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Home built PC but not really quite equivalent to new Mac Pro
Well, it did not take too long before someone has published a “Hey, I can build a PC cheaper than a Mac” article relative to the new MacPro. In reading the article they really did not even come close, and while you can build a 12 Core Xenon PC with dual Radeon cards I doubt very seriously that it’s performance would even come close to what the current raft of benchmarks are delivering for the MacPro. Time will tell but Apple has really put a very focused, high performing little tube together. I suspect it is only a matter of time before there is a Dell or HP cylinder that arrives on the market. But hey, Apple does not know how to innovate right? 😉
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64 Replies
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I don’t think there is a market for small workstations besides the Mac Pro. The closest thing in the PC side could be the HP Z1, but it’s more like an iMac with workstation components. Really, a workstation with Xeon procs and dual GPU, or quad if you want, is not a new thing.
Of course you can build a small case with that inside, except for the TB2 ports, but for many people the size of the workstation doesn’t matter, at least in my case.
The MacPro is cheap actually. If you like OSX and FCPX then it is your best choice, maybe the only one. A PC with similar components should have similar performance, really.
Personally I don’t like Firepro drivers, I prefer Quadro’s, I also prefer Cuda to Open CL, but then again I’m mostly a PC guy using Adobe CC. I find the new MacPro a good option at a good price, but I want dual Titan’s on my next workstation and dual CPU’s too, with more than 64Gbs of ram, so the new Mac Pro it’s not an option for me. I know the Titan is not a workstation card per se, but the raw power at that price is unbeatable.
The Mac Pro will have a decent performance, but it will not replace a big iron workstation. I think it’s performance will be good for it’s price and for many many people that will be enough. If you want more, you will pay more at HP or Dell or pay more or less the same and build a machine designed exclusively for your needs.
Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red One M-X, Red Epic X waiting for Dragon update, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CC, Assimilate Scratch -
[Phil Hoppes] “I suspect it is only a matter of time before there is a Dell or HP cylinder that arrives on the market. But hey, Apple does not know how to innovate right? ;-)”
I imagine there will be a knockoff of the Tube in approximately the same amount of time that there was a knockoff of FCPX. Apple’s recent innovations in the Pro Apps area are interesting in the fact that no other company seems interested in emulating them. They are the wankel rotary engines of the video market.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
I don’t know about knockoffs, but as recent as 2005 there was a cylindrical computer from FIC (the Piston) which was going to revolutionize computer design:
(https://www.engadget.com/2005/03/14/fics-piston-the-cylindrical-sff-pc/
It ran hot (at least Apple got the cooling design right), and as far as I know, didn’t get much past the development stage, due in part to the argument that making a cylindrical chassis to hold square components isn’t the smartest design concept. So I guess in the final argument it’s a “who copied whom” question. I’m not in any way saying the new machine isn’t cool looking, and it looks to be a real hotrod under the hood. I’m just saying that the industrial design isn’t an original…just re-applied and turned on its’ side.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I do 3D and my workstation is a i7 Hexcore 980 with 24Gb ram, an nVidia K5000 Quadro with a hardware RAID 10 data drive. I agree with what you said. But… I have to admit the numbers the MacPro is putting down on 4K video editing is very impressive to say in the least. The PC that the guy built in the article was nothing but a bunch of compromises and did not have near the same capability for a fairly significant higher price so overall I have to give Apple high marks. For the target that they were shooting for I think they hit it spot on. It’s just not going to work for all people but Apple does not play that game and never will.
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[Phil Hoppes] “…and while you can build a 12 Core Xenon PC with dual Radeon cards I doubt very seriously that it’s performance would even come close to what the current raft of benchmarks are delivering for the MacPro.”
Why would a DIY computer using the same or similar components as a Mac Pro be slower than a Mac Pro? How much faster would my CPUs and graphics cards have to be to equal the MPs performance?
Shawn
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I really doubt companies like Dell and HP are going to start building proprietary desktop computers. It’s just not in their wheel house plus I doubt there is much customer demand for it. The Tube is the first update in the Mac Pro line in 3 years (no, the lame speed bump in 2012 doesn’t count) so there is a ton of built up demand from Mac users to get a ‘pro’ machine that actually has modern components. I doubt anyone cares if it’s a tube, a cube or a pyramid, they just want the performance boost.
On the PC side of the fence there’s hasn’t been a lack of updated technology over the last few years so there’s no pent up demand for something newer and better. As has been pointed out elsewhere, while you can’t build a PC cheaper if you match the Tube spec for spec you can build a PC that gets the same or better performance for less money than the Tube.
Hopefully Apple goes back to updating the MPs on a regular basis because even a screaming machine today will be a middle of the road machine in 18-24 months.
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There’s nothing out there that will be faster or equal to a Mac, don’t you know that?
Because it lacks the magic sauce from Cupertino. Remember, the one that made Photoshop run so much faster on PPC compared to the suckers from Intel. Or the amazing iDVD MPEG2 encodes in realtime while the loosers running other, much more expensive encoders still had to cope with old-fashined stuff like 2-pass encoding and quantization settings.
It’s the magic formula that’s in all of Apple’s products. The shrinkage in size which is directly proportional to the features and add-ons they simply dropped which in turn is propotional to the hidden increase in pricing, the reduced longevity and the super-duper lightning speed of it all. It’s all pure magic.[Shawn Miller] “Why would a DIY computer using the same or similar components as a Mac Pro be slower than a Mac Pro? How much faster would my CPUs and graphics cards have to be to equal the MPs performance? “
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[Frank Gothmann] “Because it lacks the magic sauce from Cupertino. Remember, the one that made Photoshop run so much faster on PPC compared to the suckers from Intel. Or the amazing iDVD MPEG2 encodes in realtime while the loosers running other, much more expensive encoders still had to cope with old-fashined stuff like 2-pass encoding and quantization settings.”
Is this sarcasm?
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[Gary Huff] “Is this sarcasm?”
I believe so
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Steve Connor] “I believe so”
I mean, I hope it is, but you just never know!
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