MP 7,1 Can't decide between 7.1 and PC purchase!

[richinaus]

May I ask why you don't trust your pro build desktop with high end gaming hardware? Is it due to non-ECC RAM, thermo-throttled CPU, or something else?

Because it still isnt close to a HP Z workstation or Macpro in quality of build
However, it doesn’t thermal throttle and has performed very well in everything I throw at it. It’s just the lack of warranty and trust I guess when it is a critical tool for my pro work. This is the reason why we pay extra for the better built machines, right?

In response to availability of HP machines, we are in Australia not the US and cannot purchase direct from B&H etc. As this is for pro work it is always better to buy local from a reseller / Apple.

 

[H2SO4]

I use PC only apps for work and whilst you can do probably almost all of what you need with Parallels, I find that when I need peripherals that you have to configure it can be a pain to the point where I just get a real Windows box.
My way of looking at things is Mac when I can, Windows when I have little choice.

If I absolutely had to choose, then I would go Windows as it's essential for a lot of my work even though 60% of my work doesn't actually require a computer. For somebody whose work seems oriented so much around the performance of a computer it seems a no brainer. Get the PC.

In objective terms I simply don't like the Windows OS. I will note however that a lot of the apps I come across for industrial applications the ones written for Windows seem to have more features and configurability than the ones for other platforms.

 

[mattspace]

In response to availability of HP machines, we are in Australia not the US and cannot purchase direct from B&H etc. As this is for pro work it is always better to buy local from a reseller / Apple.

Yeah, we definitely get reamed on pro gear in .au - with HP buying direct, you don't have anything like the customisation options for the Z workstations, they do more or less standard configs only, and generally it's the high spec versions. It's not like with the American store, where you could order the lower spec model for its lifetime expansion path. With Apple gear as well, there's never refurbs for the pro machines. either they don't sell enough to get them back in sufficient quantities, or they ship them all back to America for refurbishment & resale.

 

[richinaus]

Yeah, we definitely get reamed on pro gear in .au - with HP buying direct, you don't have anything like the customisation options for the Z workstations, they do more or less standard configs only, and generally it's the high spec versions. It's not like with the American store, where you could order the lower spec model for its lifetime expansion path. With Apple gear as well, there's never refurbs for the pro machines. either they don't sell enough to get them back in sufficient quantities, or they ship them all back to America for refurbishment & resale.

yep, and I had a lot of 'fun' with HP Australia last year trying to return a Z book [extremely hot and loud, despite being advertised as running 'cool' ]
There is basically nothing on the site desktop wise, and not many laptops.

One thing I have noticed over the last few years, and this includes Apple, is the clear shift away from pro computers to a more prosumer approach.
It is easy to get hold of a HP consumer laptop [on a deal too] but try getting a Z book / Z workstation.

 

[blackquartz]

Get the Mac Pro and don't look back! Also I recommend to get the basic specs and update for yourself the components, only upgrade I would recommend from retail is the mighty w6800x duo

 

[th0masp]

Do you know the rpm of the fan for your MP 6,1?

Slightly under 800 rpm for the default setting I was comparing to.

 

[vett93]

Slightly under 800 rpm for the default setting I was comparing to.

You can hear it 70cm away and behind the monitor? You have the hearing of a bat!

 

[avro707]

Yeah, we definitely get reamed on pro gear in .au - with HP buying direct, you don't have anything like the customisation options for the Z workstations, they do more or less standard configs only, and generally it's the high spec versions. It's not like with the American store, where you could order the lower spec model for its lifetime expansion path. With Apple gear as well, there's never refurbs for the pro machines. either they don't sell enough to get them back in sufficient quantities, or they ship them all back to America for refurbishment & resale.

I noticed this too. There used to be some available in the previous years - like a Mac Pro 6,1 2.7ghz 32GB 1TB dual-D700 for $8599 refurbished but I've never seen any others. I keep an eye out for the 7,1 model just in case something shows up.

 

[th0masp]

You can hear it 70cm away and behind the monitor? You have the hearing of a bat!

I just measured it - 76 cm from edge of desk to center of trashcan. Add about 25 or so cm to get the distance ear - computer. ?‍♀️

 

[Mac3Duser]

And there is a new problem now. According to leakers, M1X would be faster than the 16-core xeon of the 2019 mac Pro, so if you take the option 32GB ram / 32 core GPU, for maybe 4000 $, you will have the new mac mini, better than a 10000$ mac pro

 

[deconstruct60]

And there is a new problem now. According to leakers, M1X would be faster than the 16-core xeon of the 2019 mac Pro, so if you take the option 32GB ram / 32 core GPU, for maybe 4000 $, you will have the new mac mini, better than a 10000$ mac pro

The "M1X" is being used to several variations. Some folks are looping Jade4C ( 40 cores , 128 GPU) into the "M1X" label. That would probably outclass a 16 core Xeon W3200 series. However, 10 core ( 8P , 2E ) , 32 GPU core ) outclassing 16c Xeon 3200 on multiple threaded workloads is doubtful. Down by 50% on higher performance cores. The two E's won't close a large gap like that. Apple is very unlikely to be overclocking "too infiniity and beyond".

