although benchmark scores do matter, but the day i saw the mac pro, it's unique design, color and shape, i decided it that moment that i'll buy this thing, no matter how well it's GPU does, no matter how well it's CPU does, etc. the specs are also great, but the greatest thing about this mac pro is it's shape, and that's one big reason out of many reason why i'm gonna get this mac pro.
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Upcoming 12-Core Xeon CPU Destined for Apple's New Mac Pro Posts Impressive Benchmark Scores
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I bought this gem,
For a scant $3300.00. And that's just a smidge more than I paid for my first MacPro.
2008 Mac Pro comes to mind.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/mac-pro-is-now-the-cheapest-high-end-workstation/979
If you really want to compare both brands it can't be the Mac Pro and an e-Machine. It has to be a workstation vs workstation.
Some are hard to compare accurately as Apple tends to use unibody Aluminum bodies machined from a solid block for instance that adds to the price.
Their build quality is top notch compared to many other plastic builds. But looking closer to whats available now, some manufactures are utilizing similar builds like Apple.
As mentioned above, the 2008 mac pro. I think it was the same situation with the 2009 as well. Basically the dual socket cpus aren't cheap, and at least at that point in time the PC companies weren't selling those workstations in enough quantity to really discount them much. And often many mac/pc price comparisons aren't relevant because the pc side of the equation has lower specs or missing features, when those are evened out the comparison is much closer.
Overlooking two thigns:
1) Apple got exclusive use of the cheaper Intel parts for a few months before anybody else and once those parts were available to others, their prices with the same components we cheaper; and
2) MB was only cheaper if you bought 3rd party storage and ram, which is quite a great way to invalidate your warranty if things go **** up...
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Again two things:
1) Alu body is because Apple needs a giant-arse heatsink, and
2) Alu gets damaged easier than ABS plastic/fibre-plastic mix, because it's so rigid and doesn't give way to anything- by comparison, I've been "abusing" my T62p for a lot longer and a lot more than my MBP5,5 but the latter has many more scratches and signs of impact/dents...
Not sure I agree with this. Scratches, nicks, sure. But what are the chances plastic that's the same thickness as aluminum is actually let likely to break?
I've cracked way more plastic shells than metal in my lifetime as a user. (I know, I know... ancillary evidence. ^_^)
Break yes, but alu dents/bends permanently, whereas plastic compresses and springs back to what it was... For example, I once dropped a knife on top of a closed MBP while travelling on a train and that left a permanent scratch+dent on top, I've done similar things with T62p and all those instances ended in minor scratches that could be "massaged out"
Nothing new with other manufactures doing the same thing. Such as adding bloatware to Windows OS to help subsidize the cost for example ( Probably not for workstations however ). Apples workstations are often on par with PC workstations on price.
But when people bring up the cheaper workstations that only support a 500 Watt power supply, is not a good example. Those workstations seem most suited as business machines.
Charging more for upgrading the specs is not indicative of just Apple but most other computer manufactures. It will always be cheaper to buy your own and install yourself.
Most things on Apple computers you are allowed to upgrade yourself without voiding the warranty. Ram, Hard Drives Video cards, PCIe cards. Obviously the new Mac Pro probably just the Ram and SSD Drive.
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Nothing wrong with using the Aluminum body as a heat sink as long as it does not gets noticeably hot. Most of mine barely get warm.
As long as we are talking normal wear & tear and not dropped or abused. I find even with plastic bodied laptops, small parts still tend to break/fall off over time and wear out faster.
The "Pro" tower was cheaper when it was using PPC processors before switching to Intel in 2006. It wasn't uncommon to purchase a PowerMac G4/5 for ~$1499-1999. I had a few, paired them with 2 23" CCFL LCD Cinema Displays, and 1 30" CCFL LCD display. Back then, Apple had stellar displays in 3 sizes, my displays bought in 2004 lasted me 8 years until replacing them with the [then new] 24" LED LCD's (which were crap). You could get a reasonably equipped PowerMac G5 and 23" IPS CCFL LCD for the cost of a Mac Pro.
Switching to Xeon Server grade Intel processors bumped the price $500-$1000 depending. Pissed many off who didn't need Xeon processors, but a tower akin to the PowerMac (i7 or such tower with SATA III, PCIe, USB 3, Thunderbolt, 1-2 processor upgradeable configuration and a Xeon BTO system.
