Assuming that things like audio can be ported to openCL. Supposedly convolution is a good fit but most other audio calculation doesn't translate well.
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So do it. Instead of just making an assumption, post the list of components and prices.
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A Closer Look at Processor Options and Performance for Apple's New Mac Pro
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Assuming that things like audio can be ported to openCL. Supposedly convolution is a good fit but most other audio calculation doesn't translate well.
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So do it. Instead of just making an assumption, post the list of components and prices.
They may at some point. Can the thermal characteristics of this generation of Xeon even work in a dual setup in this enclosure? No idea.
But Apple's strategy is clear - with the constraints they put upon themselves enclosure and price point wise, they are betting on GPGPU versus more x86 cores.
... if all goes well. My point is that there's so much more that can go wrong. In my experience, nothing works completely right the first time, and it does take a good deal of tinkering (depending on the parts you use admittedly.)
Speedstep and sleep also do not work on Xeon systems.
The point is -- if you're willing to spend that much money -- ie if your computer is that essential to your work, it almost always makes more sense to go the official route. As cool as it is (for a personal computer maybe), its just not worth it.
On my system, I actually have more crashes with my Hack build, than my Macbook Pro, make of that what you will. Also, bluetooth won't work from sleep, and requires a restart. Maybe your system doesn't have any issues, and won't ever have any issues, but I doubt it.
Also, to your point about the entry level configuration: most working pros won't be going with the entry level configuration if its CPU power they're after. And if its GPU they need, the dual GPUs more than justify the upgrade.
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I would think so -- usually GPUs use more power anyways. I'm not an EE though, so I really don't know.
Because it is not a 256GB hard drive. It is a 256GB SSD drive.
Previous Mac Pro's lacked and screen were higher priced than an iMac. This one is in the same state. If get rid of $10, $20, and $50 material and add $80 , $100 , $200 material then the price isn't going to go down. It isn't the number of parts but the also the cost of those parts that drives the total system cost. Apple dropped some things so they could add others. It is a design trade-off.
The smaller size also squeeze out room for a classic 2.5" drive container. Not only is the SSD faster than a hard drive it is substantially smaller too. That comes with a trade-off on capacity.
Enjoy paying for your magical, elegant, sexy, and delicious "Case"... LOL
Why? You know how Apple makes its money and how the pricing system works. This isn't meant for those who are purchase-power-wise between an iMac owner and a Mac Pro owner.
This is sold to photographers earning $30,000 a session, record producers charging millions to produce a song and video folk with tons of money.
For them, this is cheap.
Cheaper than HP Z820, without the graphics, of course.
No it's not FCPX. I need CPU cores, not video cards. Even if it would be the (sole) future: I buy a machine so that I can use it now. GPGPU is cool for viewport but doesn't help my actual renders or 'creating content'. So yeah, having a 12core/64GB ram limit sounds pretty much old school to me. Wonder why my friends buy themselves 32core machines instead...not everybody is backed up by a multi-billion company providing render farms et al, too.
But yeah, to each its own.
I would think the decision on the design of the case factors largely. Offering more BTO configurations seem to make a lot more sense die to the ease of the older case design. And of course (as other have mentioned) the trend towards GPU processing.
Where are you guys getting your numbers?
New quad core = 13333
Old quad core = 8417
37% improvement
New hex core = 18309
Old hex core = 13944
24% improvement
How are those results "on par?" And we're only talking CPU here.
PCIe flash is still incredibly expensive. This isn't like throwing some off the shelf SSD in your old Mac Pro.
The use of CUDA in a lot of those apps is largely exaggerated. Not saying that the loss of CUDA in the new Mac Pro is no big deal. The lack of choice in GPUs is one of my biggest gripes with it. But OpenCL is catching up and a lot of people touting CUDA performance with a lot of pro apps don't really understand how it's used in them in the first place.
The dealbreaker with the new MacPro is non-standard graphics cards.
Even an 2006 8 core 2.66ghz can be used today because you can put in a new/good graphics card.
The FirePro cards in the new MacPro are built around the 6 series AMD GPU. Only the fastest/3000dollar card model have the latest graphic core.
The professional graphic cards is the biggest ripoff there is. Exactly the same card as the "home version" and charge 10 times the money. Only difference is drivers and that the graphic cards companies cripple the number crunching on the home cards.
No support for CrossFire.
I really want a new MacPro, but I cant support this huge step backwards. Without ability to swap graphics the machine will be obsolete in 2 years instead of minimum 5 years.
(and we can even use the old: build you own 6 core PC machine for 1/3 of the price of MacPro. Without "pro" graphics, but working SLI/Crossfire. )
Even an 2006 8 core 2.66ghz can be used today because you can put in a new/good graphics card.
The FirePro cards in the new MacPro are built around the 6 series AMD GPU. Only the fastest/3000dollar card model have the latest graphic core.