If Apple put Jade2C ( 20 core , 64 GPU ) option in the current Mac Mini case that has much better chance of superseding the current Mac Pro 2019. That would be a match on performance core count and would have a 4E complex to offload background workload onto. That is if Apple doesn't thin out the Mini case options. An updated larger iMac will probably outclass the older , by then, MP 2019. But so would other 2021-2022 era AMD and Intel options also ( Ryzen Zen 3 and Gen12 "Alder Lake" )

$10K MP 2019 with 16 cores would buy a system with a 48GB RAM , W5700X and 2TB of SSD storage. And the option to add more RAM and a better GPU later. $10K with a decent portion applied to RAM , storage, and/or GPU options would put an even bigger gap on Apple's 10c+32g solution.

 

[mattspace]

And there is a new problem now. According to leakers, M1X would be faster than the 16-core xeon of the 2019 mac Pro, so if you take the option 32GB ram / 32 core GPU, for maybe 4000 $, you will have the new mac mini, better than a 10000$ mac pro

I would not put money on Apple selling a machine whose price and performance makes existing Mac Pro owners feel like they wasted their money by buying too soon.

If I were a gambling man, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro that performs on par with the Intel Mac Pro, will cost roughly the same as the Intel Mac Pro. Whatever savings Apple makes on fabbing their own processors, they will build up to the price, not price down to the components.

For example, if it has no slotted GPU, they will claim that the GPU component of their processor is worth the same price as the MPX GPU in the Intel machine, and then present a doctored performance comparison to show how it's actually better value.

 

[arche3]

I'm more concerned with gpu on the apple silicon Mac pro.

 

[deconstruct60]

I would not put money on Apple selling a machine whose price and performance makes existing Mac Pro owners feel like they wasted their money by buying too soon.

In 2017, Apple came out with the iMac Pro which "covered" a substantially large overlap of the Mac Pro 2013 (and 2012 ). In 2020, Apple came out with an iMac that covered the lower configurations of the iMac Pro.

The next "big screen" iMac probably will cover a decent subset of the lower range that the Mac Pro 2019 covered. The big screen iMac isn't very hot on active leaks so that probably will slide to 2022. However, it is doubtful "keeping the Mac Pro 2019 'safe' " is the primary driver of that.

At the highest, of the high end there will likely be a longer transition , but after 2 years of sales ( if there is no update) they are going to trying to artifically kneecap the newer systems so the previous buyers can 'feel happy'. If those folks had needs 1-2 years previous , then they should have bought at that time.

If I were a gambling man, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro that performs on par with the Intel Mac Pro, will cost roughly the same as the Intel Mac Pro. Whatever savings Apple makes on fabbing their own processors, they will build up to the price, not price down to the components.

The 2019 Mac Pro prices have a couple of substantive problems. First, it is about a 100% increase of where the entry-mid Mac Pro prices have traditionally been. It is was priced up and over the iMac Pro. Problem in 2021 is that iMac Pro is dead in the water... so just relatively just high ( even among just Mac products ). Apple has small "hole" in their pricing line up. There is a decent chance they'll use a smaller "Mac Pro" to fill it.

The w-3223 8 core in the entry Mac Pro originally listed for $749. if round that up to $1000 for Apple markup and still left with a chassis that is $4,999. Apple could chop lots of stuff off. Crank down the 1.4KW power supply. Drop at least half the slots. Drop the PEX PCI controller, Drop the PCI-e and DisplayPort switching distribution network, Drop the DIMM sllots. etc. The overall chassis cost could drop in half. So even if they were charging the same for CPU the overall system cost would drop substantially.

Second, not even Intel believes in the old "> 1 TB RAM tax" anymore. So at the high end those prices are likely gone due to increased AMD (and others ) competition. In late 2018 - early 2020 Intel was socking away tons of cash that they would use to "buy" their way out of not having competitive product in 2020-2021. Apple just piggybacked on that to add to their own agenda on high end workstations. ( one issue was to pay for more R&D on lower volume of sales. )

For example, if it has no slotted GPU, they will claim that the GPU component of their processor is worth the same price as the MPX GPU in the Intel machine, and then present a doctored performance comparison to show how it's actually better value.

