iMac Pro may be competitively priced

[j2ee]

This is kind of my frustration. When windows works, it's fine. Not great, just... fine. When it doesn't work (and this can be anything from needing to use a dos prompt to get an external USB hard drive to work or the computer's sound deciding it won't function today), it is maddening.

Windows is a time vampire when things go awry.
[doublepost=1497420750][/doublepost]

I think CPU rendering, at least for my work, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Real time open gl engines and fast GPU rendering are where my interest lies now.

I think win 10 is stable enough and basically free

 

[jrichards1408]

I am unimpressed by those dudes who cobble together a similarly specced PC and claim Macs are overpriced. For one thing, I and a lot of people do not like wires all over my desk. I like the all-in-one aesthetic. I like for my desk to be free of wires and speakers. Want to impress, built an all-in-one with similar specs. Maybe you can figure out how to cram all of that into the back of a monitor case. Point two, they are buying the cheapest matching components they can find. And when you buy cheap, you usually get cheap. Heat. Noise. Failure rate. How long before that bluetooth part you bought from China gets all crispy in your build? Lastly, no matter how sophisticated your machine is, it is still running Windows, and Windows is an unintuitive and unstable hodgepodge of an OS. How many frickin menus do I have to go through to adjust a setting? Oh, seven. Oops, it just crashed, and now I have a virus. Nah, keep your PCs (pieces of crap). I'll stick with my "overpriced" and "underpowered" iMac. Rant over.

Windows os is better than osx. It's as stable and as fast as ever before and if you play games. It's the only os you can use to play the latest games

 

[jrichards1408]

This is kind of my frustration. When windows works, it's fine. Not great, just... fine. When it doesn't work (and this can be anything from needing to use a dos prompt to get an external USB hard drive to work or the computer's sound deciding it won't function today), it is maddening.

Windows is a time vampire when things go awry.
[doublepost=1497420750][/doublepost]

I think CPU rendering, at least for my work, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Real time open gl engines and fast GPU rendering are where my interest lies now.

You don't have much knowledge and probably never used Windows since the 98 version.

Windows 10 is rock solid. Never crashes and has issues with drivers.

On the flip side my macbook crashes at least twice a week randomly..

 

[mosher]

I'm gonna go ahead and guess you don't get 1080 level performance with entry level pro.

Even if it's fairly priced, still it's bloody expensive in absolute terms. Good for the ones who are willing to invest so much in one.

i'm pretty sure that entry level Vega card will outperform 1080. Higher level Vega is outperforming Titan XP

 

[Jack Burton]

You don't have much knowledge and probably never used Windows since the 98 version.

Been a user since XP and Mac user since System 7. Skipped Windows 8 because 7 was solid and I had work to do.

But let's hold onto your thought. We will come back to it.

Windows 10 is rock solid.

Nah, 7 was rock solid. 10 is just "OK."

I've never felt it get to the level of stability that Win 7 was at near the end of its run.

Never crashes and has issues with drivers.

I have significant issues with mine. I can't upgrade the video card in mine to a modern nVidia card, which would greatly extend the life of my PC (GPU rendering and all), if only I could get past the BIOS problems and chipset driver issues on my machine.

Now, that can be blamed on my choice of motherboard, I'm sure. If only I knew 6 years ago that my machine would need some dodgy bios update that is only available on the product forums, not in the official product page since the manufacturer stopped releasing official updates a few years back. If only I knew that this board would have ram issues, or that later bios updates can cause ports on the back to stop working completely.

Perhaps there is something I could done differently to avoid the issue where the computer stops the boot process if my second monitor isn't turned on within a few seconds of hitting the power button on the PC. Perhaps there is some trick as to why the PC sometimes doesn't boot while an external USB drive is plugged in that I can't find in the bios. Perhaps there is some reason why a USB 3 hard drive enclosure works with any drive I put in it on my Mac and Xbox, but not on my PC without going into a dos prompt.

Perhaps you have a store bought desktop or a laptop. In which case support may be better, as supporting pre-made hardware is simpler. Perhaps you built one yourself, and through luck (and it is luck), everything works fine. Kudos to you.

