Thanks for posting the link to the Rain workstation; that's the cleanest comparison I've seen between nearly identical 3.33 6-core xeon workstations. Ouch!
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Is the current quad-core Mac Pro even worth buying?
- Thread starter geniusmac
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I meant vendors in general, sorry. SW or HW. GPU acceleration is terribly supported on Apple HW because Apple does not work with vendors. Flash had 2 chipsets that worked. Silverlight has zero (1% processor use in Windows, 120% in OS X) Mercury engine again has almost zero current cards aside from Quadro. It is easiest to support GPGPU because the devs know exactly what cards are going to be used in Apple gear as opposed to the endless PC possibilities. But still disclaimers and charts where 1 or 2 Mac's have the ability. Apple is the API gatekeeper and they do not share what devs need to allow HW accelerated performance.
I guess the the other issue with a non-ecc, non-dual socket capable i7 mac "pro" is what market are you trying to serve?
Wait a sec, hear me out....
The only real commonly used benefit you will get (with an i7) vs a mini is upgradable video (well, sure, and more than 2 RAM slots, but 16gb is heaps for most people who don't also want ECC). However, to get that you'll be buying a much more expensive case.
The CPU cost of i7 vs xeon in a mac pro is likely not that significant.
Unless you play 3d games (which isn't the mac's forte` anyway), the only reason to have a high end 3d card is GPGPU stuff, which is a pretty limited market.
In terms of cost vs benefit, most users chasing an i7 may well be better off buying a pimped out mini and upgrading more regularly.
An i7 in a desktop case is a very limited market for apple - and it won't be price competitive with other desktop form factor boxes out there. Sure, you could run windows on it, but if you want to do that you could buy a mini AND a windows PC for the cost of an i7 based pro, i would wager.
If you're going to pay the extra for the mac pro case, you may as well stump the little bit more for a xeon...
Wait a sec, hear me out....
The only real commonly used benefit you will get (with an i7) vs a mini is upgradable video (well, sure, and more than 2 RAM slots, but 16gb is heaps for most people who don't also want ECC). However, to get that you'll be buying a much more expensive case.
The CPU cost of i7 vs xeon in a mac pro is likely not that significant.
Unless you play 3d games (which isn't the mac's forte` anyway), the only reason to have a high end 3d card is GPGPU stuff, which is a pretty limited market.
In terms of cost vs benefit, most users chasing an i7 may well be better off buying a pimped out mini and upgrading more regularly.
An i7 in a desktop case is a very limited market for apple - and it won't be price competitive with other desktop form factor boxes out there. Sure, you could run windows on it, but if you want to do that you could buy a mini AND a windows PC for the cost of an i7 based pro, i would wager.
If you're going to pay the extra for the mac pro case, you may as well stump the little bit more for a xeon...
I like slots and desk top graphics..
The better comparison is to an iMac..most generic PC motherboards will take 32GB as can the iMac. but let take my Hackintosh for example.
I now have all 8 of my HD's internal
I have 3 optical drives
I have desktop graphics
My LAN is PCI-E
USB hub PCI
a pair of SATA 3 SATA/eSATA cards
This is easy stuff on a Windows box, and hackintosh but cannot be done with anything lower than the MP on the Apple side. Apple will never make the xMac but that doesn't mean that I don't need/desire the in between.
I prefer a good and reliable workstation with high quality and reliability.
The so-called "headless mac" is not necessary and will never come. iMacs serve that market perfectly.
For professional users the Mac Pro workstation is the best, and Apple has it distinguished as that. And nobody wants it watered down.
Only thing I'm hoping for is that we'll get a better entry level model than last time.
I'd say a 6-core as an entry level machine, then a dual six and a dual eight. Maybe even a single eight. But no 4-cores, really.
The so-called "headless mac" is not necessary and will never come. iMacs serve that market perfectly.
For professional users the Mac Pro workstation is the best, and Apple has it distinguished as that. And nobody wants it watered down.
Only thing I'm hoping for is that we'll get a better entry level model than last time.
I'd say a 6-core as an entry level machine, then a dual six and a dual eight. Maybe even a single eight. But no 4-cores, really.
I like desktop GPUs and slots as well, but we're in the minority by a LONG LONG way I'm afraid. The market for us is so small, that apple will just push you towards a full xeon based pro or an imac/mini instead.
The entire reason apple's margins are so good is because they streamline production down to a few select models and punch out large quantities of them to get economy of scale.
Fragmenting their lineup any more will cost them this efficiency advantage.
I know this sucks, but it's likely to retain a quad core in the base model if they use similarly priced hardware.
In the current, outdated set-up, the 6-core costs $ 1200 more than the 4-core.
I just don't see a $1200 difference between a 4-core and a 6-core. Where does this price difference come from? Not from the processor and the motherboard alone...
