Pros and Cons - oMP vs nMP - Factual list

[RobertSix]

[pros]
- looks different, I like change if it means better performance as well
- seems like it would be easier to transport - when i moved overseas i bought a tenba - shipping ended up being nearly as much as a new MP

[cons]
- I can't stand fixed hardware I'm used to managing myself. the whole new line of Apple's thinking with MBP's with fixed ram or MP's with fixed parts is not why I shifted to MP about 6 years ago. Getting 'smaller' is great, but not at the cost of flexibility. I don't wish to just 'add-on' external elements - I wish to 'remove' and swap elements. This is a culture of throwaway stuff, restricted to the imaginations of marketers and engineers at Apple. How do they know what I'm going to do with my MP 4 years from now? How do they know what will be possible? I'm not sensing freedom with this.

- I want to move technology in the direction that it lasts longer, and has use for longer. I feel like I'm being forced to be 'locked in' with a company rather than being given options. Can I save some money in the future by selling my nMP's redundant hardware in the future as I swap in some new cards? Doesn't sound like those cards will be useful anywhere else.

As time goes on, I am starting to think the only reason I'm with apple anymore is the OS. But after recently loading up bootcamp on my Mid 2010 MP, watching how it ran things better than the OSx it was tailored for, I began to question my rationale.


Please note, my opinion is mostly uneducated and should not be taken as professional well researched expertise.

 

[pertusis1]

Yay !!! We've continued getting stale GPUs !!! Time for Party Hats.



Links? I guess you have forgotten the rather brutal reacquaintance with reality you got in the 3D Mark thread. While 7970s do rather well at Luxmark, the significantly down clocked D700s are a little easier to catch, I'll attach a Barefeats test graph.



Uh oh. I upgraded my 5,1 5770 to a 7970 from MVC on ebay this a.m. . For me, i'm pretty sure this is overkill, but I'm glad to see I can add a second card later if I need.

 

[Gav Mack]

GPU upgrades are one thing but I can't do without my sleds for recovering data off knackered spinning disks. Directly plugged into the logic board's SATA controller as recovery software doesn't work anywhere near as good through a bridge like TB or USB.

 

[medium8080]

[Con] People keep trying to come up with pro/con lists for it

 

[slughead]

The point stands. If you were not complaining about this fact before, don't start now because the new Mac Pro did not start this tradition of Apple using old GPU's.

You should change your sig to "the king of arbitrary qualifiers."

My 2006 Mac Pro came with a 7600GT. I upgraded to a X1900, then an 8800, then I sold my 8800 and got a Radeon 6870. Then I got a 5,1 with a 5870 and got a GTX670.

You know damn well that thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people have been using 3rd party video cards for years now, with few issues other than boot screens. You ignore this so you can try and pigeon-hole reality into the small category of crappy cards that were actually included with Apples Mac Pros.

Meanwhile, MacVidCards just got a Titan Black working and you're still stuck in your little world where PCIe slots offer no advantage over 2-year old underclocked proprietary video cards that virtually nobody thinks will have a guarantied replacement/upgrade in the future.

Not to mention, right now AMD does not have a FirePro card that's better than D700 in terms of technology. When is the next WX000 card coming out that's based on Hawaii?

Again, arbitrary qualifier. Do you need a FirePro specifically? Boot into Windows and do a lot of Lightwave work, do you? What about all other tasks ? You can throw a pair of 7970 in an old MP and have a faster clock with the same processor.

That's not to mention the Quadros you can throw in an oMP which blow the FirePro away at many tasks.

And you're wrong, by the way, the W9000 which has been out for some time has a base clock 100mhz faster than the boost clock on the D700--making it much better even in the specific niche tasks in Windows Pro Apps the FirePro is designed to do. Not to mention the specific certification for the apps which the Dx00 series doesn't have. In addition, where'd the ECC RAM go? The D700 shouldn't be used for Scientific or data processing apps as ECC is necessary for those use-cases. This is yet another pit-fall of the D700 Vs the existing FirePro technology. There is absolutely no way that the D700 is "better" in terms of anything than the W9000 except possibly performance per watt, which only matters if you're stuck with a proprietary form-factor and cooling solution.

