Generic Mac Pro 2013 chatter.

[SMURG]

I dunno, it seems like a lot of power for such a small machine. 7 Teraflops on the GPUs, unless it's a marketing trick like combining single and double point precision figures, then that's more computational power than a Tesla K20!

 

I have no reason to big up Apple, most of their other products have fallen way behind, but this to me really redeems them. I mean look at it, how did they even fit a PSU in there to power all that hardware:

 

Yeah, I'll definitely agree that they've done really well in terms of fitting what they have into such a small space. They've essentially produced an LGA 2011 system which is mini-ITX, and that is no mean feat by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just not sure how necessary it was given that it will undoubtedly drive up the costs.

[NeoZeon]

I guess that's what it comes down to, although it's a headscratcher for me how media companies could become so reliant on Apple, especially after how long they took to update the current/old mac pro. You'd think they'd bite the bullet and move to some equivalent solution which works on Windows... I find it hard to believe that Apple is the be-all and end-all of media creation, since all the programs I've ever heard of for content creation are compatible with both Windows and OSX. Plus if everyone used Windows for content creation, that's what the software would be written for in the first place.

 

 

As its been said before, software is infinitely more expensive than hardware.  http://store.autodesk.com/store/adskus/list/categoryID.60099600. Thats just an example. Working on windows with multiple builds of the same language is also a pain; how am i going to use both python 2.4 and 2.7 on a PC ? Sure its possible, but its not as easy as a flip of the switch like in a mac. 

 

But here is the larger point, when you pay someone a professional level salary, and they have downtime, you are paying them not to work. Mac's are built with the promise that they don't need as much maintenance , weither that is true or not remains to be seen. Certainly that is my experience  and i use all 3 major operating systems every day. 

[Tomislav Matic]

has anyone watched latest LLT stream? Linus said it very well. New MacPro won't be so overpriced at launch. But I would like to pinpoint a few things: Apple is a company that always pushes the aesthetic standards in the tech world, and that is a good thing. iPhone, MacBook , iPad, iPod-beautiful devices. Remember Samsung's phones before iPhone came out? However when it comes to performance and upgrading Apple is not there. Same thing will happen with the MacPro. Beautiful machine that will become obsolete in a few years. So they say this is for the pros? Well as far as I know 3D animation and CG in movies is the one of the  most demanding spheres of computer usage (ok yes I know you have companies that have rendering farms you can hire ect. ) and I seriously doubt that they use Mac's for their work. Another example is the gaming industry (and that is a huge multibillion dollar industry).Developers need PC's. They need to upgrade to the latest hardware to produce more and more advanced software. Also there is another problem too. A lot of  "semi" pros or let's call them indy professionals (like for example Linus or Corridor Digital) won't be able to afford this machine just because it's not easily upgradable . Don't be fooled by Apples aesthetics, there are better cheaper machines and there will  always be better cheaper and more efficient machines out there...and if you are a pro,you won't mind a chunky box in your office  hidden under the table as long as it gets your work done faster and better, though PCs don't look like chunky boxes anymore.   

[SMURG]

has anyone watched latest LLT stream? Linus said it very well. New MacPro won't be so overpriced at launch. But I would like to pinpoint a few things: Apple is a company that always pushes the aesthetic standards in the tech world, and that is a good thing. iPhone, MacBook , iPad, iPod-beautiful devices. Remember Samsung's phones before iPhone came out? However when it comes to performance and upgrading Apple is not there. Same thing will happen with the MacPro. Beautiful machine that will become obsolete in a few years. So they say this is for the pros? Well as far as I know 3D animation and CG in movies is the one of the most demanding spheres of computer usage (ok yes I know you have companies that have rendering farms you can hire ect. ) and I seriously doubt that they use Mac's for their work. Another example is the gaming industry (and that is a huge multibillion dollar industry).Developers need PC's. They need to upgrade to the latest hardware to produce more and more advanced software. Also there is another problem too. A lot of "semi" pros or let's call them indy professionals (like for example Linus or Corridor Digital) won't be able to afford this machine just because it's not easily upgradable . Don't be fooled by Apples aesthetics, there are better cheaper machines and there will always be better cheaper and more efficient machines out there...and if you are a pro,you won't mind a chunky box in your office hidden under the table as long as it gets your work done faster and better, though PCs don't look like chunky boxes anymore.

I agree, but whether it's "overpriced" will remain to be seen. The fact is that the current top-end 10-core xeons cost somewhere in the region of $6000 alone, so if Apple are actually going to use a hypothetical newly-released 12-core in the new mac pro, that's probably going to be $8000 for the CPU alone, plus the rest of the computer, plus Apple's premium. Ofc, they may actually just be being deliberately misleading (as usual) and when they say 12 cores they mean 12 threads, in which case the price could conceivably be sub-$10,000...

