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http://fireuser.com/blog/professional_firepro_cards_vs_consumer_radeon_cards_whats_the_difference/
http://pcfoo.com/specapc-maya-2012-gpu-scores/

Stability, performance (in select scenarios) and less risk.

Obviously Quadro and FirePro are not the most value-efficient way to go if your primary use is gaming or something like that.
This is partially false. The Titan is a consumer component but you could hardly call it 'consumer performance'. As with the AMD D300/D500/D700 cards, these too are 'consumer components' as theyre nothing more than rebranded R series AMD cards with different drivers and a gigantic markup.

Saying its comparing apples to oranges is unfair. You build a computers and compare performance. Who cares what name the component is given. If one card renders a 3D environment at 45 FPS and another one at 40 FPS while not being 'branded' as consumer, why is that all of a sudden 'apples to oranges' ???
 
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http://fireuser.com/blog/professional_firepro_cards_vs_consumer_radeon_cards_whats_the_difference/
http://pcfoo.com/specapc-maya-2012-gpu-scores/

Stability, performance (in select scenarios) and less risk.

Obviously Quadro and FirePro are not the most value-efficient way to go if your primary use is gaming or something like that.

Performance can be graded. Stability is never guaranteed for any product. Some have better reputation than other, but even in the apple world, a lot of the devices we get from Apple are not perfect eventhough they've highly regarded as 'reliable'.

GeForce cards are more than capable. You'll even see people nitpicking in CG forums:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=1002086&page=2&pp=15

That right there should tell you there differences in performance (the criteria that should matter) is marginal and even then is subjective.
 
In my previous link the FirePro W5000 was 3 times as fast as the Titan. Results will obviously vary by use case.

Stability cannot be guaranteed but the professional line is certified for certain use cases which means it has at least undergone some testing. If I can spend couple thousand bucks to make my creative team much happier for years, it's probably going to be worth it in less than a week.
Performance can be graded. Stability is never guaranteed for any product. Some have better reputation than other, but even in the apple world, a lot of the devices we get from Apple are not perfect eventhough they've highly regarded as 'reliable'.

GeForce cards are more than capable. You'll even see people nitpicking in CG forums:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=1002086&page=2&pp=15

That right there should tell you there differences in performance (the criteria that should matter) is marginal and even then is subjective.
 
If you really want to compare to nMP it should probably be a PCIe based SSD with comparable speeds.

Really this is only true if your workflow will notice the difference.

All of the good 6 Gbps SATA SSDs are in the 500 MB/sec to 550 MB/sec range for large streaming sequential reads and writes..

The Samsung PCIe SSD disk in the Apple Tube is roughly twice as fast. If you read and write a 100 MB PSD file it will take the SATA SSD disk 400msec, and the PCIe SSD disk 200msec. You could take a vacation on the time savings ;) .

For smaller IO sizes the PCIe disk has less of an advantage, since there are per transfer latencies in the disk and in the OS. The smaller the payload, the more the per-transfer costs dominate the overall time.

The only clear advantage to SSD over spinners is that SSDs never have any rotational or head movement latency. Both SATA SSDs and PCIe SSDs are far better than spinners in that regard. But, if something is 20 times faster is it worth it to pay twice as much to get to 24 times faster?

I would expect to see that examining many meaningful workstation applications and workflows, both SATA SSDs and PCIe SSDs are far faster than spinners. I would also expect to see that SATA SSDs and PCIe SSDs are much closer together in actual workflow performance than you'd expect from the simplistic sequential benchmarks.

If the real world difference is seconds per day, there's no reason to needlessly bump the price by using components that won't pay for themselves.

(And to show that I seriously look at applications and performance, today I ordered $22K of Intel 910 PCIe SSDs for one of our applications. They were absolutely the best $/performance addon for the app.)
 
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If the main point of this thread is to compare prices, the setups should be similar don't you think? Otherwise it's not a fair comparison.

That's awfully hard to do, since the Mac Pro forces you to pay for options that are of no benefit to many applications (2x AMD GPUs, PCIe SSD, TB etc.).

I mean, what is that comparable Mac Pro to a setup with 6 Ive Bridge-E cores, an X79 motherboard, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 2x4TB HDDs and a basic video card?
 
That's awfully hard to do, since the Mac Pro forces you to pay for options that are of no benefit to many applications (2x AMD GPUs, PCIe SSD, TB etc.).

I mean, what is that comparable Mac Pro to a setup with 6 Ive Bridge-E cores, an X79 motherboard, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 2x4TB HDDs and a basic video card?

The nMP doesn't force you to do anything. Its a product. Just compare similar products. It really doesn't matter what an individual needs are. I love car annologies. Try comparing two cars that have completely different offerings. Only way to make a good choice is based on your needs. Adjust the offerings as you see fit.
 
