Contemplating a partial return to the dark side

Interesting points. It's hard to argue that you can't get more performance per $ for windows but I also prefer OS X (even though I spent years as a windows systems administrator). Hackintoshes are also worth considering.

Still if you compare Mac Pro's to the Workstations of the major brands HP, Dell etc the Mac Pros stack up quite well once you are in dual processor land. Those Windows workstations also tend to have quite a few proprietary bits. We have a rather recent one at work that we spent over $16K on and have not been able to get a 5970 to work in.

I only dabble in 3D, but recently read this article on GPU rendering http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/gpu-renderers-proliferate-show-newfound-maturity.ars. I'm not clear on how much of these are windows vs os x or cross platform?

 

Get a MDP to HDMI adapter for $7.

And maybe for SP MPs, the price is too high, but not for DP MPs. The price is about the same, if not cheaper for the MP.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=978782

But I do agree with you in terms of GPU, Apple is definitely slacking in that area.

 

Ya, when Win7 went official and I had a chance to run it (for gaming stuff) I was honestly jealous. OSX had spoiled me and made me change all my machines from Windows. I had always built my machines and never had a real problem with windows. But Win7 is actually a great OS, OSX still wins for me for many reasons.

I was curious about how my new MP stacked against Dell (workstations and aliendware) and HP workstations and I was shocked to see that they costed much more! Yikes.

Building your own custom i7 and fully loaded is definitely much more economical, but when I priced one up and compared it to my new Hexacore, sure the price savings was maybe $1200, but that was just the surface. The hardware wasn't nearly as nice, it wasn't all designed to work flawlessly together, it doesn't have the best warranty service ever, it will never be as stable, it doesn't have all the 'niceties' of OSX. There is only one thing that I hate more than wasting money and that is time; I need a system that will ALWAYS be working and running, because I use it to make money and every hour I lose "fixing" my windows machine is money out the door.

It's going to take a lot for me to look back at Windows for my main machine . . . gaming for sure, but only do a few hours a month at best so it's just not worth it.

 

This is really funny, I am a 3D artist too running a small 7 head studio and I have the exact same opinion.

I too bought the 08 3.0ghz MacPro when it came out and it was seriously the best investment I ever made. However the latest developments and the feeling of being left in the dark with my system makes me doubt the new MacPro's a lot.

Right now we are running 5x i7 hackintoshes that are faster, have better warranty than apple (bought everything corsair), will last me longer because they are easier to upgrade, cost me way less per render point.

I made a little calculation of how much cinebench renderpoints a machine would give me.

All machines are specified with a 850 watt corsair PSU, basic GPU, X58 UD5, 2x 1TB HD, 12gb 1600mhz RAM. The number represents how many euro's you pay for 1 cinebench point in a whole system.

An i7 930 has a euro/1cbpoint ratio of: 180
An i7 970 has a euro/1cbpoint ratio of: 160
An i7 980 has a euro/1cbpoint ratio of: 175
An hexa MacPro has a euro/1cbpoint ratio of:466
A Core2Duo iMac 24 inch 4gbram has a euro/1cbpoint ratio of: 800

After I made this graph I immediately sold our remaining iMac and bought an i7 for it.

Cool thing is I can just plug in a GTX480 or 2 if I am going to need GPU rendering. No waiting for Nvidia or ATI finally releasing an overpriced slower version of the high end cards that have flaky drivers for OSX compared to their PC counterparts.

Cool thing is, in about 2 years time I replace my 920/930's for 970's, install the latest GPU rendering gaming card and I don't need to replace any other part of the hardware. Stupid thing is that these 5 core i7 rigs cost exactly the same as 1 latest and greatest MacPro system specced the same way at the same performance level.

So yea I can definitely feel were you are coming from, you aren't the only one.

The OSX premium is becoming too high for 3D artists at the moment.

 

I'm a student majoring in Visual Effects/Compositing. I really enjoy using Maya and Nuke on the OSX platform. I've mainly been working off a late 2008 2.53 dual core MBP, but finally decided it time to upgrade to a desktop workstation

After doing my research, I decided to build up a MP from scratch by sourcing all the parts and assembling it myself. I now have a 2009 2.93 8 core MP with 16gb ram, a 120gb OWC ssd, a couple 1TB hdds, and a 4870. I got it all for about $3500. I'm looking at grabbing the NVidia Quadro Fermi 4000 when it comes out.

I agree windows 7 has some major improvements, but I enjoy OSX too much to give it up.

