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derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
I doubt it. A Titan isn't THAT much faster than a FirePro.

Image

7970 is probably the FirePro we're looking at. There hasn't been any difference in DirectX benches between the FirePro and the 7970.

OK. And here is Tessmark OpenGL.
05-OpenGL-Synthetic-02-Tessmark.png

And Sanctuary bench.
04-OpenGL-Synthetic-02-Unigine-Sanctuary.png

Not too crazy to draw some conclusions on driver expectations. I know the HW is there it is the optimizations that are troublesome.
 

CaptHenryMorgan

macrumors regular
Apr 27, 2013
196
0
The District
I can't understand why Apple is calling a non-expandable, no disc drive machine a "Pro" machine.

"Pro's", aka Professionals, do NOT want external expansion boxes cluttering their desk just because Apple deems it necessary to not allow people to expand it's internal components. ("expansion is external")

Professional users also want to burn media (videos, photos, etc) to DVDs and Blu Rays. Now, on top of a ~$3000+ machine, they have to purchase an additional external drive just to do that. Apple is not gonna undercut the price of the high end ridiculously priced 15" rMBP. ($2799)

Don't get me started on the internal storage. WHY can Pros NOT expand the internal storage? Yes, there are external drives, but when it comes down to it, it's yet ANOTHER external expansion box, cluttering an already cluttered desk.

Ha ha, I haven't burned a physical copy of anything for a client in over 3 years.

I've already got cables up the ass coming out of my towers in the way of KONA cards, Fibre cables, USB, eSATA, etc. If I could run 6 TB cables into a rack and have the Pro sitting on my desk where I can easily unplug and put it into my backpack, I'd MUCH rather have that.


And I don't know any professionals who don't edit off an external SAN or Fibre RAID, not in my house anymore. All my stuff is external so I can move it around instead of having to pull out drives.

This machine is clearly for video professionals, maybe audio professionals. Just listen to the latest "Vector" Podcast with Rene Richie to get a very good concept of why.

The lesson here is: Speak for yourself. Not all pros are as stuck in their old ways as you are.
 

kappaknight

macrumors 68000
Mar 5, 2009
1,595
91
Atlanta, GA
Maybe I'm not a "true" Pro user... but this is the first time I'm considering a Pro machine because my multi-tasking is actually reaching the limits of my MBP.

With that said, I'm still not sure what the fuss is all about. With Apple stuff, I tend to only open it up when I first get it to upgrade the RAM and the hard drive to a SSD. After that, I only open it up if things are breaking or if a hard drive fails and I need to replace it.

At home, my storage has moved to a RAIDED NAS solution since most internal storage can no longer handle the amount of media files that I have. It would be nice if I can access this via the cloud or FTP, which I can... and if things break, it'd be as easy as popping out a hard drive and swapping it vs. having to open up one of Apple's machines.

If I actually go with a Thunderbolt solution, I'm sure the speeds will be fast enough that I will no longer care if it's external or internal.

Anyway, I do see this change as being the norm and I welcome it. The way it's setup now, maybe this means if things break, you can walk into an Apple store and they can just hand you a new one after transferring your files or swapping your hard drive. I welcome efficiency even if it's as small as going to the store and getting things resolved in one trip instead of two.
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
Not too crazy to draw some conclusions on driver expectations. I know the HW is there it is the optimizations that are troublesome.

Yeah. To be fair, it didn't perform with quite the same improvement in other benches, and actually lost some real world benches.

Tom's Hardware finished with:

This card's OpenGL performance is a mixed bag. It posts solid numbers in most 3D workloads, though not by enough to justify a $1,000 price tag compared to the other gaming-oriented boards we tested. We're certainly curious to see how the Titan fares when we insert its results to the upcoming workstation graphics card round-up. However, we wouldn't recommend it (and we don't think Nvidia would either) for everyday work in a design studio. Quadro and FirePro boards are the right tools for that job, primarily due to their properly optimized and certified drivers.
 

derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
Yeah. To be fair, it didn't perform with quite the same improvement in other benches, and actually lost some real world benches.

Tom's Hardware finished with:

Hey if it ends up being a 7970 Xfire then that is great. I don't want it to suck, y'know? Maybe others do. I either want the nMP to be effing wonderful or complete failure (ala' Cube) and revert back to the previous tower state. We will all need something in the next 5 years regardless. Worst case for me is it to be moderately OK at some things (ie all Apple SW) and terrible at everything else with zero upgrade path and with no 3rd party extensibility in sight. Which it probably wont be as it will just use all the laptop peripherals.
 

handsome pete

macrumors 68000
Aug 15, 2008
1,725
259
Just because you can move away from physical media it doesn't mean that your customers may want to.

True, and I like the convenience of an included optical drive. But when you can get a good cheap external drive, is it really a big deal?
 

Macsonic

macrumors 68000
Sep 6, 2009
1,706
97
Though optical media has become less popular nowadays, there is this store that offers video weddings and they later burn the videos to blu rays as part of the package to their clients.
 

penter

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2006
600
29
True, and I like the convenience of an included optical drive. But when you can get a good cheap external drive, is it really a big deal?

