One of the big misses with the new Mac Pro is the lack of upgrades. Here's how I upgraded my 7.1 Mac Pro:
Bought an almost new "open box" base model at Microcenter for around $4000. (They discount heavily, it was literally brand new)
Still got Apple Care on it, like a new system.
Bought a 28 core Xeon on ebay for like $1k, upgraded it myself - been rock stable for years now
swapped out the 256GB SSD for an Apple 4TB drive (Granted the new Mac Pro can do this too)
swapped out the base ram, and added 196GB of ram for a few hundred dollars - oem kits off ebay for super cheap.
Swapped out the base 580x, and have tried as series of GPUs since - even AMD 6900 XT gaming cards, and settled on the W6800x Duo.
Also have tried Vega II Duos bought for much cheaper on ebay in the past
Still the possibility of adding more ram, SSD, or even other more powerful GPUs - possibly even W7xxx if Apple gives us those drivers.
Not bad - and everything I did not use, I was able to sell on the second hand market and recoup most of my money and keep upgrading.
With the new Mac Pro, you sort of have to sell the entire rig to do most of the big things - no CPU, ram, or GPU.
Ah, the good ole day of the 7.1 are still good -not to mention for my workflow with r3d raw files being GPU heavy, 7.1 is still likely faster. it's not done yet!
The 7.1 still feels like it has so much potential when I look inside - so many GPUs you can fit in there, and of course various types of storage cards.
Bought an almost new "open box" base model at Microcenter for around $4000. (They discount heavily, it was literally brand new)
Still got Apple Care on it, like a new system.
Bought a 28 core Xeon on ebay for like $1k, upgraded it myself - been rock stable for years now
swapped out the 256GB SSD for an Apple 4TB drive (Granted the new Mac Pro can do this too)
swapped out the base ram, and added 196GB of ram for a few hundred dollars - oem kits off ebay for super cheap.
Swapped out the base 580x, and have tried as series of GPUs since - even AMD 6900 XT gaming cards, and settled on the W6800x Duo.
Also have tried Vega II Duos bought for much cheaper on ebay in the past
Still the possibility of adding more ram, SSD, or even other more powerful GPUs - possibly even W7xxx if Apple gives us those drivers.
Not bad - and everything I did not use, I was able to sell on the second hand market and recoup most of my money and keep upgrading.
With the new Mac Pro, you sort of have to sell the entire rig to do most of the big things - no CPU, ram, or GPU.
Ah, the good ole day of the 7.1 are still good -not to mention for my workflow with r3d raw files being GPU heavy, 7.1 is still likely faster. it's not done yet!
The 7.1 still feels like it has so much potential when I look inside - so many GPUs you can fit in there, and of course various types of storage cards.