 

That's not for Apple to decide

All i7 cpu's have 1 QPI link - meaning you can't make a dual CPU machine with them. That's where the multi-processor Xeons come in with their 2 QPI links

 

I agree. If it hadn't been for the 08 8-core models, I would have never been able to afford a Mac Pro.
They have gone insanely over-priced since then.
Luckily, it's such a great beast that I can continue to work with it for several more years.
The software has still to catch up to its capabilities.
I have upgraded to the gtx 285 and to 16gb ram and it is a great machine. I have Windows 7 on another hard drive. My next upgrade to it will be an ssd boot drive.
Maybe in another three years or so, the software will have exceeded its capabilities, and then I will have to decide which platform to go with, just like you.

 

Dual i7s is not possible. Dual processors is only possible with intel 5xxx series Xeon chips, which are used in the dual processor machine. i7s and intel 3xxx series Xeon chips (as used in the single processor Mac Pro) are far far cheaper and cannot run in dual configurations.

Apart from the entry level octo Mac Pro, the octo and hexacore Mac Pros aren't that badly priced. The problem is that the quad core Mac Pros are overpriced by about $1000. The W3530 processor in the entry level Quad Mac Pro is basically just a Core i7 930 CPU with ECC memory support and it's priced as such (E3580: $314.99 | i7 930: $289.99).

It was calculated numerous times at the time of the 2009 Mac Pro release that Apple increased it's profit margins by about $1000 across the board on their Mac Pros. I won't go into the details now but the crux of it was that the quad core 2.66GHz 2009 Mac Pro should have been priced $1000 lower and the octo core should have come with the 2.66GHz processors as standard. That would have been roughly in line with the profit margins on their previous Mac Pro systems.

As I've mentioned before on here, the target market of the Mac Pro was shifted by Apple. The 2006/7 and 2008 Mac Pros were targeted at the professional/prosumer market. The 2009/10 Mac Pros are targeted at the corporate/professional market. They'll sell a handful fewer Mac Pros but they'll make a far larger profit on each one. The prosumer market's Mac is now considered by Apple to be the i5/i7 27" iMac. If that doesn't sit right with you then you fall into a very small minority that doesn't fit into one of Apple's neat boxes - albeit a disproportionately vocal small minority in online forums.

I've noticed a considerable decrease in prosumer grumblings in the Mac Pro forums in the last year. The reason for this is (in my opinion) that most of the prosumers who were affected by this target market change have either done what Apple wanted and bought an iMac (just see how many people in the iMac forums mention that they used to have a Mac Pro), have built a hackintosh (while still keeping their laptops etc Apple branded) or have switched to the dark side like you're contemplating. The loss of earnings for Apple by people doing this is going to be obliterated by the large amounts of extra profit Apple make on the Mac Pros that are bought and the prosumers who went for the iMac route will likely spend a lot more on Apple products anyway since they'll be replacing their i5/i7 iMacs in two to three years. It's a win-win situation for Apple and makes superb business sense. Alas, it's something Mac prosumers who don't have an infinite supply of cash simply have to come to terms with this.

 

It will work. There's no reason why an upgrade card for a 2009/2010 Mac Pro will not work in a 2008 Mac Pro. They both have EFI64 and the drivers are part of OSX. Flashed PC 5870s are already working in 2008 Mac Pros using the new iMac's 5xxx series bios dump.

The only thing Apple can really do at the moment is artificially limit the 5870 to only EFI64 - rendering the 64 bit but not considered worthy of being 64 bit 2006/7 Mac Pros unable to utilise graphics cards which can be plugged into six year old PCs without a problem. They would have to be doing some rather elaborate system model number checking in order to artificially block use of Apple's 5870 card on 2008 systems. I would be very surprised if Apple tried to do this since it would cost them a fair number of research hours and would ultimately lead to a loss in profits since most 2008 Mac Pro owners will not be buying a new Mac Pro just because their two year old computer can't use the latest graphics card - especially when the entry level octo right now can barely outpace the cheaper entry level 2008 Mac Pro. If for some reason they do go this route then just get a PC card and flash it - it's already been proven to work.

Count yourself lucky that you own a 2008 Mac Pro - the best value Mac Pro with good future compatibility due to the EFI64 and also the best Mac Pro for holding its value.

 

Thats where I see my self heading. Apple is getting more close minded every year. For complete customization / upgradeability you need a custom built PC. I think the best macs made right now are the Macbook Pros.