If performance per watt is a bigger issue than actual performance, you're welcome to use an iPad.

Not that I'm saying I think the FirePro is a good deal (again, focusing on a single product line by a single company which were designed for a single group of tasks [which don't even run in OS X] is just an arbitrary qualifier on your part). I'm just saying that you can't throw in enough qualifiers to make the D700 even the "best" FirePro out there, let alone the best graphics card (whatever "best" means).

 

[chaosbunny]

Last year the ati 5870 in my 2010 Mac Pro died. The Apple way would have been to pay about € 500,- for that same old ati 5870. But with the old Mac Pro I could pay € 400,- for a much faster GTX 670.

A "pro" of the nMP is that it is much easier to carry to an Apple store in case of a repair.

A "pro" of the oMP is that you can do the repair yourself and use better parts in the process.

 

[iBug2]

You should change your sig to "the king of arbitrary qualifiers."

My 2006 Mac Pro came with a 7600GT. I upgraded to a X1900, then an 8800, then I sold my 8800 and got a Radeon 6870. Then I got a 5,1 with a 5870 and got a GTX670.

You know damn well that thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people have been using 3rd party video cards for years now, with few issues other than boot screens. You ignore this so you can try and pigeon-hole reality into the small category of crappy cards that were actually included with Apples Mac Pros.

And I'm one of them. I sold GT8800 and bought a GTX 285. It died three times, so I throw it in the trash and bought a HD 4870, then sold that and bought HD 5870 and still using that.

I don't agree about the numbers though. I think we are a very small minority among Mac Pro users. About the upgrades of the new Mac Pro GPU's, we'll have to wait and see.

Again, arbitrary qualifier. Do you need a FirePro specifically? Boot into Windows and do a lot of Lightwave work, do you? What about all other tasks ? You can throw a pair of 7970 in an old MP and have a faster clock with the same processor.

And you'd spend around the same amount of money as dual D700 for two 7970's with 6 GB of memory each. And they'd be working on PCIe 2.0 instead of 3.0.

That's not to mention the Quadros you can throw in an oMP which blow the FirePro away at many tasks.

If you really want to keep spending money on a end of life machine, yes.

And you're wrong, by the way, the W9000 which has been out for some time has a base clock 100mhz faster than the boost clock on the D700--making it much better even in the specific niche tasks in Windows Pro Apps the FirePro is designed to do. Not to mention the specific certification for the apps which the Dx00 series doesn't have. In addition, where'd the ECC RAM go? The D700 shouldn't be used for Scientific or data processing apps as ECC is necessary for those use-cases. This is yet another pit-fall of the D700 Vs the existing FirePro technology. There is absolutely no way that the D700 is "better" in terms of anything than the W9000 except possibly performance per watt, which only matters if you're stuck with a proprietary form-factor and cooling solution.

D700 is not better than W9000. It's just 6000$ cheaper. You get a slower FirePro with non ECC memory for 6000$ less. And like you said, even if these FirePro's are not really FirePro's but 280X's or 7970's packaged as FirePro's, then you are getting dual 7970 or dual 280X for couple hundred dollars more than what you'd spend on those cards. The only problem is that you are stuck with AMD offerings. But at least among AMD offerings you are getting a decent deal.

But if I were someone who needed CUDA and knew that the apps I'm using won't be implementing Open CL, then I certainly would not buy Nvidia GPU's for my old Mac Pro. I'd sell the Mac Pro and switch to PC's today. I don't think Apple will be offering Nvidia GPU's on their next Mac Pro refresh whether or not Nvidia offers better Open CL support in the future. They will keep on AMD to force developers to implement Open CL in their apps.