My experience was "good" through win 7. In win 10 it has made me hate the PC. I need a variety of ports on my PC for storage, peripherals, and upgrades. And I need them all to work, because I use computers for work, not games.

But to say Windows never crashes or has issues with drivers is to pretend Google doesn't exist.

On the flip side my macbook crashes at least twice a week randomly..

Let's revisit your initial thought and paraphrase it now:

"You don't have much knowledge and probably never used Mac OS since System 7."

That's a pretty unhelpful statement to make to you, right? You have a negative experience with the Mac, and my reaction is "you don't have much knowledge and probably haven't used macs in years." Does my statement make your crashes any less real? Does my statement convince you that your Mac is actually stable? Does it help you in anyway? Does it make you want to buy a Mac to replace your PC?

Probably not.

 

[CWallace]

So ZDNet figures a top-end iMac Pro will clear $17,000 based on adding a 75-80% markup on the retail price of the components inside.

Apple charges a 33% premium from the 8-core to the 12-core on the current Mac Pro based on Intel's list prices. The 18-core E5-2697v4 is $2300 more than the 8-core E5-2620v4. ZDNet assumed a 75% markup to take it to $4000, but if Apple does similar to the Mac Pro's up-charge, that would be say $3000.

They figure around $2750 to go from 32GB to 128GB. The Mac Pro price is $800 to go from 32GB to 64GB and $1200 to go from 16GB to 64GB so I could see Apple asking $1000 for another 32GB and $2000 for the full 128GB upgrade.

Nobody knows what a Vega 64 will run over the Vega 56. ZDNet used the price difference between a 6GB Titan Black and a 12GB model ($1100) and noting how much more expensive HBM2 RAM is, figured it would be a $2000 upgrade. For comparison, the D500 to D700 upgrade (with double the DDR5 RAM) is $200, but I accept that's not really relevant, probably. Still, I think we might be looking at closer to $1000 than $2000 based on the differences (core clock, compute units and stream processors). The top end Vega gaming card is rumored to come in around $500, but we do not know how it will compare with the Pro models in terms of core clock, compute units and stream processors.

So we could be looking at something closer to $11,000 than $17,000 - still a pretty penny, but it gives room for Apple to price the new Mac Pro's top-end configurations into the high-teens / low twenties.

 

[j2ee]

So ZDNet figures a top-end iMac Pro will clear $17,000 based on adding a 75-80% markup on the retail price of the components inside.

Apple charges a 33% premium from the 8-core to the 12-core on the current Mac Pro based on Intel's list prices. The 18-core E5-2697v4 is $2300 more than the 8-core E5-2620v4. ZDNet assumed a 75% markup to take it to $4000, but if Apple does similar to the Mac Pro's up-charge, that would be say $3000.

They figure around $2750 to go from 32GB to 128GB. The Mac Pro price is $800 to go from 32GB to 64GB and $1200 to go from 16GB to 64GB so I could see Apple asking $1000 for another 32GB and $2000 for the full 128GB upgrade.

Nobody knows what a Vega 64 will run over the Vega 56. ZDNet used the price difference between a 6GB Titan Black and a 12GB model ($1100) and noting how much more expensive HBM2 RAM is, figured it would be a $2000 upgrade. For comparison, the D500 to D700 upgrade (with double the DDR5 RAM) is $200, but I accept that's not really relevant, probably. Still, I think we might be looking at closer to $1000 than $2000 based on the differences (core clock, compute units and stream processors). The top end Vega gaming card is rumored to come in around $500, but we do not know how it will compare with the Pro models in terms of core clock, compute units and stream processors.

So we could be looking at something closer to $11,000 than $17,000 - still a pretty penny, but it gives room for Apple to price the new Mac Pro's top-end configurations into the high-teens / low twenties.

17,000 for a computer? Why not buy a car park space to rent it out!?

 

[sfwalter]

I find the base price of the iMacs to be quite competitive. Its when you add/upgrade SSD and RAM is when the competitiveness goes away.