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OT – is the “new” Mac Pro a failure
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I’m debating these options currently – including throwing in the maxed out iMac which at close to $4000 is hardly cheap and is plenty powerful depending on your needs. Not thrilled with paying for a 5K monitor that will last only as long as the IMac. But perhaps target display mode will be supported for the 5k monitors as the next gen iMacs or Mac Pro add the ability to power it. It’s frustrating even though all options will “work”. The iMac and now aging nMP have basically non-updatable graphic cards and thunderbolt (which would not be an issue except that thunderbolt 3 is around the corner, not just a rumor. The old Mac Pro Tower can be updated and is very end user friendly BUT no way to add thunderbolt drives. Can’t imagine investing heavily in older tech for external drives.
What do you MacPro users use for raids??? USB 3 with usb card? That’s a no brainer to add anyway but do I really want to invest in usb 3 raids?
Imagine if the nMP had upgradable CPU and graphic cards and thunderbolt 3/usb-c. If Black Magic can design a camcorder that can be upgraded to a (4.6K sensor upgrade) …. come on Apple, feed the niche that made you famous.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Craig Alan] “What do you MacPro users use for raids??? USB 3 with usb card? That’s a no brainer to add anyway but do I really want to invest in usb 3 raids?”
Depends on the machine. MBP or nMP with Tbolt – then get Tbolt storage. Old MP – add an eSATA or USB3 card and get matching storage. Or get a large array using a mini-SAS connector (with the matching card). There are also GigE and 10GigE options.
If you want storage that can move between both worlds, then USB3 is your best bet today. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any storage that integrates both Tbolt and USB3 interfaces.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any storage that integrates both Tbolt and USB3 interfaces.”
How about the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Duo? It says it supports USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. Ii’s only RAID 0 or 1 though and you probably want RAID 5 for failure protection.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I have those units and they have been giving me trouble connecting to 2011 iMacs. It may be just be a bad batch but I have not been able to isolate the problem — intermittent crashing. They will crash the Mac itself – rebooting itself and then the raid will be off line and it will remain off line no matter what I do – but then reappear later on a different iMac. It might be bad power supply they have those converter type power cords. But regardless they get good reviews so it might just be a bad batch or problems with this particular gen of iMacs.
All that said :
they do connect via usb 3 or thunderbolt but cannot mix and match. Meaning you can’t daisy chain by thunderbolt and usb 3 in the chain. Its one or the other. They are a hard raid and it would seem a bit limiting to use raid 1 on a two drive raid. You would essentially end up with a single drive speed which is not a raid but would get auto backup.
My point in all this is that thunderbolt seems to be the new standard for investing in external storage on a Mac and that to me may be a deal killer for updating my MacPro as opposed to investing in a 5K iMac or just waiting it out to see what’s next.
The GPU would be about $500, the USB 3 card would be about $150, Adding a SD system drive doesn’t factor since a new Mac would mean buying from Apple which is overpriced for the SD drives. I already have a IO back magic for my broadcast monitor. My problem is I have Pegasus raids that will not work with the MacPro and I can’t see investing in usb 3 drives.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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Has your older tower been upgraded to this configuration?
https://barefeats.com/tube16.html
I think the point of the article was to show that in many ways, the older design has a much greater useful lifespan by virtue of its internal expandability/upgradability. It’s impossible for the new Mac Pro to have more than a single CPU, nor is it currently possible to upgrade the GPUs.
While it may be hyperbolic to call the new Mac Pro a “failure,” I do think it’s acceptable to point out that it is a somewhat limited/compromised design compared to what is available at the high end of non-Apple hardware. If you need more than a single CPU, nVidia GPUs, or PCIe slots, Apple doesn’t offer a system that can meet your needs.
This becomes an issue for certain applications that can make use of more powerful hardware than what Apple offers, such as Resolve or Flame. Although Autodesk recently announced their porting of Flame to OS X, the Mac version has a reduced feature set due to Apple’s hardware limitations.
