If you had to choose: Thunderbolt Vs Upgradeable GPU + PCIe slots?

[slughead]

I think the new model is better because I don't care about hacking together components, I buy Apple products because it's a whole package and I don't need to mess with incompatibilities and driver problems.

Well good luck, now that you don't have 1) a decent sound card 2) a sata controller, you're going to be using a lot more 3rd party accessories!

They had macs to fit your point of view as a user already, it's called a Mac Mini or iMac. All the thinking is done for you, no need to make tough choices like what kind of video card or internal HD to use.

 

[wonderspark]

Yes, TB2 is 20GBps.

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Wow, 3 votes for a lack of basic understanding of bit Vs byte.

Let me fix that for you: 16xPCIE 3.0 is 15.75GBytes/second AKA 128Gbits per second. Thunderbolt 2 is 20Gbits per second (2.5Gbytes/second), but early reports say it will only run at 1.5-2.1.

So yes, 8 times faster, merely 6.4x if you want to talk about theoretical maximums, but in reality it's more like 8.

Edit: Wait, so thunderbolt proponents don't even come close to understanding just how slow it is? What am I not surprised?

And, you can plug 36 devices into a single port, which will all run at unlimited speeds!

 

[CelestialToys]

Well good luck, now that you don't have 1) a decent sound card

can you explain what you mean by no decent sound card for the new MP?

 

[slughead]

And, you can plug 36 devices into a single port, which will all run at unlimited speeds!

I swear someone was about to seriously say that. With a few exceptions, these people have no freaking understanding of what they're talking about. Thunderbolt 2 is now faster than PCIE 16x 3.0, or didn't you hear?

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can you explain what you mean by no decent sound card for the new MP?

You have a 1/8" miniplug headphone jack and a microphone input... or didn't you see the pictures? Maybe you can plug your iPhone earbuds and revel in the awesomeness that is your >$2000 Mac.

Enjoy your 3rd party USB sound card, I guess you'll be "hacking together" components after all

 

[wonderspark]

I swear someone was about to seriously say that. With a few exceptions, these people have no freaking understanding of what they're talking about. Thunderbolt 2 is now faster than PCIE 16x 3.0, or didn't you hear?

Um... somebody DID seriously say it:

The "upgraded" spec of TB2 over PCIe lay in the number of cards you can add. With the old system you were stuck with just 4 slots and spaced in such a way that mostly people couldn't even use all of them - so it's like 2 or 3 slots total. With TB2 as implemented in the nMP, the number of PCIe devices you can physically connect is 36. That's an upgrade! And most of 36 will still operate at full speed (minus about 3%) - just the same as if they were connected via an internal slot.

 

[slughead]

Um... somebody DID seriously say it:

Oh God damn it Tesselator.

 

[CelestialToys]

You have a 1/8" miniplug headphone jack and a microphone input... or didn't you see the pictures? Maybe you can plug your iPhone earbuds and revel in the awesomeness that is your >$2000 Mac.

Enjoy your 3rd party USB sound card, I guess you'll be "hacking together" components after all

Thanks for taking the condescending tone with me, it's really appreciated

I guess you don't work in pro audio where few would dream of using the built in sound card and most folks already use external USB/FW cards anyhow...which strangely enough will work just as happily with the new MP as the old.

 

[slughead]

Just saw a great quote from the thread about the lackluster Geekbench scores leaked by nMP.

"The MMP will sell well to the posers who want to think that they are too important to use an Imac."

Aiden Shaw from 8/10/13.

Concise, to the point. I like it.

Seems like it, from some of the posts here about not desiring 3rd party components (and then somehow still favoring the nMP).

 

[wonderspark]

To be fair, he wasn't saying 36 daisy-chained TB2 devices on a single port, but in the Mac Pro total. I was just being silly.

