I really wouldn't be surprised if Apple waited until December 30th to release this thing.
What about the 31st?
I really wouldn't be surprised if Apple waited until December 30th to release this thing.
So will these upgrade prices be the same in the UK (i.e. $600 = £600) or will they translate correctly (i.e. $600= £368)?
The BTO upgrade prices aren't surprising, but the base price is almost a $1000 more than I remember my 2008 Mac Pro being. Perhaps this is related to American manufacturing versus Chinese, or costs associated with the new design, but it does seem to be more expensive.
These prices are very reasonable. My Dell workstation (T7610) cost my office $12,216 before tax, and with a HEAVY corporate discount.
$9,999 for a fully loaded MP is a steal. *sigh* I wish my company used Macs. I'd have one of those sitting on my desk instead of something the size of a house.
"If it's too expensive for me, then it's overpriced."
I have a late 2013 maxed out iMac, no bias here. However, this idea seems to be expressed by many of the members on the forum.
If your production company lands a $20,000 job every month, this nMP is chump change. Could it be useful for the prosumer? Sure. Is it intended or geared toward that market? Not necessarily. If it's not economical for you, don't buy it.
If you think this is expensive just go look at digital storms workstations.
Yeah, but at least the current Mac Pro is priced and spec'd wide enough for pro-sumers and high end businesses. This model has created an even wider chasm between a loaded iMac and base nMP. The 4-Core base system, which isn't even that powerful compared to a current gen 5,1 model, is ludicrous.
Having seen the unit a bit in photos now it really seems it is way too shiny and glossy.
Even though that's a cosmetic thing it really demands too much attention from the eyes.
Bring on a matte black version, or aluminium look like the rest of the MB line-up. It just looks a bit out of place in the context of everything else.
Or heaven forbid they will bring out a range of colored cases for it >_<
It it was a Radeon, they wouldn't call it FirePro. The thing is that D300/500/700 seem to be just Apple's markting names. There are no cards with these names, but there are cards with those specs. I guess we'll have to wait to find out what exactly they are (could even be the "Rx 200"-based successors to the current FireGL models, but I wouldn't bet on it).They don't match up perfectly. They're also close to 7970s, which did have a 6GB version. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't thousands of dollars. As I mentioned it may be more of an issue of branding than anything here. If they were going to charge W9000 pricing, it would be called a W9000.
Xeons are (mostly) more expensive than i7s
The GPU prices(and the upgrade options in general) are actually not bad, but those CPUs cost as much as a decent used car. Goodness gracious. Then again, this isn't consumer level hardware. Even as an engineer, I don't think I'll ever need something as powerful as this, unless I start doing 3D stuff I guess.
Wow, they are expensive. But then again, these are standard workstation parts that is always meant for 24/7 operations. I always hear people who say that their i7 processors and GTX 780s can destroy a Mac Pro for 1/4 the price. True story is, while I and most other people would not need this level of reliability, to those who need a reliable computer that cannot afford any errors and mistakes, these parts are well worth the extra 3/4 cost over an i7.
I just want a computer that's faster than a Mac Mini and which has a video card that I can upgrade myself when faster ones come out. I don't need a $3K powerhouse.
Also I don't want an iMac since I don't want to re-buy a monitor whenever I upgrade my computer.
Apparently I'm alone in this, since Apple offers no such computer.
However: Yes, a more reasonably priced machine with two 7970s (or equivalent GeForce GPUs) and an i7 instead of a Xeon is the machine many people want Apple to offer, but it's not the machine Apple built. Xeons are (mostly) more expensive than i7s and FirePros are more expensive than Radeons despite being based on the same chips. That's the market reality.
According to the tech specs the basic 4-core model can be upgraded to 6 cores so that would indicate you can leave the GPUs at the D300 level. I'm hoping for that, at any rate, as my intended application doesn't need higher than the D300 level and I'd rather sink my hardware budget into RAM and storage.
ya, people have no idea about the component prices. You can't even buy two FirePro W9000 cards (same as D700) for less than $8000 so Apple is throwing in the Mac Pro for free.
http://www.amazon.com/AMD-FirePro-R...?ie=UTF8&qid=1387236595&sr=8-1&keywords=w9000
I seriously doubt that the "other workstation hardware" would come with similarly restricted internal expansion options. Profound concepts for internal expansion are one of the key features that distinguish workstations from simple DIY towers.I often complain about the "Apple tax", but if the prices quoted in the news article are the real deal, it's more or less in line with other workstations and in terms of the GPUs, it might even be a good deal. Again: If you compare it to other workstation hardware, not the consumer versions – which are much cheaper at pretty much the same or in some cases even slightly better performance, but don't offer features like ECC for example.
Your complaints are absolutely valid but that's a different discussion.I seriously doubt that the "other workstation hardware" would come with similarly restricted internal expansion options. Profound concepts for internal expansion are one of the key features that distinguish workstations from simple DYI towers.
If the nMP's price is indeed "in line with other workstations", it's _not_ a good deal. Just the other way round: Other offerings may be the good deal in comparison, if you can accept less stylish design and a bigger footprint (both of which are usually no problem for a professional user).
CPU (Stock: 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5)
- 3.0GHz 8-core: +$1500
- 2.7GHz 12-core: +$3000
Graphics (Stock: Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5)
- Dual AMD FirePro D700 with 6 GB GDDR5: +$600
RAM (Stock: 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC - 4x4GB)
- 32GB (4x8GB): +$400
- 64GB (4x16GB): +$1600
Flash Storage (Stock: 256GB PCIe-based)
- 512GB: +$300
- 1TB: +$800