They are more likely to point out how much power is saved ( and hence saving the planet) and quieter it is .
They don't have to doctor the performance that much if compare it to a 580X or perhaps even an 5700 ( if they only have a high end GPU option). They just have to pick on older GPUs ( of which there are several in MPX form factor from the 2019 era.) They are pretty unlikely going to be able to cover the Duos MPX options.

 

[richinaus]

I'm more concerned with gpu on the apple silicon Mac pro.

So am I.

Everything else will be great. This is the mystery area as far as I am concerned and I really hope in Oct / Nov Apple actually tell us what they are up to.

This mystery is why I bought PC's last year for the studio and so far have zero regrets doing so. Once the transition is smoothed out, it will be much easier to understand the direction of Apple and make the right choices.

A fast single core speed and fast GPU is what we need [we as in the studio, not MR ].

 

[sirio76]

10 core ( 8P , 2E ) , 32 GPU core ) outclassing 16c Xeon 3200 on multiple threaded workloads is doubtful.

I would say the opposite, it’s totally possible. A 2020 4core M1 almost match an 8core Xeon 3200 in both Cinebench(real world well multithreaded test) and Geekbench(synthetic but still significative), so I can’t see why an Mxx with twice the p core won’t match an Intel with twice the core, and that is considering old 2020 cores. Then the M1 core destroy every Xeon 3200 in single threaded tasks, at a fraction of the power, and barely cooled, but that’s another story.

 

[deconstruct60]

I would say the opposite, it’s totally possible. A 2020 4core M1 almost match an 8core Xeon 3200 in both Cinebench(real world well multithreaded test) and Geekbench(synthetic but still significative),

The M1 has 8 cores. ( 4 P + 4 E). The 8 core being similar to another implementation's 8 core isn't a huge chasm to leap. ( unless using some oddball locks (for this kind of computer) and/or AMX specific calls , general compute threads can be spread over both P and E cores. The E cores aren't entirely crippled when it comes to doing math. The don't do "out of order" and don't have AMX, but they aren't stripped clean of doing decent math either. ) . For code that is primarily meant to be portable and avoids proprietary vector/matrix function units , the number of general math units can throw at the multiple threaded load will be a large contributing factor to the MT scores. [ these kinds of benchmarks tend to throw workload at SMT/Hyperthreads also. So they tend not to be super discriminating about being a "good enough core" before distributing workload. ]


The Jade 10c version does two core swaps ( E -> P ) and two core adds ( + P). That how end up at 10 cores. The W-3245 adds eight full size cores to the W-3223. That is six more core "adds". Even if toss in the swaps it is still two more "adds".

The two swaps aren't going to add a "full" P to the overall performance throughput. The only ones with a full contribution would be two full "adds".

so I can’t see why an Mxx with twice the p core won’t match an Intel with twice the core, and that is considering old 2020 cores. Then the M1 core destroy every Xeon 3200 in single threaded tasks, at a fraction of the power, and barely cooled, but that’s another story.

Power wise. Removable DIMM slots and higher power consuming CPU and soldered on RAM and low power consuming CPU ... in the historic Mac Pro userbase that is a pretty straightforward trade off preference that will probably fall on the side of the former.

 

[archimacpro]

Here's what I did.
Bought M1 Mac minis for the office. For general office day to day they are brilliant. Reliable & safe.
Bought high spec PC for me to do rendering (Lumion) & Ultimaker - crashes, but it's PC, so expected. But does get the job done.
Move files from trashcan to PC for rendering.
Use trashcan for everything else. It's still just bearable for modelling.
We have a couple of 2016 macbook 16" pros which will go as soon as new ones arrive.
& I'll get a couple of the new MiniPros where they get here.

 

[vett93]

Here's what I did.
Bought M1 Mac minis for the office. For general office day to day they are brilliant. Reliable & safe.
Bought high spec PC for me to do rendering (Lumion) & Ultimaker - crashes, but it's PC, so expected. But does get the job done.
Move files from trashcan to PC for rendering.
Use trashcan for everything else. It's still just bearable for modelling.
We have a couple of 2016 macbook 16" pros which will go as soon as new ones arrive.
& I'll get a couple of the new MiniPros where they get here.

What are the good ways for transferring/sharing files between Mac and PC? I just ordered a Windows PC. Some of the software I use requires Nvidia GPU. I plan to keep my trashcan for daily uses as well.

 

[richinaus]

Here's what I did.
Bought M1 Mac minis for the office. For general office day to day they are brilliant. Reliable & safe.
Bought high spec PC for me to do rendering (Lumion) & Ultimaker - crashes, but it's PC, so expected. But does get the job done.
Move files from trashcan to PC for rendering.
Use trashcan for everything else. It's still just bearable for modelling.
We have a couple of 2016 macbook 16" pros which will go as soon as new ones arrive.
& I'll get a couple of the new MiniPros where they get here.

