250,000 x just my $0.02 = MacPro
Or how about 5000 of you send me a dollar. It'd be cheaper that way.
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Apple Announces New Mac Pros With Up to 12 Cores, SSD Options
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Core i vs Xeon. That's the price difference. Compare the Dell Xeon workstation prices and the Mac Pro looks pretty competitive.
What is near nothingness when you sell 3.47 million Macs in a financial quarter? At 5%, that would be 173,500 units. If Apple is making an average of $500 profit per Mac Pro given that count, that is $86,750,000 of a lot of near nothingness to ignore.
The numbers are pure speculation since Apple doesn't release separate sales figures for their computers or other details to fill them in. Still, some basics guess still suggest that it isn't time to drop the Mac Pro machines just yet.
Your missing the fact a Mac Pro run's near silent, contains Server Hardware (Dual Ethernet bondable links, Firewire, Xeon CPU's) and has plenty of upgrade space.
OK, sure, they're faster, but I'm disappointed to see the prices again go higher, not lower. It's too bad Apple has only provided benchmarks for the highest configuration; it'd be interesting to see if you're still getting the same performance per dollar like last time.
I just want the prices on the new GPUs standalone and a mention that they'll work in my 2008 8x2.8.
I just want the prices on the new GPUs standalone and a mention that they'll work in my 2008 8x2.8.
I think that Apple thinks that they're hearing & responding to this customer complaint, which is why this release came out with the statement of "...over a BILLION permutations possible.." (sic).
However, that's quite misleading. First off, there's only one Mac Pro and much of that "choice" offered merely comes down to variations on how to equip it with different size/quantity of HDDs and the like - - and except for your keyboard language, none of those choices come at zero change on the price tag.
Secondly, if one wishes to be pendant about it, Apple's "Billion" claim functionally represents a huge reduction in consumer choices. Here's the current Mac Pro's list of options and subsequent calculation of its level of options:
"2009" Mac Pro Permutations Build
# of CPUs 2
Speed 3
Memory 5
RAID 2
HD1 3
HD2 4
HD3 4
HD4 4
GPU 5
Optical 2
Display1 3
Display2 3
Mouse 2
Keyboard 12
Wireless 2
Fibre Channel 3
iWork 3
Aperture 2
FCE 2
LogicExpress 2
Filemaker 3
MS Office 3
Server 2
Xsan 2
DVI Adapt 2
Dual DVI 2
VGA 2
MobileMe 3
Printer 4
One to One 2
Applecare 2
Combinations: 49,533,891,379,200
Yup, the current Mac Pro has 49 Quadrillion (that's 49,533 Billion) combinations.
Still the point holds that it is not insignificantly less than Apple's single core price. YMMV as to who is going to turn their nose up at a 25%+ discount.
Unfortunately, if it was that close, then Apple would have said the exact release date...or simply delayed this announcement for a week, or started to take pre-orders immediately. As such, my hunch is that it will figuratively be at 11:57pm on August 31st...which we will note is a Tuesday
I personally suspect that the ECC is present so as to meet a hard checklist from some Government customers on GSA contracts...
...and the irony is that as per last year's GSA contract offering, the only Mac Pro listed was exactly this: the slowest Quad.
Except that the base $2499 model didn't get a bump in cores...its still a quad at nearly the same GHz for the same price. Oh, and an obsolete 640GB hard drive got replaced with a 1TB drive, and an obsolete GPU card got replaced too.
I'm starting to shop for open box/ refurbs now too...
What is near nothingness when you sell 3.47 million Macs in a financial quarter? At 5%, that would be 173,500 units. If Apple is making an average of $500 profit per Mac Pro given that count, that is $86,750,000 of a lot of near nothingness to ignore.
The numbers are pure speculation since Apple doesn't release separate sales figures for their computers or other details to fill them in. Still, some basics guess still suggest that it isn't time to drop the Mac Pro machines just yet.
I think your numbers are close to reality. I'd swag the Mac Pro down to as low as 2%, but this is offset by higher per-box profits and nets out to be around the same contribution to the bottom line.
-hh
No he doesn't have a point. The Mac Pro and Inspiron desktops are not in the same class.
