Is the new Mac Pro a failure?

[Daisy81]

Hey, honest question. It seems that the performance differential between a 6 core, dual D700 mac pro and an external thunderbolt drive enclosure would not be that significant compared to the PC you built for the purposes of video editing. Was price the deciding factor between the two options?

I am also confused when you say that it does not have SLI when it has the AMD equivalent of dual GPUs. Is it just that they are not Nvidia?

Price was not a factor. The issue is they are selling processors that are two years old for the price of current processors. In addition I didn't want to expend money on a external raid array if I could simply install it in the computer case and use SATA cables.

The RAM in the Mac Pro is DDR3 and I'm using a high end matched set of DDR4.

The Mac Pro's 3.5GHz 6 core processor on paper sounds like it is the same performance as a 5930K. However the Xeon is actually from the previous generation. The Core i7 5930K is ~20% faster.

My machine with the monitors, keyboard, mouse, head phones and the machine itself cost $5500. The Mac Pro is still good but it is horribly out dated.

I prefer nVidia SLI because Crossfire doesn't provide a smooth frame rate. It has more of a micro stutter then SLI.

Edit:
I know over clocking it not something typically done on a Mac but I'm able to push my Core i7 5930K to 4.7GHz on all cores while encoding, compiling and rendering. This makes for a very fast machine.

 

[flat five]

Price was not a factor.
[...]
In addition I didn't want to expend money on a external raid array if I could simply install it in the computer case and use SATA cables.

hmm.


--------------
anyway, wouldn't having an external disk array be advantageous in your scenario?
the imac, the mbp, the other desktop, the mini..
you can easily move the disks amongst the other components.

like- do people really not see this particular advantage in having external disks?

 

[Bytehoven]

like- do people really not see this particular advantage in having external disks?

I suppose if you're going mobile and you can get by with a few less pieces of gear, maybe it's an advantage.

 

[Daisy81]

hmm.


--------------
anyway, wouldn't having an external disk array be advantageous in your scenario?
the imac, the mbp, the other desktop, the mini..
you can easily move the disks amongst the other components.

like- do people really not see this particular advantage in having external disks?

Not in this case. The Apple machines all network in and access the 16TB array for anything they need over a gigabit/wireless AC network.

The Mac Mini is running headless currently. I access it through VNC or screen sharing on my Mac Book Pro.

The MacBook Pro is my general browsing and light duty machine. I'm not big into the iPad.

The iMac has a 4TB USB3 drive on it but if my boyfriend needs more space he can access the 16TB array at near direct speeds.

There is a reason why the appliance Apple devices default to small drives. They are not meant to be mass storage. They are extensions of the primary machine.

 

[flat five]

They are not meant to be mass storage. They are extensions of the primary machine.

i thought that was a given?

 

[flat five]

I suppose if you're going mobile and you can get by with a few less pieces of gear, maybe it's an advantage.

it's not about having less gear.. it's about having easy access from all your computers/devices.

if i were a fortune teller, i'd say in less than a decade that most of us will have personal clouds or office clouds.
we'll see disk arrays tethered via cables as outdated.. and we'll see an array of disks inside a single personal computer as caveman.

---------
[add]

the next big thing?
the Internet of Things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You should write for Trump team...

You should keep writing on your walls in private and listening to the voices, they're helping.

You read wrong, Thunderbolt practically don't add latency, also it's protocol overhead it's the same as pcie 2.0 each tb2 connection equals to an 4xPcie 2.0


About Latency, please take the time to read this thread http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1190716&start=280

And you cannot comprehend basic bandwidth issues which will introduce latency. Too much bobbing your head up and down at articles where other people theoretically did the thinking for you.

Here is were personal formation arises, and this actually tells you read not an engineer (at least not in electronics or IT) since what you said is actually moot on connectivity. This is like the debate on the parallel port (old printer port) vs usb or serial port, and actually most capture card providers have teach exactly the same as me at the post quoted above.

Here is another spot where you and others in this thread show your condescending and consistently wrong opinions and bias against anything that is not your little glass menagerie world view. Like my apparently not owning a Mac pro, and now your morbid broken attempts at deduction.

W/O Thunderbolt you can't connect more than a single device to an pcie x4 slot (you may add pcie bridges, but those bridge add 148ns latency over 8ns latency on TB2.

