No Thunderbolt, though. Not in any of the old form factor Mac Pros. That's what is most likely to end their OS support eventually, in my opinion.
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Classic 12 core Mac Pro Value in 2-3 years
- Thread starter RoastingPig
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And yet, it is already happening.
We have documented over at Netkas that both AMD and Nvidia cards are running VERY poorly in 3,1 machines. As in Unigine Valley scores that are 60% of what they would achieve in 4,1/5,1 with 7950/70. The real kick in the nxxs is that the 1,1 isn't affected.
All releases of 10.9 have been affected and Nvidia cards are plagued too, but not quite as much.
Keep in mind that in 10.8.5 the scores were nearly identical in well written GPU benchmarks. (Cinebench 15 is complete and utter CRAP, BTW) When some people started the thread there I thought they were whiny babies until I tried taking same card and OS install from 3,1 to 4,1 and saw for myself.
I don't recall if anyone has tried with older cards like 4870/5870 but 7950/GTX680 are certainly affected. When Sapphire released 7950 they specifically excluded 3,1 from "supported" list. Now it looks like they meant it.
Hopefully it's just an oversight and someone forgot they used to make Mac Pro in 2008 and when 10.9.3 rolls around it gets fixed. But currently there is little reason to upgrade GPU in a 3,1 if running Mavericks.
http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,8206.0.html
EDIT: GOOD NEWS EVERYONE !!! A guy in the 3DMark thread just told me that my 2009 8 Core is worth $4K !!!
So I guess our worries about sliding prices are over.
Wow, it's APPRECIATED in value since I bought it...AMAZING !!!!!
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While I think cMPs hold their value well, it will inevitably go down. Yes there are some 1,1s which are upgraded and go for a nice buck BUT:
1. if you drop such upgrades on it you need to raise the price to recuperate the cost or you simply sell the upgrades on its own
2. 2006 was a long time ago. components fail. in 2016, original Mac Pros will be ten years old. sellers will need to go down with price because you can't simply guarantee that Mobo won't fail etc.
12-core cMP is still a nice machine but they will follow the fate of 1,1s too. I cannot imagine not even a prosumer/up-and-coming pro using a machine with SATAII and USB2. new software will probably take advantage of GPUs and bandwith in nMP.
I won't argue, I still get by with 4-core 4,1. which means I could probably sell it and get the same performance with newer iMacs, hell even Mac minis cause I don't really need PCI slots.
As someone else stated before - the prices are probably inflated right now. Once the new machines get solid foothold (less than a year I guess), all those "valuable" MPs (2009 and newer) will drop to 500-1000 range, the same where 1,1s, 2,1s and 3,1s are right now.
1. if you drop such upgrades on it you need to raise the price to recuperate the cost or you simply sell the upgrades on its own
2. 2006 was a long time ago. components fail. in 2016, original Mac Pros will be ten years old. sellers will need to go down with price because you can't simply guarantee that Mobo won't fail etc.
12-core cMP is still a nice machine but they will follow the fate of 1,1s too. I cannot imagine not even a prosumer/up-and-coming pro using a machine with SATAII and USB2. new software will probably take advantage of GPUs and bandwith in nMP.
I won't argue, I still get by with 4-core 4,1. which means I could probably sell it and get the same performance with newer iMacs, hell even Mac minis cause I don't really need PCI slots.
As someone else stated before - the prices are probably inflated right now. Once the new machines get solid foothold (less than a year I guess), all those "valuable" MPs (2009 and newer) will drop to 500-1000 range, the same where 1,1s, 2,1s and 3,1s are right now.
Well, all that's assuming the slotless nMP, and the modular, 3rd party Thunderbolt concept that comes with it , will become a success .
Or even be a viable option in the workstation market .
Stagnant the traditional PC workstation market might be, but it won't be redundant for the time being .
Apple's cute, yet constrained design and GPU dominated, OpenCL based computing could well turn out to be a goat racing horses .
And time is not on Apple's side in this market, which demands workable and competitive solutions now .
They got away with PPC back then, but those days are over .
Hmmm, new order availability dates slide out for 3rd time. Nobody wants to buy these at all. *cough*
What other workstation vendor has this same sort of problem over the last 3-4 months?
I'm not saying the Mac Pro is going to take over the workstation market, but the question of being competitive or not has lots of evidence in plain view at this point. This new design and approach is holding its own. The likelihood that this is not going to be a viable product for at least the next iteration (or two ) is shrinking every month.
To merge back with the thread topic , a future Mac Pro 7,1 or ( 7,1 and 8,1 ) models are going to push the prices of the older, pre 6,1 models down on each new iteration. It is highly likely to happen.
People are buying this because it is not a workable solution now?
You are twisting what you think the breadth of the Mac Pro target market "should be' with whether it is a highly effective at targeting what solutions it is a fit for (the actual target market).