Interestingly, the old top-end mac pro had dual sockets with 2 x 6-cores 12 threads Nehalem xeons, so if they do go for a 6 cores 12 threads xeon for the new mac pro, I can see it actually having less CPU power than the old one. I mean Ivybridge-EP isn't twice as fast as Nehalem; it's only about 50% faster clock per clock, core per core right?

Make no mistake though, whatever the specs end up looking like, Apple are going to make people pay through the nose for this.

[KaareKanin]

Is two 6-core Xeons out of the question with the new Pro? Has it been stated specifically that the Pro will only have one CPU?

[Lyons]

I agree, but whether it's "overpriced" will remain to be seen. The fact is that the current top-end 10-core xeons cost somewhere in the region of $6000 alone, so if Apple are actually going to use a hypothetical newly-released 12-core in the new mac pro, that's probably going to be $8000 for the CPU alone, plus the rest of the computer, plus Apple's premium. Ofc, they may actually just be being deliberately misleading (as usual) and when they say 12 cores they mean 12 threads, in which case the price could conceivably be sub-$10,000...

Interestingly, the old top-end mac pro had dual sockets with 2 x 6-cores 12 threads Nehalem xeons, so if they do go for a 6 cores 12 threads xeon for the new mac pro, I can see it actually having less CPU power than the old one. I mean Ivybridge-EP isn't twice as fast as Nehalem; it's only about 50% faster clock per clock, core per core right?

Make no mistake though, whatever the specs end up looking like, Apple are going to make people pay through the nose for this.

 

LOL, did you seriously just say all of that? Wow...

[SMURG]

LOL, did you seriously just say all of that? Wow...

Care to expand?

[Lyons]

Care to expand?

 

I think you were exaggerating a little too much there. Starting price will be in the $4000 range in my opinion.

[SMURG]

I think you were exaggerating a little too much there. Starting price will be in the $4000 range in my opinion.

The lowest-end 10-core xeon costs $3000 alone lol (http://ark.intel.com/products/53575/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8850-24M-Cache-2_00-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI). I was saying that IF they use a 12-core xeon (which would be an E7, not an E5 I would think) then the price is going to be astronomical.

Alternatively, you may be right and the price may be ~$4000 - but for that to be true, they'll have to use a single 6-core 12 threads xeon (which I agree, is most likely). The thing about that is that a single 6-core 12-threads IVB-EP xeon will be about 50% slower than the previous generation top-end mac pro assuming the clock speeds are fairly close together. I can't see Apple offering a dual-CPU solution in that size chassis.

[Puppet]

Hope this clears things up, it's quite old too, surprised no one brought it up.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Xeon-Ivy-Bridge-EP-Server,21972.html

 

So it looks like it will be a 12 core hyperthreaded and it's an E5 so no point comparing it to E7 prices, kind of sucks if you bought an E3 Ivy though, they should have made them 6 or 8 core at least if they were planning on this, that's what threw me off a bit.

 

To be honest all of the Xeon line up and release schedule confuses the hell out of me, they aren't something I research very often.

[SMURG]

Hope this clears things up, it's quite old too, surprised no one brought it up.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Xeon-Ivy-Bridge-EP-Server,21972.html

 

So it looks like it will be a 12 core hyperthreaded and it's an E5 so no point comparing it to E7 prices, kind of sucks if you bought an E3 Ivy though, they should have made them 6 or 8 core at least if they were planning on this, that's what threw me off a bit.

 

To be honest all of the Xeon line up and release schedule makes my head hurt a bit, they aren't something I research very often.

Yeah, it even says E5 on the site which suggests it's 12 threads not 12 cores. That's just misleading is all.

It still remains that a single Ivybridge-EP 6-core E5 looks to be around 50% slower than the two Nehalem 6-cores in the top-end mac pro of yesteryear, so for anyone who's doing CPU intensive tasks it's kind of a kick in the teeth if you already have the top-end old mac pro. The new one is far superior in GPU performance though, so that's something.

[Puppet]

Yeah, it even says E5 on the site which suggests it's 12 threads not 12 cores. That's just misleading is all.

It still remains that a single Ivybridge-EP 6-core E5 looks to be around 50% slower than the two Nehalem 6-cores in the top-end mac pro of yesteryear, so for anyone who's doing CPU intensive tasks it's kind of a kick in the teeth if you already have the top-end old mac pro. The new one is far superior in GPU performance though, so that's something.

Read the article again the new E5s can have 10/12 cores with 20/24 threads, supposedly.

[KaareKanin]

Yeah, it even says E5 on the site which suggests it's 12 threads not 12 cores. That's just misleading is all.

