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First Mac Pro Review Units Out in the Wild

G4DP said:
Which proves his point. The Xeon is wasted in this Mac Pro. For the previous versions of the Mac Pro it made sense to use Xeon's for ease of build. Now there is no reason to do so. Apart from using more expensive and RAM and charging people more.

Looks like a nice machine and i'm sure would be a great improvement if I were to buy one over my 08 model.
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Intel's i7 chip doesn't support ECC ram so right there you have a reason to have a Xeon in there. You know the reason why for the more expensive RAM, and you know the other processors don't support it. I don't understand why you're saying no reason when you plainly already get at least one reason. ^_^
 
coolfactor said:
What I find fascinating is they built an entire factory to build this one machine? I wonder how quickly it can be refactored to build future generations? Let's hope the factory is state-of-the-art ahead of the rest.... that would be true innovation for Apple.
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Apple is using Flextronics for the actual assembly.
 
shaunp said:
No it won't. Integrated graphics suck. Simple as.
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Don't tell my integrated card that, it must be over preforming then since it just sucks, simple as.

For hardcore task, of course integrated cards aren't the best thing for the job. Though for MOST tasks that MOST consumers do that are in MOST consumer level PC's integrated cards are easily up for the task. Simple as.
 
0x0x0x0 said:
Because having a word processor, or browser, start in a second or so vs a few seconds is going to make so much difference to the average use case?..
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Sata II/III ssd's in real life usage perform just as well as the PCI-Express ones. It really all comes down to the controller and the random read/write performance.

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flat five said:
i think people that play the i7 is the same game aren't peaking cores for 1000+ hrs per year.. because if they were, they'd be "yes, sign me up for xeon please.. thank you"
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They are essentially the same chip. They are the same die and everything. COnsidering people run haswell/ivy bridge/and sandybridge chips at 4.5-4.9 ghz stable quite often I think they would be perfectly fine running at the stock 3.7 ghz 24/7. You also forget that many people in fact use these chips to fold 24/7. Not to mention the xeon chips aren't even haswell based which actually makes the 4 core versions inferior. And don;t start talking about pci-e lanes as that does not even apply in the mac pro.
 
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I retired my 2006 Mac Pro last month. I waited 2+ years for Apple to announce the successor to the "cheese grater" Mac Pro. And, when specifications and pricing were finally revealed, I pulled the trigger.

I bought a fully-loaded 27" iMac.

The Mac Pro is certainly the tool for heavy lifting (high processor and graphics needs). But, for how I use a Mac, the new Mac Pro is overkill. My primary professional use of the iMac is Aperture. And since I opted for the 1TB solid state drive in the iMac, Aperture REALLY flies on this iMac. Seriously fast compared to my 2006 Mac Pro.

I also occasionally use Final Cut Pro X. It's also significantly faster on this iMac.

To get an equivalent new Mac Pro setup (4-core, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 27" Thunderbolt display) would have cost me $1,500 more than I paid for the iMac. And, for how I use it, it would NOT have been appreciably faster. I'd have had to move up to a 6, 8, or 12 core machine to really appreciate the speed difference. $$$$$$$$ ouch!

The new Mac Pro is a thing of beauty. Congrats to everyone that is adding one to their desk (who would hide the thing under a desk?!?). But, for "pros" like me (photography), the latest iMac really gets the job done!

Mark
 
oh man... its an R2D2 droid...

It has more connections than a swiss-amy knife. (and that doesn't even make sense...) :/
 
blackhand1001 said:
They are essentially the same chip. They are the same die and everything. COnsidering people run haswell/ivy bridge/and sandybridge chips at 4.5-4.9 ghz stable quite often I think they would be perfectly fine running at the stock 3.7 ghz 24/7. You also forget that many people in fact use these chips to fold 24/7.
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tbh, i was more specifically talking about which computers the chips are available in.. i.e. iMac/mini rendering every night for a month straight vs a mac pro doing the same thing.
would you rather i7 or xeon in that scenario?
 
