomi are expected to adopt 3D sensors on upcoming 2018 models, following in the footsteps of the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera. 

Huawei already announced their system a week or so back, but it's not being used in the V10 (http://winfuture.de/news,100794.html).


It looks rather similar to Apple's system, no surprise there. It can capture 300,000 points in under 10 seconds (iPhone X does 30,000 points, but in a shorter amount of time). Huawei also claims their system will unlock in 0.4 seconds.

If it works as well as they claim, and that's an "if", then it would seem they're able to catch up to the hardware in a pretty short amount of time. Huawei also has a Neural Processing Unit as part of their Kirin 970 that's considerably more powerful than Apple's Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic, so all that remains is the software.

Can you provide me with a reference that the Kirin 970 neural processing unit is considerably more powerful than Apples Neural Engine?

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11804/huawei-shows-unannounced-kirin-970-at-ifa-2017-dedicated-neural-processing-unit

Kirin 970's NPU offers 1.92 trillion operations per second, Apple's Neural Engine offers 600 billion operations per second. For further comparison, both are well behind Google's PVC in the Pixel 2 / Pixel 2 XL which offers 3 trillion operations per second.

Completely useless self defined spec with no standardization, but go on buddy spit it out if it makes you feel better.

And as for insults, I insult just trolls who think parking here at Appleinsider will "teach us" and yeah you're not the first here to do that, Googlehead's been there spitting out useless stats and distorsions longer than you.

It's not useless. Through quantization you can use an 8-bit integer in a neural network prediction while maintaining useful accuracy. On that basis, it's very straight forward to compare.

Remember, honey, not vinegar.

Nah it’s just specs. Specs is specs. Specs aren’t the only thing that matter, especially when the total experience is worse off. The A11 specs are impressive because it’s best in class and the iOS experience is better than the knockoffs. The “neural” spec you’ve cited is rather meaningless because the knockoff experience is inferior to iOS.