It's also because the architecture design of Nvidia will never leverage the power of OpenCL remotely close to AMD architectural designs. It's a trade-off they made for CUDA.
With GCN 2.0 imminent the HSA 3.0 standard and OpenCL 1.2 built throughout OS X 10.9 those FirePro cards will scream.
By the way, Apple approached Blender to help them port Cycles Rendering to be fully OpenCL 1.2 compliant for the Mac Pro, when they met at SIGGRAPH 2013 July.
Note that the Xeon E5-1xxx chips require the same dual-capable C6xx chipset as the E5-2xxx chips.
You'll save money on the Xeon, but not on the chipset and motherboard.
So THAT'S why my computer is so popular. I bought it in 2012 and have really been liking it. On-topic, I seriously doubt that any Mac Pro will have a good price vs raw performance specs for a significant period of time. Maybe if OS X uses the resources more efficiently or something...
Yup, my '08 was cheaper than an equivalently spec'd Dell/HP/etc at the time I bought it, and only slightly more expensive than building my own with comparable specs and chassis. And that was before the dev discount.
One of the most important DOS utilities was FDFORMAT. It was able to format a disk in the background while you could keep working. It was still necessary in Windows 95, because formating a disk would make the whole system unusable. Decades later we are still working with a mostly linear way of thinking.
False. I don't know why that misinformation keeps getting spread around.
Good point. Years ago the single socket MP was way more expensive than an equivalent i7 because that's how the chips were priced from intel. At that point it would have made sense to have an i7 version of the MP for the low end. But since then intel has moved to offering low end xeon chips that are priced about the same as their i7 equivalents, same goes for ECC ram as well. But the quad MP is still very expensive, I guess the difference now is that the high price is for no real reason.
With this next generation of MP they could start the low end below the current base MP if they wanted to, it will be the first time in years the MP is actually using the latest CPU instead of one that's two or three years old.
You don't want them to always be awake but you hate to wait for them to wake up. Seriously?
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If the user interface and operating system mean anything to you...yes.
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I'd love to see benchmarks of 24 cores versus 12 cores before I care about this.
Also, I'll care about this when my pro apps switch back to relying on the CPU versus the GPU.
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Based on the past, the final OS X doesn't perform any differently than the beta.
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With your logic, having 4 single-core processors is better than 1 12-core processor. Of course, that's ridiculous.
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The current Mac Pro can have 4 internal hard drives and 2 internal optical drives. The new Mac Pro has 1 SSD hard drive. Soooo, that means you would have 5 cables, not 20.
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People still miss the forest for the trees: the Mac Pro is designed for the future, not the past, and gets much of its performance from the extra GPU. Luckily, I'm buying for the future too!
And that SSD!
I don't believe you're required to allow drives to sleep. And I don't think Thunderbolt makes drives sleep in some way that is different from internal bays.
P.S. It's fun to see people who would never buy 24 cores complain to other people who would never buy 24 cores that they wish they could buy 24 cores. "Bullet list marketing" at its finestCatchy specs over results? No mention of OpenCL, even from people who like to brag about performance numbers?
Duel GPU is not the future. Windows PCs have been doing that for a decade, at least.
It's just an extra cost running Macs. Mac users should have been able to do SLI years and years ago but couldn't. Now they can't use all those PCI slots in their Mac Pros to have multiple GPU making GPU-intensive apps like Apple's Final Cut Pro X and Motion faster, they have to buy a non-expandable new Mac to do it.
I'm really on the fence, now. I'm giving Apple one more shot at making FCP X good enough for me. I've had it for a year and it really is garbage in many areas. If I switch to Adobe Premiere Pro, I'll get a custom Windows system. I don't see the point of running the Adobe Suite on a new Mac Pro, assuming the cost of it is similar to existing Mac Pros.
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Proof is in the pudding. It's not that way right now. "Just you wait!" has been a rallying cry for the Mac fan a very long time now.
FCP X can't even scroll its timeline while playing a project, so please don't argue that it screams with OpenCL versus Adobe and CUDA.
Keeping your drives spinning is much healthier for them than having them spin up and down when you need them. Just FYI.
Yeah, I guess I'll just disable the hard drive sleep since something is bound to wake up my external hard drive over and over again. Since I rarely need it, I'd still rather have it stay asleep when it should.