It still remains that a single Ivybridge-EP 6-core E5 looks to be around 50% slower than the two Nehalem 6-cores in the top-end mac pro of yesteryear, so for anyone who's doing CPU intensive tasks it's kind of a kick in the teeth if you already have the top-end old mac pro. The new one is far superior in GPU performance though, so that's something.

 What about this:

The E5-2600 V2 family of CPUs will feature up to 12 cores with Hyperthreading, resulting in 24 threads.

did you manage to read as 6 cores, 12 threads?

[SMURG]

 What about this:

did you manage to read as 6 cores, 12 threads?

If they use a 12-core 24 threads CPU, it's going to be extraordinarily expensive, and if they use a 6-core 12 threads CPU, it will be slower than the old mac pro.

That's all I'm saying.

[Puppet]

If they use a 12-core 24 threads CPU, it's going to be extraordinarily expensive, and if they use a 6-core 12 threads CPU, it will be slower than the old mac pro.

That's all I'm saying.

Again I'm no expert on Xeons, but Intel tend not to fluctuate on price too much no matter how old or new they are, I reckon they will price them roughly the same as the previous generation.

It's going to be a great machine, but there is only so much even Apple can get away with charging, they are going to have to be priced similarly to the previous line up.

[NeoZeon]

they are going to use 2 6 core cpu's

[christoi]

If they use a 12-core 24 threads CPU, it's going to be extraordinarily expensive, and if they use a 6-core 12 threads CPU, it will be slower than the old mac pro.

That's all I'm saying.

 

Depends a lot on how Intel decides to price it, really. The silicon itself really isn't that expensive, more cores probably just means a greater surface area from a resource perspective. While I don't know the exact costs, I would expect the price to manufacturer the CPU would probably be around a hundred dollars or so, give or take.

 

The main reason why you see chips so expensive in contrast, is for the massive costs of R&D. As a result, Intel could very well start selling the 12-core CPU's with the same prices as they did with Sandybridge-EP, $2k for the flagship chip. Given the state of the market they probably will sell it for a higher price, but I doubt it's going to be that much more expensive.

 

Haven't looked into the E7 Xeons myself, but since they are aimed at a different audience compared to the E5's, I'd assume prices are adjusted accordingly for that. As a result their flagship 10-core chip is priced at 4.5k, with support for 4/8 way configurations.

[SMURG]

Depends a lot on how Intel decides to price it, really. The silicon itself really isn't that expensive, more cores probably just means a greater surface area from a resource perspective. While I don't know the exact costs, I would expect the price to manufacturer the CPU would probably be around a hundred dollars or so, give or take.

 

The main reason why you see chips so expensive in contrast, is for the massive costs of R&D. As a result, Intel could very well start selling the 12-core CPU's with the same prices as they did with Sandybridge-EP, $2k for the flagship chip. Given the state of the market they probably will sell it for a higher price, but I doubt it's going to be that much more expensive.

 

Haven't looked into the E7 Xeons myself, but since they are aimed at a different audience compared to the E5's, I'd assume prices are adjusted accordingly for that. As a result their flagship 10-core chip is priced at 4.5k, with support for 4/8 way configurations.

 

Depends a lot on how Intel decides to price it, really. The silicon itself really isn't that expensive, more cores probably just means a greater surface area from a resource perspective. While I don't know the exact costs, I would expect the price to manufacturer the CPU would probably be around a hundred dollars or so, give or take.

 

The main reason why you see chips so expensive in contrast, is for the massive costs of R&D. As a result, Intel could very well start selling the 12-core CPU's with the same prices as they did with Sandybridge-EP, $2k for the flagship chip. Given the state of the market they probably will sell it for a higher price, but I doubt it's going to be that much more expensive.

 

Haven't looked into the E7 Xeons myself, but since they are aimed at a different audience compared to the E5's, I'd assume prices are adjusted accordingly for that. As a result their flagship 10-core chip is priced at 4.5k, with support for 4/8 way configurations.

A lot of the cost comes from the fact that only 1 in so many chips that come off the production line are capable enough to be E5s and E7s I think. After all, that's the main reason we get i7s for Socket 2011 at all right?

[Tomislav Matic]

I agree, but whether it's "overpriced" will remain to be seen. The fact is that the current top-end 10-core xeons cost somewhere in the region of $6000 alone, so if Apple are actually going to use a hypothetical newly-released 12-core in the new mac pro, that's probably going to be $8000 for the CPU alone, plus the rest of the computer, plus Apple's premium. Ofc, they may actually just be being deliberately misleading (as usual) and when they say 12 cores they mean 12 threads, in which case the price could conceivably be sub-$10,000...

