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Jumping ship, options?

B

BonusFeatures75

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2011
3
0
I have decided that apple is no longer a company I can rely on to make machines I will be making money with, no timelines for releases, recent events involving the mac pro, ditching the pros (whether they say they are or not) I'v decided to go back to the dark side.

I'm building a custom workstation through a well known website (not sure if im allowed to say it on these forums?), and for the same price I was going to spend on my new mac pro which never came ($4200, with 3rd party ram and drives) Im looking at a machine with the same two 4 core sandy bridge server grade processors that would have been in the new mac pro- 2x 2.40 ghz quad core procs, an nvidia gtx 690, 32 gigs ram, solid state, regular drive, usb 3.0, esata, firewire 800, liquid cooled.

I use my machine for video post production needs such as working with 4k and 5k video from red, editing in avid, color grading in davinci, and the occassional compositing in after effects.

Id be a liar if I said I wasnt going to game on it too :p

Alright so all that said, heres my question. I can get a machine with the 2x 2.40 ghz sandy bridge E quad cores, or I can get the same machine with a sandy bridge i7 6 core 3.40 ghz. Which processor is going to better suite my needs?

Not sure if i want 2 less cores and take the higher ghz, and no more server grade processor with the consumer i7, or go for the server grade dual processor combo with 2 more cores and less ghz.
 
I've been considering the same recently. I was waiting around to see what the new offerings were and was left pretty underwhelmed. And making the switch back to windows isn't as bad as it would have been several years ago due to software constraints. I think the Avid Symphony offer just might be enough to force me to decide.


As for hardware, I'm still looking into that, but I was contemplating running a single 2687w on a dual chip board with the notion that I'd be able to upgrade to a dual CPU system down the road. It's an expensive chip though and I wouldn't see much better performance than an overclocked i7 which obviously comes in at a much lower cost.

However, I'm going to be doing a lot of 3D animation and rendering, so that's what has me leaning towards the server chips.
 
You can post the website, that way people can help recommend alternatives :)

The E5-1650 is a better choice than two 2.4GHz 4-core E5-2609s as they don't have hyper-threading or turboboost and you are going to be paying for more a dual processor board and use more power.

Not every Xeon Intel makes is a logical solution for someone buying their own system.

I'd only consider one (or two) of these Xeon processors for a workstation - excluding 8-core models as they are all worth consideration. All the others offer only minimal performance gains. If you are going to overclock obviously there are i5 and i7 alternatives.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/65732,52271,64621,64601,64593,64591,64587
 
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handsome pete said:
I've been considering the same recently. I was waiting around to see what the new offerings were and was left pretty underwhelmed. And making the switch back to windows isn't as bad as it would have been several years ago due to software constraints. I think the Avid Symphony offer just might be enough to force me to decide.


As for hardware, I'm still looking into that, but I was contemplating running a single 2687w on a dual chip board with the notion that I'd be able to upgrade to a dual CPU system down the road. It's an expensive chip though and I wouldn't see much better performance than an overclocked i7 which obviously comes in at a much lower cost.

However, I'm going to be doing a lot of 3D animation and rendering, so that's what has me leaning towards the server chips.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat. Found myself looking at Windows today, and configuring an HP 820z workstation. Got a great price on a 2.7 gig 16 core machine with 16 gigs of ram, ATI Firepro graphics 2 gig card, and a three year warranty, all for $7,320.00 including tax. Almost felt like I was fooling around on the wife or something. I'm really not sure what to do at this point. That HP looks very tempting.
 
My current setup is a Mac Pro at my desk + a MBA for travel. I like OS X much better than Windows, but I have a serious issue with paying top dollar for a new Mac Pro that is going to be slower than a $1000 Core i7 system.

So unless Apple comes out with a great desktop system, I'm thinking that my next Mac will be a new laptop + external display, and I'll get some Core i7 boxes with Linux for all my serious computation needs. Apple will still get money from me, but a lot less than if they had a Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge Mac Pro.
 
My current MP is an early 2009 model and I want to upgrade, but I simply cannot bring myself to buy a Mac Pro as it currently stands.

If they even do a small upgrade to the iMac (Ivy Bridge, 7970m or 680m) I'll probably get a top of the line 27" instead of a MP. Add a Thunderbolt display or two and it will suit my needs.
 
The website I am using is called ibuypower. The two machines in question are the two higher end machines in the professional series at the bottom of the page. Both machines would be specced out with essentially the same parts, so my decision is all about the processor here.

the i7 in question is the 6 core 3930k (would an upgrade to the 3960x extreme edition be worth it at all?)

the E series dual proc in question is the E5-2609

http://www.ibuypower.com/Info/professional-series.aspx

Like I said, my budget is $4100 for a new machine (just the box, no monitors or anything)

Really at a crossroads here! both with windows vs osx and the two sets of processor choices.
 
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I share your disappointment - and I'm not even a Mac user, but had hoped to become one. I have no answer to your question, sorry. I know next to nothing about video, but I am still looking for the right approach to upgrade all my hardware for photo editing and audio recording. My guess is that for video you'd be better of with more cores instead of more speed. Depends on the software you're going to use and what the exact specs are. But it may also depend on how this all works together with the graphics interface. That's the opportunity/risk with Win-PCs: you can customize but you have to know what works for your needs and what doesn't.

I'm still hunting after some recent specs for a machine that would be good with photos (usually not that demanding) while still working well with Cubase or Pro Tools. And since that is a bit of work and involves some risk I was willing to go Mac this time around. Actually, I still think that a tricked out Mac Mini with two good displays would work for me. But I've decided that I want to be on one platform one way or another. And the laptop situation for those applications don't look thrilling either way. For photography the new Mac Book pro with the retina display appears to be an utter failure. Plus the missing "legacy" ports are really annoying. Must be the same in the video world I would assume. So what is your solution for that? I'd actually consider still getting a hi res matte 15" or 17" - but there is no clear indication here that Apple will in the future still support the users with more higher end needs.

I don't hold it against them. It's a tiny market. But is it smart signing over all video producers, photographers, audio engineers, etc over to the dark side? And that is exactly what it seems like. I see more and more photographers who are quite happy with what HP or even Dell has to offer. The iMacs have been avoided by serious folks for a while already because of the mediocre screens. Same with audio. I read about more and more custom PC solutions for pro studios as well as home recording. Shouldn't Apple be interested in the marketing potential and multiplier effect that those folks carry even if they only account for 1% of actual sales?
 
tony3d said:
I'm in the same boat. Found myself looking at Windows today, and configuring an HP 820z workstation. Got a great price on a 2.7 gig 16 core machine with 16 gigs of ram, ATI Firepro graphics 2 gig card, and a three year warranty, all for $7,320.00 including tax. Almost felt like I was fooling around on the wife or something. I'm really not sure what to do at this point. That HP looks very tempting.
Click to expand...

This is the system we're looking at. It really does feel like I'm committing infidelity.

----------
tony3d said:
I'm in the same boat. Found myself looking at Windows today, and configuring an HP 820z workstation. Got a great price on a 2.7 gig 16 core machine with 16 gigs of ram, ATI Firepro graphics 2 gig card, and a three year warranty, all for $7,320.00 including tax. Almost felt like I was fooling around on the wife or something. I'm really not sure what to do at this point. That HP looks very tempting.
Click to expand...

This is the system we're looking at (the Z820 anyway :cool:). It really does feel like I'm committing infidelity.
 
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