MP 7,1 Humiliated 7.1

[mattspace]

Supply influences 'price' at least as much as 'value' does.

Yeah, and 5,1s are being held on to, and snapped up (especially unmolested ones) when they come to market, and being offered for higher prices...

...because...

...they're considered to have more value than the 6,1.

 

[Pezimak]

I can tell you that in Australia, 5,1s are now more expensive than 6,1s on the secondhand market.

The things Apple claims have value - higher scores in Apple's specific flavour of the moment benchmark codec, don't seem to hold value when reconfigurable hardware performance lasts longer than any codec/benchmark paradigm.

Probably why Apple sells more laptops then anything else, because it's acceptable you can't upgrade a laptop really bar memory and Apple make damn good ones.
Interesting the 5,1 are higher value. I guess it's because they can take a large array of graphics cards. I guess 6,1 is easier to upgrade the software on as it's still supported I think?

 

[mattspace]

Interesting the 5,1 are higher value. I guess it's because they can take a large array of graphics cards. I guess 6,1 is easier to upgrade the software on as it's still supported I think?

I think it's pretty reasonable to assume it's because of their greater utility as an ongoing viable machine, rather than hordes of retro-computing nerds wanting vintage workstations as museum pieces.

 

[Pezimak]

I think it's pretty reasonable to assume it's because of their greater utility as an ongoing viable machine, rather than hordes of retro-computing nerds wanting vintage workstations as museum pieces.

Only it isn't, because it's EOL so it takes work to update it to the latest OSX versions. Or to upgrade it. I don't think anyone wants it as a museum piece. But neither would it be useful to the average consumer IMO these days. Good value though.

 

[mattspace]

Only it isn't, because it's EOL so it takes work to update it to the latest OSX versions. Or to upgrade it. I don't think anyone wants it as a museum piece. But neither would it be useful to the average consumer IMO these days. Good value though.

For the average consumer, no, though many of the 5,1s now available here are preconfigured with Opencore etc.

However, for its pricerange it's the only mac that can host more than 64GB of ram, drive more than 3 displays, boot Windows, Host a better GPU etc. Hence its value for people who want a utility computer, not a faffing-about home pc.

And, you'd need your head read to buy a 2013 given their built in autodestruct countdown.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

And, you'd need your head read to buy a 2013 given their built in autodestruct countdown.

I always thought that only EPSON would implant a countdown timer for scrapping.

 

[mattspace]

I always thought that only EPSON would implant a countdown timer for scrapping.

I expect Epson to keep the consumables of their printers - the cartridges, in production for longer than Apple keeps the 6,1s consumable - the GPU.

 

[Pezimak]

For the average consumer, no, though many of the 5,1s now available here are preconfigured with Opencore etc.

However, for its pricerange it's the only mac that can host more than 64GB of ram, drive more than 3 displays, boot Windows, Host a better GPU etc. Hence its value for people who want a utility computer, not a faffing-about home pc.

And, you'd need your head read to buy a 2013 given their built in autodestruct countdown.

I think the cheese grater works well as both a home machine and utility one if your budgets very tight. At least with the 2013 you can replace the individual parts, shame the GPU's are so ridiculously expensive and custom though.

 

[iPadified]

For the average consumer, no, though many of the 5,1s now available here are preconfigured with Opencore etc.

However, for its pricerange it's the only mac that can host more than 64GB of ram, drive more than 3 displays, boot Windows, Host a better GPU etc. Hence its value for people who want a utility computer, not a faffing-about home pc.

And, you'd need your head read to buy a 2013 given their built in autodestruct countdown.

It is possible to believe you are a bit biased consider what you have seem to have under your desk

 

[mattspace]

It is possible to believe you are a bit biased consider what you have seem to have under your desk

True, something that works, and is reliable, does tend to bias a person towards it.

 

[grouch]

Mac studio is not a direct upgrade path for many professional users.

 

[goMac]

I think the talk of resell value of the 2019 Mac Pro is kind of funny.

I bought one as a tool. Not an investment. Computers go down in value after you buy them, that’s what they do.

Mac Studio is nice but it doesn’t fill the same role, and doesn’t replace what I do on my Mac Pro. Even when this Mac Pro is replaced by some Apple Silicon Mac, it will probably continue being a Boot Camp and Intel software Mac.