Sure if Apple disappears down the rabbit hole again and doesn't do a Mac Pro upgrade until Dec 2015 and/or doesn't fill-in some software gaps in OS X 10.10 then they will be in trouble. They haven't screwed up yet. In the here and now, they have something though.
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Meh. I've seen behavior exactly like that in some configurations on a 3,1 since 10.7.
I don't know what's going on with the driver stack that's making that happen though. But I think it's probably incompetence over conspiracy.
Given that 10.7 also supported the 3,1 Mac Pro just fine, I don't think it will alter their support policy.
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im a hypocrite people i ended up selling my 12 core mac pro for $2700 with the gtx670 and 1tb hard drive. And i ordered the new mac pro!!! damn im going to be waiting a long time for it. 6core 12gb ram 256 ssd and d700's woooo!!!! im so happy. $4501.67 like a boss
Competence? Is AMD doing driver optimization updates for their cards from the 2007-2008 era? Not sure why they would be throwing effort at old Intel equipment when not doing much for equally as old AMD equipment.
It also isn't like they have a shortage of modern OS + hardware combos ( permutations of 10.7 , 10.8 , 10.9 + Mac Pro 2009/2010/2012/2013 ) optimizations to deal with. Squeezing out the last drops of performance out of 5-6 year old equipment probably is simply not medium priority. Thrown on top nobody is going to pay for the work; even lower.
Hey MacVidCards,
When that happens will you give us a heads up?
I saw the 2.93s are dirt cheap now, but I only want to upgrade once, so I'm waiting a bit longer for the 5690s.
The basic 3,1's are down to starting at $500-1000, the same with single-core 2009s. I'd expect the multicore machines will keep their value a little longer, but it's a question of at what point the lack of modern connectivity options like native USB3 and Thunderbolt hurt more than the raw power and expandability of the machine. I decided to trade up to a 5,1 because I figured I can make most of my money back selling the 3,1, but that won't be the case for much longer.
For what its worth, there are workarounds for some if not all of these issues. Boot drives can obviously go PCI-e and are not SATAII limited - a current nMP drive stuck in there will read/write over 1000 mb/s, and rumoured OWC/Sonnet solutions out later this year possibly hit 1800 mb/s.
Plenty of storage adaptations that improve results....
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_ID=414
http://www.transintl.com/pro-cable-for-mac-pro2009-2010.html
http://www.transintl.com/mac-pro-enhancements.html
I will point something in my mind.
Now may be my 4,1 upgrade to 12x2.93 cost $1600-1800. in used market.
But you need to notice that used 4 core nmp stil > $2500. and, if you combile with ~ $1000. use 12c ivy e5 chip. That make grand total $3500.
So in nowadays if i need to upgrade to nmp, it cost me ~$1800-2000.
but
3 years later.
the next next mac pro may come out with 8c standard at $2500.
the value of 2013 nmp and it upgrade chip may goes down to $13-1400 to.
in that situation. the 12c old mac pro value. it may be $500-ish.
but who care.
in that time you just pay a little to upgrade your pro.
or you can bought a used one at cost under $1500.
that the other form of cmp value?
in the bottom line. now, i think the decrease rate for cmp value is lower than nmp. that made me happily to hold this machine till i can affordable get mid-life-nmp. in foreseable future.
Now may be my 4,1 upgrade to 12x2.93 cost $1600-1800. in used market.
But you need to notice that used 4 core nmp stil > $2500. and, if you combile with ~ $1000. use 12c ivy e5 chip. That make grand total $3500.
So in nowadays if i need to upgrade to nmp, it cost me ~$1800-2000.
but
3 years later.
the next next mac pro may come out with 8c standard at $2500.
the value of 2013 nmp and it upgrade chip may goes down to $13-1400 to.
in that situation. the 12c old mac pro value. it may be $500-ish.
but who care.
in that time you just pay a little to upgrade your pro.
or you can bought a used one at cost under $1500.
that the other form of cmp value?
in the bottom line. now, i think the decrease rate for cmp value is lower than nmp. that made me happily to hold this machine till i can affordable get mid-life-nmp. in foreseable future.
Here in Europe, they haven't been legal to sell new for at least a year. They not only are holding their value, there are guys shipping pallets full of them from the US to flash, upgrade, and sell at a profit.
If you spend time on colour grading forums, postproduction forums, you'll see that the lack of thunderbolt isn't really an issue. In these environments, they use SAS/Fibre channel for the big storage, fast internal raids (see my links for SATAII workaround) for local. As for USB 3, under fifty bucks takes care of that. And now that boot/scratch disk read/writes at nMP speeds are available, that only helps minimise the differences.
So while they will inevitably lose value, I feel it will be at a slow rate for a couple of years, as long as they aren't disadvantaged by the OS. Since they were selling this iteration new a year ago, figure on the 1,1 fate not being for 5 years or so.