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MP 7,1 Is the new Mac Pro too expensive? [MERGED]

kis said:
One major question will be though: Can you throw a standard SSD in there? RAM is easily upgradable, but the 256gb SSD in the base model is a complete and utter joke and, frankly, a slap in the face for 2019.
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Thats the $64,000 question (also the cost of a fully specced up mac pro) CAN you throw in a PCIe mounted NVMe drive , say a 1 or 2TB samsung 970 pro on a card, and BOOT off it, or plug an evo 860 into one of those 2 sata ports and BOOT off that should you actually want to, or does the security chip DICTATE that an apple only ssd or raided ssds in that lower slot pair is the ONLY boot drive possible. (unlikely but a possible nightmare scenario)
 
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mode11 said:
Sure, this is a market, and one that will probably be very pleased with the new system, but the price-point makes it an irrelevance to 99.9% of Mac users
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Totally agree; this new beast could have been aimed at a broader market, but it's the old 'don't want to cannibalise imac pro sales' problem.

They only hope remaining is that after a year or two, they'll have recouped most of the r&d costs, and will be more minded to release a mac pro which does aim at that 99.9% group. That would be sweet. So, back to the waiting game ;)
 
Well, that's the downside of the platform (OS) owner also being the sole provider of hardware. It's not like we can just go elsewhere if we don't like the current hardware offerings.
 
IndioX said:
what did you expect?

all have demanded a highend machine and now all are complaining about the price

unbelievably
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Exactly. 90% of the people complaining about the price would have their creative needs more than satisfied with a 2k Mac Mini, or their gaming needs met with a 1.5k Gaming PC.

The target market for this Mac Pro need more than that.
 
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So if the new Mac Pro were a $200m super computer, the correct response would be "Hey, people who predict the weather need something that powerful. It's good value compared to a Cray."?

Bear in mind that on the PC side, the idea of a powerful, good value tower is not some outrageous flight of fantasy that's far too much for lowly serfs to expect. Apple just has us by the balls if we want to run macOS, and they take full advantage of it.
 
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AustinIllini said:
No actual professional would use a setup like that, but you have at it.

Because the Mac Pro is not for you.
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I think it's cute you've appointed yourself arbiter of Mac Pro ownership and use.

If the price/performance ratio makes sense, I'll acquire 7,1s. If it doesn't, I'll use the best tool for the job, and currently that looks like Z series Hackintosh. The energy industry here churns off-lease workstations for cheap. Picking up dual socket Z820s (low clocked) and stuffing them with GPUs may well continue to outperform Mac Pros, PCIe expansion chassis, and GPGPU servers for a while to come (in my environment).

Right now I'm running (3) GTX 1080s per Z820 for let's call it 24 TFLOPs per box. If a single duo MPX module gets me 28 TFLOPs, and 2 gets me 56 per box, of course I have to consider it. Apple appears to have listened. We know it'll be quiet, and we know it won't throttle. Will they burn up over time, and how much will they cost?

I'll decide when 7,1 benchmarks and prices are released.
 
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The problem is, the iMac costs about $4000 in a pro configuaration, the iMacPro about $6000, so the $5000 for the MacPro is "ok" from this point of view. The main problem is the lack of an $2000 5K monitor.
 
We bought an Apple //e in 1983, paid $2k for the machine and another $1k for the extended 80-column card. About $7k in today's money, though it did come with a monitor. I guess not much has changed. :cool:
 
Coyote2006 said:
The problem is, the iMac costs about $4000 in a pro configuaration, the iMacPro about $6000, so the $5000 for the MacPro is "ok" from this point of view. The main problem is the lack of an $2000 5K monitor.
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Except for the fact that the Mac Pro configuration sold for $6,000 lacks a decent video card and storage (for this kind of price, I mean).
 
