You make a good point but now you are entering top of the line iMac territory. Most people who buy an MP want the dual gpu. As much as I think your idea is great I just don't see how it'll be better than the top iMac.
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Mac Pro Reviews Find Impressive Hardware, But Few Software Titles Take Advantage
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You make a good point but now you are entering top of the line iMac territory. Most people who buy an MP want the dual gpu. As much as I think your idea is great I just don't see how it'll be better than the top iMac.
it sort of falls into this gap. need more than the iMac (and without the built in screen), but less than the nMac pro.
apple really doesn't have a lot of options in that segment. The Old Pro, while a beastly chassis could be configured nearly as low, but could go through the roof as well if needed.
this one seems to start high and only go higher, completely losing that middle ground.
if Apple is trying to gain market penetration with the nMP to gain better GPGPU software from other companies, you'd think they would try and expand the amount of people who could benefit at first.
My Mac Pro tower has two USB and two FireWire ports on the front. That's not a "token" amount, it's enough for everyday use. Occasionally I have to access a port in the rear, but not often. I do keep a Lightning cable permanently plugged into the back of my tower so it's easy to connect iDevices without using up a front port.
On the iMac and Mini, all the ports are on the back, even the SD card slots, lol. So that's where we got the "idea" that Ive is hostile to ergonomic port placement.
I wouldn't turn my Mac Pro around "backwards" and leave it that way. But users have to do whatever makes sense for their work flow. If you complain that you need to turn it around frequently to access the "back" ports and it is a problem for you, then turn it around and leave it. If the power cord or desktop clutter is your concern, then leave it with the ports in the "back". Either way, you have a choice.
Until/Unless Premiere is optimized for OpenCL, a PC with a good CUDA card will be faster. You can't really compare the two until Adobe incorporates OpenCL in all of it's products. You can't compare FCP on a PC. You can compare FCP OpenCL speeds on Mac with Premiere CUDA speeds on PC or Mac. In this case the MacPro wins.
Premiere already uses OpenCL, as was evident by the Adobe demo at WWDC.
No, I the complaints are silly. How frequently will people need plug/unplug something once their workstation is set up? And had Apple included I/O in the front then people would have complained how ugly it looks with cables sticking out the front.
Apple probably did a silent update to throttle the performance.
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Since this thing is a cylinder shape - why not move it 90 degrees. Have the ports come out the left or right side. This way you don't have the cables directly in front and it's still easy access and still looks nice sitting on your desk.
I agree with you on this one, it would be nice to have a price point in
between the iMac and macpro.
Being an American I am glad the macpro is made/assembled in the US.
I'm curious if the 2K-2.5K price point is doable with the mac pro being that
its made in the US?
Maybe they'll cave and give us an entry level mac pro without the extra
gpu?
Here's hoping!
I agree with you on this one, it would be nice to have a price point in
between the iMac and macpro.
Being an American I am glad the macpro is made/assembled in the US.
I'm curious if the 2K-2.5K price point is doable with the mac pro being that
its made in the US?
Maybe they'll cave and give us an entry level mac pro without the extra
gpu?
Here's hoping!
I'd be willing to pay the "apple premium" for a nMP too if it were available in the options I had previously mentioend to make it a bit more reasonable.
As for the "made in". I still have a lot of doubt. it's a step in the right direction, but just bringing the parts already fabbed in from overseas then having some cheap labour "click" the parts together isn't "Made in the USA" to me.
Made in the usa should be using as much as humanly possible made there. That means bringing as much as the manufacturing process here as possible. Not making all the parts in foxconn, putting them in a box and shipping them here for assembly.
I'm always willing to purchase things at a premium if built by quality local worksmanship.
My hockey equipment (i'm a goalie) I have completely hand built by local guy here in Ontario. it outlasts all the overseas mass produced factory built stuff. sure it has a 10-15% premium in cost. Yes, i can't buy a $200 knock off set of it. But i know that everytime i go to lace up, it's still in great condition. My last set easily had 300+ games on it before i chose to replace it with something more modern. My set before that, which was "made in china" (said right on the label), only lasted 20-30 skates before things started popping off. Fallnig appart and wearing away, and only cost me that 10% less
Where did you find that? Right now on the dell website they only list one dual eight core configuration of that particular machine and it's $7k ("on sale" from $9300). For some reason none of the configurations of that machine allow BTO customization, I wonder if it's because the parts are in limited supply and they are trying to limit people to stock configs for now?
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There are a lot of different "True Professionals". Some of them can benefit from dual GPU. Others need high end CPU power but their software doesn't take advantage of GPU so that extra GPU power is wasted money. Audio work is an obvious example.
Any evidence to back that up? Seems like pure speculation. And I'm very skeptical of that claim considering that so far Final Cut seems to be the only app that gets a big speed boost from that second GPU.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Dell's site seems to be in a real constant state of flux lately. priced something out last week. this week I can't even find the same product category on the site.
had a call last night from my aunt and uncle. their old PC died. They went to Dell and were completely, utterly lost and confused. They have no idea what they need/ want.
They went to the apple site and were immediately able to identify that the Mini would solve their needs.
