Wait for the new MacPro or get the new iMac?

[Brooks Tomlinson]

Lets Put some Math into the equation, and I’ll tell you my plan.

Anywork I do on my mac at is at home, or freelance. So I too wanted a new mac pro, but was tired of waiting. Then the retinas came out and I bought one in June.

I figured I would rent to myself the new macbook pro, until the Mac pro was released.

I paid 2300 for 16gig retina macpro (2.3). I know the resell value will be fair to high.

7 months later, gazzelle is buying for 1450 right now, selling privately for 1700.

So if I privately sell at 1700, currently thats only $85 a month. If I had to sell to gazzelle, it is $141

I bought only accessions that I know would work in a tower. For fast storage, I use a 256 SSD , and have a 2tb drive. I use the Seagate line, so I can switch between usb 3.0 (174mb read/write) or the thunderbolt adapter (350mb Read/write) I just transfer my projects on and off the fast drive like we did in the old days. Rarely do I have more than 256 for a project (even full show edits)

I have a 120 SSD for my Smoke, and AE cache drive.

On my laptop I run, smoke, mocha, ae, primere, nuke, all real time. Even RT red footage. FCP X is super fast as well. I’ve been really impressed with the speed, especially smoke.

One last benefit, when I want create a new look, or a do a new tutorial, I can do it in the living room with my wife while we watch tv. I get to work, and she gets together time 🙂

Downsides,
I have a 24 inch monitor, and to hook it up, you have to buy a 100 dollar apple adaptor. I all ready had it.

The retina will get hot on long work hours. I had to buy a laptop cooler, but it has a USB 3 hub built in!

That was my plan. Honestly though, what will probably end up happening is I will just save up for the new mac pro, and keep the macbook instead of selling my macbook.

Brooks

Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float”

[Helmut Kobler]

“Check barefeats articles from the last month detailing performance tests of the iMac vs MacPro. While the MacPro wins on some raw benchmark scores, the iMac wins in some real-world situations. The current gen MacPro is not cut and dry faster than the iMac in all situations- depending on what software you’re using.”

Hi Marcus,
All of Barefeats’ recent tests have been done on a *single* CPU Mac Pro, using 6 cores. Yup, the newest iMac scores well against that, but I don’t think it would do nearly as well against a Mac Pro with two CPUs/12 cores, running software that’s multi-core aware like After Effects, Adobe Media Encoder, FCP X and Compressor.

Another reason I’m still considering a current-gen Mac Pro is this: I think Apple will ship a new pro machine with one or two PCIe cards, instead of the four in the Mac Pro. Apple will want to put as much momentum behind Thunderbolt as possible, and the prospect of adding more gear outside my machine and worrying about daisy chains bugs me.

——————-
Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
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[Craig Seeman]

[Helmut Kobler] ” I don’t think it would do nearly as well against a Mac Pro with two CPUs/12 cores, “

While I do think a 12 core MacPro will have some advantages it may not be as big as you imagine. Obviously it’ll depend on software and what’s being executed.

FCPX takes advantage of AVX technology that doesn’t exist in the Xeon’s being used in the MacPro. There’s also limited choice of very old GPUs and you can see that impact in the Barefeats tests now.

I suspect the newer Xeons (which one may depend on the release date of the MacPro replacement) will be a major difference. Of course the GPUs choices will be as well.

Given the price performance and vintage of the Xeons and GPUs in the current MacPros I don’t see any long term value.

[Helmut Kobler] ” think Apple will ship a new pro machine with one or two PCIe cards, instead of the four in the Mac Pro”

As I mentioned elsewhere this is going to steer third party peripheral development. For example, if there are no 4x PCIe slots, I don’t think you’ll see much new development in that area. That will all move to Thunderbolt.

Basically if you’re keeping a lot of legacy stuff going and using software that will take advantage of the older core technology, I can see buying one but not beyond that.

I think the CPU/GPU improvements over the aging MacPros will not be trivial even if the rest of the internals are “controversial.”

[Jeremy Garchow]

Barefeats also usually tests a 6 core not a 12 core.

They are pretty clear that a MacPro can be much faster, but you will have to spend a lot more money to get there. “A lot more”.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

Woops.

I’m late to this party. I’ll see myself out, enjoy the cocktails.

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

If one already owns a MacPro and 2+1 displays, which I think is actually the most common situation among professional editors, so that one can use the PCIe esata and HDMI output cards, the drives and the external non thunderbolt enclosures and arrays that he’s using moving them to a new 2012 MP, it could end up being even cheaper than the iMac, if I am not missing something:
MP 2012, 2×2,4 Ghz Xeons, 12 cores, 32Gb RAM, top GPU: E. 4901,00 https://store.apple.com/it/configure/MD771T/A?
iMac 27″ i7, 32Gb Ram, top GPU, Pegasus G4 external Thunderbolt RAID, external Thunderbolt 2xPCIe adapter, about E. 5710,00. One could go for a cheaper FW800 or esata to use with the adapter, but anyway it would be about the same price at best, not much cheaper, and I think an external FW would not be the same as the internal RAID the MP offers. I am considering that option….

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Marcus Moore]

My only regret in purchasing the G5QUAD when it was released back in 2005 was that ultimately (even though it was impossible to know this at the time) it was the WORST time to buy a Mac from a longevity perspective. In 2006 Apple announced the Intel transition, and so my $10,000 machine was obsolete way before it should have been.

I would be very cautious about buying into what’s essentially already 2 year old hardware at this juncture. I think we should definitely expect an inflection point for the hardware with this new machine, and I’d personally be worried about have the current MacPro get left behind like mine was…

[Chris Kenny]

[Marcus Moore] “No one knows what Apple’s schedule on this is beyond “2013”. But I think a timeframe of 6-10 months is probably a reasonable assumption.”

I would imagine that at this point Apple will wait for Intel’s Ivy Bridge E processors, which would indeed be Q3 or Q4 according to Intel’s roadmap.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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