It will be a sad day for the poor chap that hooks up 36 devices with the idea that s/he will see 20Gb/s x36, and realize it's only PCIe x4 lane through three TB controllers for 60Gb/s total, theoretically. If someone gets even 5GB/sec out of that machine without spending Hollywood money, I'll be very impressed.

 

[subsonix]

You have a 1/8" miniplug headphone jack and a microphone input... or didn't you see the pictures? Maybe you can plug your iPhone earbuds and revel in the awesomeness that is your >$2000 Mac.

Enjoy your 3rd party USB sound card, I guess you'll be "hacking together" components after all

Eh, do you seriously consider the built in sound a "sound card"? It is, and has always been intended to "just get sound out of the box", as such it's perfectly fine.

If you want something better there are a lots and lots of options, not just USB, even though there are some decent USB interfaces.

 

[slughead]

Thanks for taking the condescending tone with me, it's really appreciated

Like you did when you failed basic computing earlier and rubbed it in my face by calling me a "hobbyist" rather than a professional?

Yes, people who want PCIe slots are people who want to use PCIe slots for 3rd party cards. This isn't "hacking" anymore than buying a better set of tires for my new car is "hacking"--these are standardized parts. Check the poll numbers here, MANY people want them, not just me. Are we all not "professional" enough or would you like to adjust your condescending tone?

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To be fair, he wasn't saying 36 daisy-chained TB2 devices on a single port, but in the Mac Pro total. I was just being silly.

It will be a sad day for the poor chap that hooks up 36 devices with the idea that s/he will see 20Gb/s x36, and realize it's only PCIe x4 lane through three TB controllers for 60Gb/s total, theoretically. If someone gets even 5GB/sec out of that machine without spending Hollywood money, I'll be very impressed.

The reality is that the new Mac Pro is supposed to only have 6 Thunderbolt channels split among the 6 ports--meaning each controller can't even run both ports at full speed at the same time, more like half speed. The total throughput is around 60Gbps. This is according to deconstruct60 on here.

 

[CelestialToys]

Like you did when you failed basic computing earlier and rubbed it in my face by calling me a "hobbyist" rather than a professional?

Yes, people who want PCIe slots are people who want to use PCIe slots for 3rd party cards. This isn't "hacking" anymore than buying a better set of tires for my new car is "hacking"--these are standardized parts. Check the poll numbers here, MANY people want them, not just me. Are we all not "professional" enough or would you like to adjust your condescending tone?

you might actually like to take a few minutes to read my username and realise that this is the first time we have ever crossed paths on here

 

[slughead]

Eh, do you seriously consider the built in sound a "sound card"? It is, and has always been intended to "just get sound out of the box", as such it's perfectly fine.

I've had no problems with my on-board toslink, I've never required anything more for what I do. I'd prefer that my $2,000 computer include one than nickel-and-dime me (literally probably $.10 savings on their part) and force me to buy an external box I didn't want. Though honestly they probably left it out due to space than cost.

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you might actually like to take a few minutes to read my username and realise that this is the first time we have ever crossed paths on here

Sorry, I mixed you up with someone else I was just talking to, I apologize.

 

[CelestialToys]

Sorry, I mixed you up with someone else I was just talking to, I apologize.

Apology accepted.

I'm pretty sure that the new MP will have the same combo line/mini-toslink in/out that other macs already have. I don't think a lack of a full size toslink port will make a great deal of difference to be honest, it's just one less hole to get lint in

I should point out that I have no need for any kind of MP, an iMac / MBP is perfectly good enough for most audio pros

 

[subsonix]

I've had no problems with my on-board toslink, I've never required anything more for what I do. I'd prefer that my $2,000 computer include one than nickel-and-dime me (literally probably $.10 savings on their part) and force me to buy an external box I didn't want. Though honestly they probably left it out due to space than cost.

Yes, but do we know that the new model do not have it? On the MacBooks it's been buried in the 1.8" jack, with mini-toslink.