Thunderbolt is not a panacea. OS X doesn’t support external GPUs, and Thunderbolt 2 is a bottleneck for GPU processing when compared with PCIe bandwidth. While it’s true that Thunderbolt 3 will raise the bandwidth, the PCIe spec isn’t standing still, and will leapfrog Thunderbolt 3.
As someone said earlier in the thread, horses for courses. I don’t think it’s impertinent to wish that Apple made a computer that has the same potential for power and expandability that we see from non-Apple hardware. Unfortunately, it’s clear that for Apple, there’s really no financial benefit to producing such hardware.
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[Alan Okey] “Has your older tower been upgraded to this configuration?
https://barefeats.com/tube16.html“
I upgraded the video card to the very recent, but not duals.
[Alan Okey] “Thunderbolt is not a panacea. OS X doesn’t support external GPUs, and Thunderbolt 2 is a bottleneck for GPU processing when compared with PCIe bandwidth. While it’s true that Thunderbolt 3 will raise the bandwidth, the PCIe spec isn’t standing still, and will leapfrog Thunderbolt 3.”
You’d have to prove that to me. I’ve been using RAIDs longer than most people have been in this business, and I’ve never had a RAID that matches these TB2 models…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Mitch Ives] “You’d have to prove that to me. I’ve been using RAIDs longer than most people have been in this business, and I’ve never had a RAID that matches these TB2 models…
“I was speaking specifically about available GPU bandwidth, not bandwidth available to RAIDs. RAIDs aren’t generally bottlenecked by Thunderbolt, but GPU bandwidth is. Even if OS X were to support GPUs over Thunderbolt, throughput would be restricted compared to what is available via PCIe slots.
In terms of maximum available bandwidth, there is no comparison between PCIe and Thunderbolt. A PCIe 3.0 x16 slot provides 16GBps (gigaBYTES per second) in each direction. Thunderbolt 2 has two bidirectional 20Gbps (gigaBITS per second) lanes, which is only 2.5GBps in each direction. Putting it another way, a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot provides 128Gbps in either direction vs Thunderbolt 2’s 20Gbps. Even a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, which provides 64Gbps in each direction, still has greater bandwidth than Thunderbolt 2.
I only mention this because some have suggested that the new Mac Pro’s GPUs might be upgraded by using external GPUs over Thunderbolt.
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I don’t think you can judge something to be a success or failure with stating what the barometer of success is. If Apple wanted to create an eye catching, quiet, small, desktop then I think you’d have to rate it as a success. Is it a financial success? Only the people at Apple know. Is it a success in the eyes of people that need/want a desktop with a lot of internal expandability? Probably not. But was Apple aiming the nMP at those users? Probably not.
Like pretty much all things Apple, they made what they wanted to make and customers can either take it or leave it.
With that being said, it is surprising how well the old MPs hold up which makes the ideal of coughing up top dollar for a machine that came out in 2013 even less appealing. Oddly enough waiting for the nMPs to come out is what got me to buy an ’09 MP as a ‘hold over’ machine and waiting for the new, new MP to come out might be what drives me to just buy more up grades for my old Mac Pro (or just bite the bullet and get a PC).
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[Mitch Ives] “You’d have to prove that to me. I’ve been using RAIDs longer than most people have been in this business, and I’ve never had a RAID that matches these TB2 models…”
Not that 1 GB/s isn’t fast… but fast storage for a big finishing system today is 6 GB/s or more. You can hit about 5 GB/s in a Z840 with an internal RAID of 16 SSDs.
Of course, not everyone needs that kind of speed, but the fact remains that there is simply no way to get it on the nMP.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Not that 1 GB/s isn’t fast… but fast storage for a big finishing system today is 6 GB/s or more. You can hit about 5 GB/s in a Z840 with an internal RAID of 16 SSDs.”
It could be faster… I’m only using 6 drives. Sixteen would make a huge difference. In addition, SSD’s would definitely speed things up dramatically.
[Walter Soyka] “Of course, not everyone needs that kind of speed, but the fact remains that there is simply no way to get it on the nMP.”
Why do they need to be internal? The external RAIDs I’m seeing are making huge numbers.
For balance, you should tell everyone what a 16 SSD RAID cost? Be prepared to pass out people…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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