Not that I'm saying I think the FirePro is a good deal (again, focusing on a single product line by a single company which were designed for a single group of tasks [which don't even run in OS X] is just an arbitrary qualifier on your part). I'm just saying that you can't throw in enough qualifiers to make the D700 even the "best" FirePro out there, let alone the best graphics card (whatever "best" means).

If it was up to me the new Mac Pro would come with a single 290X with dual being an option (can be underclocked slightly which I don't mind). It would have better Open CL performance than D700 and it's Open GL performance per dollar beats all Nvidia offerings.

 

[MH01]

And I'm one of them. I sold GT8800 and bought a GTX 285. It died three times, so I throw it in the trash and bought a HD 4870, then sold that and bought HD 5870 and still using that.

I don't agree about the numbers though. I think we are a very small minority among Mac Pro users. About the upgrades of the new Mac Pro GPU's, we'll have to wait and see.



And you'd spend around the same amount of money as dual D700 for two 7970's with 6 GB of memory each. And they'd be working on PCIe 2.0 instead of 3.0.



If you really want to keep spending money on a end of life machine, yes.




D700 is not better than W9000. It's just 6000$ cheaper. You get a slower FirePro with non ECC memory for 6000$ less. And like you said, even if these FirePro's are not really FirePro's but 280X's or 7970's packaged as FirePro's, then you are getting dual 7970 or dual 280X for couple hundred dollars more than what you'd spend on those cards. The only problem is that you are stuck with AMD offerings. But at least among AMD offerings you are getting a decent deal.

But if I were someone who needed CUDA and knew that the apps I'm using won't be implementing Open CL, then I certainly would not buy Nvidia GPU's for my old Mac Pro. I'd sell the Mac Pro and switch to PC's today. I don't think Apple will be offering Nvidia GPU's on their next Mac Pro refresh whether or not Nvidia offers better Open CL support in the future. They will keep on AMD to force developers to implement Open CL in their apps.




If it was up to me the new Mac Pro would come with a single 290X with dual being an option (can be underclocked slightly which I don't mind). It would have better Open CL performance than D700 and it's Open GL performance per dollar beats all Nvidia offerings.

Its quite simple. 3D performance.

Take the top of the line nMP, maxed out, go crazy with whatever you can find after market, no expense restrictions.

Take oMP, go crazy after market, no expanse spared.

Its not just a win to the oMP, its a first round Knock out by a Huge margin.

The fact remains, out going 12 core oMP v 12 core nMP, not a huge difference, just that with the oMP you can beef it up to outperform the nMP by quite a margin, maybe the next nMP revision will see a decent gap.

 

[ActionableMango]

thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people have been using 3rd party video cards for years now, with few issues other than boot screens.

I don't agree about the numbers though.

I agree with the numbers.

MACVIDCARDS alone has sold thousands of flashed cards. That doesn't count the people that copy his work on Ebay, all the self-flashing folk, and all the people that don't even bother to flash at all. Looking at Ebay "completed listings" and you'll see hundreds of PC cards sold as Mac cards in the last month alone. Double or triple that if you count actual Mac cards too.

The Netkas forum, which are almost entirely dedicated to getting PC video cards working with OS X, has over 14,000 registered members, and since registering is not required, I think it's reasonable to assume the number of lurkers is much, much higher.

And right here in the Macrumors Mac Pro thread, video card update topics are typically among the very hottest threads with the most views, most replies, and most longevity. One of them is even a sticky right at the top. In my few years here of daily viewing I don't think the Mac Pro forum's first page has ever been without at least one, if not several, threads related to upgrading video cards.

Clearly it is important to a LOT of people.

 

[wildmac]

I agree with the numbers.

