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wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
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Its not unusual for the Mac Pro to go longer then two years before updates. Even your beloved classic Mac Pro.

So there you go, you just verified my statement, thanks.

No he didn’t. You say its not unusual for the Mac Pro to go 2+ years between updates? Its happened once. Its now over 200 days past the typical update length and about a month away from the longest time between updates ever. And you can’t hide behind product cycles out Apple’s control. Haswell Xeons have been out for over a year.
 
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linuxcooldude

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2010
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I don't recall any such questions, please link me back to them so I can answer them for you.

Unsupported PC Cards have had driver support since 10.7.3, thread in the stickies. Use the scroll bar to go upwards, I can explain anything you can't work out.

Not going to repost here but posts #2529 & #2426 While Apple may have provided drivers, they don't officially support them. They would definitely not provide tech support if they stopped working. But most are already out of warrantee anyway.

If you haven't updated to El Cap you may be surprised to find that 570s with no EFI may now support 2 DVI outputs. Can't confirm, all mine have EFI.

Thats what I've heard as well, but I moved on to a better supported card by then. Last time I used a GTX 570 it worked fine with two monitors in Mac OSX, but not when using using Nvidia drivers. As far as what I remember.

"Workstation" cards are the same as "consumer" cards in OSX, sorry if you never figured that out. At least in Windows they get special drivers (when they have special device ids).

Drivers are not the only thing that make workstation graphic cards different then consumer versions. While I don't think they use special drivers in Mac OSX the GPU chip is still a bit different then consumer version. See post number I referenced.

Even the above paragraph seems rather difficult to make sense of. Seems rather jumbled and confused. Perhaps your spell checker mangled it a bit?

I would of figured you would leave that to the spelling police and comment on more important things.

No he didn’t. You say its not unusual for the Mac Pro to go 2+ years between updates? Its happened once. Its now over 200 days past the typical update length and about a month away from the longest time between updates ever. And you can’t hide behind product cycles out Apple’s control. Haswell Xeons have been out for over a year.

I said it was not unusual, I didn't say it was frequent.
 
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wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
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or if you buy a 4 bay solution from akitio or OWC you can have almost the same expansion ability with only two cables. (and RAID or not)

And the cheapest one with good total size capabilities on OWC is $400 and they are limited to 790 MB/s. That’s fast enough for mechanical drive RAIDs, not so much for SDD RAIDs.

This is what just doesn’t make sense. We’re now forced to pay more for less, if we a “new” Mac Pro.
 
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wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
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I said it was not unusual, I didn't say it was frequent.

And we’re 30 days from its never being this long. And to most people “unusual” means “not frequently”. You just said it wasn’t frequent, yet its also not unusual. Good god man. Talk about arguing semantics...
 
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Fl0r!an

macrumors 6502a
Aug 14, 2007
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Not going to repost here but posts #2529 & #2426 While Apple may have provided drivers, they don't officially support them. They would definitely not provide tech support if they stopped working. But most are already out of warrantee anyway.

To be fair, Apple doesn't give any better support to official products like HD 7950 Mac Edition. They f*cked up drivers 2 years ago and don't give a single sh*t.
 

koyoot

macrumors 603
Jun 5, 2012
5,939
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Because the goal for every hardware is to not get performance improvements from Drivers, but from the application itself.
 

linuxcooldude

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2010
2,480
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To be fair, Apple doesn't give any better support to official products like HD 7950 Mac Edition. They f*cked up drivers 2 years ago and don't give a single sh*t.

Those are not official Apple branded cards. I have not seen any official partnership between Sapphire & Apple to guarantee support of these third party cards. So buyer beware.
 

Kpjoslee

macrumors 6502
Sep 11, 2007
416
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Because the goal for every hardware is to not get performance improvements from Drivers, but from the application itself.

well, drivers are pretty important since there are no applications that directly access GPU bypassing drivers. As long as driver exists between the application and the GPU, driver side of things become the most important factor.
 

koyoot

macrumors 603
Jun 5, 2012
5,939
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I agree that yet there is not that high amount of Apps that use low-level APIs, but the amount will grow in close future.

And Apple and AMD does everything to push everyone for it. AMD - we can imagine why. They don't have enough cash to spend on people optimizing the performance of applications. Apple - they don't have time for it. But, the benefit from this is much, much bigger.
 

filmak

macrumors 65816
Jun 21, 2012
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And the cheapest one with good total size capabilities on OWC is $400 and they are limited to 790 MB/s. That’s fast enough for mechanical drive RAIDs, not so much for SDD RAIDs.

