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Home built PC but not really quite equivalent to new Mac Pro
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[Oliver Peters] “If you look at the pricing for HP’s best machine, the Z820, and compare equivalent specs to the Mac Pro, the Z820 is more expensive. Yes, it is more expandable, but otherwise is actually a less capable machine based on the internal parts.”
I guess I’m not following here, Oliver. How is a similarly spec’d HP less capable than the Mac Pro?
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “I guess I’m not following here, Oliver. How is a similarly spec’d HP less capable than the Mac Pro? “
Because the top end option is similar, but not the same. 1 GPU, versus 2, for example.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Gary Huff] “[Shawn Miller] “Now I’m sort of wondering why Apple opted to put a Xeon processor in the Mac pro instead of an i7… why go with the more expensive Xeon if you can only put one in the machine?”
The 1150 socket maxes out with i7s at 4-cores…you have to go socket 2011 for the 6-core varieties, and there aren’t any boards with that socket that have TB2 ports that I am aware of.”
Ah, that does make sense then. Thanks Gary.
Shawn
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[Oliver Peters] “[Shawn Miller] “I guess I’m not following here, Oliver. How is a similarly spec’d HP less capable than the Mac Pro? ”
Because the top end option is similar, but not the same. 1 GPU, versus 2, for example.”
You can configure the Z820 with up to three GPUs.
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “You can configure the Z820 with up to three GPUs.”
And that price is?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “If you look at the pricing for HP’s best machine, the Z820, and compare equivalent specs to the Mac Pro, the Z820 is more expensive. Yes, it is more expandable, but otherwise is actually a less capable machine based on the internal parts.”
Apple’s innovation is shipping dual GPUs and PCIe flash storage standard. Apple didn’t invent these technologies, but not even offering single GPU configs or mechanical hard drives is a brilliant move that advances capabilities for users and makes the Mac Pros look unique in terms of performance.
Of course, HP and others have been shipping multiple GPUs in BTO configurations, and fast PCIe flash storage has been available from third parties like Fusion IO and integrators who install them for years.
In these price/value comparisons, I think it’s worth noting that HP offers significantly better support than Apple does. When one of my HP laptops needed service, I called support and they had a tech in my office to do the repair on-site the next day. When my MacBook Pro needed a new motherboard a few years ago, it had to get shipped back and forth to a facility in Texas for the repair.
Lugging the old Mac Pro through the mall to the Apple Store Genius Bar was no fun. I guess the new Mac Pro will be easier to roll down the concourse.
[Oliver Peters] “The advantage the Mac Pro will have is optimization and performance tuning for a vertical market – Apple software running on Apple hardware – specifically THAT hardware. The configuration can be optimized in ways that simply adding more GPU cards into a PC cannot. It no longer has to adhere to the one-size-fits-all approach used in PCs and the previous generations of Mac towers.”
I see both sides of this point. Apple does have a limited number of configurations to support, they’re able to put the things they need right into the OS, and the performance of FCPX is certainly impressive.
But on the hand, FCPX on the new Mac Pro is not really an appliance. That same FCPX not only runs on the 3 very different Mac Pro dual-GPU configurations, it still has to run on current iMacs and MacBook Pros, plus however many legacy Mac systems Apple chooses to support, all with different GPU compute capabilities.
Once you have an application that is able to run on multiple GPU architectures and is able to exploit multiple GPUs in a single system, the ability to put more than two GPUs in a single system may be a real advantage.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Oliver Peters] “[Shawn Miller] “You can configure the Z820 with up to three GPUs.”
And that price is?”
I don’t know the price, but I’ll check. I thought your point was about similar configurations and performance. That was actually my question to you… how can the similarly spec’d Mac Pro outperform it’s PC counterpart? I didn’t say anything about price.
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] ” don’t know the price, but I’ll check. I thought your point was about similar configurations and performance. That was actually my question to you… how can the similarly spec’d Mac Pro outperform it’s PC counterpart?”
There is no reason why it should, outside of some optimized coding on FCPX vs either AVID or FCPX or Edius or Lightworks. And that’s just a programming issue.
There’s nothing particularly “optimized” about the hardware itself in the Mac Pro, just design changes to fit the case.
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Well it appears the CPU CAN be upgraded https://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/27/new-mac-pro-confirmed-to-have-removable-cpu/
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Shawn Miller] “I didn’t say anything about price.”
I think the only argument is price. There no put in a home-built machine except to save money and induce pain. 😉
I just did a quick config at HP.com and was easily able to drive an 8-core/1GPU machine over $10K. That’s with slower CPU speeds and using the NVIDIA K4000.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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