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danwells said:
$600 motherboards don't have close to the specs of the Apple board - they have gigabit Ethernet, no Thunderbolt, fewer RAM slots (at lower speeds), no PCIe x16 slots and much less power delivery (they're meant to run 165 watt server CPUs). The closest thing you can buy to the Apple board is the $1600 Asus Dominus Extreme - HP, Dell and friends won't sell their high-end workstation boards separately.
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Dell and HP might not (actually, they do if you have the right contacts) but Supermicro does. And a $500 Supermicro motherboard has 7x PCIe slots, 3TB RAM support, 10GigE, and support for every tier of CPU - Including the 205W models. Heck, if you're OK with "just" having two dual-height GPUs and 165W CPUs, you can even put together a workstation-class system in a mATX case.
 
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Also, this is the company, that in 1997 sold you a MessagePad 2x00 for about 1000$ without a power brick, which you needed for charging the batteries.
 
mode11 said:
So if the new Mac Pro were a $200m super computer, the correct response would be "Hey, people who predict the weather need something that powerful. It's good value compared to a Cray."?
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Yes that would be the correct response if it was competitive in that market.

You might also still be saying "I wish they did a mid range tower for the 'rest of us' with a bit of expandability" but that's a different problem.

I'm grumpy about that too, but it doesn't make the new Mac Pro a bad computer in it's intended class/area. It's the wrong one for me, and for many others, so we are naturally grumpy we're still not being catered for. What we want is the old 'Mac Pro' as it was previously pitched, what we've been shown is essentially a 'Mac Pro Pro' (or Mac Pro^2). Annoying for us, but not a bad product.
 
Why do you people need Xeons and ECC in the first place? Unless you want to run multiple CPUs on the same board.

These things are completely unnecessary for any kind of Audio and Video production let alone 3D/CAD modeling and rendering. If you are into simulation and some complex math then maybe yes since I don't know much about such software but most of the Video/Audio apps favors faster core than number of cores and most of them can't even utilize that crazy core number anyway. How many times did you have RAM fail on you? Don't buy cheap RAM and you would be fine. In other words let's all stop pretending our workflow is like some huge VFX studio or Hollywood cutting floor. Audio people have moved on from whole overkill specifications a while ago and they know shoving 6 HDX cards makes zero sense cause no one does 100+ tracks with VST racks on them at the same time and if they do they are doing it wrong.
 
Well I must say, I as a music professional have been holding on to my treasured "perfect but a bit limited now" 2008 Mac Pro, awaiting the ultimate upgrade for running Logic and Final Cut.

Having just watched
reviewing the base configuration, I'm actually staggered at what Apple have had the cheek to provide, rather less powerful than the iMac Pro and way way pricier. Hope nobody shouts at me here, as I'm an Apple advocate through and through, but honestly....$6000 for a 256GB storage and 32GB RAM, an "ordinary" graphics card, no monitor (or monitor stand!), and a recommendation that a video editor would have to pay AT LEAST $9000 plus monitor just for a minimum configuration (let alone having no nVidia options) just to justify getting something better than an iMac Pro....well, does anyone here disagree with this?

The reviewer states, quite fairly and rationally IMO, that especially for $6000, the base config should be 1) a better graphics card 2) 48GB RAM (using all 6 slots, ie optimal config) and 3) 1TB SSD (like the base iMac Pro). Penny for anyone's thoughts.

Cheers from the UK.
 
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chuanist said:
No one has mentioned the price of the display ... sans 999.00 display stand. Does the new Pro drive older displays?
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I do agree with this. They were idiots to not just ignore that and then put it on the Store when available or say it was $6K and have the option to remove it in store / swap for vesa mount.

Yes it will drive any display.

Single Vega2
Two HDMI 2.0 ports on card
Four DisplayPort connections routed to system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports
Support for up to six 4K displays, two 5K displays, or two Pro Display XDRs

Dual Vega2
Four DisplayPort connections routed to system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports
Support for up to eight 4K displays, four 5K displays, or four Pro Display XDRs
 
christof69 said:
Well I must say, I as a music professional have been holding on to my treasured "perfect but a bit limited now" 2008 Mac Pro, awaiting the ultimate upgrade for running Logic and Final Cut.

Having just watched
reviewing the base configuration, I'm actually staggered at what Apple have had the cheek to provide, rather less powerful than the iMac Pro and way way pricier. Hope nobody shouts at me here, as I'm an Apple advocate through and through, but honestly....$6000 for a 256GB storage and 32GB RAM, an "ordinary" graphics card, no monitor (or monitor stand!), and a recommendation that a video editor would have to pay AT LEAST $9000 plus monitor just for a minimum configuration (let alone having no nVidia options) just to justify getting something better than an iMac Pro....well, does anyone here disagree with this?

