SAN/NAS if you required network accessible storage.
Your solution involves the Mac Pro being on all the time to serve data to the network...
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OWC Debuts First Intel Xeon Processor Upgrades for 2013 Mac Pro
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SAN/NAS if you required network accessible storage.
Your solution involves the Mac Pro being on all the time to serve data to the network...
Actually people were complaining about both upgradability and expandability while using the two terms interchangeably.
My point wasn't regarding expandability... but there seems to be a movement of people saying "I can build a gaming rig for much less!" when in fact they are two different things entirely. Nobody cares about their gaming rigs.
I hope this was sarcasm...because your gaming rig wouldn't have a chance to keep up with this without spending as much as the price of this in upgrades.
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Name one as portable and that takes up such little space as well as remains as quiet, is as cost effective, and uses as little power.
that's because it's not a DIY gaming rig running a crummy OS. it's a pro workstation running OS X. you weren't able to upgrade the motherboard of past MPs either.
Most likely yes, which is why it costs what it does. OWC is using the few hundred $$$ extra, plus the price they can get selling the original processor (which won't be much, frankly) to both pay for their trouble and fund future warranty work. This is also why if you want 3 years warranty they are charging you an additional 199$ on top of all of that before.
Frankly, I am more than capable of opening a nMP and working on it. I wouldn't though, for just this reason.
I'm honestly surprised their legal council has OK'd this. As a first gen product there is significant potential risk for failure somewhere along the lines. I'd hate for a problem to crop up in a run, much less the whole first gen, which apple will warranty but they (OWC) will have to pick up the tab directly....
Karl P
And even within those that use their computer to make money (like me) don't really need all that power. If you are into movie editing or something that does require that kind of horsepower, yeah, it worth it (and tax deductible!).
Yep. But be careful what you buy. I'm guessing if you use a part with a greater TDP it might void your warranty.
I think you got lost on the way to your destination, try it again:
m a c d a i l y n e w s . c o m
Weren't people crying over no upgradability before?
They were crying about upgrades being difficult and/or expensive. And they are. Especially GPU upgrades! If this was a regular old computer, you'd be able to upgrade the CPU (or anything else) yourself with ease.
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>"up to 31 percent more affordable"
This line made me think the post was a joke. I can't see any way that this is or could be even remotely true.
What? The whole point of the OWC upgrade is that it's cheaper than what Apple provides. I'm assuming it costs 31% less to go the OWC route, but I'm concerned about the warranty.
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You can replace it, don't know about upgrading it.
That is less likely. These are cpu swaps, so they don't require custom hardware. I wouldn't personally swap cpus on a machine under warranty though.
Your comments indicate that you haven't looked into this. You will find that the proof of concepts are there, but many of them involve hacked solutions. For example it's possible to get some PCI cards working in external enclosures. They aren't ideal in that they're quite expensive, often limited on power, and the drivers aren't set up for it. If the cables come loose at any point or get tugged, you end up with kernel panics. That is after the exorbitant cost of such atypical hardware. If you look into it in real detail, you'll see that there aren't many good solutions for external thunderbolt peripherals. Some people will be affected less than others. There are many cases where older systems required the use of specialty hardware that isn't crucial to the same users today. Thunderbolt could use more in the way of DAS options. The other thing is that after market gpu upgrades are highly unlikely. Previous ones were basically the same hardware as the PC side with a higher markup. If they require significant custom work, it won't happen. There's also the issue of dual gpus. If they have to match it would cost quite a lot driving down potential after market sales. Past a certain point it becomes a better investment to move to a new machine.
This power and price is incomprehensible.
Wow, no kidding.
that all costs an arm and a leg
These aren't Apple sanctioned, they comply with Apple's technical specifications (e.g. power consumption, heat generation/dissipation, etc.). Completely different.
Is there a joke in there somewhere? You must have been one of the haters from the beginning.
As much as I would really like to do this and I do have some extra cash right now, I am just hesitant to. I have bought several things from OWC and most have been excellent quality. I have however had two occasions where they told me that the item I was purchasing was 100% compatible. After installation that turned out to be not that case. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to trouble shoot the issues with no luck from OWC. They were kind enough to give me a full refund both times. I just don't want to be their Beta Group for these...
I work for a company that has AASP status. Trust me, these upgrades are not "sanctioned by Apple." They may not void entire warranty however, it's a bit of a fine line. But Apple will never, ever, "sanction" any third party upgrade -- even for customer upgradable parts like RAM. "Being OK with and not totally voiding warranty" and "sanctioning" are not the same thing!
So, you could buy a new processor ("46% faster") for the same price as a base-model Mac Pro, while trading in your original CPU.
You could set up a Thunderbolt bridge between them and use them as a supercomputer! The new node would have its own quad-core CPU, a pair of GPUs, 12GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. That's pretty damn useful!
One guy managed to get 760 MB/s over Thunderbolt.
It depends what kind of work you're doing, but if it's highly parallelised work it could probably be farmed out over the network easily enough. FCPX doesn't support render slaves AFAIK, but Compressor allows distributed exporting.
You could set up a Thunderbolt bridge between them and use them as a supercomputer! The new node would have its own quad-core CPU, a pair of GPUs, 12GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. That's pretty damn useful!
One guy managed to get 760 MB/s over Thunderbolt.
It depends what kind of work you're doing, but if it's highly parallelised work it could probably be farmed out over the network easily enough. FCPX doesn't support render slaves AFAIK, but Compressor allows distributed exporting.
I haven't seen his comments myself, but he was probably complaining that the CPU would be difficult and/or expensive to upgrade (which it still is). You can usually upgrade everything in a Mac, just with highly varying degrees of difficulty
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As long as you have lots and lots of money at your disposal. Meanwhile, the 2012 Mac Pro's GPUs, in the near future, can be upgraded beyond the GPUs in the 2013 Mac Pro! Dunno about my 2008 Mac Pro, but that GTX 650Ti Boost is serving me very well.
Oh yeah, and many PCs are also much cheaper to upgrade. Too bad they run Windows and Linux and are depressing to use in general.
Sorry,I was not clear enough, I meant the LAST place you'd ant your data is inside the workstation.
Ignore what is technically possible and think about a perfect world with no technology limits. What would you want? I think I'd want to be able to just sit down any place in the world at a borrowed computer and work on editing that video I'm making. No login or password, the computer would see it's me and remember what I was doing. I certainly do NOT want to have to carry a notebook computer around with me. I'd prefer them to be generally available. Either that or they are so tiny the video editing computer fits inside my glasses frame or a ring or watch. But carrying a computer with you because the data in inside THAT computer is "so 20th century". The dumbest thing I hear is "I can't get to my email because it is on my other computer". The entire concept of "that data is on that computer" needs to disappear.
It will be a long time before we can do that world wide but we can do exactly as I described above within one building or campus. Today it is cost effective to install fiber optic cables in building and campuses. Gigabit level bandwidth is common within building today. This will grow. In 100 years no one will even know where data is. It will liley be widely distributed and fault tolerant and certainly strongly encrypted