 

[CelestialToys]

Yes, but do we know that the new model do not have it? On the MacBooks it's been buried in the 1.8" jack, with mini-toslink.

I'm pretty sure that will be the case

 

[Tesselator]

^^^ The truth is we don't know yet. And little specs like optical audio jacks could change before the nMP ships.

Oh God damn it Tesselator.

What?

Hey it's true! 6 ports, 6 devices per port (6x6=36) and according to benchmarks already available for TB1 most cards (with the exception of some games and high-band video over GPU) use about 1/4 or less of what TB2 is capable of. So that's 4x6 (24 devices) right there. Now assuming the user isn't trying to use every card at the same time (ie rendering OpenCL on 24 card while editing 128 track audio, while watching 4 different 1080p BR rips, etc) then yeah, all of the 36 cards will operate at the same speed (minus about 3%) as if they were connected via internal PCIe card edge connector.

What they did is smart. They took all that unused potential that almost every card on the planet wastes, and made it accessible. Sorry if you don't understand that. But I fully expect you will be apologizing to the entire community when the nMP comes out and someone tries something like this and shows that it actually works. I know you'll be big enough to admit you were wrong. For some people mathematical projections aren't good enough and you/they need to see it in action. I guess I can appreciate that. Meanwhile I did my time, I got my CS masters, and I've been working in a related field for the past 30 years - so I can just use the math to formulate a pretty good estimation.

 

[Tesselator]

Yes, TB2 is 20GBps.

Ah, OK, so I was mixing that up. Thanks for the correction.

So in that case (talking about that ultra-high dollar 3GB/s SSD) if you want the speed of that 3GB/s card you will need to buy two cheaper 1.5GB/s cards and RAID0 them over two of the three TB2 controllers.

But of course don't expect either setup to actually deliver 3GB/s more than about 0.5% of the time. Pretty much only benchmarking utilities will ever reach speeds over about 2GB/s and the bulk of your I/O over that device will be happening at around 200MB/s with maybe 5% or so of it at up around 1GB/s.

 

[slughead]

For some people mathematical projections aren't good enough and you/they need to see it in action. I guess I can appreciate that.

That's because thunderbolt 1 (which is basically a 1 channel version of TB 2) already fails to get up to maximum speeds.

Thunderbolt RAID 0 with 6Gb/s SSDs appears to run into a bottleneck when you compare it to the SAS RAID 0 with the same 6Gb/s SSDs. I guess the 1000+MB/s theoretical bandwidth is... theoretical.-Barefeats

Whereas most Thunderbolt storage devices top out at 800 - 900MB/s, Thunderbolt 2 should raise that to around 1500MB/s (overhead and PCIe limits will stop you from getting anywhere near the max spec).
-AnandTech

Also, the bandwidth limit is a lot more than you think. The nMP, according to deconstruct60, is only 6 channels--60Gbits/sec. That means that running a couple 1.5GBps cards in a RAID (ignoring the insane bottleneck of software RAID you'd have to suffer) is going to take 2/3 of the bandwidth.

As far as 36 devices, you got me there, that's technically more than PCIe can directly plug in...indirectly, however, PCIe can run controller cards for fire-wire, SAS, SATA, USB, etc which can bring that number up in the hundreds. Is it as much as thunderbolt? No? Do you need more than that? Probably not. At that point you should probably be concerned about bandwidth....

That's not to mention that NONE of your 36 little thunderbolt-connected devices can be a 3,000MBps hard drive, a GPU (unless you'd like some pretty great throttling), or a 4 port SAS controller. TB2 is 1/8 the speed of PCIe 3.0 16x.


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Meanwhile I did my time, I got my CS masters, and I've been working in a related field for the past 30 years - so I can just use the math to formulate a pretty good estimation.

Holy Condescending tone, batman. You just found out the product you've been touting for months is literally half as fast as you've been assuming and I'm the uneducated one? Plus you're poo-pooing experimental data when the tech you're talking about has already proven to have practical maximums well below the theoretical.