Unfortunately though, They have been using Windows their entire lives and microsoft office. When presented with the option of going Mac Mini, which they were really interested in, And having to learn OSx, or go back to the dell website, they chose to go back to the dell website. I will likely go over there this week to sit down with them and go over the options and what they all mean.
Yeah, I think we've made a deal with the devil regarding the low cost chinese imports. We've become even more of a throw away society because of it.
I'd much rather buy things that are made in this hemisphere.
I don't know the whole scoop on the Mac Pro, but i thought read somewhere that the mac pro was more than tacked together in the US but I'll have to see what google says
Actually, that's what I would say, too.
Software development, for example, unless you can compile your app using GPGPU (which AFAIK no compiler supports). Also in my case, I need a LOT of VMs, so the number of cores (and memory) is more important than 2 GPUs (which are also not used in this scenario).
And even with software that can use 2 GPUs IN THEORY, it remains a theory until it is actually supported. Therefore the verge is mostly right.
We should look at facts and hard numbers, and not solely speculate on what MIGHT be happening in the future. And no, "automatic success" is neither guaranteed with OpenCL nor with thunderbolt. Apple already has failed in the past with their proprietary tech, so we will see what happens this time.
Which facts and hard numbers do you want? And which applications are you specifically talking about? I can point you at a thread or two on the Adobe Premiere forums where someone tested multiple video cards with Premiere Pro CC, and the performance literally scaled linearly. That was on a Windows box, but the same code is running on the Mac version.
The Verge's review was pretty poorly done. There's a lot of user-based altering they could have done to Premiere to make it work wonderfully with the GPUs in the Mac Pro they had. As Premiere users, they certainly should have known that.
i see you saying this but then i also see a major equation in my workflow (rhino) and i know for fact which computers its mac version is being written on (macbook pros)..
so who am i supposed to believe? what software are you developing?
Web apps.
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Benchmarks, for example.
About every app that cannot fully leverage the nMP power. Ie all apps that are not able to support 2 GPUs via OpenCL. I hope I must not list them all, would take some time
But think of Audio, Databases, VMs, Compilers etc
And if you think that OpenCL enabled Apps leverage the GPU for just everything, think twice.
About every app that cannot fully leverage the nMP power. Ie all apps that are not able to support 2 GPUs via OpenCL. I hope I must not list them all, would take some time
But think of Audio, Databases, VMs, Compilers etc
And if you think that OpenCL enabled Apps leverage the GPU for just everything, think twice.
but what's the complaint? is it that you're potentially spending maybe $250 more on a 2nd d300 if you buy a mac pro?
i assume you want more cpu cores for compiling since you're looking beyond an imac/mbp/mini etc.. so if the cost was $5250 instead of $5500 with one less gpu, would you then be satisfied? or is your complaint something else?
Actually I am not complaining
oh.. yeah. i can see that.
my bad.
And you compile web apps? How exactly?
And why you have to run several VM at once to test web apps? There are just three rendering engines (Trident, Gecko, Webkit) and you only have to test for one language on the browser side (JavaScript) in no more than three VM (Vista, 7 and 8) to cover all your bases.And you compile web apps? How exactly?
Using SASS and closure compiler, for example. Actually I have whole build scripts that do much more than that. And did I say that I am the only one who compiles stuff? There are much more scenarios with developping, and AFAIK not a single one profits from a GPU let alone two. More cores - and in many instances maximum single thread perf - is still way more important.
If you say so ...
have you ever actually programmed a web app?One language, right? And totaly identical on all systems? That would be too good to be true! Only three rendering engines? Is that a serious question? You know there are different versions of these engines and that MS had reprogrammed their engine with every recent major release? You know that rendering of a web page / web app looks even different based on OS? And no, not everyone uses the latest version of a browser
This can has been made for Pros? really, I guess they have never actually stepped foot into a Professional recording, dubbing, mastering, post mastering studio one bit.
It's all fine and dandy for graphic artist or video editors, but a lot of them will tell you that they do not think the design was intended for Pros.
For us in the recording industry, it really isn't thought out one bit. The lack of internal expandability means that you wil have a mess of wires running about the production desks (for those that do not have machine rooms to store their computers and other noisy equipment) where the occasional doped up artist (if just that and not drunk also) will have all the luxury of finding a way to actually have a mishaps with the computer.
There's also the fact that there's no reason for any of us who rely heavily on DSP cards to do the audio processing to actually have a need of the dual Graphical Processing Units, as the audio software will not be using it as there's no sense in it. Pro tools, Logic, Nuendo, Cubase, VEP5, REAPER, etc have no need for dual GPUs. That means that we who have invested thousands in cards would now have to invests thousands again just to get the required amount of expansion chassis which will be laying around our Machine rooms as most are not rack mountable either.
Truly this design is not catering to the pro in the music industry around the world, which the mac pro has been a staple in thousands of studios with multiple mac pro units for many of them.
Way to go apple.
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Indeed! So we have at least 2 whole industries (Audio production and software development) which used to work with Mac Pros a lot, but cannot profit much from the nMP capabilities, at least as it stands right now.
And I have to add, that also for "standard" graphic design stuff (which I also do) like working with PS, AI, FW etc you also won't gain that much, unless you're doing huge batch jobs with GPU supported filters all day.