Tell me, have you ever used a Blu-Ray player professionally? Occasional use of an optical drive hardly qualifies as professional use...

Just because you can move away from physical media it doesn't mean that your customers may want to.

Just because the mac pro doesn't have a optical drive doesn't mean it's not a pro machine, either.
This OP sounds like a complaining n00b who likes to rip Blu-Rays.
I don't know of any professionals in my industry that actually use DVD's, let alone blu-rays.... And I work in the entertainment industry.
When we're given a project, we're given assets digitally. They don't give us a Blu-Ray to rip lol
So unless you're in the professional business of ripping/watching Blu-Rays, there is little need for a Blu-Ray player, IMO

If anyone likes the added convenience of having an optical drive, in this day and age (hence my original question to the OP), then buying an external optical drive sounds pretty convenient to me...
 
Last edited:

ssgbryan

macrumors 65816
Jul 18, 2002
1,488
1,420
Tell me, have you ever used a Blu-Ray player professionally? Occasional use of an optical drive hardly qualifies as professional use...



Just because the mac pro doesn't have a optical drive doesn't mean it's not a pro machine, either.
This OP sounds like a complaining n00b who likes to rip Blu-Rays.
I don't know of any professionals in my industry that actually use DVD's, let alone blu-rays.... And I work in the entertainment industry.
When we're given a project, we're given assets digitally. They don't give us a Blu-Ray to rip lol
So unless you're in the professional business of ripping/watching Blu-Rays, there is little need for a Blu-Ray player, IMO

If anyone likes the added convenience of having an optical drive, in this day and age (hence my original question to the OP), then buying an external optical drive sounds pretty convenient to me...

I'll go slowly for you Sparky.....

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP. Let me repeat that because it is important.

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP.

Just because the business you work for is B2B doesn't mean that every "professional" business does B2B. If the customer says "I want the finished product on Blue-Ray." You have two options, give them what they want, or the business goes to someone else.

Lots of "professional" businesses outside of your narrow viewpoint use MPs.

For the company you work for, the nMP may be nirvana. For what I do, the nMP is a fantastic advertisement for both Dell & HP workstations. Many more horses for a lot less money.

It all depends on what your workflow looks like.
 

motegi

macrumors regular
May 14, 2009
197
0
sydney.au
Id rather buy an external BD burner than have one inside the box.

That way for the 90% of the year where its unused, I can unplug it put it in the drawer out of sight. :)
 

ZnU

macrumors regular
May 24, 2006
171
0
We're a post facility. We burn Blu-rays with fair regularity. Our filmmaker clients want them for festival submissions, etc. But an external burner is still way more convenient, as we can move it between machines to keep mundane tasks like disc burning from interfering with the client work going on in our edit/color suites.
 

penter

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2006
600
29
I'll go slowly for you Sparky.....

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP. Let me repeat that because it is important.

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP.

Just because the business you work for is B2B doesn't mean that every "professional" business does B2B. If the customer says "I want the finished product on Blue-Ray." You have two options, give them what they want, or the business goes to someone else.

Lots of "professional" businesses outside of your narrow viewpoint use MPs.

For the company you work for, the nMP may be nirvana. For what I do, the nMP is a fantastic advertisement for both Dell & HP workstations. Many more horses for a lot less money.

It all depends on what your workflow looks like.

i'm willing to bet that most professional workflows don't involve burning blu-rays... sparky
 

koban4max

macrumors 68000
Aug 23, 2011
1,582
0
I can't understand why Apple is calling a non-expandable, no disc drive machine a "Pro" machine.

"Pro's", aka Professionals, do NOT want external expansion boxes cluttering their desk just because Apple deems it necessary to not allow people to expand it's internal components. ("expansion is external")

Professional users also want to burn media (videos, photos, etc) to DVDs and Blu Rays. Now, on top of a ~$3000+ machine, they have to purchase an additional external drive just to do that. Apple is not gonna undercut the price of the high end ridiculously priced 15" rMBP. ($2799)

Don't get me started on the internal storage. WHY can Pros NOT expand the internal storage? Yes, there are external drives, but when it comes down to it, it's yet ANOTHER external expansion box, cluttering an already cluttered desk.
go buy usb cd drive...from apple.
 

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
none
I'll go slowly for you Sparky.....

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP. Let me repeat that because it is important.

Your "industry" isn't the entire market for the MP.

Just because the business you work for is B2B doesn't mean that every "professional" business does B2B. If the customer says "I want the finished product on Blue-Ray." You have two options, give them what they want, or the business goes to someone else.

Lots of "professional" businesses outside of your narrow viewpoint use MPs.

For the company you work for, the nMP may be nirvana. For what I do, the nMP is a fantastic advertisement for both Dell & HP workstations. Many more horses for a lot less money.

It all depends on what your workflow looks like.

I wish you could see the irony of your post, especially in a thread where yourself and others claim that the nMP is not a Pro machine because it does not suit their specific needs and workflows.
 
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