It’s not doom and gloom. It’s just progress. A Mac from 2019 is eventually going to get outpaced but something newer. It’s just how things go.

 

[rondocap]

Here's a funny 7.1 +Mac Pro only thing too:

If you booted into Windows and mined ethereum on the Vega II, Vega II Duo, even the 6800x - you could have been well on your way to covering a large part of the cost of a Mac Pro since profitability was so high last year.

Finish your work in Mac OS, shut the lights off and let it mine when it's idle!

Even at the somewhat higher power consumption, it's still very profitable, even as of right now.

Just a thought - something no Apple Silicon Mac can do!

 

[Korican100]

Here's a funny 7.1 +Mac Pro only thing too:

If you booted into Windows and mined ethereum on the Vega II, Vega II Duo, even the 6800x - you could have been well on your way to covering a large part of the cost of a Mac Pro since profitability was so high last year.

Finish your work in Mac OS, shut the lights off and let it mine when it's idle!

Even at the somewhat higher power consumption, it's still very profitable, even as of right now.

Just a thought - something no Apple Silicon Mac can do!

wait whaaaat. where can I find out more how to do this?

 

[ivion]

wait whaaaat. where can I find out more how to do this?

I can confirm

 

[ivion]

In short; the Vega II has 82 mh/s Ethereum mining power per gpu in Windows.

In my case: I got one Duo and one Solo = 244 mh/s.

Two duo's would give you 328 mh/s. On whattomine.com you can calculate current profitability: now $300-$400 a month for 3 vega II's, excluding electricity. Which doesn't really make it worth it anymore.

You may even mine Ethereum during work time if you do not need the full gpu power.

I wouldn't advice mining anymore (especially if you live in Europe), as Ethereum mining will end when they go from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake at the end of this year / next year (so no mining needed anymore for securing the Ethereum blockchain).

 

[profdraper]

Only it isn't, because it's EOL so it takes work to update it to the latest OSX versions. Or to upgrade it. I don't think anyone wants it as a museum piece. But neither would it be useful to the average consumer IMO these days. Good value though.

As well as my 7,1, I still have a perfectly working 2010 5,1. And, there is no reason to upgrade the OS beyond Mojave. Evrything since then is mostly about Apple control, their own walled garden, T2 chip, shareholders, lack of user control etc. The 5,1 is certainly not a museum piece and certainly continues to work well for pro audio, film not so much becuase of the lack of GPU grunt. In pro audio, all of the apps, drivers, DAWs etc continue to work very well & without all that so-called 'security' BS, eg, at various times recently when Apple servers went down and was revealed just to what extent Apple spies on all of our installs. Then there's the more recent bricking the hardware and needing to recover by using yet another Apple mac and specialised software etc.

A clean 5,1 + Mojave is still a very nice setup indeed.

 

[Pezimak]

As well as my 7,1, I still have a perfectly working 2010 5,1. And, there is no reason to upgrade the OS beyond Mojave. Evrything since then is mostly about Apple control, their own walled garden, T2 chip, shareholders, lack of user control etc. The 5,1 is certainly not a museum piece and certainly continues to work well for pro audio, film not so much becuase of the lack of GPU grunt. In pro audio, all of the apps, drivers, DAWs etc continue to work very well & without all that so-called 'security' BS, eg, at various times recently when Apple servers went down and was revealed just to what extent Apple spies on all of our installs. Then there's the more recent bricking the hardware and needing to recover by using yet another Apple mac and specialised software etc.

A clean 5,1 + Mojave is still a very nice setup indeed.

A valid point, but surely you will miss out in security vulnerability patches then. Software updates are usually their to plug security holes that have been found, and you can be at risk if you don’t install them, that’s a fact that’s been proven over and over again with any software, and Apples OS is a target for hackers these days. But likewise Apples solution with its new systems seems rather over bearing also and does give I believe a little too much control on the life of the computers to Apple, if they don’t allow anyone outside Apple to repair them for instance.

 

[ADGrant]

You can't know that. No one looked at the 2013 Mac Pro and immediately thought "that design will result in endemic overheating failures".

Under-provisioning cooling capacity is a deep part of Apple's DNA.

The tear downs of the Studio don't appear to show under provisioned cooling. Most testing shows the machine maintaining a temp of around 60 Celsius. The cooling system is larger that the main board and power suppler. The Ultra version includes 2lbs of copper heat sink.

