Yeah for what most people are doing that's a pretty cool machine, dual 7200 rpm drives, it will work well for audio and light video editing.
Will have to up the ram but for the money that's a pretty good machine.
Of course I'm not a gamer .
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Entry-Level Mac Pro Offers Comparable Pricing Versus OEM PCs, DIY Systems More Affordable
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Yeah for what most people are doing that's a pretty cool machine, dual 7200 rpm drives, it will work well for audio and light video editing.
Will have to up the ram but for the money that's a pretty good machine.
Of course I'm not a gamer .
I would not be able to tolerate those hard drives. You are in iMac territory there and it is such an old machine now. 3 year old processors...Yeah for what most people are doing that's a pretty cool machine, dual 7200 rpm drives, it will work well for audio and light video editing.
Will have to up the ram but for the money that's a pretty good machine.
Of course I'm not a gamer .
Guess it depends what you're doing?
I should be able to mix at least 80-100 tracks of audio with that setup.
I got yelled at the other day by some forum members for suggesting such a machine.
Apparently we're not allowed to discuss what we want... instead we should just take what Apple gives us
I got yelled at the other day by some forum members for suggesting such a machine.
Apparently we're not allowed to discuss what we want... instead we should just take what Apple gives us
You usually do get yelled at, then you get a tirade of arrogance from self-proclaimed "professionals" who "know what they're talking about"
Ever since the switch to Intel, they've offer one, token, mid-range desktop system and that was the 2006 build-to-order 2.0Ghz Mac Pro. By today's standards, any i7 based Mac Mini would destroy it on CPU power and add a single 6Gb/s SSD, it would destroy it on I/O too unless someone was prepared to sink serious money into such an old system for PCIe SATA 6Gb/s cards.
You'd have no problem doing that at all,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ka--dw6P-U
This is what gets me. Apple offer this great, affordable, low powered, entry level system that basically offers over 80% of the CPU power of the entry level Mac Pro for a 3rd of the price. Yet people obsess over specs that mean nothing to audio work, like GPU power (or PCIe lanes, let's not forget them because they're SO important to running DAW software), but the fact remains, at this point the entire Mac range now relies on external storage solutions. Not one Mac can be upgraded internally with additional drives apart from the Mac Mini and almost all of them either use PCIe Flash or SATA 6Gb/s SSDs as a BTO option.
Geekbench scores put the new i7s in the Retina Macbook Pro approximately on a level where a 2Ghz 2013 Retina i7 = a 2.3Ghz 2012 Mac Mini i7, the 2.6Ghz BTO Retina Macbook Pro has insignificantly less CPU power than the entry level 2013 Mac Pro and when it comes down to it, more and more DAW software is taking advantage of additional systems as processing nodes for even more power.
This leaves the option of buying a Quad i7 Mac Mini + a Retina Macbook Pro for the price of just the one Quad 2013 Mac Pro and that would offer the best of both worlds. Portability and massive CPU power because once you combine the 2 systems via ethernet, you'd match the 8 core Mac Pro for Logic X plug-ins (or other DAWs with remote processing abilities).
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A mac? I have my Mac Book air on my nightstand. I use it every night
A mini? been a while. However, I have used the parts that make it up recently. I have also used comparable desktop variants.
I don't imply the Mac Mini is garbage. it's not. It's a very competent machine for an everyday user.
But comparatively, for your home media production like i explained, you generally want the desktop variants. the i5's on the 4xxx platform crush those on the mobile platform and the ability in desktop to add cuda / openCL cards for relatively cheaply is a huge bonus. The mac Mini is extremely limited by the intel GPU. While it's competent enough, Intel's GPU's are still not a replacement for a discreet one.
its just most home usage scenarios won't benefit from the Mac Pro, and the Mini isn't good enough.
But dont get me wrong. the mini is excellent. I'm speccing one out now to connect to the TV for xmbc and use as a settop box.
You usually do get yelled at, then you get a tirade of arrogance from self-proclaimed "professionals" who "know what they're talking about"
Ever since the switch to Intel, they've offer one, token, mid-range desktop system and that was the 2006 build-to-order 2.0Ghz Mac Pro. By today's standards, any i7 based Mac Mini would destroy it on CPU power and add a single 6Gb/s SSD, it would destroy it on I/O too unless someone was prepared to sink serious money into such an old system for PCIe SATA 6Gb/s cards.
You'd have no problem doing that at all,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ka--dw6P-U
This is what gets me. Apple offer this great, affordable, low powered, entry level system that basically offers over 80% of the CPU power of the entry level Mac Pro for a 3rd of the price. Yet people obsess over specs that mean nothing to audio work, like GPU power (or PCIe lanes, let's not forget them because they're SO important to running DAW software), but the fact remains, at this point the entire Mac range now relies on external storage solutions. Not one Mac can be upgraded internally with additional drives apart from the Mac Mini and almost all of them either use PCIe Flash or SATA 6Gb/s SSDs as a BTO option.