The professional graphic cards is the biggest ripoff there is. Exactly the same card as the "home version" and charge 10 times the money. Only difference is drivers and that the graphic cards companies cripple the number crunching on the home cards.
No support for CrossFire.
I really want a new MacPro, but I cant support this huge step backwards. Without ability to swap graphics the machine will be obsolete in 2 years instead of minimum 5 years.
(and we can even use the old: build you own 6 core PC machine for 1/3 of the price of MacPro. Without "pro" graphics, but working SLI/Crossfire. )
Man, Phil Schiller screwed the pooch on this one. If you are going to make people wait 3 yrs without the slightest update, you better have something amazing waiting.
Phil, if you want to make something smaller, start with your waistline.
Phil, if you want to make something smaller, start with your waistline.
Well, I'd say it's only a matter of time before audio benefits from OpenCL/GPU processing. While the conventional wisdom about GPUs being inefficient for many audio processes holds, this is being actively challenged by recent research. There's a 2011 paper (so not that recently, really) that came out of Dolby labs (working with nVidia) that presents some interesting ways to exploit GPUs for audio. Since that's already 2 years ago, I'd imagine things have moved forward considerably in the meantime. The approach has to be quite different algorithmically, but it's definitely possible, and as long as it's possible history has shown us that it will (eventually) happen.
[EDIT: The main point being that I don't think that Apple included dual high-end GPUs in the new Mac Pro purely for running big monitors. The new Mac Pro is pretty clearly conceived as a kind of processing node, dedicated to crunching numbers and pushing around data. So they really just packed in about as much processing power as they could; the GPUs are a **big** part of that design approach. The need to make it so small is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, personally, but I think the general direction (i.e., toward modularity) makes a lot of sense.]
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We live in a hilarious country. On one hand, everyone wants everything to be made in 'Merica because of... well, JOBS!
On the other hand, we whine about having to pay for it. Seriously, just pick one and stop whining!
Yes, the new entry Mac Pro is $500 more than the previous model. That is the cost of R&Ding a whole new setup, and having it built in the US. Is there profit to be made, of course! No one is forcing you to buy one though... if it's not for you, move on. Go build your Hackintosh and let those that would buy this machine stay in this forum after it's released.
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Man, Phil Schiller screwed the pooch on this one. If you are going to make people wait 3 yrs without the slightest update, you better have something amazing waiting.
Phil, if you want to make something smaller, start with your waistline.
I wish the down vote button was back... this was an completely useless comment.
Not with this specific case design. There is no room for additional DIMM slots with placement to cool them even if traded a CPU daughtercard for a GPU daughtercard. You could jam the CPU package by itself in there, but without the additional DIMM slots it isn't going to be very effective at all.
They'd need a different case. There in lies the rub. In the previous Mac Pros the single and dual shared a case. Decoupled the dual from shared R&D and infrastructure probably dooms it as a separate product. The volume of units sold fall low enough that it doesn't meet Apple criteria as a viable product.
They are also betting the Intel continues the "core count" wars. This E5 2600 v2 class topped out with 12. E5 2600 v3 will likely climb to 14. The one after that 16. ...... All of these are alot more than just 4 (what the mainstream market Intel processors are capped at. ). Intel is likely going to do more to put those core counts into slightly smaller power envelopes too over time also.
But yes for "embarrassingly parallel" math workloads those will drift into OpenCL and toward GPGPUs as long as they maintain the substantially higher perf/W advantage for those workloads. Not just here on the Mac Pro but across the whole Mac line up. OpenCL optimizations are not making apps only Mac Pro optimized. Since the whole Mac product line up now is OpenCL compatible, that optimization can be used across the > 10M Macs sold per year.
Power per computational core? No.
12 core Xeon ~ 130W ==> 10.8 W/core
W9000 FirePro with 2094 at ~280W ==> 0.13 W/core
That is about two orders of magnitude difference. The GPU is higher total but also getting a dramatically larger number of computational cores.
Similarly, the D300 is probably pretty close to being inside the 130W envelope. So even if cap the "plus 1 computational engine" budget to the same as the CPU it is same. [ For most dual configs actually need to drop the power budget per package in old Mac Pro to fit. Duals were more likely to be in 95W each range. ]
With the new Mac Pro design going more minimalistic on total space and power, the question is which one delivers more "bang for the buck".
I think you're over-estimating the target market for this machine a bit. Sure, you're gonna have some of the unlimited income power users, but these workstations have always been for smaller shops and freelancers as well. Apparently the myth of Apple dominating the high end creative workspace lives on. That's not exactly the case. And I'm wondering who exactly they're targeting with this new version as I don't see many of the bigger shops messing with an already in place infrastructure.
I don't like the 12 core limit either. But it doesn't exactly take million dollar financing to put together a small render cluster.
You are comparing Apples to Oranges. An i7 is a desktop processor whereas the Xeon is a workstation/server class processor. That processor coupled with ECC ram gives you high precision calculations and depending on your altitude and amount of local background radiation, that difference can become significant.