It was $1,200 to upgrade a $300 processor to a $1,000 processor at the time. The alternatives were buying one yourself, taking it apart, installing it and selling the old one - maybe saving yourself $400. Apple obviously knew what they were doing because a heck of a lot of people have 6-core Mac Pros, despite them being upwards of $2,000 more than systems using the same level of hardware. All the big companies price upgrade options high because they know businesses will pay it and those who want the best price will always find it elsewhere.
If Apple maintain their current pricing then you will get a 3.6GHz 4-core Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM for $2,499 with $400 to upgrade to a 3.2Ghz 6-core.
Umbongo just explained it flawlessly. Apple doesn't adjust their pricing. You must look at 2010 era pricing.
Ideally you would have bought it 2 years ago. I bought a couple 2 summers ago - I'm glad I did.
Buy it today? Only if you need it, or can find a good deal used or refurbished.
the issue for 2010 mac pro is not the cpu.
the sata II backplane needs to be sata III and the gpu needs to be an hd7950 and a hd7970.
t-bolt is only needed as a bto if you have other t-bolt macs
the sata II backplane needs to be sata III and the gpu needs to be an hd7950 and a hd7970.
t-bolt is only needed as a bto if you have other t-bolt macs
You need to look at the overall picture here. First Apple only supports older machines for so long. They may be phased out together, or anything using the 2009-2010 logic board may go away. Perhaps AMD cuts off support for those cards or whatever. It won't happen soon. It's just that you're likely to be running up to date longer on the newer one. Gpu options would be updated. You'd see a 7XXX gpu of some kind rather than the 5770 and 5870. The 5870 is still quite good, but you would get something a bit better without the extra configuration.
If that is the approximate pricing model, you'd get better performance for less money. Also it's not just a case of how much you make in a day. If your current machine wasn't doing the job, it would already be replaced. It typically comes down to if you can gain enough efficiency in the short term to justify the cost of a machine that is likely to be updated soon. Since the argument that it could be killed comes up frequently, I'll say that I don't think that's a good argument in favor of buying the current one. It's been out for a while already, and when Apple kills things, they quickly move away and try not to look at them.
thanks for the reply. I don't have a machine currently that is why I desperately need one. As far as the gpu .. i could live with the 5770 until the new gpu comes out. I would still get 3 years out of the warranty with applecare but highly doubt I would keep the computer that long .. i tend to only keep things for a 1-2 years at most.
This is going to be a nail biter.
There's still a chance for Apple to ditch the 4-core, start with a 6-core - a slightly more expensive entry level model, raising the bar of what a workstation means for Apple.
Just waiting for the sign of a Mac Pro rumor among all those iPhone and iOS rumors.
yea
i need a computer bad .. i think the next time the 6 core comes on the refurb store I'm gonna buy
IMHO the value for money in Mac Pro's after the 2008 models began to wane anyway, so the fact that the current models are so old only exacerbates the issue. It wouldn't be so bad if the iMac wasn't just a sealed unit that had some scope for user upgrades and decent ventilation for multiple night long rendering jobs over its lifetime but I don't think so.
In fairness, it's not all Apple's fault - Intel set the price and mechanisms for which processors do and don't work in dual configs which has pushed the price of the 8 / 12 cores up but even so, the single processor pro's are expensive for what they are.
It's so weird that after luring pro PC users to switch after Apple went with Intel and did for a period offer good value upgradeable machines, they are now retreating backwards to their earlier days of sealed, expensive boxes again.
If you're not techy or up to the hassle, hackintoshes aren't really an option but that whole scene has got it's act together pretty well these days....It's more viable than it used to be. I bought an i7 Wintel box last year with no intention of hacking it (so I didn't choose specifically hackintosh friendly parts) but I recently installed OS X on it just to see how it performs and it's a beast. Unless pricing of Mac Pro's comes down again, I can't see myself buying another one.
In fairness, it's not all Apple's fault - Intel set the price and mechanisms for which processors do and don't work in dual configs which has pushed the price of the 8 / 12 cores up but even so, the single processor pro's are expensive for what they are.
It's so weird that after luring pro PC users to switch after Apple went with Intel and did for a period offer good value upgradeable machines, they are now retreating backwards to their earlier days of sealed, expensive boxes again.
If you're not techy or up to the hassle, hackintoshes aren't really an option but that whole scene has got it's act together pretty well these days....It's more viable than it used to be. I bought an i7 Wintel box last year with no intention of hacking it (so I didn't choose specifically hackintosh friendly parts) but I recently installed OS X on it just to see how it performs and it's a beast. Unless pricing of Mac Pro's comes down again, I can't see myself buying another one.
I believe that url might not offer the best insight when talking about a potential refresh from the Westmere series Xeon to the SandyBridge E series Xeon. Rather than looking at the i7 980x you should look at the x5680. For SandyBridge rather than looking at the 3930k you should look at the E5 1650. It paints a slightly different picture.
This is another synthetic benchmark to consider but it shows aprox. 37% increase. http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5680+%40+3.33GHz
Who knows what will actually be released... if anything. Just a thought.