The nMP doesn't force you to do anything. Its a product. Just compare similar products. It really doesn't matter what an individual needs are. I love car annologies. Try comparing two cars that have completely different offerings. Only way to make a good choice is based on your needs. Adjust the offerings as you see fit.

So true. It's like comparing a Porsche 911 to a Nissan GT-R. The GT-R was built to beat the Porsche 911 around the Nürburgring. That was the benchmark standard and it did for a fraction of the price. We could argue this forever. The GT-R is better than the Porsche at this and that and vice versa but at the end of the day, it's still a Nissan, not a Porsche. You can buy more bolt on upgrades to make it faster and better in all aspects but when it breaks, good luck trying to find anyone who knows what they're doing to fix your one of a kind custom setup. Then the nightmare begins.
 
That's awfully hard to do, since the Mac Pro forces you to pay for options that are of no benefit to many applications (2x AMD GPUs, PCIe SSD, TB etc.).

The question is why do you think you need a Mac Pro? Why don't you just buy a PC - install Windows 7/8 and be done?
 
So true. It's like comparing a Porsche 911 to a Nissan GT-R. The GT-R was built to beat the Porsche 911 around the Nürburgring. That was the benchmark standard and it did for a fraction of the price. We could argue this forever. The GT-R is better than the Porsche at this and that and vice versa but at the end of the day, it's still a Nissan, not a Porsche. You can buy more bolt on upgrades to make it faster and better in all aspects but when it breaks, good luck trying to find anyone who knows what they're doing to fix your one of a kind custom setup. Then the nightmare begins.

LOL what?

Its so easy to replace parts in a PC. Its just as hard to replace in a nMP or the old Mac pro.
 
The problem with benchmarks like that is they're somewhat outdated and don't give a complete picture of actual real world results.
Benchmarks like what? In the other link there's a real world video where the FirePro is smooth and Radeon is struggling. If the professional range was a complete nonvalue ripoff there's no way they would still be selling.

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That's awfully hard to do, since the Mac Pro forces you to pay for options that are of no benefit to many applications (2x AMD GPUs, PCIe SSD, TB etc.).

I mean, what is that comparable Mac Pro to a setup with 6 Ive Bridge-E cores, an X79 motherboard, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 2x4TB HDDs and a basic video card?
If there is no comparable setup you shouldn't compare it to your setup? If your looking for most power per buck in General computing and want a Mac then an iMac or Mac Mini will make more sense in most cases. It is well known that Apple hasn't had an inexpensive middleclass tower for a while.
 
Benchmarks like what? In the other link there's a real world video where the FirePro is smooth and Radeon is struggling. If the professional range was a complete nonvalue ripoff there's no way they would still be selling.


The workstation class cards still hold their value, but the line often becomes blurry in certain instances. As for benchmarks, I'm talking about stuff like Specapc and Specviewperf. They can be a useful tool as long as you know the software itself and what to look for. But they're also outdated.
 
The question is why do you think you need a Mac Pro? Why don't you just buy a PC - install Windows 7/8 and be done?

Perhaps because I don't particularly enjoy using Windows? I don't think anybody expects Apple to deliver bargain basement pricing, or to cater to the needs of every niche with the Mac Pro.

It's just a little strange how narrowly they've focused themselves compared to, say, 4 years ago. The 2010 Mac Pro had its flaws, but as a general purpose workstation, it wasn't that far off from the custom-build PCs of the day. The new one is another story entirely.
 
Perhaps because I don't particularly enjoy using Windows? I don't think anybody expects Apple to deliver bargain basement pricing, or to cater to the needs of every niche with the Mac Pro.

It's just a little strange how narrowly they've focused themselves compared to, say, 4 years ago. The 2010 Mac Pro had its flaws, but as a general purpose workstation, it wasn't that far off from the custom-build PCs of the day. The new one is another story entirely.


Really great points.
I really wanted to end up with a new Mac Pro since I love the aesthetics and resale options, but it's just so totally skewed away from my needs of gaming with X-Plane / Prepar3d on the Windows side and video and photo work on the Mac side -- I just can't justify it.

Probably will build another Hack. i7 4930k with a gtx 780ti is basically natively supported now and it's just worlds better value if you don't have a need for workstation everything components.

Bums me out. I wish that Apple would make a Mac Pro "Gamer" version with a variety of more suitable gaming components through BTO.

I think they'd find it would sell well. iMac is a good option, but I refuse to tie the display to the machine. Makes upgrades and reselling a huge pain.
 
Perhaps because I don't particularly enjoy using Windows? I don't think anybody expects Apple to deliver bargain basement pricing, or to cater to the needs of every niche with the Mac Pro.