Bandwidth collisions cost time.

On this regard I'll follow Einstein's teachings, and of course you win me due your longest experience.

"winning you" is no prize. Perhaps following is your decided lot in life.

In the mean time, enjoy another poll showing the creative community running away from the mac pro in droves....

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/community-vote-5-best-store-bought-desktops-creatives/

 

[Daisy81]

it's not about having less gear.. it's about having easy access from all your computers/devices.

if i were a fortune teller, i'd say in less than a decade that most of us will have personal clouds or office clouds.
we'll see disk arrays tethered via cables as outdated.. and we'll see an array of disks inside a single computer as caveman.

hmm I can see you have more of a consumer outlook.

 

[Daisy81]

i thought that was a given?

Then why on earth would you think floating a USB drive around manually by moving it physically is better then a network?

 

[flat five]

hmm I can see you have more of a consumer outlook.

as opposed to what?

Then why on earth would you think floating a USB drive around manually by moving it physically is better then a network?

huh? i never said usb once.. and i think a network is better..
and having the network's heart/base inside your main computer probably isn't the best way to set it up.

 

[Roykor]

Daisy81, I know for you the money was not a factor. But for me, it is a part of the factor (I dont like to be fooled you know) + the configuration I would like to see, isnt there and will not come. So I will switch to a Windows PC soon.

As much I do like OSX and Apple in overall, u just said it very nicely, the hardware of the nMP older, but you still pay premium. I tried to configure a machine that matches what u describe on paper and it will cost 6268 euro + u still need to invest in external storage. And you are on ATI whch lacks any Cuda off-course. So, outdated hardware (we enter 2016) that cost 2 / 3000 euro more than your system, no CUDA, and everything outside your computer which will be an extra investment (it cost more). I see a: what? + huh + wtf + :*( = PC

Enjoy your awesome horsepower machine and update your CPU and GPU when ever you want, others are doing the same or will follow your example soon.

For those who are on the "the nMP is the best thing i can buy right now" side, I have an question that is bugging me. What would be your edge when u say, okay Apple, now you are crossing the line here. I can not / or will buy this (principle). Or doest it not really matters what Apple charge or how old the hardware is for you?

 

[Mago]

I think on the new Mac Pro as am workstation for OSX users, obviously you have more powerful offers for other OSs but if you do not need boot camp, the best and most convenient Mac Pro is the little black trash can..

Enough said about TB over PCIe (and enough said by tb peripheral vendors about), I'll not comment again on other user "assertions" reading hin/her we could assume no pcie peripheral run stable on TB, the real truth is that is far superior than any other pluggable port, and ties on pcie x4 on performance impossible to measure a meaningful performance or stability difference among tb peripheral and directly plugged pcie counterparts (peripherals vendors explained it enough) plus you get flexibility like never before, you can connect your Mac to an attachment enclosure located at an different floor or to a capture card installed on a special room everything at 99ft and still get 20Gbps throughput.

Soon an updated nMP will arrive with faster NVMe SSD blades (maybe dual) TB3 (40Gbpsa) on usb C, and Fiji based GPUs (hopefully with ECC ram) , plus maybe an 20 core cpu as top option and of course the much needed DDR4 ecc.

Still Wil not be the king of the hill of the workstations but the one that most OSX users waited for.

 

[Roykor]

Still Wil not be the king of the hill of the workstations but the one that most OSX users waited for.

Not king of the hill - pay with hills of gold tho (sarcasm)

 

[Mago]

Daisy81, I know for you the money was not a factor. But for me, it is a part of the factor (I dont like to be fooled you know) + the configuration I would like to see, isnt there and will not come. So I will switch to a Windows PC soon.

As much I do like OSX and Apple in overall, u just said it very nicely, the hardware of the nMP older, but you still pay premium. I tried to configure a machine that matches what u describe on paper and it will cost 6268 euro + u still need to invest in external storage. And you are on ATI whch lacks any Cuda off-course. So, outdated hardware (we enter 2016) that cost 2 / 3000 euro more than your system, no CUDA, and everything outside your computer which will be an extra investment (it cost more). I see a: what? + huh + wtf + :*( = PC

Enjoy your awesome horsepower machine and update your CPU and GPU when ever you want, others are doing the same or will follow your example soon.