You are also comparing a gaming card to dual workstation gfx cards.
Unless you really need ECC (not just because any real "pro" should use it) for single socket and 64Gb of RAM i7 and non ECC memory will be much faster for the same amount of money. If you need dual socket and 256Gb RAM you will need Xeon and ECC, but latest MacPro doesn't support it too.
So why should I get workstation CPU, Graphics and RAM if desktop CPU and RAM with Gaming video are enough for me and work much faster for the same amount of money. With hackintosh I have such choice and with MacPro I don't. People which saying that hackintosh is cheaper don't use exactly the same components as in MacPro - they use cheaper and faster alternatives which are better for them.
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Let's hope that it will possible to upgrade the CPU without having to upgrade the GPU, and vice versa. For example I could put the fastest CPU to good use, but the base GPU would already be more than enough.
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Btw, given current RAM sizes and unchanged bit error rates, ECC should be standard, everywhere, from iPhones to Mac Pros...
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Btw, given current RAM sizes and unchanged bit error rates, ECC should be standard, everywhere, from iPhones to Mac Pros...
And doesn't the same hold true for those who build PCs rather than buy pre-configured workstations from HP, Dell, etc.?
Workstations have always been expensive and the new Mac Pro doesn't change anything on that front. I just don't know why the outcry seems much more pronounced this time around. Were people really expecting a more affordable machine with desktop parts?
I was exaggerating, so yeah you're right. But building a render farm with 12c nMPs don't strike me as really efficient either. Especially as a freelancer/small office. I don't really care for this discussion tbh though. It is what it is and I'm rather lucky since the licensed programs I use are multiplat. I just don't get the reasoning of a lot of people over here as if we're somehow missing 'the future' when GPGPU isn't the big deal now, 64GB ram limit on the other hand...
Why would I put TWO Fire Pro cards into a possible Hackint0sh if I don't use two video cards on a daily basis to begin with?
I don't need two video cards. I need upgradability (my 08 Pro still kickin') and expandability. So the money I save by NOT having to buy an external diskless (does one even exist?) thunderbolt storage contraption and by not needing two video cards, will go right back into my pocket. And the Hackintosh hardware guides these days are so thorough you almost have to go out of your way to find hardware that won't work.
I don't need two video cards. I need upgradability (my 08 Pro still kickin') and expandability. So the money I save by NOT having to buy an external diskless (does one even exist?) thunderbolt storage contraption and by not needing two video cards, will go right back into my pocket. And the Hackintosh hardware guides these days are so thorough you almost have to go out of your way to find hardware that won't work.
Used for what? There are numberous instruction upgrades Intel has made over the last 5 years. On a AVX optimized FCPX export a lowly MBP will pummel that 8 core Mac Pro in throughput.
doing AES encoding... again pummeled.
Confined to a software core base stuck in a 2008-9 time bubble sure. Confined to software which was only GPU constrained in the first place. Sure. It still runs. And will run faster if the Apple graphcs stack can do more offloads than previously to the GPU stack.
They are not. The 6000 series was the previous generation that Apple has now completely skipped. These are derived from the 7000 series Pitcairn ( D300) and Tahiti ( D500 and D700) generation.
No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...g_units#Southern_Islands_.28HD_7xxx.29_Series
The W7000 HD 7870 GHz Pitcairn XT at slightly underclocked settings matches to D300 s
The HD 7870 XT Tahiiti LE at slightly underclocked and tweaked memory interface mathes to D500
The HD 7970 at slighly
Likewise matches in current FirePro series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#FirePro_Workstation_Series
W7000 -> D300 [ same underclock tweaks as above Pitcarin XT. Missing 2GB of VRAM though. ]
W8000 roughly D500 [ a Tahiti LE instead of Tahiti Pro core.. same small tweaks as LE above. And missing 1GB of VRAM ]
W9000 -> D700 [ same Tahiti XT. underclocked but not missing VRAM]
Not. The VRAM capacties are different. There is different set of features enabled that are not enabled in mainstream GPU (e.g., ECC memory. ).
There is a huge market and can debate whether the additional features , service , and optimizations are worth it, but 'exactly' is highly inaccurate.
Nope. If go back up to links above and look at floats on 7970 GHz edition and W9000 the totals are 4096 sp / 1020 dp versus 3993 sp / 998 dp
What is crippled is ability to do more accurate computations that take longer amounts of time. Game grahpics where individual bits don't matter because they are wiped from the screen in a fraction of a second the Pro card's capabilies don't matter. If the data is actually valuable it does.
Some AMD Pro cards do support Crossfire. The far more relevant point though is that Mac OS X never has. Probably won't in the immediate future either. Apple doesn't particularly buy into vendor specific lock-in standards.
It has that ability.
What may/may not be missing in two years is a large open market for cards to swap. There will be non zero amount over time though. ( there is a CPU+RAM daughtercard market now for the previous Mac Pros. )