The reviewer states, quite fairly and rationally IMO, that especially for $6000, the base config should be 1) a better graphics card 2) 48GB RAM (using all 6 slots, ie optimal config) and 3) 1TB SSD (like the base iMac Pro). Penny for anyone's thoughts.

Cheers from the UK.
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Yes, I think the whole point here is not that the Mac Pro is expensive, but that the basic configuration is too weak for the price. Perhaps all the expandability justify the high price: the motherboard, the power supply, the case, the connections. But it still sounds a rip-off for the average user who has no idea of the price of these components.

We still do not know how much an updated configuration will cost. Probably a lot more. But at least I think any user could upgrade the internals without having to pay the Apple tax.
 
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christof69 said:
Well I must say, I as a music professional have been holding on to my treasured "perfect but a bit limited now" 2008 Mac Pro, awaiting the ultimate upgrade for running Logic and Final Cut.

Having just watched
reviewing the base configuration, I'm actually staggered at what Apple have had the cheek to provide, rather less powerful than the iMac Pro and way way pricier. Hope nobody shouts at me here, as I'm an Apple advocate through and through, but honestly....$6000 for a 256GB storage and 32GB RAM, an "ordinary" graphics card, no monitor (or monitor stand!), and a recommendation that a video editor would have to pay AT LEAST $9000 plus monitor just for a minimum configuration (let alone having no nVidia options) just to justify getting something better than an iMac Pro....well, does anyone here disagree with this?

The reviewer states, quite fairly and rationally IMO, that especially for $6000, the base config should be 1) a better graphics card 2) 48GB RAM (using all 6 slots, ie optimal config) and 3) 1TB SSD (like the base iMac Pro). Penny for anyone's thoughts.

Cheers from the UK.
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The RAM is the Killer here. 1.5tb is going to be 18K - in mac or PC world.

Nvidia is less of an issue now for a lot of use cases - all the major app makers announced support for this new MP

The upgrades were always a bit odd - RAM and SSD were insane - CPU and GPU (D300>D700) were not a lot. Hundreds not thousands. But on this you can buy the SSDs and RAM elsewhere for a lot cheaper - it’s standard.

So the real issue is how much the Vega2 GPUs will be. My guess is 1.5K each card.

It is expensive as a prosumer machine and about right as a Pro machine and I do wonder if they will make a xMac now for the 3K sweet spot - Be they do in a year or so.

I do wonder if you can just put in a Standard AMD card - I am sure you can if it’s supported like the Radeon VII...

Just as a point it has 12 not 6 Dimm slots (6 channels)
 
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ETN3 said:
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On paper, the Mac pro is more expensive compared to someone building their own. I'd say given that 6000 dollar price tag, and apple charging a thousand dollars for a monitor stand, its hard not to say that
 
IMO the base Mac Pro should have come with a 1 TB SSD and Vega II, with no other changes, and maybe 4999, and it would have been a great product at a great price.
 
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Flint Ironstag said:
I think it's cute you've appointed yourself arbiter of Mac Pro ownership and use.

If the price/performance ratio makes sense, I'll acquire 7,1s. If it doesn't, I'll use the best tool for the job, and currently that looks like Z series Hackintosh. The energy industry here churns off-lease workstations for cheap. Picking up dual socket Z820s (low clocked) and stuffing them with GPUs may well continue to outperform Mac Pros, PCIe expansion chassis, and GPGPU servers for a while to come (in my environment).

Right now I'm running (3) GTX 1080s per Z820 for let's call it 24 TFLOPs per box. If a single duo MPX module gets me 28 TFLOPs, and 2 gets me 56 per box, of course I have to consider it. Apple appears to have listened. We know it'll be quiet, and we know it won't throttle. Will they burn up over time, and how much will they cost?

I'll decide when 7,1 benchmarks and prices are released.
Click to expand...
Again, you want to break the law, you have at it.
 
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