MACVIDCARDS alone has sold thousands of flashed cards. That doesn't count the people that copy his work on Ebay, all the self-flashing folk, and all the people that don't even bother to flash at all. Looking at Ebay "completed listings" and you'll see hundreds of PC cards sold as Mac cards in the last month alone. Double or triple that if you count actual Mac cards too.

The Netkas forum, which are almost entirely dedicated to getting PC video cards working with OS X, has over 14,000 registered members, and since registering is not required, I think it's reasonable to assume the number of lurkers is much, much higher.

And right here in the Macrumors Mac Pro thread, video card update topics are typically among the very hottest threads with the most views, most replies, and most longevity. One of them is even a sticky right at the top. In my few years here of daily viewing I don't think the Mac Pro forum's first page has ever been without at least one, if not several, threads related to upgrading video cards.

Clearly it is important to a LOT of people.

Despite the numbers, I wonder what the lifespan for this market is, and when new cards won't be available to put in the oMP, due to design or driver changes.

 

[iBug2]

I agree with the numbers.

MACVIDCARDS alone has sold thousands of flashed cards. That doesn't count the people that copy his work on Ebay, all the self-flashing folk, and all the people that don't even bother to flash at all. Looking at Ebay "completed listings" and you'll see hundreds of PC cards sold as Mac cards in the last month alone. Double or triple that if you count actual Mac cards too.

The Netkas forum, which are almost entirely dedicated to getting PC video cards working with OS X, has over 14,000 registered members, and since registering is not required, I think it's reasonable to assume the number of lurkers is much, much higher.

And right here in the Macrumors Mac Pro thread, video card update topics are typically among the very hottest threads with the most views, most replies, and most longevity. One of them is even a sticky right at the top. In my few years here of daily viewing I don't think the Mac Pro forum's first page has ever been without at least one, if not several, threads related to upgrading video cards.

Clearly it is important to a LOT of people.

I disagreed with the hundreds of thousands part. Thousands certainly seems reasonable. But hundreds of thousands GPU switchers on Mac Pro? I don't think so. Apple probably isn't even selling hundreds of thousands of Mac Pro's.

 

[Anim]

I have watched this thread with some interest but not really joined in the discussion because it is, so far, mostly a justification by owners on both camps arguing

So, with speculation/betas/hacks/biased opinions aside I finally found a good factual answer.

https://www.everymac.com/systems/ap...ay-black-cylinder-earlier-mac-pro-models.html

It is an article that highlights the differences between the models, there was quite a bit of information that I didn't know buried in it, e.g. the OS support between the models is not 100%.

An obvious singular advantage of the oMP is that you can use some Nvidia cards in it. That to me was a shocker when the nMP was announced. I like nVidia/Cuda but the option wasn't available.

Another benefit to the oMP is if you have a 12 core model, then you can install 128GB of ram. That could be important to some users but I guess Apple figured with the speeds you can get via TB storage, it closes that gap to a tiny minority of users who need ram caches that size, Apple ditched the dual CPU option (which I assume matters where total RAM is concerned) and managed to keep the core count.

To take that a little further, 128GB of ram is faster than any storage solution, agreed?
But when you consider you can get 2,600 Mb/s data throughput using Thunderbolt2 with storage sizes in the terabytes, does that remove the data bandwidth problem for 99% of these niche users, especially in the digital video industry plus with the benefit of the much bigger disk size. I would think so myself.

You can install third party PCI cards into the oMP which has kept its users happy over the years but the technology gap keeps widening. Maybe in a year or two the oMP users will be forced to upgrade into the nMP era. I guess Apple want to force the same purchase/upgrade path as their other products. You don't modify an iPhone 4 to make it a 5. You just buy the 5 if you have the cash and want the latest features. It is quite plausible that Apple are hoping to do this to their pro line of computers too.

Every other component that comes in the stock nMP is an upgrade though.

Peace.

 

[AidenShaw]

To take that a little further, 128GB of ram is faster than any storage solution, agreed?