It's just a little strange how narrowly they've focused themselves compared to, say, 4 years ago. The 2010 Mac Pro had its flaws, but as a general purpose workstation, it wasn't that far off from the custom-build PCs of the day. The new one is another story entirely.

...........................
I had a 2010 8c for about 2 1/2 years.
It worked fine without a single problem in all of those years, but I suffered hell when trying to speed communication with external drives.

The LaCie USB3 PCIe card with it's never updated driver was a true PITA, making jump my mouse because of interferences with BT. :eek:
Besides it refused to recognize any non-LaCie device, not even as a USB2 port!

2 different eSATA cards I tried worked when THEY wanted, not when I needed them to work...

The "flaws" you mentioned were not so meaningless (and people complained with right that the SATA 2 of the motherboard was not what should be expected from a professional workstation at that time).

I will never understand why Apple didn't add up to date speedy inside and outside communications to their oMP, not even in 2012...
:confused:
 
I will never understand why Apple didn't add up to date speedy inside and outside communications to their oMP, not even in 2012...
:confused:

It's not down to Apple, it was the Intel chipset that didn't support it. Not without the addition of 3rd party chips.

I managed to solve my USB3 problem with an Inateck USB3.0 card, although it would always, and still does eject my external devices after sleeping.

For the Sata issue I used an Apricorn Velocity X2 card. Even so I prefer my nMP in everything bar pure OpenGL performance.

AMD's drivers are lacklustre at best, and need some serious work.

On top with the Thread I would easily recommend a mackintosh if the user selects a "golden"build from Tonymacs.
Therefore have guaranteed compatibly and stability, and then slapping in as many GPU's as possible.

Sadly in the GPU case only the top end NVIDIA cards are supported, as I'd personally prefer the AMD 290X's.
 
LOL what?

Its so easy to replace parts in a PC. Its just as hard to replace in a nMP or the old Mac pro.

Exactly. You can swap parts easily on the PC but in a a hackintosh setup, things don't always play nicely and you'll end up troubleshooting if you don't stick to the "Golden Builds".
 
Exactly. You can swap parts easily on the PC but in a a hackintosh setup, things don't always play nicely and you'll end up troubleshooting if you don't stick to the "Golden Builds".

It's actually pretty easy to swap parts on the cheesegrater Mac Pro, just as easy as it is on any regular PC. The real problem is that you need EXACT parts and those are difficult to come by and when you do, they're expensive and often times used. The cylinder Mac Pro is useless in my opinion, its basically a faster macbook pro with as many limitations.

Anyone who's into tinkering with their system, a hackintosh should be the preferred choice; you get REAL options, a real upgrade path at a significantly lower price. Most of us being Mac users don't really want to bother with all of that though, theres a reason why we prefer OS X (headache free) but for guys that are computer enthusiasts, building a whole system is a lot of fun; its like nerds and computers vs. car aficionados.
 
...........................
I had a 2010 8c for about 2 1/2 years.
It worked fine without a single problem in all of those years,...

...and then you list all of the problems that you had with a system "without a single problem". :eek:

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It's not down to Apple, it was the Intel chipset that didn't support it. Not without the addition of 3rd party chips.

Just like the chipset in the nMP doesn't support USB 3.0, so Apple is using third party USB 3.0 controller chips.

Why couldn't Apple have done that years ago in a minor update to the cheese grater?
 
Why couldn't Apple have done that years ago in a minor update to the cheese grater?

As above poster said. That's also the reason they kept oMP banned from Europe as well, instead of fixing the minor issue with the fans.
 
It wasn't worth it. Apple already had nMP in the pipe.

As above poster said. That's also the reason they kept oMP banned from Europe as well, instead of fixing the minor issue with the fans.

Apple waited four years before adding the third party USB controller chip, which would have been a very minor expense. Likewise, the European rule was published years before it went into effect, and only needed a 50¢ grille on the fan to comply.

For a company with billions and billions in off-shore accounts, that seems to be neglect more than planning.
 
It wasn't worth it. Apple already had nMP in the pipe.

They left the MP without SATA III and USB3 since 2009. There's no way the nMP was in progress that long, and if it was it was far enough from release to make those relatively minor tweaks to the previous model. Honestly those are probably the two biggest things people wanted in a MP update other than "just use the latest CPUs".
 
Likewise, the European rule was published years before it went into effect, and only needed a 50¢ grille on the fan to comply.

For a company with billions and billions in off-shore accounts, that seems to be neglect more than planning.

Obviously, there is much arrogance included in apple's stance in this case. But I'm sure they would have done something eventually (they'd have to), if it wasn't for a new machine in their near-future plans.
 
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