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12 Core Mac Pro for Aerospace Engineering Student

C

colonelradec

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2011
15
0
Hi guys...
I'm going to buy a 12 core Mac Pro.I will wait till they relase a new (if they)one and going to buy most powerful one.I dont want to change my Mac for 5-6 years.I will make my projects on it.And doing some video editing.....Is it good for me ?
 
colonelradec said:
Hi guys...
I'm going to buy a 12 core Mac Pro.I will wait till they relase a new (if they)one and going to buy most powerful one.I dont want to change my Mac for 5-6 years.I will make my projects on it.And doing some video editing.....Is it good for me ?
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12 core sounds like a good choice, but keep in mind buying a 12 core won't necessarily means it lasts longer than a lower end model. There are always other considerations (I/O ports, PCI Express bandwidth, firmware, etc) that can outdate your machine regardless of raw CPU power.

I once worked for an employer that bought every staffer a Power Mac G5 in 2004 because they thought "iMacs would get outdated faster". Guess how that turned out? :)
 
The 12 core in it's current form is an amazing machine. Even when (if) the next generation Pros come out there is a high possibility that the current 12 core will remain faster than most of the next gen models with the exception of the new top of the line. You're probably familiar with this and it really says it all. If you are losing by waiting due to opportunity cost then don't wait. If you can afford to wait longer (up to 3-5 months) to get your hands on a next gen then wait, otherwise just get the current gen it is more than enough and a whole lot faster than any other Mac out there.
 
I can wait for 3-5 months....I'm currently using a 13" MBP and trying to do my staff....But it's not enough for me... :(
 
colonelradec said:
I can wait for 3-5 months....I'm currently using a 13" MBP and trying to do my staff....But it's not enough for me... :(
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In that case the 12-core will likely be the mid-high range dual processor model with 16 core being the top of the line.
 
Absolutely no need for you to have a 12 core Mac Pro.

See my sig with what I work with.

Lots of memory + decent GPU to allow VMWare Fusion with W7 x64 to run at a decent speed, if I'm really hammering it then I boot into bootcamp.

Signed,
4th Year Aerospace Engineering Student


PS: I bought my Mac Pro 2.5 years ago, and I'm coming up to replacing it. The total cost of my 2009 + 2012 Mac Pro would be £4k compared to the £5k+ the 8 core 2.93Ghz was at the time.

Lesson for the day: FUTUREPROOFING DOES NOT EXIST.

Class dismissed.
 
goMac said:
I once worked for an employer that bought every staffer a Power Mac G5 in 2004 because they thought "iMacs would get outdated faster". Guess how that turned out? :)
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Yep, the iMacs were outdated before they were even made.
 
W123 said:
Yep, the iMacs were outdated before they were even made.
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In the end, they were both outdated at the same time. iMac G5 vs. Power Mac G5 didn't matter, Intel came along and outdated them both.

(Disclaimer: Before the requisite "PowerPC is still fast!" fight, in IT, it doesn't matter. If you can't load the latest/same software on a machine you're boned.)
 
goMac said:
Sure it does. I mean, need is a strong word, but a lot of the stuff done in aerospace can take advantage of 12 cores.
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Need is indeed a strong word. I feel there is alot of want in there too as I know every engineering college has labs with workstations so students would not need to buy a 12 core machine personally lol.

Perhaps I am just reflecting on my own experience when I was in Mechanical Engineering and getting by on an emac and now working as a grad student...lol
 
dukebound85 said:
Need is indeed a strong word. I feel there is alot of want in there too as I know every engineering college has labs with workstations so students would not need to buy a 12 core machine personally lol.

Perhaps I am just reflecting on my own experience when I was in Mechanical Engineering and getting by on an emac and now working as a grad student...lol
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When I was an engineering student (comp sci), I had an 8 core. Made everything a breeze. Didn't have to deal with campus lab machines, my compiles ran super fast. When it came time to do multicore programming, I could use my personal machine instead of having to schedule myself time on one of the dual socket or quad socket Xeon boxes on campus. (Students can't share time on the machines because then our apps would be harder to profile.)

Could I have graduated without it? Sure. But it really helped. Both because I could use it instead of specialized campus resources, and it just ran so fast.

(And I had it back in 2008. Back then most people didn't even have dual core machines. So a lot of people had a similar reaction to you.)
 