FYI, the maxed out configuration is 9600 USD:
12-core CPU, 64GB of RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, dual AMD FirePro D700 (6GB VRAM each)
 
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wazgilbert said:
British £1,000.00
German €1.000,00

which confuses me greatly in financial discussions, what currency? what notation standard and what exchange rate?
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French 1 000,00 €

symbol comes after the number. Decimal point is actually a comma. Thousands separator is a space. There is no pan-European standard.
 
R2d2

I predict no more than 6 months before someone does an R2D2 case mod. It's practically begging for that!
 
flat five said:
tbh, i was more specifically talking about which computers the chips are available in.. i.e. iMac/mini rendering every night for a month straight vs a mac pro doing the same thing.
would you rather i7 or xeon in that scenario?
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I would rather have an actual desktop. I don't a giant old mac pro desktop but a mid size tower or compact tower would be better than the new mac pro and imac/mini for me.
 
ChrisA said:
But they don't say what they were running when it was quiet. I'm waiting for a reviewer to try some task where the CPU cores are all maxed out.
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Oh, it also has to be the 12-core model. See if this "thermal core" thing actually works.
And overclocked :D
 
R2D2 semi-clear Mac Pro Holder stand

It would be cool to have an R2D2 semi-clear Mac Pro Holder stand that looke something like this
1468773_10202165909525485_1455557801_n.jpg
 
blackhand1001 said:
I would rather have an actual desktop. I don't a giant old mac pro desktop but a mid size tower or compact tower would be better than the new mac pro and imac/mini for me.
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i know. you say the same thing in every post.
:p

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MacsAre1 said:
I predict no more than 6 months before someone does an R2D2 case mod. It's practically begging for that!
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nah.. sooner.. someone already has it mostly designed and are just waiting on the hands-on measurements etc.
(i'm guessing)
 
Dan-- said:
I like it. It'll be a nice machine for many pros. But can I repeat my request for a headless desktop that uses desktop components, starts at $1000, and is very nicely configured for $1500?
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don't understand why people like you don't understand.... you're asking for a Mac Mini. Go get one.
 
G4DP said:
Which proves his point. The Xeon is wasted in this Mac Pro. For the previous versions of the Mac Pro it made sense to use Xeon's for ease of build. Now there is no reason to do so. Apart from using more expensive and RAM and charging people more.

Looks like a nice machine and i'm sure would be a great improvement if I were to buy one over my 08 model.
Click to expand...

Xeons do a lot more than multiprocessing, including cache ECC for reliability.
 
I wish Apple the best of luck with the Mac Pro. They will probably sell tons of them. I just wish Apple made a Mac that fits my needs. Somewhere between a Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Actually just a Mac Mini with a discrete graphics card would probably do it.

I am going to seriously look at Hackintosh solutions over the holidays. I would give Apple $2000 of my money if they made a Mac between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.
 
coolfactor said:
But Dell, HP and the rest of the PC manufacturers don't have Mac OS X. That's where the real kicker is. Looking at raw specs is one thing. But performance of a computer is defined by far more than that. It's defined by what it can ultimately do at the end of the day. So now tell me which machines are better with total cost of ownership in mind?
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Is that why Windows 7 on my Mac Pro is faster at just about everything versus OS 10??

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Arfdog said:
don't understand why people like you don't understand.... you're asking for a Mac Mini. Go get one.
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Mini does NOT use desktop components. Nor does it have a good video card.
 
Nunyabinez said:
Still waiting to see Geekbench scores of the various configurations. And yes, I Know that's only part of the story, but I want to get at least a sense of how much extra horsepower I'll get per $.
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That is where I am at now too.
I am having a hard time balancing CPU vs GPU upgrade costs. $1000 for dual D700s or go for the octo-core for $1500?

Then there is also the whole spectre of paying $1500 more than a maxed out iMac for 2 more cores and the heavy graphics cards. I think after the initial rush of buyers Apple is going to have to do some serious proof of concept on the dual GPU single CPU platform.
 
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