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What kind of work does he do again? Maybe i missed it earlier in the thread. Regardless, it seems that there are many snobby attitudes in this thread, as if work cannot be done on skylake/kabbylake, which has been one of the fastest at single core performance up until recently. Sure there is threadripper, epyc, xeon, but if someone doesn't need the extra horsepower, why spend an extra 3-4k if it's not needed for their work/application?
Of course, if you don't need it, don't buy it. But you also can't pretend your consumer-grade box can replace a pro-tier machine for those who need it. Some of it isn't even performance but features. Things like GPU error correction and ECC RAM for the CPUs come to mind. Or you absolutely need more RAM than the cheap parts even support.
 
So, it's custom made to downclock? Interesting indeed.
Lmao
  • Downclocked Suffocated-Air-Cooled CPU
  • Second Classed GPU
They might win the numbers somehow but they are shipping a caged beast with the potential of a World War Hulk. That's sad.

Got great news. You can sell your kidney, eyes, blood, liver, bone-marrow, sperm..
I saw the prototype model at WWDC this year. I can tell you that while it looks like an iMac on the outside, the internals are completely redesigned. The airflow being sucked in and out of the thing is impressible and quiet. very large air intake ports and exhaust.
[doublepost=1508205699][/doublepost]Did anyone ever think that maybe the CPU is down clocked since it's not the release version and they are doing testing and don't want to give away the performance of the thing yet?
 
Are they kidding with this?
5 grand!? Enough with pricing your gear as if you're a struggling company in the 90's, Apple!
For $5000 you could get a monster of a PC or a beast of a hackintosh. Are they trying to price themselves out of the desktop business?

Plus, the iMac model is a proven failure when it comes to heat management. Why re-make the same mistake?
 
LOL, what a joke. Apple is forced to gimp the Xeon CPUs in their pro desktop because it MUST BE THINNER at all costs.

They had to underclock, or least aggresively throttle, a few GPU models for the same reason. This is an ongoing problem with the iMac that could be solved inexpensively with a thicker case and optimized airflow.

Yet another cost of the ultrathin design is that it forces USB and SD card ports to the back where they are hard to reach. Side ports are an innovation that permits one to use them without standing up and giving one's display or AIO a reach around.
 
The Intel Xeon W-21XXB is an Intel OEM processor, and the Geekbench results that is shared here was made when it was running on a limited turbo frequency of around 4.2GHz.

People here already speak about a 'down clocked Mac' even before they have ever seen or worked with one. Seriously. The only thing that is lower is the base frequency. That is important for Apple, to get a lower TDP. You however won't notice it. HWP (Intel SpeedShift) is blistering fast and it will ramp up to 4.3 GHz, on all cores, so fast that the difference is close to zero. For Apple it's matter of configuring HWP to their need.

The 8 core test model has a AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 Compute Engine clocked at max 1.25 GHz
The 10 core test model has a AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 Compute Engine clocked at max 1.35 GHz.

@rog,

1.) You're SSD is not only smaller, but also a dog slow compared to the new NVMe one in the iMac Pro.
2.) You're iMac has no ECC memory support.
3.) You're iMac uses only two memory channels.
4.) You're iMac uses slower memory.
5.) You're iMac lacks all the extra instruction sets and other CPU features that come with the new Xeon's.
6.) You're iMac doesn't support 128Gb memory.
7.) You're iMac's GPU is no match to that of the one in the new iMac Pro.
8.) You're iMac's Ethernet adaptor does not supports 2.5Gb, 5Gb, and 10Gb Ethernet

You're driving me nuts. I've never seen someone make the same exact error 8 sentences in a row. Please learn what "You're" means before using it again. (hint: it means "you are," and therefore your sentences are nonsensical.) The word you are looking for is "your." This isn't hard. You can do this.
 
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Both downclocking and not being able to fit multiple CPUs. Aren't people partially paying the big Xeon bucks to get multi-socket support?

Does not matter, the iMac chassis means you even have to compromise with non Xeon based builds. The idea of spending big bucks to upgrade the CPU so you can use the iMac over the pathetic Mac Pro (which I own ) just to see it throttle .... complete form over function , which this iMac pro is. This iMac pro makes the 2013 Mac Pro a clever design with its cooling actually, not that it matters cause the 2013 Mac pros were frying themselves also.
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Nobody is going to trust using that for work. Overclocking is bad, but Hackintosh is the real problem.