For those who are on the "the nMP is the best thing i can buy right now" side, I have an question that is bugging me. What would be your edge when u say, okay Apple, now you are crossing the line here. I can not / or will buy this (principle). Or doest it not really matters what Apple charge or how old the hardware is for you?

The 6,1 nMP do t worth to be buy since April this year when they must have launched a refresh based on Xeon e5v3 and updated pcie ssd.

Another thing is the upcoming 7,1 enough leaked to be confident still have the same form factor with upto date internals.

Before I said you, it's disappointing the vacuum salesman mind at Cuppertino they insist to sell now 2013hw at same price it should if just updated to 2015tech nothing to apologize Apple for that.

Now that both tablet an pc markets decline they can't blame the "post-pc" era for such decline but the lack of appealing upgrades that commit consumers to renew their systems, seems the only Macs that they interested on update are the iMac retina and the MacBook pros all others have to wait at least 24 month for updates, this explains lowest sales ever.

 

[Daisy81]

as opposed to what?

The grades are consumer, prosumer and professional.

It's not a slight just a different mindset and priorities. However thinking a workstation is a consumer level product is concerning.

huh? i never said usb once.. and i think a network is better..
and having the network's heart/base inside your main computer probably isn't the best way to set it up.

We where discussing why I didn't want a Mac Pro because of it doing external expansion vs internal. A tethered connection implies USB/Thunderbolt. One doesn't generally refer to a networked drive as tethered to a machine.

However you bring up a point. That is an option. Performance is inferior though.The type of cloud drive or USB port on a router you speak of is for consumers. To imply my solution of using off the shelf drives in a machine that has more bandwidth and processing power (faster file serving to more devices simultaneously) as archaic (caveman) makes me think we have very different goals.

Why have an extra device to serve files at all if you have a machine that is already capable? Like I already said it is a waste of money and space In my opinion.

My machine needs to be able to stream games at ultra detail to the big screen at 4K and still be able to host files to three other machines at once. Internal drive arrays are not going anywhere as long as they are cost effective and get the job done.

This machine can play as hard as it works but that is a good example of how much data it can stream at once while performing complex computations.

 

[tuxon86]

right.. lab or theoretical speeds would be amazing.
i'm thinking more along the lines of real world use never being worse than 100MB/s.. i.e.- moving a 20GB library wirelessly would take 3 minutes.. real world.

that'll be sweet.

Except you'll only get that theoretical constant 100MB/s in a setting where you can control interference. You won't get that if you live in a WiFi "noisy" neighborhood which most of us in these days and age do. Copper wired connection don't suffer from this.

 

[Daisy81]

Daisy81, I know for you the money was not a factor. But for me, it is a part of the factor (I dont like to be fooled you know) + the configuration I would like to see, isnt there and will not come. So I will switch to a Windows PC soon.

As much I do like OSX and Apple in overall, u just said it very nicely, the hardware of the nMP older, but you still pay premium. I tried to configure a machine that matches what u describe on paper and it will cost 6268 euro + u still need to invest in external storage. And you are on ATI whch lacks any Cuda off-course. So, outdated hardware (we enter 2016) that cost 2 / 3000 euro more than your system, no CUDA, and everything outside your computer which will be an extra investment (it cost more). I see a: what? + huh + wtf + :*( = PC

Enjoy your awesome horsepower machine and update your CPU and GPU when ever you want, others are doing the same or will follow your example soon.

For those who are on the "the nMP is the best thing i can buy right now" side, I have an question that is bugging me. What would be your edge when u say, okay Apple, now you are crossing the line here. I can not / or will buy this (principle). Or doest it not really matters what Apple charge or how old the hardware is for you?

It is a real shame. I love OSX but the con list is growing and I feel like I am being forced out. However increasingly I have noticed that the software quality is degrading because of them trying to do too much at once at a breakneck pace.

Apple's mail program is nice especially for included software. iMovie is a gateway software tool which is fine. But I question Final Cut after seeing what they did to aperture.

I have not found one tool in my workflow not available on Windows. They run just as well if not better because my machine is faster. Apple is doing to professional software what they did with games ages ago. I for the life of me don't understand why they are allowing their foundation to erode.