I guess we're all supposed to digest the totally false information you're putting out there just because you got a piece of paper? You're wrong, Elenore!

Did you know CS 30 years ago has almost nothing to do with anything today? I also like how you assume I don't have a degree in computers as well (I have 2).

 

[Tesselator]

^^ Using TB1.0 numbers doesn't help too much when talking about TB2.x

Holy Condescending tone, batman.

Yeah, a little I guess... Sorry about that.

You just found out the product you've been touting for months is literally half as fast as you've been assuming ...

No, I knew it was 20 until yesterday when I had a small brain-fart and assumed it was 40. So prior to yesterday all my figuring was based on 20Gb/s per controller with 6 ports and three controllers.

I guess we're all supposed to digest the totally false information you're putting out there just because you got a piece of paper? You're wrong, Elenore!

Holy Condescending tone, batman.

Did you know CS 30 years ago has almost nothing to do with anything today?

Bzzzzt! Wrong. That's like saying your grandpa knows less than your 3-year old little brother because you little brother is newer. LOL. Completely wrong.

--
And this is how you think honest debate goes? Trying to belittle or discredit the opponent (instead of the arguable points) only makes the debater look like a fool (childish and immature) and disqualifies them. Ya might wanna keep that in mind.

 

[slughead]

Yeah, a little I guess... Sorry about that.

Not a big deal, it was more about waving around a CS degree as proof of anything instead of actual source material.

I admit I don't have a Masters in CS (I have a doctorate, but it's not in this field), but I cite sources to back up my opinions. What's more useful?

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^^ Using TB1.0 numbers doesn't help too much when talking about TB2.x

They do, actually. TB 2 is just 2 TB channels instead of 1. It can only, at most, do double TB1... Unless your CS masters says 1 + 1 = 3...

 

[Tesselator]

I admit I don't have a Masters in CS (I have a doctorate, but it's not in this field), but I cite sources to back up my opinions. What's more useful?

That depends. If it's something which requires reasoned speculation and/or statistical analysis given only manufacturer specifications then the papered professional has the experience and base knowledge to produce a more probable estimate.

If the benchtest results are already available from multiple independent sources then there's little need for estimates. I don't see any TB2 benchmarks yet tho, do you? Link us up if you do. I saw one Intel demonstration of TB2 and that's it. And especially I haven't seen any TB benchmarks v1 or v2, where multiple controllers were employed.

 

[slughead]

Holy Condescending tone, batman.

Did you watch the video? This is important!

And this is how you think honest debate goes? Trying to belittle or discredit the opponent (instead of the arguable points) only makes the debater look like a fool (childish and immature) and disqualifies them. Ya might wanna keep that in mind.

Yeah, thanks for that, Mr CS masters... Wait, how did I know you had a Masters in CS? oh yeah, because you just waved it in front of me like it's a magic freaking wand that makes all your total misconceptions fly away.

I discredited your positions directly with facts that I cited from multiple sources. You backed your position up with saying "I have a CS degree so I can conjecture better than you" (paraphrase)--thanks for that, real helpful and mature!

If you're feeling insulted or bad right now, it should be because I called you out for using your degree as carte blanche to say any inane garbage that comes to mind. I'm just saying [citation needed]. Unless you studied Thunderbolt when you got your degree 30 years ago, your argument needs to come from more than your formal education.

Please refer to my previous post to get back on topic

 

[Tesselator]

They do, actually. TB 2 is just 2 TB channels instead of 1. It can only, at most, do double TB1... Unless your CS masters says 1 + 1 = 3...

Condescension again?

 

[slughead]

Condescension again?

Can we get back on topic? That joke was clearly objectively funny and therefore doesn't count.

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Condescension again?

... And if you'd like to give me some reason to think TB 2 will be more than twice as fast as TB 1, I'd like to hear it from an "expert"