Anyway, build to the same specs, and you'll find the iMac is not a bad deal for its parts. First of all, Xeon and Vega are expensive parts for creative pros who need their specific features that an i7 and gaming GPU won't have. You also have to consider additional costs like the top of the line SSD, likely a much nicer display (38" has poor pixel density and sounds like you bought a cheap TV), mobo supporting 128GiB RAM, and peripherals. I'm not saying it's a good product; all-in-one form factor is dumb.

Why is overclocking bad? I'd argue a well cooled overclocked PC is actually more stable than a iMac when pushed . While I have an iMac and a Mac Pro, my water cooled PC which is heavily overclocked has not missed a beat. They have made it so simple to overclock and test your rig these days. Manafactures these days don't condone over locking but markert it as a feature. Nvidia and the like also make it idiot proof with safety features.
 
Downclocked? Apple admitted to “painting themselves into a thermal corner” with the trashcan (I think was the phrase they used.) I can’t help but wonder if they have done the same again with this iMac Pro.
I’m not the target market for this, but will watch with interest how it goes with regards to fan noise and thermal throttling, as well as real world performance of course. I’d be less sceptical if they just made the thing thicker.

I think that goes without saying. Every iMac is painted into a thermal corner. It cannot be upgraded anyway, so that's all there is to it.
 
ha. nice

@3232330
future reference.. you can drag&drop images into the reply box and they'll embed in your post.. like this:

powerbook-g5-mockup.jpg


(if you'd rather do that instead of linking, that is)
 
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I'm not impressed. My 1,5 Year old OCd, 32GB DDR4, 4.5GHz Skylake i7 Hackintosh has a 6100/22000 single/multicore score. For 3k less. With a 38" 4K display...
Only 4K?

Funny story: I recently bought a 28” 4K display thinking I could mimick a new iMac. The monitor got returned after a days use and I’ve got a CTO 27” iMac on its way. I’m sure it’s not as fast as your 4K machine but I’ll cope.
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That takes me right back :’)
 
Interesting. You build those for free? You do tech support for free? You make your own operating system for free?

Odd points. You can build a PC for free (yourself) or pay to get it assembled (most big shops also assemble it for you for free). You can get support for whichever part of it is needed and it will also be on a guarantee for a specific time (free replacement/repair) just like a mac. And there are free operating systems, although even if you pay for one (e.g. in case of windows) the total cost will still be lower than the mac.
 
When would one use multiple cores all firing at the same time?

It's an honest question.


Something non-interactive that can pin a lot of number crunching to particular cores. It costs a certain amount to get enough threads up and running, even if some kind of thread pooling is in place. For a short lived task, it's unlikely to spread to that many cores (or rather to be dispatched to that many cores). There are certain cases where you could explicitly dispatch it in this manner. For example typical openMP runtimes support both core affinity (pinning threads to cores) and static scheduling, so you could technically do it.
 
Yet another cost of the ultrathin design is that it forces USB and SD card ports to the back where they are hard to reach. Side ports are an innovation that permits one to use them without standing up and giving one's display or AIO a reach around.

Lol funny the only time I’ve ever heard that phrase other than your post is ... “... the common courtesy to reach around” by gunner seargant Full Metal Jacket.

Still makes me laugh like an adolescent after all these years.

I do agree side connections would be better functionally even bottom ones or in the stand as a base but aesthetically it’s a challenge never left alone by I’ve and team. If you drew a red marker line around or place masking tape over anywhere on the rear of an iMac and told them do NOT touch they’d stare at it for 72hrs fidgeting in their expensive chairs until their heads exploded!
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It's a sick (the good kind) computer but also kinda stupid at the same time. Having to downclock your high-end CPUs due to thermal limitations... What a shame. This thing should just be a separate box that can keep itself cool.

What about a higher end MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt External GPu box?! Maybe a more modern Mac Mini Pro ... better cooking slightly larger size?
 