He should be comparing the Mac Pro to the Precision T3500 line. Those are in the same class, ie, Workstation grade hardware (ECC memory, Xeon Processors).
This is getting old, people want a "Mac Pro" because it's an Apple tower but don't even know what it is they are buying. Then they go out and compare it to 300$ desktops with cheap consumer parts.
The days of the PowerMac 1000$ towers are over. Apple is done with that segment. It's shrinking in favor of laptops anyway.
Hello MacRumors,
I'm new here and this is my first post.
I never owned a mac in my life, never even used it continuously more than 30 minutes
and I was wondering if the price of this new announced Macbook Pro coming out in August is worth the price tag (for the least specs)?
Keeping in mind that I'll always be loyal to W*****s because to be honest each OS has its best and worst side (I'm not here to argue, I come in peace) but maybe I'll use a Mac because its the fastest notebook to run the other OS, but Is the price a lot if I'm not going to use it for Music and Graphics?
Btw, I'm a proud iPhone owner and I love it < soon to buy iPhone 4 < can't wait for the white IP4 tho.
Thanks
I'm new here and this is my first post
.I never owned a mac in my life, never even used it continuously more than 30 minutes
and I was wondering if the price of this new announced Macbook Pro coming out in August is worth the price tag (for the least specs)?Keeping in mind that I'll always be loyal to W*****s
because to be honest each OS has its best and worst side (I'm not here to argue, I come in peace) but maybe I'll use a Mac because its the fastest notebook to run the other OS, but Is the price a lot if I'm not going to use it for Music and Graphics?Btw, I'm a proud iPhone owner and I love it < soon to buy iPhone 4
< can't wait for the white IP4 tho.Thanks
Because the Core i7-980X cannot be used as a dual CPU configuration.
If you then ask, "Why not use the i7-980X for the single CPU configuration?"
I don't know.
For those who are lamenting at how expensive the upcoming Mac Pro is (and it is expensive, no doubt!), I encourage you to spec out a comparable Dell system. Start with the Dell Precision T7500 64bit Dual Processor. (The T7500 uses Windows, the T7500n uses Red Hat Linux.)
I think you will find that the Mac Pro is expensive due to the components being expensive. For those who really need that kind of power (e.g., software developers, graphic artists, post-production movie shops) and can justify it, they will buy it.
For those who want that kind of power, but don't really need it: I agree that the price tag is terribly daunting.
For those who are build-it-yourself-ers and can put together a comparable rig for under $300: fantastic! You rock!
On the plus side, the iMac line and the Mac Pro line no longer are competing with each other in their respective price ranges.
A little sanity please
A tin of beans costs less than a really nice meal out... In much the same way, Dell sells machines that are cheaper than a new Mac Pro, but they are not the same thing.
Dell's closest model to the new Mac Pro is their Precision 7500 (not the lower 3500 and 5500 ranges which only support one CPU). I did a quick pricing on the Dell UK store and came to £4150 (about $6700) for a spec similar to a Mac Pro: two X5670 CPUs, 12G RAM, 1T disk, 1G GDDR5 graphics, no extras. So price wise, it's pretty close; the Mac Pro is certainly not overpriced compared with the competition. Dell has a far wider choice of graphics cards, but OTOH it comes in a case you'd be embarrased to be in the same room as, and you don't get to run OS X.
So, to the dimwit that said that an Inspiron was cheaper than a Mac Pro; it's true, but it's also cheaper than an a Precision 7500. Now if Dell were selling the Precision for the price of the Inspiron, you might have a leg to stand on, but they're not, so you don't.
I've got an 8-core 2008 Mac Pro and I'm still very happy with that - it's great to see 8 cores getting busy with LLVM/gcc/GCD. My main annoyance I fixed recently - my Nvidia 8800GT was really noisy, so I put a passive cooler on it, works a treat.
A tin of beans costs less than a really nice meal out... In much the same way, Dell sells machines that are cheaper than a new Mac Pro, but they are not the same thing.