By the way I love your equation.

 

[996085]

The grades are consumer, prosumer and professional.

It's not a slight just a different mindset and priorities. However thinking a workstation is a consumer level product is concerning.


We where discussing why I didn't want a Mac Pro because of it doing external expansion vs internal. A tethered connection implies USB/Thunderbolt. One doesn't generally refer to a networked drive as tethered to a machine.

However you bring up a point. That is an option. Performance is inferior though.The type of cloud drive or USB port on a router you speak of is for consumers. To imply my solution of using off the shelf drives in a machine that has more bandwidth and processing power (faster file serving to more devices simultaneously) as archaic (caveman) makes me think we have very different goals.

This is the part the pro-nMP advocates continue to forget. They continue to dismiss other peoples requirements for those imposed by Apple. Until they can understand people have different requirements / wants they'll continue their dismissive comments.

Why have an extra device to serve files at all if you have a machine that is already capable? Like I already said it is a waste of money and space In my opinion.

My machine needs to be able to stream games at ultra detail to the big screen at 4K and still be able to host files to three other machines at once. Internal drive arrays are not going anywhere as long as they are cost effective and get the job done.

This machine can play as hard as it works but that is a good example of how much data it can stream at once while performing complex computations.

My brother has a Retina iMac which is attached to external storage via Thunderbolt. Sadly the quiet environment created by the iMac (and advocated for by the nMP crowd) is lost with the external storage. The drives themselves make noise as they spin / seek and the enclosure itself makes noise due to the cooling fan. Likewise it takes up space on his desk and consumes another outlet on his UPS. IOW the benefits of the nMP (compact, reduce power consumption, quiet, etc) is lost as soon as you add the very items which made the cMP "noisy", "larger", and increased power consumption. But Apple can say the nMP is smaller, quieter, and uses less power and nMP advocates fall right in line behind Apples marketing department.

 

[Mago]

This is the part the pro-nMP advocates continue to forget. They continue to dismiss other peoples requirements for those imposed by Apple. Until they can understand people have different requirements / wants they'll continue their dismissive comments.


My brother has a Retina iMac which is attached to external storage via Thunderbolt. Sadly the quiet environment created by the iMac (and advocated for by the nMP crowd) is lost with the external storage. The drives themselves make noise as they spin / seek and the enclosure itself makes noise due to the cooling fan. Likewise it takes up space on his desk and consumes another outlet on his UPS. IOW the benefits of the nMP (compact, reduce power consumption, quiet, etc) is lost as soon as you add the very items which made the cMP "noisy", "larger", and increased power consumption. But Apple can say the nMP is smaller, quieter, and uses less power and nMP advocates fall right in line behind Apples marketing department.

I connect my nMP to an lacie little big disk Thunderbolt ssd which actually is as fast as the nMP ssd, also I've an lacie 2Big Disk and none is noisy, I don't know every enclosure but having hdd inside the workstation indeed you have the same noise in.

External Thunderbolt storage may not appeal everybody but has huge advantages: you can unplug from the workstation and plug to an server and immediately you have your workstation free for other tasks or to just shutdown and extend its service life and your files still available to your workgroup.

The issue with plugs on the ups is an minor easy to solve as long your ups have enough power for all the devices (not my case I only have 4 devices and everyone have a plug in the ups, but I knew somebody just plugging all their peripherals to an multiple socket and this to the UPS), BUT I Think the typical Mac Pro setup doesn't implies more than 4 occupied sockets (nMP - monitor - storage 1 - storage 2 / monitor 2).

I meant as pro user as someone using some professional application on some specific work flow requiring huge compute power, not as professional user someone which pretends to be am IT handyman and which wants the most powerful setup (just in case) and also don't wanna loose the enjoyment to customize by own hand, this one I name it enthusiast/handyman I think Apple doesn't care of them.

 

[996085]

I connect my nMP to an lacie little big disk Thunderbolt ssd which actually is as fast as the nMP ssd, also I've an lacie 2Big Disk and none is noisy, I don't know every enclosure but having hdd inside the workstation indeed you have the same noise in.

