MP 7,1 So, selling the 7.1 now or holding out for 9.1?

[chfilm]

Hey guys,

I guess some of you are in the same boat- I have a 2019 16c 2xVegaII, 192Gb Ram standing here and it's still doing a decent job at most tasks (except for the dreaded h264/5 decoding).
But my guy at apple recently offerend me a 12% discount on the new mac studio -
I - like many - believe that the m3 mac studio or pro is probably the bigger upgrade over my current machine that would be worthwhile to hold out for - but I feat that the 7.1 value will drop more and more over the next 1,5 years... I dont believe an m3 studio will come out before spring 2025 the earliest.

So the question is - try to get rid of the 7.1 now while I can get the studio at a reasonable price- or wait because I can survive on the 2019 machine for another year or so and then do the proper upgrade? Are people even buying the 7.1 on ebay?

 

[mcnallym]

What else are you using the machine for that need the 2x VegaII Cards in it.

Yes people are buying the 7,1 on ebay etc as there are a number of people for whom the new Mac Pro/Studio not suitable and so are buying up a 7,1 where they can to at least tide them over to see if things like 3rd Party GPU card support added etc

Whilst the Mac Studio will be a big improvement in terms of h.264/h.265 encode/decode then without knowing what else using for then is hard to say if is worth it or not.

You may be buying an improvement on the h.264/h.265 only to find that slower in another area that use the machine for more.

However really need to know what using your Mac Pro for to be able to say if worthwhile moving or not.

CPU then a Studio will be an improvement
264/265 encode/decode helped by the Media Engines. Will also add much improved ProRes decode/encode as well however you don't seem to do ProRes (no Afterburner in our Mac Pro)
Raw GPU power going to be down would say with the 2 VegaII a single M2 Max is higher Metal Score in Geekbench however you have 2 which works out in theory better then an M2 Ultra, however depends on how well a VegaII scales with 2 of them, so may not be as big a gap as on paper.

I would say personally that people buying up the 7,1 now will/should be planning the migration away from Mac as clearly the future for now of Mac is not going to meet there needs. So now is when they need the 7,1. When the M3 Ultra/Mac Pro launches then really shouldn't be people that surprised if no GPU support or new Cards etc.
Would expect that Apple retained the MPX in the system so that other MPX cards could go in as well as potential GPU in the future.

So should see a big upsurge then in demand for 7,1 at the moment and people reporting difficult to find so people are looking and not many about. So I would say there is a surge in demand now that Mac Pro out with Apple Silicon in it however that won't remain and will start to see a drop in those prices.

 

[chfilm]

Yea I forgot to mention that I have an afterburner too. I do after effects (where I would benefit greatly from the m2ultra because of the CPU power and optimization), and davinci resolve, hence the two Vegas for noise reduction etc. it seems like the new Mac Studio is about on par with my machine in resolve- slower for blur nodes, faster for NR. So yea- I would benefit in after effects and resolve editing when it comes to those obscure file formats- but not doing color grading…

 

[profdraper]

Nope.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So the question is - try to get rid of the 7.1 now while I can get the studio at a reasonable price- or wait because I can survive on the 2019 machine for another year or so and then do the proper upgrade? Are people even buying the 7.1 on ebay?

Why would the studio be at an "unreasonable" price in the future? Or do you mean because you can get more cash by selling the 7.1 now so the offset makes it more reasonable? I would imagine you will get more bang for buck with the M3 even in a studio later.

Generally speaking, the longer you wait, the more you will win in buying a later computer. Tough to know if the depreciation curve of the 7.1 will change that markedly. But I think the 7.1 has taken the brunt of its depreciation ALREADY. If you spent $15k on a machine you might get 4-5k back on it now. So does losing another $1500 in a year make that much of a difference?Conversly the improvement of the M3 may make a bigger difference, arguably.

 

[avro707]

Hey guys,

I guess some of you are in the same boat- I have a 2019 16c 2xVegaII, 192Gb Ram standing here and it's still doing a decent job at most tasks (except for the dreaded h264/5 decoding).
But my guy at apple recently offerend me a 12% discount on the new mac studio -
I - like many - believe that the m3 mac studio or pro is probably the bigger upgrade over my current machine that would be worthwhile to hold out for - but I feat that the 7.1 value will drop more and more over the next 1,5 years... I dont believe an m3 studio will come out before spring 2025 the earliest.

So the question is - try to get rid of the 7.1 now while I can get the studio at a reasonable price- or wait because I can survive on the 2019 machine for another year or so and then do the proper upgrade? Are people even buying the 7.1 on ebay?

All the ones I've seen are very expensive and it made more sense just to buy a new one for slightly more and get Applecare with it. We can see the new Mac-Pro isn't totally what it is claimed to be.

What I would do eventually is ditch Apple completely and buy a proper workstation. Something like a Lenovo PX, dual CPUs and up to four 48GB Nvidia A6000 if you want.

Apple may or may not do something better, but would anyone wait 5 years to see or just go with what is out there and proven to deliver performance.