Dell's closest model to the new Mac Pro is their Precision 7500 (not the lower 3500 and 5500 ranges which only support one CPU). I did a quick pricing on the Dell UK store and came to £4150 (about $6700) for a spec similar to a Mac Pro: two X5670 CPUs, 12G RAM, 1T disk, 1G GDDR5 graphics, no extras. So price wise, it's pretty close; the Mac Pro is certainly not overpriced compared with the competition. Dell has a far wider choice of graphics cards, but OTOH it comes in a case you'd be embarrased to be in the same room as, and you don't get to run OS X.
So, to the dimwit that said that an Inspiron was cheaper than a Mac Pro; it's true, but it's also cheaper than an a Precision 7500. Now if Dell were selling the Precision for the price of the Inspiron, you might have a leg to stand on, but they're not, so you don't.
I've got an 8-core 2008 Mac Pro and I'm still very happy with that - it's great to see 8 cores getting busy with LLVM/gcc/GCD. My main annoyance I fixed recently - my Nvidia 8800GT was really noisy, so I put a passive cooler on it, works a treat.
Many Dell systems are nearly silent as well - it's FUD to claim that an Apple is quieter. Many Dell models have as many disk slots and more PCIe slots than the maxi-tower Apple, and they are much smaller.
If ECC is important to you, then you should compare to the Precision. If ECC is not important, then the comparison is valid as it is written.
(And the only difference between a Xeon and the equivalent Core i7 is ECC - putting non-ECC memory on a Xeon is simply wasting money.)
Wrong on one point, and disagree on the others.
The Precision T5500 does support dual processors (12core at 3.33GHz), and up to 72 GiB of RAM. It holds 4 disk drives (with SSD options) and 2 opticals. It has two PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x8 (x16 header), a PCI-X 64-bit slot, and a PCI 32-bit slot. And an eSATA port on the back.
The T5500 is definitely comparable to the dual-socket Mac Pro - in fact better in several ways such as a range of graphics options up to a 4 GiB Quadro FX5800 and even an NVIDIA® Tesla™ C1060 Computing Processor for even faster CUDA processing.
The T3500 is a valid comparison to the quad Mac Pro - but it's available with up to 3.33 GHz hex core, has six ECC DIMM slots for up to 24 GiB of RAM, 4 PCIe (2 x16, 2 x4) and 2 PCI slots. And an eSATA port on the back.
The T3500 is definitely comparable to the single-socket Mac Pro - in fact better in some ways - such as starting at $1139.
Indeed, though I doubt it will happen as the lowest price I could find for the CPUs alone is £1097 each (X5670). That's roughly $3400 for a pair.
6 core vs. 8 core
After reading all these posts, looks like people think the 4 core is a joke and the 12 core is too expensive. Well what about the 6 & 8 core?
I'm wondering which one to get. My 6 year old powermac G5 died last month so I need a new computer. I use FCP to edit side projects at home. No gaming. Want my next computer to be able to last the next 5 years.
After reading all these posts, looks like people think the 4 core is a joke and the 12 core is too expensive. Well what about the 6 & 8 core?
I'm wondering which one to get. My 6 year old powermac G5 died last month so I need a new computer. I use FCP to edit side projects at home. No gaming. Want my next computer to be able to last the next 5 years.
And iPhone still dominates their front page.
Yes because it appeals to many more people. The average user isn't sitting there lusting after a Mac Pro. When you consider the price it isn't something that anybody would have a use for except for professionals.
I pretty much in the same position as you. Just need it for video and photo editing. I'm thinking 6 myself, depending on cost.
me three. Im thinking a single 6 core. I have a Quad G5 right now... Cant run 10.6 or the latest Adobe. How much though??
I'd look at the on the processors prices first.
It's possible to get dual ethernet and FireWire outside of a server motherboard. I remember a friend with Dual Ethernet back on their Socket 939 tower years ago.
This may be the last.
Not sure if anyone has said this yet, as I didn't read the entire thread...
To all of you noting that the form factor of this machine has not changed in 7 years: you might consider that this may be the last revision before a complete overhaul of this machine.
I predict that LightPeak will bring forth a new 'era' of pro computer, as there is an opportunity for many PCIe devices to go to an external form. The other component keeping the form factor as large as it is are 5.25" bays and the Power Supply.