This is what just doesn’t make sense. We’re now forced to pay more for less, if we a “new” Mac Pro.

Unfortunately for mass storage all the solutions available are of this kind in general, of course there are some faster TB solutions available too, suitable for SSDs.
I wonder... even if we had a new cMP available with 4 bays for standard mechanical drives it would have (in best case) SATA3, the old one finished having only SATA2, the performance would be similar (or probably less) to the current externals, so please explain what isn't making sense?

I personally think that, in this case, only the extra cost is a factor.
 
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zephonic

macrumors 65816
Feb 7, 2011
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greater L.A. area
And we’re 30 days from its never being this long. And to most people “unusual” means “not frequently”. You just said it wasn’t frequent, yet its also not unusual. Good god man. Talk about arguing semantics...

Seriously, I don't think the 2012 model counts as an update. A near-undetectable spec bump of the 2010 model, absolutely nothing new. They didn't even bother to change the model identifier (5,1). Even the 2010 model was an evolution of the 2009 model, but at least the Westmeres and GPU's were new.

So the longest period between updates was from 2010 to 2013.

I suspect that the same people complaining about no new MacPro would complain the loudest if Apple did update it this year, cue the "Apple sucks for updating to Haswell when Skylake/Purley is around the corner. The nMP is basically obsolete when it hits the shelves" tirade.

BTW, Skylake/Purley is rumored to be a pretty massive upgrade: http://wccftech.com/massive-intel-xeon-e5-xeon-e7-skylake-purley-biggest-advancement-nehalem/
 

Kpjoslee

macrumors 6502
Sep 11, 2007
416
266
Seriously, I don't think the 2012 model counts as an update. A near-undetectable spec bump of the 2010 model, absolutely nothing new. They didn't even bother to change the model identifier (5,1). Even the 2010 model was an evolution of the 2009 model, but at least the Westmeres and GPU's were new.

So the longest period between updates was from 2010 to 2013.

I suspect that the same people complaining about no new MacPro would complain the loudest if Apple did update it this year, cue the "Apple sucks for updating to Haswell when Skylake/Purley is around the corner. The nMP is basically obsolete when it hits the shelves" tirade.

BTW, Skylake/Purley is rumored to be a pretty massive upgrade: http://wccftech.com/massive-intel-xeon-e5-xeon-e7-skylake-purley-biggest-advancement-nehalem/

Skylake/Purley is 2017 platform lol. I do think Mac Pro will get updated to haswell/broadwell before that.
 

wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
1,589
809
Unfortunately for mass storage all the solutions available are of this kind in general, of course there are some faster TB solutions available too, suitable for SSDs.
I wonder... even if we had a new cMP available with 4 bays for standard mechanical drives it would have (in best case) SATA3, the old one finished having only SATA2, and the performance would be similar (or probably less) to the current externals, so please explain what isn't making sense?

I personally think that, in this case, only the extra cost is a factor.

Isn’t that 790MB/s sustained for the whole enclosure, with 1.3GB/s max speed? Each Sata3 is more like 600 MB/s per connection, so 2.4 GB/s over the 4 total. Plus, ya know, there are actually more than 4 Sata3 ports on standard boards these days.
 

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
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Aveiro, Portugal
Joe, indeed it uses 2600 in the 8 core and up but since only one socket is available, and doubtfully there will be any 2S nMP, do you see Purley in nMP really?
That leaves us with a problem. Either the 1S platform goes upwards of 8 core, or the nMP is indeed in a dead end.
Or maybe there will be 2 versions,1S Kaby Lake and 2S Lewisburg (with and without OmniPath, 4 and 6 channel mem and all that stuff).
 

filmak

macrumors 65816
Jun 21, 2012
1,418
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Isn’t that 790MB/s sustained for the whole enclosure, with 1.3GB/s max speed? Each Sata3 is more like 600 MB/s per connection, so 2.4 GB/s over the 4 total.
I wrote specifically about mass storage mechanical drives, there is not a rotating drive that can saturate those theoretical 600 MB/s.
Also if you want better performance you may look for better enclosures, there is not only OWC, and you have chosen the cheapest one.

Plus, ya know, there are actually more than 4 Sata3 ports on standard boards these days.

Thank you. Yes I know. Perhaps it would be better for you to look at pc/win solutions because you won't find these built-in SATA3 ports in current, older, or the upcoming Mac Pro, so if this 2.4 GB/s are crucial for your applications switch to windows and achieve (?) the speeds you want for less money.
 

wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
1,589
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You can't have the cheapest and best performance simultaneously in any product, you will have to compromise at some point.