Geekbench scores put the new i7s in the Retina Macbook Pro approximately on a level where a 2Ghz 2013 Retina i7 = a 2.3Ghz 2012 Mac Mini i7, the 2.6Ghz BTO Retina Macbook Pro has insignificantly less CPU power than the entry level 2013 Mac Pro and when it comes down to it, more and more DAW software is taking advantage of additional systems as processing nodes for even more power.
This leaves the option of buying a Quad i7 Mac Mini + a Retina Macbook Pro for the price of just the one Quad 2013 Mac Pro and that would offer the best of both worlds. Portability and massive CPU power because once you combine the 2 systems via ethernet, you'd match the 8 core Mac Pro for Logic X plug-ins (or other DAWs with remote processing abilities).
I have not run the mini so I could only go by the benchmarks.
Last year I had a 2008 8 core mac pro and before I got rid of it I ran the same session on it and a couple of other machines, a 2009(?) iMac I3 a 2011 macbook pro 13" running a I5 2.4 and I was surprised how well the iMac and macbook pro did. They were both slower at crunching video down to a dvd but
both were acceptable.
I'm not operating my studio as a business at the time being but I've never understood the idea that you have to have the latest to get work done?
I checked out the bench tests on everymac and the minis and iMacs hold up quite well against the old mac pros.
I'm used to being able to expand my macs too, but I guess the current trend is thunderbolt. I've been pretty happy with firewire 800 but as they say your mileage may vary!
I think apple has the range pretty well covered but would like to see
a clickbox on the video option for the mac pro to allow the removal of one of
video cards to get the price down to $2500 or even better $2k!!
There is always the refurb or used option.
A mac? I have my Mac Book air on my nightstand. I use it every night
A mini? been a while. However, I have used the parts that make it up recently. I have also used comparable desktop variants.
I don't imply the Mac Mini is garbage. it's not. It's a very competent machine for an everyday user.
But comparatively, for your home media production like i explained, you generally want the desktop variants. the i5's on the 4xxx platform crush those on the mobile platform and the ability in desktop to add cuda / openCL cards for relatively cheaply is a huge bonus. The mac Mini is extremely limited by the intel GPU. While it's competent enough, Intel's GPU's are still not a replacement for a discreet one.
its just most home usage scenarios won't benefit from the Mac Pro, and the Mini isn't good enough.
But dont get me wrong. the mini is excellent. I'm speccing one out now to connect to the TV for xmbc and use as a settop box.
I've not used a mini so I'm only going by benchmarks on everymac comparing the minis to the 3 macs I have available to me but it looks like for what I do that the I7 quad mini will do what I need it to do?
What are you doing that needs the discreet GPU?
I still do some pro work but I'm kinda in between the home user and the Pro
right now so I'm not a high end user but for me these in between macs are a good value.
So are you happy with the macbook air?
Which one is it?
I got yelled at the other day by some forum members for suggesting such a machine.
Apparently we're not allowed to discuss what we want... instead we should just take what Apple gives us
In the 90's I sent a letter to Steve Jobs and He answered me!
I was trying to get my studio going and was bitching about the prices of Macs
and He sent me a letter back explaining something about the pricing
and telling me that I was rude!
He was probably right!
I'm am an Apple fan as I have bought many and used them for my business
but I still think we need to complain to Apple when they've got it wrong.
We need a sub 3K Mac Pro!
Tell em to take out that extra video card!
I'm using the 2011 11" macbook air as my "use around the house for internet" and the like. Works flawlessly for that.
I would never try heavy lifting on it.
The i7 in the mac mini though is a decent CPU. albeit it, it's NOT the same i7 you get if you had a full desktop. There are significant differences in performance and power that comes from the limited thermal design of the Mini.
A more telling benchmark for example is to compare the offerings of a full desktop chip to it. however, it's all really dependant on usage. if you'r enot doing a lot of heavy lifting it will be fine. for media playback and some light work you probably won't find any issues
Well I'm doing some pretty heavy lifting at times on an I3 and an I5
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by that though.
I'm doing audio and some video, a tiny bit of photo work which is why I responded, didn't you say you had a relative doing photo work?
I guess if someone isn't used to the mac OS than a Mac would not
be the first choice, although the mac is pretty easy to teach to someone.
Check out the specs on the Mini vs the Macbook air vs the iMac/http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-comparison-chart/?compare=all-intel-macs
Of course the newer 8 core 12 core crush this stuff but its really more than I need right now. Also where I have a couple of units the next thing I want to try is networking them for rendering. someday...
The problem is, the computations specific to audio processing generally don't translate well to OpenCL, the one exception being convolution. Even if they want to embrace the technology, the hardware simply isn't a good fit for that application.
iMac or mini isn't an option for my music applications because I need more CPU power and can't get by on four cores.
