So what happens to our hardware…?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Great post, Walter S. Thank you.

I have mentioned that it is certainly fear that keeps me trying Windows, that and no one else in the office is remotely interested: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/20281

At this point in time, it’s not feasible for our little shop.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Hancock] “Do you pay extra for it or is this covered under the standard warranty (or AppleCare)?”

No extra cost in AppleCare. The Mac is registered as a business. The SuperDrive blew out, they told me who to call. This was two years or so ago, not sure what’s changed. The business division is different than the consumer division. This Mac was under warranty. Haven’t had a problem like that before or since. I dont know what would happen if the motherboard went out.

https://www.apple.com/retail/business/

https://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313 (U.S. Store)

Jeremy

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “At this point in time, it’s not feasible for our little shop.”

Absolutely. Like anything else, Macs and PCs are just tools — not every tool is right for every task.

I just re-read your linked post there. I’m in the market for a cross-platform SAN. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to chat with you or with a sales rep for the SAN you’re testing for a few minutes sometime. (I am very easy to find through my COW services page [link].) Thank you!

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

[Jamie Franklin]

[olof ekbergh] “These are exiting times”

And equally frustrating.

I can’t generate the power needed for high particle visual effects out of a quasi-custom imac/mini/laptop or kangaroo and I have no idea what my next move should be because everything is completely uncertain in hardware and cost. It’s easy for someone to say, switch to PC! When all my licenses are mac. Ok, I’ll just throw out another 30k for that…who needs a tower when we have thunder and lightning? Well, I do. And the ground isn’t moving with them at the moment.

Exciting for some

[Walter Soyka]

[Chris Conlee] “Man, what would this system cost if it were built by Apple?
https://myvideopc.com/professional-pcs.html“

Do I assume correctly you were suggesting Apple would charge an insane premium? You might be surprised.

A 12-core, 2.66 GHz Apple Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM, a 1 TB system drive, and a 1 GB graphics card costs $4,995.

A 12-core, 2.66 GHz HP Z800 with 6 GB of RAM, a 1 TB system drive, a 1 GB graphics card, and a Firewire card costs $6,443. That’s nearly 30 percent more than a comparably equipped Mac Pro — a whole lot of money to pay for a couple extra PCIe slots.

Where it gets interesting for me is not the prices Apple charges for their products, but rather the products they don’t make available at any price: mini-tower desktops (like the one you linked to), current high-end workstations, and high-end NVIDIA GPUs.

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

[Gerald Baria]

“You can make today’s processor smaller tomorrow, or you can keep it the same size and make it faster.”

Or…you can make it BOTH smaller and more powerful. So then you’d require less energy to do the same processing cycles..less energy consumption is more or a need now than an option so that’s the best way to go. And fortunantely it is the direction of the 3 leading processor corporations..smaller and smaller transistors that consume lesser and lesser power for the same processing cycles.

Quobetah
New=Better

[Robert Brown]

Win 7 64 is actually pretty good. I’m finding that OSX has some things built in that make it nicer off the bat but when you do a little digging you can find little apps to fix a lot of those things in Windows. I’m finding memory management to be better inWin 7 meaning it handles ram intensive programs a little better and prevents them from paging ram and slowing down.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Frank Gothmann]

But that is exactly not what’s happening. If a current iMac or Laptop with Thunderbolt works for you… great. But please stop suggesting that it has to be good enough for everybody else.
A Pegasus TB Raid enclosure gives you roughly 30-40 per cent of the performance you get from an Areca SAS Raid Box that has a similar form factor.
And the Pegasus is more expensive. So “smaller, cheaper and more powerful” is simply not correct.
Thunberbolt is a great addition to the list of connectivity option; seeing it as a replacement even for the current PCI standard (and the next one is around the corner) is a step backwards with regards to performance to a lot of people.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Frank Gothmann] “A Pegasus TB Raid enclosure gives you roughly 30-40 per cent of the performance you get from an Areca SAS Raid Box that has a similar form factor.”

I just need to play devils advocate here.

The 6 drive Pegasus array runs at 800MB/sec with SATA drives.

If it had more drives, it’d go faster. Faster drives would go faster.

For data only, thunderbolt is a winner.

How fast is the Arcea box? How many and what kind of drives? What’s the connection protocol?

[Frank Gothmann]

You used Barefeats benchmarks elsewhere (I think it was you, if not I apologise) so here is a comparison between TB and an SAS Raid.
https://barefeats.com/tbolt01.html

But also here:
https://www.macworld.com/article/160819/2011/06/pegasusr6thunderbolt.html

The Pegasus delivers 566 MBs read, an Areca SAS connected enclosure does over 1280 (It’s sitting right next to me) with standard desktop class Sata 6G 2TB drives from Hitachi.
Yes, the Areca has two more drives, I give you that. But there is no TB enclosure with more slots on the market (which, initself, is a problem).
Also, those benchmarks are with just one Thunderbolt device. Add more to the chain and they share the bandwith.

As far as expandability is concerned: I can choose larger enclosures holding up to 24 drives or I can stick with that one enclosure and connect up to 15 of those 8-drive boxes daisy chained to one SAS controller card.
And I still have all the performance in the world on my other pci slots unscratched.

Price wise, the Pegasus is more expensive.

But, again, TB is great and, I want to see it across the entire product line and it will flexibility to a lot of people. But not as a replacement for pcie for those who need and rely on it.