Err... OK.... But in a more standard form factor I wouldn’t have to make this choice at all....

If your point is that I can choose between paying more for less or paying way more for something roughly equivalent, then well, you don’t have a very good point...sorry
 

wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
1,589
809
I wrote specifically about mass storage mechanical drives, there is not a rotating drive that can saturate those theoretical 600 MB/s.
Also if you want better performance you may look for better enclosures, there is not only OWC, and you have chosen the cheapest one.

So you’re limiting it to mechanical drives why? And that 600 MB/s (call it 550 if that will make you happy) in Sata3 is not theoretical, its the real world saturation point. Theoretical is 750 MB/s (6 Gbs / 8 = .750 GB/s).

Thank you. Yes I know. Perhaps it would be better for you to look at pc/win solutions because you won't find these built-in SATA3 ports in current, older, or the upcoming Mac Pro, so if this 2.4 GB/s are crucial for your applications switch to windows and achieve (?) the speeds you want for less money.

Already done actually. I have a workstation running Ubuntu with 2x E5-2630s with a RAID10 and a RAID5 internal. I gave up in early 2013. I’d love to have a workstation that would work for me that can also run OS X by the time I need another machine though.
 

filmak

macrumors 65816
Jun 21, 2012
1,418
777
between earth and heaven
Err... OK.... But in a more standard form factor I wouldn’t have to make this choice at all....

If your point is that I can choose between paying more for less or paying way more for something roughly equivalent, then well, you don’t have a very good point...sorry

Yes I agree, but this standard form factor is gone from Apple's plans.
If you have projects running based on OS X and its Apps, unfortunately you will have to pay more or way more, and I say it again... unfortunately.

Imho the only solution for your concerns is to switch to a windows workstation, you won't find what you want made by Apple.
 

filmak

macrumors 65816
Jun 21, 2012
1,418
777
between earth and heaven
So you’re limiting it to mechanical drives why? And that 600 MB/s (call it 550 if that will make you happy) in Sata3 is not theoretical, its the real world saturation point. Theoretical is 750 MB/s (6 Gbs / 8 = .750 GB/s).

Already done actually. I have a workstation running Ubuntu with 2x E5-2630s with a RAID10 and a RAID5 internal. I gave up in early 2013. I’d love to have a workstation that would work for me that can also run OS X by the time I need another machine though.

We have bad timing.:)

I limit it because as I have wrote to you from the start, I was talking about mass storage, terabytes of data, not speed.

Glad you have built such a nice system:), are you satisfied with it?
 

wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
1,589
809
Seriously, I don't think the 2012 model counts as an update. A near-undetectable spec bump of the 2010 model, absolutely nothing new. They didn't even bother to change the model identifier (5,1). Even the 2010 model was an evolution of the 2009 model, but at least the Westmeres and GPU's were new.

The 2012 update was both a spec bump and a price decrease. Its far to argue if that counts as an update given that Sandy Bridge E5s were available at the time. Would it have been so hard to get a new logic board in the old design?

So the longest period between updates was from 2010 to 2013.

Arguably yes, but that’s still just one update worth.

I suspect that the same people complaining about no new MacPro would complain the loudest if Apple did update it this year, cue the "Apple sucks for updating to Haswell when Skylake/Purley is around the corner. The nMP is basically obsolete when it hits the shelves" tirade.

Maybe some. But it doesn’t seem very likely given we don’t even have the Broadwell E5s from intel. And you won’t find me really caring what CPUs are chosen until the there is a 2 socket version. If I was in the market for a nMP, I’d be hoping they update with Broadwell-EP.



I am aware. And it would be worth waiting for if it wasn't 2 years out.
 
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wallysb01

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2011
1,589
809
We have bad timing.:)

I limit it because as I have wrote to you from the start, I was talking about mass storage, terabytes of data, not speed.

There is a bit of middle ground that’s missed though. SSDs have come down in price enough that making small RAIDs out of them for crazy speeds plus reasonable storage is not absurdly expensive. The 1 TB option from Apple is $720. For a little less than twice that cost, you’d get 4 times the raw storage (a good deal on a 1TB SSD is about $300 these days). You could put a 2TB RAID10, 4TB RAID0, 2x 2TB RAID0, 3 TB RAID5. It would be nice to have those kinds of options and not pay about $2K for an enclosure to support it.

Glad you have built such a nice system:), are you satisfied with it?

I am. But honestly, I don’t really like maintaining a linux workstation.
 
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