Aerospace means you'll be using matlab and some CAD program. If your university supplies you Vectorworks and the UNIX version of Matlab, them I'd suggest you to get the 6 core mac pro with at least 12 gb ram or wait for the new refresh.
If not, just get something else.
 
As a 4th year engineering student who uses MATLAB, I would just like to warn you that by default it refuses to run on more than 1 core, you need to get a special toolbox (parallel processing toolbox IIRC) for it to work correctly. At least this is the case for the student version of MATLAB.

That being said I use my 8 core for all my engineering software and its made everything SO much easier, even compared to my quad core MBP.
 
colonelradec, are you a graduate or undergraduate student?

I'm an aerospace engineering graduate student and is about to get my PhD next year. According to my experience, whether to buy a 12-core Mac Pro really depends on the area you will be studying in.

If you are going to study Fluid Mechanics or Solid Mechanics, a Mac Pro is necessary ONLY IF your adviser/research group doesn't provide one. People in these areas do need multi-core workstations for heavy load parallel computations(they use Fortune language, not Matlab). It's not a surprise to see their workstation running for a few days until a solution is computed. However, as far as I know, most professors/groups in these areas do provide students with powerful computers (could cost $2000-$4000, etc). If you happen to be studying in such a group, there is no need to buy one yourself.

On the other hand, if you are interested in Navigation/Guidance/Control systems, there is no need to buy a 12-core Mac Pro. You are very likely to jump into Matlab most of the time. As commented by other posters, Matlab is not quite efficient in parallel computation, and you don't even need to use parallel programs most of the time. A Macbook Pro is already sufficient.
 
I'm an undergraduate student.And I'm going to study Fluid Mechanics.After graduation I will get my M.S. and PhD (I hope so)... And I dont want to kiss anyone's ass for using a workstation.I like working at home.I feel much more confortable at home.
 
colonelradec said:
I'm an undergraduate student.And I'm going to study Fluid Mechanics.After graduation I will get my M.S. and PhD (I hope so)... And I dont want to kiss anyone's ass for using a workstation.I like working at home.I feel much more confortable at home.
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Do you know if you'll have easy access to a campus computing cluster? I know little of fluid mechanics research (besides the fact that those doing it are hogging up our cluster all the time), but I've been using some bioinformatic tools that are very computationally demanding and I actually very rarely use my MBP for work other than logging into the cluster or my Mac Pro in the lab. The MBP is fast enough to do a lot of the little steps in my analysis, but usually if I'm working its all through ssh. Often what keeps me from actually doing things on my personal machine is the download/upload times, even if its the kind of thing that might actually run faster on my MBP. That wouldn't change if I had a Mac Pro.

All that said, if you have the money to burn, do what you want. I can't say I'd blame you for wanting a Mac Pro for $3000, if the alternative is a MBP for $2000 and you think you'll basically be just using at home and not utilizing the portability.
 
seriously, you won't need much of anything until at least third year, and you definitely won't need 6 cores, let alone 12. buy something a little less useless.

buying a computer now for work you might be doing 5-6 years from now in grad school is simply moronic. get a computer then if you need to, it'll be faster and cheaper.
 
colonelradec said:
I'm an undergraduate student.And I'm going to study Fluid Mechanics.After graduation I will get my M.S. and PhD (I hope so)... And I dont want to kiss anyone's ass for using a workstation.I like working at home.I feel much more confortable at home.
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If you can afford it, and want it, then just buy it and be happy. What somebody else thinks you need or don't, isn't really that relevent, unless what you're really doing is fishing for rationalization to blow all that cash :cool:

Back in my day we used little clay tablets and we liked it!

Seriously, it's unlikely that you *need* it, and future-proofing is a nice theory that has nothing to do with reality. But if you can afford it (or even more important: if somebody else is buying it for you), then get one. Then 4 years later, get another one, and so on. Nothing lasts forever, nothing is future-proof, and you'll probably find something to use it for other than an expensive doorstop.
 
Schismz said:
an expensive doorstop.
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jobs_christ.jpg


Is nothing sacred anymore?
:p
 
I have a BS in Aerospace and a MS in Mechanical engineering. There is no way I could have justified a 12 core machine for my undergrad work. Heck, for that matter, there isn't a chance I could justify the AE major, but that's another matter.

I did research on supersonic combustible fluids for my MS and I could have easily used it then. However, any serious research project should provide you with the tools you need. My degree was some years ago, so I had a Cray Y-MP account.

There is a ton of want at play here. If you have money to burn fine, but that's what you are doing.
 
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