This is basically what I will be doing once the new mini is out. Using Twinmotion not lumion though on the PC, and getting a Form 3

to shift files I simply use OneDrive SharePoint.

 

[sirio76]

The M1 has 8 cores. ( 4 P + 4 E). The 8 core being similar to another implementation's 8 core isn't a huge chasm to leap. ( unless using some oddball locks (for this kind of computer) and/or AMX specific calls , general compute threads can be spread over both P and E cores. The E cores aren't entirely crippled when it comes to doing math. The don't do "out of order" and don't have AMX, but they aren't stripped clean of doing decent math either. ) . For code that is primarily meant to be portable and avoids proprietary vector/matrix function units , the number of general math units can throw at the multiple threaded load will be a large contributing factor to the MT scores. [ these kinds of benchmarks tend to throw workload at SMT/Hyperthreads also. So they tend not to be super discriminating about being a "good enough core" before distributing workload. ]


The Jade 10c version does two core swaps ( E -> P ) and two core adds ( + P). That how end up at 10 cores. The W-3245 adds eight full size cores to the W-3223. That is six more core "adds". Even if toss in the swaps it is still two more "adds".

The two swaps aren't going to add a "full" P to the overall performance throughput. The only ones with a full contribution would be two full "adds".




Power wise. Removable DIMM slots and higher power consuming CPU and soldered on RAM and low power consuming CPU ... in the historic Mac Pro userbase that is a pretty straightforward trade off preference that will probably fall on the side of the former.

Last part is irrelevant, I’ve not compared workstation features to an M1 system, I was just referring at the raw CPU speed.
The whole 4e cores are equivalent to a single p core so for the M1 you are looking at something like a 5p core CPU for multithreaded tasks. Even using the same old M1 cores in a 8+2config @ same frequency(a very conservative hypothesis likely to be exceeded) you will have an equivalent of a total of 8.5 p core, given that a 16core Xeon w3245 is not twice as fast as an 8core Xeon or an M1, is very likely that the added cores of the Mxx will easily match the Xeon.
All of this should not be surprising since a single M1 p core @ standard speed is about 50% faster than the Xeon w3245 core considered @ highest turbo frequency, when you factor in that the Xeon will lower the frequency by a considerable margin when maximizing CPU usage, then the gap will be quite a bit larger.
It’s really simple math based on data/benchmarks available to everyone, nothing fancy.
As said my guess is that the new AS SoC will be about as fast as the 3245, can be wrong of course.. we will know for sure in a few week.

 

[Mac3Duser]

For 3D, software like Zbrush, blender, and cpu renderes, or the Adobe suite, we can bet that the mac mini m1x will be much faster (will obviously consume less, and will be much smaller, transportable) than a Mac Pro 2019, even updated with Ice lake xeon. On the other hand, for other tasks with very long intensive calculations, the question may exist.
If Apple decides to lower the price of the mac pro by $ 1000, and the soldered memory of the 64gb mac mini m1x is over $ 1500, the prices will be equal or nearly equal.
only the addition of gpu pcie and the consumption (without forgetting windows) will play but the choice will be difficult.

 

[m1maverick]

It's obvious by the responses and your characterization of Windows dating back to the 1990's that you should stick with the Mac.

 

[blackquartz]

For 3D, software like Zbrush, blender, and cpu renderes, or the Adobe suite, we can bet that the mac mini m1x will be much faster (will obviously consume less, and will be much smaller, transportable) than a Mac Pro 2019, even updated with Ice lake xeon. On the other hand, for other tasks with very long intensive calculations, the question may exist.
If Apple decides to lower the price of the mac pro by $ 1000, and the soldered memory of the 64gb mac mini m1x is over $ 1500, the prices will be equal or nearly equal.
only the addition of gpu pcie and the consumption (without forgetting windows) will play but the choice will be difficult.

People talk about the m1x like its the second coming, but fantasizing about a hypothetical and unreleased new Mac won't do much for the current actual needs of the professionals who need to do their work NOW, the Mac Pro is unrivaled in terms of longevity, flexibility and expansion, if anyone is in the Apple market looking for that, the Mac Pro 7,1 is the way to go.

 

[m1maverick]

People talk about the m1x like its the second coming, but fantasizing about a hypothetical and unreleased new Mac won't do much for the current actual needs of the professionals who need to do their work NOW, the Mac Pro is unrivaled in terms of longevity, flexibility and expansion, if anyone is in Apple the market for that, the Mac Pro 7,1 is the way to go.

Within the Apple product offerings.