Two points:

• 128 GiB of RAM is not supported on the new Mini Pro.
• Storage is usually several hundred to multiple thousands of GB. What good is 64 GiB (or 128 GiB) when the dataset is a thousand GiB?

Yesterday I got a new disk array. Installed it today, and first tests showed about 7,000 MB/s sequential bandwidth. Doesn't make me think that I made wasted money in putting 384 GiB of RAM in the host.

Some of the other points that you made make sense, but the one I quoted is absurd.

 

[Anim]

Two points:

• 128 GiB of RAM is not supported on the new Mini Pro.
• Storage is usually several hundred to multiple thousands of GB. What good is 64 GiB (or 128 GiB) when the dataset is a thousand GiB?

Yesterday I got a new disk array. Installed it today, and first tests showed about 7,000 MB/s sequential bandwidth. Doesn't make me think that I made wasted money in putting 384 GiB of RAM in the host.

Some of the other points that you made make sense, but the one I quoted is absurd.

Eh

I was talking about the oMP supporting 128GB not the nMP and then I agreed that you get more capacity with external storage.

And stop calling it a New Mini Pro, its highly irritating lol

Edit: You completely misunderstood what I was saying. To re-word it, I pointed out that maybe maximising RAM is now not as important as people used to think because data transfer speeds are so fast as to remove that bottleneck for people that "think" they need all that ram. You yourself get 7,000 MB/s which is extremely quick. There must be cases where the speed benefit you get from internal ram is critical but as I said, its now (probably) a much smaller niche market than before and the obvious point that its a tiny size in comparison to other storage options.

Edit2: Just to clarify, I am talking about video editors and such who want to load clips into memory, not users that require the max ram for running applications.

Clearer?

 

[linuxcooldude]

I think a very telling issue is that before it even launched you could put better GPUs in the cMP than anything available in nMP. Titan Black coming out today will only further push the 2 year old 7970s (sorry, D700s) into obsolescent obscurity.

While it can support newer cards not without its quirks. Newer cards are going to need another jerry rigged power supply, sometimes limited bandwidth unless hacked. Newer AMD cards are supported, but not guaranteed to work if they remove support in upgraded operating systems.

For CUDA, you're screwed. For Gaming, you've got better options on the oMP. For compute power in general, PCs can wipe the floor. For price/performance in nearly any task able to be run in windows, PCs again win the day.

People don't tend to use workstations for gaming as that is not they were designed to do. Price/Performance on PC's...Apples & Oranges...Your trying to compare a consumer PC VS workstation, instead of Workstation VS Workstation.

Some people prefer fully supported hardware that does not need any extra parts, software or hardware hacks. They need this to run a business reliably.

Nonsense! Since the release delays, there are nMPs on Ebay for more than the retail price.

Some people will always try to take advantage of peoples gullibility. I've also gone on Ebay to see people try to sell iPhones with flappy Birds, Twinkies ect...all for extraordinary high prices. I recently bought my second Mac Pro at a reasonable market value.

Two points:
128 GiB of RAM is not supported on the new Mini Pro.

The RAM limit is not because of the OS or chipset as far as I know. Off the top of my head once 32GB ram sticks are more prevent we can reach that amount.

 

[AidenShaw]

Clearer?

ACK

Thanks.

 

[slughead]

[...]

I was calling you out on your statement about the D700 being the "best FirePro technology," saying that 1) Who really cares about FirePro on OS X and 2) There are better FirePros.

You actually ended up agreeing with me on both points: That there are better FirePros (contradicting your first post) and that there are better options than the FirePro in this case.

You never mentioned price/performance until now. For price/performance, Dual 7970, even with 3GB each, may be better options. Depending on the task, the 10-40% better clock may be more important than the extra RAM. Not to mention that dual D700 are a $1000 upgrade to the D300, making their net cost > $1,000. Without any segue, you mention 6GB as yet another arbitrary qualifier here, without any data to show it provides a significant advantage, especially for the money.