SSDs do not have any reason to be more than 2.5". I could see a configuration of two 2.5" SATA slots, two to four 3.5" SATA slots, and a slot-loading optical drive (really token at this point). Two USB 3.0 and FW XX00 on front and four Light Peak in back. Two PCIe 16x 2.0 slots (ATI offers up to 6 displays per slot on the PC line and the newly offered cards have support for 3). This could allow for a much slimmer form factor IMHO.
Not sure if anyone has said this yet, as I didn't read the entire thread...
To all of you noting that the form factor of this machine has not changed in 7 years: you might consider that this may be the last revision before a complete overhaul of this machine.
I predict that LightPeak will bring forth a new 'era' of pro computer, as there is an opportunity for many PCIe devices to go to an external form. The other component keeping the form factor as large as it is are 5.25" bays and the Power Supply.
SSDs do not have any reason to be more than 2.5". I could see a configuration of two 2.5" SATA slots, two to four 3.5" SATA slots, and a slot-loading optical drive (really token at this point). Two USB 3.0 and FW XX00 on front and four Light Peak in back. Two PCIe 16x 2.0 slots (ATI offers up to 6 displays per slot on the PC line and the newly offered cards have support for 3). This could allow for a much slimmer form factor IMHO.
AFAIK, if you do a lot of multi-process, multi-thread work like virtualization or audio/video encoding, you'll benefit a lot from a hexacore.
The 6-core seems to perform either equally as well, or significantly better than 2xQuad the more concurrent processes you add.
Sure the price is maybe competitive. But there is no apple in the mid range
suitable for example a music studio. (Silent enough if you put a macpro in machine room) Or any other application with need for pcie or separate display form the hard drive. The are idiots not making something between lowend macmini and entryleven mac pro. The gap is enormous. In the PC world no one ever find any free gap...
I agree.... in fact I think this announcement was made earlier than planned to help take some of the heat off the iPhone antennae.
Great. Wonderful. But why won't other's let me make a different decision - for my own reasons. I've already linked in an earlier post about the rate of errors found in non-ECC memory. Because of the type of work I do, I don't want to risk memory errors. Period. So, when people claim that ECC is same as non-ECC - and that because non-ECC is perfectly fine for the work they do anyone who chooses to use ECC is overpaying (and by implication, an idiot) I get a bit testy. So, would all those people who don't need non-ECC memory stop claiming it's the same. And in exchange I won't make fun of your coffee maker or your toaster. Because if you spent more than $2 on your coffee maker you paid way way way too much (Seriously. I make perfectly fine coffee with a cheap plastic funnel type of maker) and if you spent more than $12 on your toaster - oh good Lord did you get taken to the cleaners. Seriously.
...
Absolutely! Positively! I was just saying exactly the same thing to my wife last night. Until her eyes glazed over, and I had to change the subject - to just what the heck is the Harper govt thinking when they decided to do away with the census long form??
No he doesn't have a point. The Mac Pro and Inspiron desktops are not in the same class.
He should be comparing the Mac Pro to the Precision T3500 line. Those are in the same class, ie, Workstation grade hardware (ECC memory, Xeon Processors).
This is getting old, people want a "Mac Pro" because it's an Apple tower but don't even know what it is they are buying. Then they go out and compare it to 300$ desktops with cheap consumer parts.
The days of the PowerMac 1000$ towers are over. Apple is done with that segment. It's shrinking in favor of laptops anyway.
It never fails here though. Any Mac Pro workstation thread is filled with idiots confusing a workstation with a desktop.
So you're wasting your breath, because you'll get the response of "but but but I don't have a choice". No, really? Then don't buy an Apple.
We just bought one of these:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/e...9-307907-4050865-3718645-3718646-4193572.html
With dual procs though. It was more expensive than the Mac Pro. Wow, Mac Pros are so expensive!!
If the exterior were copper or diamond film, it would draw out more heat _then_ you could run it faster.I wonder why there isn't a market for detailing Mac Pro cases if so many people want something different, or surely some paint would do? I think they look fine, but then again I'm satisfied with the looks of my old VME computer with all the I/O hanging out the front.