You’ll be fine. It’s people like me that have less than half that to spend for the next decade that I’m concerned about ?
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Mac Pro Now Starts With 512GB of Storage and Radeon Pro W5500X Graphics
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You can conduct heat anywhere, but if you don't radiate that heat, it's not really going anywhere.
People keep commenting like anyone still wanting Windows running on their Mac is being ridiculous....
Problem is, most Mac users I know would LOVE to dump Windows completely, except they can't because of software with no native Mac version.
I pointed this out a while ago in another forum here, but I have some music gear from the early 2000's (such as a Line 6 POD Pro XT) that's still perfectly good and capable equipment, but the manufacturer stopped updating the software used to upload new sound patches to it and act like a librarian for them. On a Mac with a current/recent version of Mac OS, the last version of this software won't even run anymore. But you can get their Windows release to work fine in a VM, especially if you stick to Windows 7 in it.
I also have a hand-held police scanner that only has Windows software for managing it and updating it with the latest list of frequencies you want to scan. And I own a few Netgear smart network switches where again, you can only update their firmware or manage them with a Windows app.
Especially with music gear, you'll typically find the companies making it don't sell a whole lot of units (typically total sales in the thousands, as opposed to HUNDREDS of thousands or even MILLIONS for products like mice or card readers). So they're not real enthused to keep updating software packages for any of it any longer than they have to. Once the hardware sales have "run their course", they're on to making something new to try to get the next 5,000 or so units sold and existing users are just expected to keep using what they've got with machines running the old software.
Apple is notoriously bad about making sweeping changes to their OS that require developers to keep revising apps to work with new releases. So it's usually a Windows version you can keep going via a VM for much longer.
Obviously rattled by the new kid on the block , he’s ugly but he sure packs a punch
Yeah, I wasn't being clear.
I just built configs in the Apple Store app to compare prices.
I know on paper they have similar performance because of the early benchmarks, which make complete sense, given this is also what I estimated if Apple released an M1 Max Duo.
Sure, you can upgrade the RAM and storage on the pro with less expensive third-party hardware (that’s what I would’ve done had I bought one) but you still have to be able/willing to buy one. At this point, it’s even less cost-effective when the Mac Studio is added to the equation. When I priced what I’d reasonably need to buy on the Mac Studio (all the RAM and storage, up front!!), I was appalled. So I went looking at the current Mac Pro again. Still appalling.I wasn't saying APPLE memory...
So once again, I’m left with no sensible choice. Even buying a cheaper used machine as an interim upgrade (as I regret doing once already), leaves me disgusted at spending half my computer fund on a USED machine with possibly several years less in software support.
??♂️
Why not pick up an M1 Mini or its successor plus a windows gaming machine. Are you actually using enough power on the MacOS side that you need 2 equivalents to gaming rigs?
Agree...Must sell Intel Mac Pro's to make room for upcoming, new Apple silicon Mac Pro's...
Yes? See that’s the problem with having 2D/3D graphics, music, and gaming as hobbies... and despising the platform with all the games. I used to do everything on a PC, but I absolutely have zero tolerance for Windows in any capacity beyond gaming. I’ve been WAY more productive with Logic Pro than I ever was with Sonar (Windows only) or Cubase. More productive on a Mac in general. This is why I wanted a Mac Pro with Windows via Bootcamp: best use of the hardware and funds.
No, I am NOT interested in a Hackintosh.
OK, but the M1 machines are pretty powerful, even an M1 Mini absolutely crushes my heavily upgraded 2010 Mac Pro. If you're managing on old hardware now an M2 mini later this year would likely be plenty of power for hobby work for a long time to come....
Thanks for your suggestion. I’m not discounting the potential option. It’s just that other potentials scare me:
1. Realizing the money was ultimately better spent on something else (such as what happened when I bought my used iMac 12,2). The power and connections offered on that machine are pretty limited.
2. Finding that using the system heavily for extended periods of time causes it die of thermal strain in under five years.
That’s what became of my first brand new Mac: Gaming and 3D rendering killed it (and my second one seems to possibly have similar problems developing).
Admittedly, it was a MacBook Pro 3,1, known for NVidia defects (NVidia is in my second, too). But the game was only Half-Life 2, and it only acted as a CPU node in a network of three computers doing rendering in Carrara or Lightwave 9 (neither of which used the GPU for rendering at the time).
[This is verbose, sorry]
3D modeling & rendering is a PITA, so I’m hoping my next foray into it is helped with as much acceleration as possible. Carrara & Lightwave are abandoned products (more money down the drain), but Blender has improved much over the years.
But having only one system to render from, and using GPU acceleration, means needing a system that’s got lots of CPU & GPU muscle... and making more heat. (now wondering if a gaming PC would be useful as a network rendering node in Blender)
Ultimately it’s all hobbyist stuff. I have no potential to earn income from it... or from anything. This is about what I do with the rest of my miserable life, while trying to distract myself from the oppression of a hateful residence.