So which is it? Are we talking about price/performance or are we talking about straight performance? Because for each goal there are far better solutions than dual D700 (except maybe at FCPX, which I accepted before... though I wonder what three 7970's at $300 each would do).

If it was up to me the new Mac Pro would come with a single 290X with dual being an option (can be underclocked slightly which I don't mind). It would have better Open CL performance than D700 and it's Open GL performance per dollar beats all Nvidia offerings.

I agree. In this case (where Apple is ditching everything for OpenCL, and we're running OS X), there's really no point in having a FirePro over a Radeon. I'm not an NVidia fanboy, each line has its advantages. Depending on your use-case, one card may be much "better" than another.

 

[Anim]

in 3D, 6GB graphic card ram comes into play when you have a heavily textured scene and want to view it without slowdowns. With less ram you end up turning things like adaptive degradation on which toggles the viewport display mode to shaded/wireframe if the fps drops significantly.

The same principle is applied to games where textures are loaded into vram at the start of the level rather than as streaming assets as you play which, if the details are high enough can cause micro stuttering. This is one reason you often see people in COD games spinning around at the start of a map to load in all the textures from the FOV before the match starts rather than running around a corner only to briefly stutter as new textures stream in, but other than that the game engines are optimised for 1GB and 2GB cards mostly so 3GB and 6GB have little effect.

NVidia is releasing a single 12GB card soon too I think.

Also something I read awhile back, with 2 x D700's we don't have access to 12GB ram, we get 2 x 6 GB ram as the memory isn't pooled, each card manages its own memory separately.

I also read somewhere but can't find the article at the moment that more ram helps with multiple high resolution displays.

 

[Anim]

Something else I though of, the new consoles have 8GB ram on the graphics cards to future proof them when textures get heavy with higher resolutions, 16xAntialiasing etc. A lot of games are ported too so it may come in handy if your a game developer.

 

[tuxon86]

in 3D, 6GB graphic card ram comes into play when you have a heavily textured scene and want to view it without slowdowns. With less ram you end up turning things like adaptive degradation on which toggles the viewport display mode to shaded/wireframe if the fps drops significantly.

The same principle is applied to games where textures are loaded into vram at the start of the level rather than as streaming assets as you play which, if the details are high enough can cause micro stuttering. This is one reason you often see people in COD games spinning around at the start of a map to load in all the textures from the FOV before the match starts rather than running around a corner only to briefly stutter as new textures stream in, but other than that the game engines are optimised for 1GB and 2GB cards mostly so 3GB and 6GB have little effect.

NVidia is releasing a single 12GB card soon too I think.

Also something I read awhile back, with 2 x D700's we don't have access to 12GB ram, we get 2 x 6 GB ram as the memory isn't pooled, each card manages its own memory separately.

I also read somewhere but can't find the article at the moment that more ram helps with multiple high resolution displays.

I agree with what you're saying.

In application like Blender or 3DS Max, if your project runs out of video memory while rendering then the app crashes... But you can work around that by using a render farm which split the project into more manageable chunks. It is also, most of the time, cheaper to build a farm of cheaper dedicated computers than to buy a multi-GPU standalone workstation. Hell, you could even use every computer in your business as rendering node when they are sitting at idle during off hours...

 

[Anim]

I agree with what you're saying.

In application like Blender or 3DS Max, if your project runs out of video memory while rendering then the app crashes... But you can work around that by using a render farm which split the project into more manageable chunks. It is also, most of the time, cheaper to build a farm of cheaper dedicated computers than to buy a multi-GPU standalone workstation. Hell, you could even use every computer in your business as rendering node when they are sitting at idle during off hours...

Ha, I used to do just that, people would come into the office in the morning to see notices pinned over 20 odd monitors saying "rendering, do not touch" ha.

But that was CPU rendering back then.

