http://anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013
Its the most area efficient dual-GPU setup Ive ever seen.
Both GPU boards are custom, so it would appear that Apple has effectively killed the limited 3rd party Mac GPU upgrade market. Its entirely possible that someone will clone Apples GPU card design here, but that seems like a lot of effort for very limited potential sales.
You should, in theory, be able to upgrade the Mac Pros CPU down the road should you want to. Its definitely not a simple task but at least feasible. Especially as Xeon pricing drops down the road, this may be a good way of extending the lifespan of your Mac Pro.
I poked around Dell, HP and Lenovo websites looking for comparable systems Apples pricing is [not] out of touch with reality
The DIY PC route is still going to be more affordable. If we go the Ivy Bridge E route and opt for a Core i7-4930K, you get more cores than either of the options above for around $600 for the CPU. Adding in another $330 for a motherboard, $180 for 12GB of DDR3-1866 memory, $1400 for two W7000 GPUs and $220 for a fast SATA SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) were at $2730 for a configuration that would cost at least $3499 from Apple. Thats excluding case, PSU and OS, but adding another ~$350 takes care of that and still saves you some money. If you opt for Radeon HD 7870s instead of the W7000 you can knock another $1000 off of that total price. All of that being said, I dont expect there to be a lot of cross shopping between DIY builders and those looking for a Mac Pro.
The 4, 6 and 8 core CPU options all offer the same peak single core frequency (3.9GHz). This is very important as single threaded performance remains the gate for system responsiveness outside of thread heavy applications. The 12-core CPU sacrifices around 10% of this peak single core performance.
There is a very healthy increase in single threaded performance over the 2010/2012 12-core system. The 34% increase in performance is because the Mac Pro never got the Sandy Bridge bump. All previous Mac Pros topped out at Nehalem/Westmere. Couple all of the Sandy Bridge improvements with the much higher peak clock speeds (3.5GHz vs. 3.0GHz) and the performance gains make sense.
It is really surprising just how big of an impact GPU performance can have on Final Cut Pro 10.1. It makes total sense that Apple went dual GPUs top to bottom with the new Mac Pro. It seems the latest version of Final Cut Pro was designed with the new Mac Pro in mind, which is unfortunate for anyone who was hoping to get by with an older Mac Pro with a far less capable GPU. It's very clear to me that the Mac Pro is really designed to be an upgrade on all fronts (CPU, GPU, SSD and external IO).
Under OS X games have to specifically be written to use both GPUs in the new Mac Pro. Under Windows however it's just a matter of enabling CrossFire X . CrossFire is clearly working under Windows
Its the most area efficient dual-GPU setup Ive ever seen.
Both GPU boards are custom, so it would appear that Apple has effectively killed the limited 3rd party Mac GPU upgrade market. Its entirely possible that someone will clone Apples GPU card design here, but that seems like a lot of effort for very limited potential sales.
You should, in theory, be able to upgrade the Mac Pros CPU down the road should you want to. Its definitely not a simple task but at least feasible. Especially as Xeon pricing drops down the road, this may be a good way of extending the lifespan of your Mac Pro.
I poked around Dell, HP and Lenovo websites looking for comparable systems Apples pricing is [not] out of touch with reality
The DIY PC route is still going to be more affordable. If we go the Ivy Bridge E route and opt for a Core i7-4930K, you get more cores than either of the options above for around $600 for the CPU. Adding in another $330 for a motherboard, $180 for 12GB of DDR3-1866 memory, $1400 for two W7000 GPUs and $220 for a fast SATA SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) were at $2730 for a configuration that would cost at least $3499 from Apple. Thats excluding case, PSU and OS, but adding another ~$350 takes care of that and still saves you some money. If you opt for Radeon HD 7870s instead of the W7000 you can knock another $1000 off of that total price. All of that being said, I dont expect there to be a lot of cross shopping between DIY builders and those looking for a Mac Pro.
The 4, 6 and 8 core CPU options all offer the same peak single core frequency (3.9GHz). This is very important as single threaded performance remains the gate for system responsiveness outside of thread heavy applications. The 12-core CPU sacrifices around 10% of this peak single core performance.
There is a very healthy increase in single threaded performance over the 2010/2012 12-core system. The 34% increase in performance is because the Mac Pro never got the Sandy Bridge bump. All previous Mac Pros topped out at Nehalem/Westmere. Couple all of the Sandy Bridge improvements with the much higher peak clock speeds (3.5GHz vs. 3.0GHz) and the performance gains make sense.
It is really surprising just how big of an impact GPU performance can have on Final Cut Pro 10.1. It makes total sense that Apple went dual GPUs top to bottom with the new Mac Pro. It seems the latest version of Final Cut Pro was designed with the new Mac Pro in mind, which is unfortunate for anyone who was hoping to get by with an older Mac Pro with a far less capable GPU. It's very clear to me that the Mac Pro is really designed to be an upgrade on all fronts (CPU, GPU, SSD and external IO).
Under OS X games have to specifically be written to use both GPUs in the new Mac Pro. Under Windows however it's just a matter of enabling CrossFire X . CrossFire is clearly working under Windows
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. I'd like to see how it acts in the real world: Will users have to put the nMP on an AC duct like it's some over-priced bitcoin miner?