His enclosure is by no means noisy...it's just not silent. You know the criteria set by the nMP advocates. It makes no more noise than the cMP he had before buying the iMac. IOW it's a wash. Likewise yours is a two drive setup whereas his is four...so his system has to cool an additional two disks.

External Thunderbolt storage may not appeal everybody but has huge advantages: you can unplug from the workstation and plug to an server and immediately you have your workstation free for other tasks or to just shutdown and extend its service life and your files still available to your workgroup.

Nothing about the cMP form factor prevented one from using external storage if they wanted to. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the nMP form factor when it comes to internal storage.

The issue with plugs on the ups is an minor easy to solve as long your ups have enough power for all the devices (not my case I only have 4 devices and everyone have a plug in the ups, but I knew somebody just plugging all their peripherals to an multiple socket and this to the UPS), BUT I Think the typical Mac Pro setup doesn't implies more than 4 occupied sockets (nMP - monitor - storage 1 - storage 2 / monitor 2).

Yeah, yeah...I get it...same old story I've heard time and time again from people...issues people bring up are dismissed because...well...because Apple said so. People's needs be damned...all that matters is what Apples marketing department tells their customers. And there are people like you willing to fall all over yourselves to carry that marketing message on.

I meant as pro user as someone using some professional application on some specific work flow requiring huge compute power, not as professional user someone which pretends to be am IT handyman and which wants the most powerful setup (just in case) and also don't wanna loose the enjoyment to customize by own hand, this one I name it enthusiast/handyman I think Apple doesn't care of them.

I really don't know what it is you're attempting to say here.

 

[Arron Rouse]

The Mac Pro on the other hand is crap. I have wanted a Mac Pro for a long time but I didn't want to buy an outdated machine for top dollar. My hopes where killed when the the new Mac Pro was released. I ended up building my own desktop about six months ago because I gave up on waiting. It is a Core i7 5930K (3.5GHz 6 Core w/ HT) 32GB DDR4, 500GB SSD, RAID 0 Array of 4 x 4TB 7200 RPM drives and 2 x nVidia GeForce GTX 970 cards for my video editing using Premiere. It is water cooled and it is near silent at idle and mildly noisy when cranking out video or rending 3D projects. It runs Windows 10 Pro and it is everything I wish I could get in a Mac.

So here we have a perfect example of where the split lies. I'm sure it's an awesome games machine (though I don't get why you didn't spend the extra 8% cash on 980s) but it's amateur hour.

• Built it yourself? So there's nothing other than RTB guarantees for the components. That's if you haven't voided those with the water cooling. A failure of any component -- which is far more likely in a hand-built machine -- could stop your business for several days. E.g. if your PSU died, how long are you going to spend trying to figure that out before you order a new one?
  
• Everything in one box? So a single component failure -- e.g. a dodgy RAM stick or bad Windows update -- means nobody can access the company projects. Including you. One dodgy capacitor and your business is toast until you've traced the fault.
• Water cooling? So you have pretty much guaranteed that the machine will fail at some point. One leak and your business is toast until you find it and fix it. That's if it hasn't taken out something important.
  
• RAID 0? So a single drive failure would destroy your business. And because it's RAID 0 with 4 drives, it is 4 times more likely to fail than a single drive. Even if you've got it backed up, it would still be more than a working day to restore once you've figured out what went wrong and bought a replacement drive. Given your setup, my guess is that you don't have an additional 16TB for backups.
  
• And so on.

What you have built is just teenager-with-money. I'm sure it's got awesome performance while it's working but you've stored up so many problems for yourself that there's no way I'd risk using you for a project.

For comparison:

• If my cMP failed, an engineer would be here within 4 working hours.
• If it was completely shot, I could buy an nMP as a replacement and restore my work from Time Machine on the NAS.
• If a drive failed in the office NAS, it's RAID 5 so it would still work but be slower until the faulty drive was replaced.
• If the NAS itself failed, an engineer would be here within 4 working hours.
• If the office caught fire and burned everything, we'd just have to get 6 replacement machines. The weekly offsite backups of the NAS would have us up and running again within a few days.

You traded those things for a 20% faster processor and SLI. Like I said, amateur hour.

Then we come to the upvotes for your machine. To those who upvoted it, you have a lot of explaining to do. Just because you bought a machine with Pro in the name doesn't make you a professional. To me, anyone who thought Daisy's set up was an appropriate replacement for a cMP or nMP is also an amateur.