Maybe for 24/7 server or render farm use, but for people using the machine as a workstation, they are going to see similar results between the two if you compare similar chips.
There aren't Haswell i7 with six cores yet, but there are a couple ivy bridge ones with six. And those particular chips look like they have 40 PCIe lanes as well. In fact, the anandtech article specifies a 4930k for the DIY build which is a six core version and would be much faster than the MP quad core, instead similar to the six.
http://ark.intel.com/products/77780/Intel-Core-i7-4930K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
There are really two different comparisons to be made, build a machine with the same parts as the mac or build a machine that performs as well as the mac.
His DIY comparison runs about $3000 for a six core i7, but that's with $1400 in video cards. For someone like an audio guy whose software won't take any advantage, take those out and swap in a basic $200 video card and you're at about $1800. No question it's not the same hardware any more, but for someone who is going to see the same performance isn't it nice to have the option to save that $1400 on video cards?
First of all, Xeon's are not the same price as Core i7's. Secondly, the E5-1620 V2 is not sold to end users, it's sold to large manufacturers only. As such, I found it at Mouser for $377. The E5-1660 V2 is available to end users, but in the ballpark of $1000.
You'd have an easier time using a "barebones" workstation, and going from there. I did something similar on page 7 using Lenovo and AMD parts and put it together for under $3000.
http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=16296820 $293
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=E5-1620V2 $293
...
Why Mouser for almost 20% more?
B
I wasn't saying Mouser was the only source, it was just the first I came across, and their primary customers are manufacturers.
Why Mouser for almost 20% more?
The fact is, it's only available as a tray product. As Intel explains, tray products are not intended for end users, and don't include a warranty, a heatsink/fan, etc.
That doesn't differ from any of the other "OEM" parts that are sold via consumer oriented suppliers like NewEgg, PC Connection, Superbiiz to build their PCs. Does it?
B
This.
I don't think people fully realize the great support that the enterprise customers, or high end workstation and monitor customer support that Dell and HP offer. blows away Apple support.
To put this into perspective, I checked out Newegg. They list 116 Intel desktop and server processors. 115 are box (aka retail) product codes, 1 is a tray (aka OEM) product code. So yes, it would be very unusual for an end user to be buying a tray product.
If you compare similar CPU power the prices are very similar. If you're seeing different prices you need to be more specific about which chips you are comparing.
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1620 v2
(10M Cache, 3.70/3.9 GHz) Launched Q3'13 4 130 W TRAY: $294.00
Intel® Core i7-4770 Processor
(8M Cache, 3.4/3.90 GHz) Launched Q2'13 4 84 W BOX : $312.00
TRAY: $303.00
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1650 v2
(12M Cache, 3.50/3.9 GHz) Launched Q3'13 6 130 W TRAY: $583.00
Intel® Core i7-4930K Processor (previous generation, the latest doesn't include six core yet)
(12M Cache, 3.4/3.90 GHz) Launched Q3'13 6 130 W BOX : $594.00
TRAY: $583.00
Based on those prices the xeons actually look like a bit better price and performance. But motherboard and ram may make a bigger difference in price although I expect that to narrow over the next few months as the latest tech is more widely available and becomes more mainstream.
You know what, you're right. Historically this was never the case, so I didn't even check.
However, the E5 V2 series is all Ivy Bridge EP, and there's no Core version of this. The two below are both Haswell, and almost identical:
Intel® Xeon® E3-1245 v3
(8M Cache, 3.4/3.8 GHz) Launched Q2'13 4 84 W BOX : $287.00
Intel® Core™ i7-4770
(8M Cache, 3.4/3.9 GHz) Launched Q2'13 4 84 W BOX : $312.00
And yeah, the Xeon is less expensive. You can compare the three in detail here.
I would really rather have the HP.
I bought my HP Z820 early last year for just over $2,000. I'm now in the process of upgrading it to two new Xeon v2 processors (E5-2690's) and 128 gigs of RAM. (The HP supports up to 512 gigs - 16 slots - versus 64 gigs max for new Mac Pro - but I really don't need 512 gigs now
. And the HP includes three years of support - something you can't buy at any price from Apple.The HP can also use ANY of the new E5 processors from Intel (there are a ridiculous number - over 30 altogether). Apple limits you to three options.
Unfortunately, I can't do ANY OF THOSE UPGRADES with my early 2009 Mac Pro - hmmm, so I'd have to fork out another bundle of cash for a new Mac Pro - I don't think so.
The HP can also use ANY of the new E5 processors from Intel (there are a ridiculous number - over 30 altogether). Apple limits you to three options.
Unfortunately, I can't do ANY OF THOSE UPGRADES with my early 2009 Mac Pro - hmmm, so I'd have to fork out another bundle of cash for a new Mac Pro - I don't think so.
If you're going to do the CPU swap on your own, it's no different on either the old mac pro or the new one. Both should take any CPU compatible with that socket, same as any PC with the same socket.