I haven't done much Cuda/OpenCL animation rendering personally other than while working and setting up lighting rigs.

Edit: Just so I am clear, in the previous post, I was talking about general viewport fps on heavy textured scenes. If you have 3DSMax press 7 for the FPS display. I wasn't talking about rendering in that post.

 

[iBug2]

I was calling you out on your statement about the D700 being the "best FirePro technology," saying that 1) Who really cares about FirePro on OS X and 2) There are better FirePros.

You actually ended up agreeing with me on both points: That there are better FirePros (contradicting your first post) and that there are better options than the FirePro in this case.

There aren't better FirePro's on Mac. And if AMD offered their W9000 for Macs, they would probably cost even more than 7000$. About who really cares about FirePro on Mac, you may be using your machine to dual boot and do the FirePro accelerated jobs on Windows. So if you can get almost the same performance as dual W9000 on Windows for only 1300$ish on a Mac, that's like I said a great deal. Btw have we actually seen any benchmarks on this yet? Do these cards work like WX000 series on specific Windows apps?

So which is it? Are we talking about price/performance or are we talking about straight performance? Because for each goal there are far better solutions than dual D700 (except maybe at FCPX, which I accepted before... though I wonder what three 7970's at $300 each would do).

Better? Yes. Far better? No. If Apple offered Dual 7970 instead of these FirePro's I don't know how much cheaper their offering would be. I'm not even sure we are actually paying anything more for the FirePro branding in this case because Apple's prices seem to agree with the previous Radeon HD pricing they offered. I think the FirePro is either a marketing gimmick or those cards actually work as FirePro's on Windows but cost as much as regular Radeons to Apple. About three 7970's, that's not an option on the new Mac Pro. I'm really not thinking about the old Mac Pro at this point, since it's EOL.

 

[slughead]

There aren't better FirePro's on Mac.

Yet another qualifier... let's ignore that the W9000 probably runs in OSX about as well as a D700, you don't need a FirePro on Mac, because the entire reason to buy a FirePro are Windows professional apps!! You can throw a W9000 into an oMP and have a better experience doing the things FirePros are designed to do (eg: Windows Pro Apps) than a D700.

Even you agree you'd much rather have a faster card of the current generation than TWO firepros--a sentiment I would likely share.

About who really cares about FirePro on Mac, you may be using your machine to dual boot and do the FirePro accelerated jobs on Windows.

What a common use-case for a Mac user! Evidently one that you don't even do!

Do these cards work like WX000 series on specific Windows apps?

They do about as well as the W7000, IIRC. It's almost irrelevant because someone who works in this industry is probably going to prefer the Wx000 series as they're actually certified to run in those apps, unlike the Dx00

I'm not saying the Dx00 aren't a "good deal"--but they're only a good deal if you actually perform those tasks in Windows. You can't exactly yank the D700's out and sell them for $2000 each, now can you?

By the way, most of those Windows Apps are not multi-GPU aware, so having Dual D700 isn't any better than having one.

Here's a simple question: If someone offered you either a 290X OR a W9000 and you weren't allowed to sell it or give it away, which one would you choose?

Value is not determined by price, unless you're a reseller.

If Apple offered Dual 7970 instead of these FirePro's I don't know how much cheaper their offering would be.

The best part about having PCIe slots is not relying on Apple to offer you anything. Here is what happens to people who rely on Apple for video card upgrades:

I'm really not thinking about the old Mac Pro at this point, since it's EOL.

If you live in a world where you only have 3 video card options, it does make choosing easy. The rest of the world, including oMP owners, are enjoying better performance in their daily tasks.

 

[RoastingPig]

Slughead is the man. The voice of us cMP users.

 

[Nugget]

Here is what happens to people who rely on Apple for video card upgrades...

Yeah, but let's not pretend that the situation was all puppies and rainbows before the nMP came along. Here's what happens to people who look to the hobbyist marketplace for video card upgrades for their oMP: