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MP 7,1 Apple Pro Display - trickle down?
- Thread starter Freida
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I've also narrowed it to those three models. I like the LG because (a) it's 5k, and (b) they've worked with Apple when engineering it.
BUT...when I looked at it in my local Apple store...oh man, it's so ugly. I'm not sure I can put that thing in my studio (although it was sitting next to an iMac Pro, possibly the most beautiful computer ever created).
I'd love to get the Apple display, but here in Singapore it's $8.7k for the basic model (not nano) with the stand, whereas the LG is only $1.8k. By buying the LG, I can upgrade the base model to the 16-core CPU and 4GB SSD, and it's still about $2,200 cheaper.
The new cheesegrater was more of a result of luck than pressure. Apple's gamble on the two GPU architecture is what ultimately killed the trashcan. Once Apple came to the conclusion that architecture was dead and they would need to start from scratch it became obvious they listen to feedback from users(to some degree).
The catch is in Apple fashion they just didn't listen to users and bring back the old cheesegrater with new hardware in a $3000 price range because that doesn't create headlines and they would be going backwards. One way of creating headlines is going all in with the supercar of computers and now they got lots of free press with "Apple's new 50k computer" while serving a legit pro user base.
Benq has a brightness-uniformity-corrected professional 27" 4k display (PV Series) that's due soon, has a calibrator built in to the bezel, SDI inputs etc. It should be a good solution, though it'll be a fair but more expensive than the SW271 4k 27".
Does anyone have any opinions on this LG 34" 5k2k monitor? Apparently the text clarity is roughly equivalent to a 4k 27" display, which is perfect for me (extended desktop in a single monitor).
Two GPUs is a killer? What is the Vega II Duo then ? Apple has made much of the same bet here (with better infrastructure this time Metal and Infinity Fabric abstractions to added to Metal to get more bang for the buck out of two GPUs. The MP 2013 got substantively hung up on software foundations as well as hardware. ). Dual isn't the default now but it wasn't the root cause killer then either.
Much of the "killed" trashcan showed right back up in the iMac Pro with the "let's only use one GPU simplification. Apple released two years ago ( which basically meant that it was higher priority. So no they didn't completely walk away from that path. ).
Not all of the folks giving Apple feedback were talking the $3000 range. Even back the 2009-2010 there were folks harping about how the Mac Pro wasn't "big enough" and needed to go toe-to-toe with the Z8 and 7000 series from HP/Dell. Only real Mac Pro had dual CPUs and gobs of DIMM slots at substantially higher costs. So Apple mostly gave them that minus the dual CPUs part.
Yes Apple cut off some folks that are rigid "box with slot" constraint folks with lower budgets, but that wasn't everybody.
In about 3-4 years these Mac Pro 2019 will start to trickle out the used market in sufficient volume to have some hit in the $3-4k range and folks will buy them. It is a gap for now but it will be filled in the long term.
I've also narrowed it to those three models. I like the LG because (a) it's 5k, and (b) they've worked with Apple when engineering it.
BUT...when I looked at it in my local Apple store...oh man, it's so ugly. I'm not sure I can put that thing in my studio (although it was sitting next to an iMac Pro, possibly the most beautiful computer ever created).
I'd love to get the Apple display, but here in Singapore it's $8.7k for the basic model (not nano) with the stand, whereas the LG is only $1.8k. By buying the LG, I can upgrade the base model to the 16-core CPU and 4GB SSD, and it's still about $2,200 cheaper.
The LG is only using an 8-bit panel. At least look for a used Dell UP2715K or HP Z27q.
You could also easily get a 5K DIY monitor with driver board and the same panel used in the LG for much cheaper (~$435).
It's a killer when when your architecture is designed in a way to use weaker two GPUs to compensate for a powerful one.
Powerful GPUs that wouldn't work in the 2013 architecture.
It's not the same bet because the infrastructure is different as you stated. The 2013 Mac Pro was a dual GPU architecture at it's core and wasn't designed for large powerful GPUs....the 2019 is not.
It was the killer. Thats coming from Apple. The dual GPUs was not flexible in that design.
"the thermal core, is designed to have three fairly similar loads – similarly balanced in power. And so the overall size of the product and the fan, that defines the overall thermal capacity for the enclosure. And we didn’t see as much take up in dual GPUs and we would have expected.And certainly there’s other applications where it’s not necessarily the right thing. So, for certain classes a single bigger GPU would actually make more sense. But that architecture doesn’t really support that. The way the product was constructed was with these three balanced loads in mind. So, again, it served its purpose well and created a really quiet and powerful machine using it for a certain class of things, it just didn’t necessarily have the flexibility that we need to have"
- John Ternus VP hardware engineering Apple
It's origin is to serve largely a stop gap product that used an existing design and modified it.
The Mac Pro was a sub $3500 computer for it's entire life(including inflation) until this year so the general expectation was something along those lines(maybe more but not the extent of the current version). As I stated it wasn't just a headline as it does obviously have a legit purpose but make no mistake there is a major marketing angle to the Mac Pro. They spent 25 mins demoing a high end workstation at a keynote who 99% of the audience doesn't need. Two ways of creating a buzz.....2013 did it with a radical "can't innovate anymore my a$$" design. 2019 did it with $50k supercomputer design.