You're driving me nuts. I've never seen someone make the same exact error 8 sentences in a row. Please learn what "You're" means before using it again. (hint: it means "you are," and therefore your sentences are nonsensical.) The word you are looking for is "your." This isn't hard. You can do this.
Gosh man. I'm aware of the meaning and difference, but this text was typed in by a Spanish sidekick, at 3:15AM, and thus she missed it. What a shame. I hope that you are feeling better now. Now you go use Spanish dictation software at the same time and see if you spot your errors...
 
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I do agree side connections would be better functionally even bottom ones or in the stand
Oh yeah, bottom connections are all the rage. Everybody loves them. Just ask any Atari STE owner and how much they loved LOVED the controller ports on the bottom/base of the machine. ;)
 
At the price of this config, spending $100 extra for a 960 Pro and $150 more for the most expensive TR4 motherboard is nothing. Non ECC RAM is faster, and Zen likes that.

An expensive integated monitor sucks, and upgrading will be a pain. I would understand people preferring a cMP, but not an iMac.

I preferred an iMac. Love integrated display.
 
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Downclocked eh... i said so when they announced it. You can't cool serious computing power in this form factor.
Question is, how much will the entry level Mac Pro cost if this toy starts at $5000?
 
I really worry the failure of this product will, in turn, affect Apple's commitment to the pro market. I create 2D/3D motion graphics and animation and there's no way I would buy a computer that I can't upgrade and is throttled due to thermal limitations because of the hardware design. So that begs the question, what line of professionals will want to buy an 18-core beast that has almost no upgrade potential as opposed to the cheaper 5K models? This just seems like a desperate attempt to appease the professional market until they can release a proper pro computer, like the Mac Pro.
 
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Downclocked eh... i said so when they announced it. You can't cool serious computing power in this form factor.
Question is, how much will the entry level Mac Pro cost if this toy starts at $5000?

Precisely. I've already mentioned that the 5K iMac with equal specs to the iMac Pro (in terms of numbers, not in terms of components), i.e. 1TB SSD (not as good, but still 1TB), 32GB RAM (not as good, but still 32GB) etc. is still over £3.5k. If you take that into consideration when selecting the iMac Pro, design arguments aside, it's a great buy for people who need it. In return for their £5K, they get a video card that's brand new - not almost 2 years old - like the ones in the current iMac. They get faster, safer RAM with an 8-core processor rather than a 4-core processor. Those three things alone make a vast difference. Add in the new cooling system, great number of ports and all the other extras announced for this machine, and then £5K is actually good value.

The modular Mac Pro, given the cost of the iMac Pro, is going to be at least in the same price range: £5K starting. By the time you've added a monitor, it's going to be the same price as the 10-Core, 16GB GPU iMac Pro. The iMac Pro is almost here; you have to wait at least 12 months for the modular Mac Pro.

The fact that Apple has already brought cooling up to begin with shows their confidence in their iMac Pro design. If they thought all of them were going to fry in 12 months time, I'm fairly certain that they wouldn't be releasing it.

Surely they've learned their lesson after the Trash Can Mac Pro?
 
The modular Mac Pro, given the cost of the iMac Pro, is going to be at least in the same price range: £5K starting. By the time you've added a monitor, it's going to be the same price as the 10-Core, 16GB GPU iMac Pro. The iMac Pro is almost here; you have to wait at least 12 months for the modular Mac Pro.

The fact that Apple has already brought cooling up to begin with shows their confidence in their iMac Pro design. If they thought all of them were going to fry in 12 months time, I'm fairly certain that they wouldn't be releasing it.

Surely they've learned their lesson after the Trash Can Mac Pro?

Have they? I'm of a 'wait and see' mind. I will need a new pro-ish machine in the next 1-2 years... I'd very much like to upgrade my hackintosh to a genuine Apple made machine (Hackintosh hassles are minimal these days, but they're still there).

However, I am also a silent computing fanatic that does 40+ min multicore compiles occasionally, and I don't think the iMac Pro can serve me, even if it doesn't fry itself. Current iMacs get pretty noisy under long, sustained load, and this will have even more heat to take out of the case.

Only chance is the Mac Pro, if they don't **** it up again. Or I could hackintosh again... or get a beige box and switch back to linux... we'll see.
 
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