I beg to differ. It's possible but likely not practical given other options which are available.

AFAIK, it's not possible to make a Thunderbolt card for the cMP as its chipset simply doesn't support it. To support TB, the PCIe host controller needs to support it and that didn't come until later Intel chipsets. TB was prototyped in a cMP case but it had a custom motherboard with a prototype chipset.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL
I'm treating this whole thread as a rather rude and unruly pub conversation with friends. So much so that I'm tempted to have a few beers before posting.

 

[Daisy81]

I connect my nMP to an lacie little big disk Thunderbolt ssd which actually is as fast as the nMP ssd, also I've an lacie 2Big Disk and none is noisy, I don't know every enclosure but having hdd inside the workstation indeed you have the same noise in.

The Lacie 2Big Disk is $1200. That is a massive waste of money. For $300 less I can upgrade my machine with a 1.2TB PCIe SSD in a PCIe x16 slot. (Link) In fact I could even add two of them and have 400GB more storage then your solution if you bought a second and use the $600 in savings along with the proceeds of selling my 5930K and straight up buy a 5960X or keep a spare 5930K on hand just in case. That is how outrageously and unnecessarily expensive thunderbolt expansion is. This is why adoption is so slow. I mean I get more storage and a better CPU then you for free compared to your storage solution.

In regards to using networked arrays elsewhere in the building, just because I don't doesn't mean I can't. I'm not limited. That is the point and the reason why the new Mac Pro is not doing as well.

External Thunderbolt storage may not appeal everybody but has huge advantages: you can unplug from the workstation and plug to an server and immediately you have your workstation free for other tasks or to just shutdown and extend its service life and your files still available to your workgroup.

Powering down and powering up machines is the time where they are most likely to fail. Thermal expansion caused by cooling down and warming up the machines components will cause them to degrade faster. All of my machines are on 24/7 except for maintenance. Which brings up another point. The machine I built has filters in the case which keeps dust out.

Moving the drive from machine to machine by moving the cable is Mickey Mouse and amateur. Not only do you now have the possibility of dropping the drive during the move or in some way damaging it you have to be in the room to make the change. My machines are networked. That means even if I am thousands of miles away I can VPN in and get to any file on any machine without having to move a drive. When you can do this the idea of moving drives around like that has zero appeal because there is zero point.

 

[flat five]

Except you'll only get that theoretical constant 100MB/s in a setting where you can control interference. You won't get that if you live in a WiFi "noisy" neighborhood which most of us in these days and age do. Copper wired connection don't suffer from this.

hmm, yeah, I don't really know how fast it could be in real world.
the 100MB/s guess is way under the listed spec (theoretical speed would be around 1200MB/s)... I think we could at very least expect 1/12 of that in real world.. it would probably be faster than that in many cases but I do feel it's safe to assume 100MB/s as a worst case scenario.

(but then again, my maths could be screwy)

fwiw, the theoretical limits of 802.11ac are faster than my 100MB/s real world guess with ax.. and ax is said to be 10x faster than ac.

 

[flat five]

The grades are consumer, prosumer and professional.

It's not a slight just a different mindset and priorities. However thinking a workstation is a consumer level product is concerning.

how are these grades determined? what is the difference between the three? what would i need to be doing for you to grade me as prosumer or professional instead of being placed in your consumer category?

 

[Daisy81]

So here we have a perfect example of where the split lies. I'm sure it's an awesome games machine (though I don't get why you didn't spend the extra 8% cash on 980s) but it's amateur hour.

Condescending much? I'll overlook it because you don't sound technical. It's probably best you stick to Apple devices and don't try to go beyond the confines of the box too much.

I don't think you understand the cost difference of a 980 and a 970. Two 970 cards in SLI blow one 980 away for the same cost as a single 980. This is another example of knowing what hardware to buy to get the best bang for the buck.

At the end of the day I still have a limited budget and don't want to spend all my profits. The more I can have it pull double duty the better.

Everything else mentioned is fear tactics of what if. The Apple solution to a broken machine is simple. You go to the store, break out the credit card and buy another appliance because it costs more to fix the old machine then buy the new model. That is a consumer mind set.