And a lot more in external enclosure/PCIe chassis costs. And latency when it comes to the audio production market that uses ProTools and the like, since the PCIe card must go through a PCIe->Thunderbolt bridge, and face some pretty horrible overhead due to the PCIe 2.0 x4 link width they get for their throughput. And that's assuming nothing else is taking any of that bandwidth from the Falcon Crest controller (it looks like two ports per FC controller here).
If you game, an iMac will fare better so long as you get the top of the line iMac. If you do
compute work, the GPUs will work overtime for you and then some. But unless you deal primarily in compute (OpenCL or another GPU specific API) work, the value is definitely not there in these TrashCan Pros.
For the first time
ever, I've gotten myself parts for a Hackintosh. Mine is a Hackwell Pro. I'm utilising a Z87 chipset instead of a modified X79 chipset, which is what Apple is using here (Sandy Bridge-E/Ivy Bridge-E), but the Xeons aren't necessarily more powerful clock for clock, they just have more cache. Their real strength comes in the extra PCIe lanes compared to Haswell's 16 lanes.
Follow guides like you see on tonymacx86.com for the parts and you can then choose to follow instructions from here, InsanelyMac, or use the UniBeast/MultiBeast installers on tonymacx86.com.
It's a lot easier to build a Hackie today than it was two years ago, by far.
Just a clarification here: Enthusiasts won't touch these machines. Enthusiasts are the type that fiddle with their hardware, upgrade as paths open up to them, and go for the most power with the best longevity they can get.
These machines fulfill none of those roles.
See above.
You're comparing Apples to Oranges (no pun intended). The 2010/12 Mac Pros used the Nehalem/Westmere architecture, a full
two "tock" cycles behind the current Ivy Bridge-E Xeons. Comparing CPUs whose architecture is four years apart isn't really viable.
It's going to come down to latency due to bridging a PCIe card to Thunderbolt, bandwidth limitations (2 GB/sec max for a Falcon Crest controller before overhead), and the cost of moving drives to enclosures.
The biggest problem is that instead of being completely internal with faster overall capability (especially for RAIDs), you're using a PCIe -> TB and then having to hope your other TB ports (one of the other two FC controllers) are enough bandwidth for what you need to do.
Video production will suffer in this regard especially as it has already been demonstrated by
a review of a fairly good Thunderbolt to PCIe chassis. Heavy track counts for audio production would suffer similarly.
The W9000s by themselves are
$3500.
Each. Assuming anywhere near those specs for the top of the line card, and $1500 per card, even as an "upgrade" option price, would be pie in the sky dreaming.
Input lag has little to do with video cards (for the most part). It has more to do with your display's processing. This is being partly addressed in the near future by
nVidia's G-Sync hardware solution. But that will be costly and impractical for many people, especially those that use large TVs as their displays, since even 32" "computer" dispays cost far more than a decent 55" or 60" TV would.
For some, the tradeoff of high price for almost zero lag is worth it. For others, until competition makes the tech widely available for as many users as possible, it's just not worth it as the value isn't there.
As for the pricing of the TrashCan Pro, I pegged it pretty close when I figured the entry level to be $2800 by sourcing prices of components. Factoring in a markup, I was pretty much spot on.
The prices listed aren't unreasonable given the particular hardware being used (FirePros aren't cheap and neither are >4-core Xeon 26xx CPUs). The SSDs are overpriced as usual, and the RAM presented is downright
pitiful, as I managed to get 32 GB RAM for $280 vs. the 12 GB RAM Apple gives you for much more than that.
That said, given that the machine is aimed at data analysis, video rendering (in a very cold room mind you, since the machine is going to thermally throttle itself otherwise), and medical imaging, there just isn't any real value to most of the people that really want a newer and more powerful machine with expandability.
And the "cost of ownership" goes far beyond the initial sticker shock - you pay through the nose for TB accessories, and if you have any real need for PCIe cards, you'll pay $300 minimum for a PCIe bridge enclosure. And that's pretty much the cost
per PCIe slot. And multiple PCIe slot enclosures are still subject to the same 2 GB/sec limitations just like a single PCIe slot enclosure. To put that in perspective, 2 GB/sec is PCIe
1.0 x8, before overhead. And that bandwidth is shared across all devices on the same Falcon Crest controller. So a 4K display means you can't put
anything else on the TB chain for that particular controller. So such a display means both ports on that controller are effectively "taken". Falcon Crest controls two ports per controller and there are six ports, for a total of three controllers per MP.
Unless you're a business owner that determines that the cost/performance ratio is there for these machines or can just outright afford to buy anything in the world, these machines aren't really for you and you'll regret getting one in the long run.
And for those of you drooling over the Turbo Boost clock frequencies, those are for
single core operations. Once more than one core reaches a certain utilization percentage, the CPUs will not Boost unless they're in a motherboard whose UEFI BIOS specifically allows full unlocking of the Turbo function for all cores. That. Is. Not. Happening. With. Apple. Ever.
(And it won't happen in this machine anyway due to its thermal dissipation limitations).
Unless you're afraid of building a system or just have no skills at doing so, avoid these and save yourself $1k or more and build a Hackwell Pro. There are guides with fully compatible hardware "out of the box" requiring no DSDTs, SSDTs, or other major surgery. Just some simple installers and BAM, you're up and running. And you get to choose the level of cooling you want for your system so it never throttles on you even if you try running Prime95 for days on end.