And that’s another thing: if I can sell my house and buy one much farther from urban hell... why the hell would I spend $10,000 on hobbies instead of a house?? I don’t even know if it’s possible (property is insanely expensive & I’m on disability). Hobbies/distractions matter a lot in the mean time.
Being poor sucks and is expensive. Apple’s Mac Studio, in forcing people to buy all the memory and storage up front, from Apple, is a perfect example of what NOT to do when “offering options” to people who aren’t rich.
If they meant the Mac Studio to be a lower cost option for small studios and hobbyists, they sabotaged it. It feels like a repeat of the 2013 Mac Pro, with greatly improved specs, but having gone backwards in upgrade/cost-effectiveness.
It’s not like they do this by accident. Apple management know people will be forced to buy today the memory and storage they anticipate they might need later. There’s no 3rd-party option today or tomorrow. What they do is perfectly planned to make shallow statements easy (“the base model only costs...”).
The details matter to the individuals actually buying the hardware. Wall Street cares about nothing other than stock valuation, which is entirely opinion. That means controlling shallow opinions matters more than making actual options available to a diverse customer base.
I completely forgot the base model was 256.
I hope people take a more sober look at this machine now that two years have passed. I recall watching YouTubers make videos about how they're selling their $15,000.00 Mac Pro and using an M1 iMac. It's like dude, if you can do that, this wasn't the machine for you in the 1st place.
I hope people take a more sober look at this machine now that two years have passed. I recall watching YouTubers make videos about how they're selling their $15,000.00 Mac Pro and using an M1 iMac. It's like dude, if you can do that, this wasn't the machine for you in the 1st place.
No one knows yet, but it's likely plenty. We had expansion slots before Apple was on Intel you know. The big issue is drivers and what Apple allows, not the ability to stick PCIe slots on the machine. I suspect a lot of the use of expansion slots on a new Mac Pro will be Apple's own cards though, things like afterburner, or even Apple's own dedicated GPU maybe
This was a lot to unwind. I feel you, we all have to go through the desert at one time.
Might I suggest that as you have been able to "bear" windows for gaming, you might also be able to rev up blender and do it all the same.
Blender is almost an "os" in it's own right, and while I may be too amateur to know any of the difference occurred by distributed computing as described in your iMac debacle. I HAD to buy a win-lux machine. OptiX simply is that good. It's financially irresponsible to buy mac hardware in this use case unless you do it for fiscal reasons.
I don't interact with the device, simply remoting into it with Microsoft Remote Desktop.
EDIT: Did not read about your need for Logic, no expertise about the hardware need of that software, and if you can get away with the base M1 mini, that could serve as an end point to access your despicable WinMachine (Some cheap gaming rig with RTX, once the GPU market cools down) you could be golden for a while.
You don't need a high tier GPU to work with blender professionally, anything with 8 GiGs of memory and RTX will serve you well so long as you don't aspire for photorealism. And even then, clever shaders often outshine the heavy textures that would saturate your limited DRAM. And look it up, GET A GPU THAT ENABLES OPTIX, night and day QOL for the viewport.
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Mmmmmmm good points. And you're right, they put a CPU in the GPU. That said, I'm super curious to see if they have the balls to follow through on what I consider an awesome concept. They would still need to release 2 separate products: the new Mac Pro, that is 100% pure Apple Silicon, and an AS Ultra GPU that slides into the 7.1 I would not only be extremely happy with that, but I would buy both. I hope they're aware of this...
You just made my month with this comment about Relay.
I was thinking that they might make specialised cards like Afterburner to share the video processing workloads or something similar.
I'll keep my 2009 model thanks.
Apple this week upgraded its base model Mac Pro to include 512GB of storage and AMD's Radeon Pro W5500X graphics for the same $5,999 starting price. Previously, this configuration included 256GB of storage and Radeon Pro 580X graphics. These changes apply to both the tower and rack versions of the Mac Pro.
As we previously reported, Apple has also made AMD Radeon Pro W6600X graphics available as a $300 upgrade option for the Mac Pro.
Released in December 2019, the Mac Pro continues to use Intel's Xeon processors, but Apple confirmed during its "Peek Performance" event on Tuesday that an Apple silicon version of the high-end desktop computer is planned. Apple did not provide a release timeframe or any additional details about the future Mac Pro.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously reported that an Apple silicon version of the Mac Pro will have two chip options, including one with a 20-core CPU and a 64-core GPU and the other with a 40-core CPU and a 128-core GPU.
Article Link: Mac Pro Now Starts With 512GB of Storage and Radeon Pro W5500X Graphics
