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Mac Pro – Thoughts? Winner or Loser?
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[David Mathis] “Can we upgrade the video card? Can we add an external DVD drive? Why does this “thing” look like something of a Star Trek movie? Inquiring minds, mine included need to know! At least it will be made in the USA, have to give them credit for that.
“I think the answers are no and yes as long as the external drive uses USB or Thunderbolt.
https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
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[Phil Hoppes] “Loser – for my needs at least. For video only I’m sure it should work quite well. I do 3D work. ALL 3D renders for production on CPU cores. Quadro and all of the video card engines are nice for fast preview rendering but non of the CGI graphic rendering engines do final render on graphic cards because all of the shaders and effects needed are not supported. For me, in the end, it’s CPU threads. This MacPro is limited to a single CPU. No matter what it costs I’m sure I can build my own Dual Xeon 12 core machine for what Apple wants for a single. Plus, your limited to ONLY AMD graphics. If that works for you great. If not, your hosed.
“If I did lots of 3D work I wouldn’t have been using Apple for a while!
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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Loser. Complete loser. A mac mini on steroids. Thunderbolt 2 is not fast enough to support Multiple fast graphics cards. Its the equivalent of a PCIE 3.o x 4 slot BFD. Wow. Amazingly terrible. I don’t know what to do for next year. We have 30 2008 macPros to replace that I held off on. WOW just wow. I can’t believe how terrible this is!
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[Steve Connor] “Perhaps you can help us – how well will Adobe Apps support Open CL on the AMD cards in it when it comes out? If there is no NVidia and therefore CUDA Option will there be a massive performance benefit from using a PC instead of it?”
We support certain OpenCL chips today with CS6 and I’m confident that you will see more about OpenCL on June 17th. 😉 More info then!
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I haven’t. All of my work in on custom built Win7 desktops and servers. I do have the last of the nice 17″ MBP which I boot camp to Win7 and have MtnLion. For quick and dirty stuff it’s nice to run some things on the Mac side. (Modo and Maya) but all renders are on Windows.
I was curious what Apple would do. I was on of the “MacPro is Dead” doom sayers, so I’ll have a plate of Crow for dinner, but given what the did release, I have no second guesses on my decision to drop them 3 years ago.
For the people that really need/want MacPro’s I hope this fulfills what they need. It will be interesting to see what they charge.
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Fail IMO. No internal expandability tells us everything we need to know. This is not a workstation. It is a beefed up Mini of Cube meant to be replaced every 18-24 months. People generally expect a longer lifespan out of a workstation. But all of those TB2 ports are relevant only until TB3 comes out.
Of course, the price will dictate how well this computer will do. If it is priced as a Mini or Cube, then maybe it has a chance to thrive as a “planned obsolescence” Apple gadget. I find that unlikely, however. If its price tag is over $2000, I don’t see it as an attractive option when you consider all the external add-ons you’ll need to buy just to bring its capabilities up to that of a traditional workstation.
Also, can anyone remember when a heavily daisy-chained solution was the most efficient or most desirable solution? Remember when people would pay the “Apple Tax” BECAUSE they offered the most desirable solution?
To me, there is no longer any incentive to stay on the Apple platform at all. You will pay extra for extra headaches.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[larry towers] “Loser. Complete loser. A mac mini on steroids.”
I can see a new forum coming and it will be a debate on whether to go with the Mac Pro or something else. It will be interesting for sure.
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I was planning to buy the new machine day & date. I waited four years with a 1,1 in the hopes it would receive a decent update, and finally last week I bought a used 3,1 to bide the time until the new one. Now I’m feeling a bit lost. Not sure if I’ll get the new one or just build a Hackintosh at this point. I really don’t have a need for a small desktop, that’s why it’s at my desk.
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Avid MC, PPro CS6, FCP7 – wasting away on my SSD.
I just can’t quit X.
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[Phil Hoppes] “This MacPro is limited to a single CPU.”
12 cores. Says so on the page linked to
https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
The new Mac Pro is muscle through and through, starting with the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset. With configurations offering up to 12 cores of processing power, -
Yeah for me.
I think this is a very philosophical argument about how someone sees their machine.
Either you want internal expandability- Buy a machine and upgrade it into the ground over 5-6 years.
Or you want to buy a machine and use it for 2-3 years, then sell and replace with the upgraded version.
As the latter, I can tell you that I have no interest in being the former. And thru innumerable threads on this board I’ve never had someone convince me that I’ve paid substantially more to do what I do than someone who upgrades. Resale value on macs is very high, and my time spend servicing my machine is basically nil over the last 6 years.
With 2 internal GPUs, I no longer have any reason for the 16x slots. The rest can be handled via thunderbolt- a RedRocket card or Backmagic Video out. The new TB2 can probably handle 6xPCIe cards, so is there anything other than GPUs which I’m missing out on?
Choose how you want to do it, but don’t say its not a Pro machine. Cause that would be silly.
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