Interestingly, the old top-end mac pro had dual sockets with 2 x 6-cores 12 threads Nehalem xeons, so if they do go for a 6 cores 12 threads xeon for the new mac pro, I can see it actually having less CPU power than the old one. I mean Ivybridge-EP isn't twice as fast as Nehalem; it's only about 50% faster clock per clock, core per core right?

Make no mistake though, whatever the specs end up looking like, Apple are going to make people pay through the nose for this.

Now just imagine a 10 000$+ PC. I bet that you could even make your custom PC case out of pure aluminum with gold keys on it. Those L3P-or what's their name desk's cost a lot less and I bet they could make you a pretty sick UPGREDABLE  work station for less. Then again would it be the same height and width as an 10" tablet? Probably not, but if you followed computex desktop PC are getting smaller and smaller again...with new ROG ITX motherboard and previous gen small 670. I bet that the PC guys could pull of something as decent looking and better preforming than the new MacPro, after all we aren't in the 90ies anymore wher macs look lake spaces ships and PC's look like crap.

[orangecat]

Why can't a PC motherboard be that small? itx is pretty small but you get so little they packed a ton of stuff onto a tiny board and put in dual GPUs... pc manufactures need to innovate more.

[SMURG]

Why can't a PC motherboard be that small? itx is pretty small but you get so little they packed a ton of stuff onto a tiny board and put in dual GPUs... pc manufactures need to innovate more.

A PC motherboard could easily be that small, but it would then not be upgradeable. Personally I'm happy with mini-ITX and pico-ITX as far as small computing is concerned. Mini-ITX works nicely for my home server.

 

they are going to use 2 6 core cpu's

Source? Reason for believing this?

[KaareKanin]

Now just imagine a 10 000$+ PC. I bet that you could even make your custom PC case out of pure aluminum with gold keys on it. Those L3P-or what's their name desk's cost a lot less and I bet they could make you a pretty sick UPGREDABLE  work station for less. Then again would it be the same height and width as an 10" tablet? Probably not, but if you followed computex desktop PC are getting smaller and smaller again...with new ROG ITX motherboard and previous gen small 670. I bet that the PC guys could pull of something as decent looking and better preforming than the new MacPro, after all we aren't in the 90ies anymore wher macs look lake spaces ships and PC's look like crap.

 

Trust me, you don't want to make anything like that out of pure aluminium :P 

 

Anyways, considering the size of the Mac Pro, I'd be very impressed if anyone could put together a better PC package with a similar size without using custom hardware

[Rhotis]

Now just imagine a 10 000$+ PC. I bet that you could even make your custom PC case out of pure aluminum with gold keys on it. Those L3P-or what's their name desk's cost a lot less and I bet they could make you a pretty sick UPGREDABLE  work station for less. Then again would it be the same height and width as an 10" tablet? Probably not, but if you followed computex desktop PC are getting smaller and smaller again...with new ROG ITX motherboard and previous gen small 670. I bet that the PC guys could pull of something as decent looking and better preforming than the new MacPro, after all we aren't in the 90ies anymore wher macs look lake spaces ships and PC's look like crap.

 

10k PC?

 

E5 xeon 2687W  1935 USD

Asus P9X79-E WS  500USD

64gig wintec ECC ddr3 1600 (8 dimms) 610USD

Silverstone TJ 11 case  580USD

Corsair H80I  -  87 USD

Samsung 840 pro 512gig 470USD

3x WD RE 3TB drives  960 USD

x2 Nvidia K4000   1600USD

Nvidia Tesla K20 -  3400USD

 

Grand total 10,142.  

 

Thats a pretty boss machine for 10k lol.  

[AaronC31]

If you don't like the new Mac Pro you:

 

- do not understand or appreciate professional working environments

- do not understand or appreciate professional working needs

- do not understand or appreciate professional software

- do not understand or appreciate small component engineering

- are trying to fit in with the 'PC superiority' crowd

- can't afford it and therefore irrationally think it's overpriced

 

It's an amazing computer.

 

/thread

 

Considering I've done a lot of work inside the gaming industry... I can tell you for a fact that 99% of games are made on Windows PC's that are higher end than this Mac Pro and run on server farms.  Hell, Pixar doesn't even use Mac/OSX.  They use custom built workstations from PC components and run Linux Ubuntu on everything.  Don't believe me?  Try to buy their animation software.  :)

[SMURG]

Trust me, you don't want to make anything like that out of pure aluminium :P

 

Anyways, considering the size of the Mac Pro, I'd be very impressed if anyone could put together a better PC package with a similar size without using custom hardware

The size is the clincher, but only because they don't make mini-ITX socket 2011 boards because the socket is too big. The only reason Apple can get away with the new mac pro is because all the components are soldered on. Personally, I'd rather something was upgradeable and single-part-replaceable than it being a bit smaller and prettier - but maybe I'm just a pragmatist :P