The fly in the ointment is the fan is very hard to access. Dust could easily accumulate.

 

[skippermonkey]

When the Studio can compete with a Mac Pro and two W6800X Duos for GPU rendering, give me a call.

 

[mattspace]

The tear downs of the Studio don't appear to show under provisioned cooling. Most testing shows the machine maintaining a temp of around 60 Celsius. The cooling system is larger that the main board and power suppler. The Ultra version includes 2lbs of copper heat sink.

The fly in the ointment is the fan is very hard to access. Dust could easily accumulate.

Yup, and as stated, no one was stating the 2013 was going to be under-provisioned - everyone just repeated the company line of how good the "thermal core" would be. Also, the 2013 didn't report abnormal temperatures - it simply burned out its components, presumably because the heat spots were in places that lacked any effective temperature measurement.

 

[rondocap]

The Mac Studio is highly workflow dependent - Those who use R3D Raw for example and can have a beefy Mac Pro, it's a really big performance gap still.

If you use Pro Res or H265 however, the Mac Studio has the hardware accelerators that specifically help that.

 

[rondocap]

In short; the Vega II has 82 mh/s Ethereum mining power per gpu in Windows.

In my case: I got one Duo and one Solo = 244 mh/s.

Two duo's would give you 328 mh/s. On whattomine.com you can calculate current profitability: now $300-$400 a month for 3 vega II's, excluding electricity. Which doesn't really make it worth it anymore.

You may even mine Ethereum during work time if you do not need the full gpu power.

I wouldn't advice mining anymore (especially if you live in Europe), as Ethereum mining will end when they go from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake at the end of this year / next year (so no mining needed anymore for securing the Ethereum blockchain).

Definitely, but if you had it running since last year, it's certainly been worth it. It's not even so bad now if you already have the hardware.

A funny note: Two Vega II Duos like you mentioned theoretically can do 328 mh/s, but generally at least one of them or more will thermal throttle and you end up closer to 240-250 mh/s and makes sense to disable one of them.

Two W6800x Duos can run without thermal throttling, however - and you'll usually be around 240 mh/s or so since they have slower memory bandwidth vs the Vegas.

If you point some fans at the front of the Mac Pro, or even zip tie some high performance fans and power them externally, you can decrease temperatures and noise for GPU load, too.

 

[ivion]

Definitely, but if you had it running since last year, it's certainly been worth it. It's not even so bad now if you already have the hardware.

A funny note: Two Vega II Duos like you mentioned theoretically can do 328 mh/s, but generally at least one of them or more will thermal throttle and you end up closer to 240-250 mh/s and makes sense to disable one of them.

Two W6800x Duos can run without thermal throttling, however - and you'll usually be around 240 mh/s or so since they have slower memory bandwidth vs the Vegas.

If you point some fans at the front of the Mac Pro, or even zip tie some high performance fans and power them externally, you can decrease temperatures and noise for GPU load, too.

That’s a good tip, thank you adding to that; the dust really accumulates (even with a robot vacuum cleaner doing its chores every other day) to the Mac Pro and seems to affect throttling as well. After a case clean, the temperatures seem remarkably lower than with a layer of dust.

The most interesting point of the mining experiment is that the Vega II’s are still a very good choice for computation and (future) high bandwidth usage; eg 6k/8k prores raw footage. Sometimes even faster than the 6000series, just because of the HBM2 memory(?). Next to the non-DSC throughput (uncompressed 6k delivery to the XDR Display), these vega’s are still a fun choice.

 

[rondocap]

That’s a good tip, thank you adding to that; the dust really accumulates (even with a robot vacuum cleaner doing its chores every other day) to the Mac Pro and seems to affect throttling as well. After a case clean, the temperatures seem remarkably lower than with a layer of dust.

The most interesting point of the mining experiment is that the Vega II’s are still a very good choice for computation and (future) high bandwidth usage; eg 6k/8k prores raw footage. Sometimes even faster than the 6000series, just because of the HBM2 memory(?). Next to the non-DSC throughput (uncompressed 6k delivery to the XDR Display), these vega’s are still a fun choice.

Definitely, the Vega II's are amazing for Raw style footage. For R3D raw, they easily beat even a fully specced out Ultra Mac Studio.

The next Mac Pro will need some beefy GPUs to match the current Mac Pro in this category, however. Not everything can be done with hardware acceleration like ProRes or H265!