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MP 7,1 Mac Pro 7,1 - hit or Miss?
- Thread starter JazzyGB1
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I can't get 43 hours out of my trashcan6,1 but I did have a pair of G5 Xserves that had been up for over 5 years when they got pulled. I had to personally compile and install openssh and bash/sh/ksh binaries for various vulnerabilities, but frankly I was afraid if they bounced the drives would fail. found my worklog:What is - uptime of 43 days?
I had like 200 days on my Trashcan until a weird and so far very rare Wacom driver bug caused a panic on wakeup. The counter is at 88 days again now. My mini on the other hand is at 460 or so days of uptime. Sleep function - it's convenient and it works!
`18:00 up 1996 days, 6:48, 2 users, load averages: 1.28 1.74 1.68`
My 5,1. 7,1. And 16 i9 has been on since this post. Still rocking.It should just work, really.
20+ years ago as a student I helped run a computer lab at uni, filled with unix workstations. The students d*cked around on them all day running self compiled code and whatnot but we restarted the machines only over the christmas holidays. It was very rare that you had to actually reboot one because of a problem. That I found amazing.
Assuming the Mac Pro is an overall stable system it should be able to get there easy if only used by one or very few responsible adults.
It would be a reasonable question to wonder whether the current M-series chips (with their inability to use discreet GPUs onboard or in eGPU and 2 screen limit) were designed to be Mac chips from the start, or if they're actually the chip that was originally intended for the iPad Pro only?
Was the M1 originally an A-Series, but with Apple's perhaps earlier-than-planned switching of the Mac to ARM, and a worldwide processor shortage, did marketing slap a new label on them (macOS has no doubt been running on ARM for years), and we're still to see the processor that was originally planned as the first Mac-specific ARM chip.
Quite a few years of uptime there! To be fair it might be easier with servers if they only get used for a limited number of tasks and aren't being hammered all the time. At least in my experience the problems that make restarts necessary show up when you run all sorts of demanding programs on the local machine that try to take over the computer resources.
Sometimes the problem sits in front of the keyboard though - I restarted my Mini the other week thinking I had lost audio on it when in fact I had accidentially muted the media player.
So, restarted the system after 1.5 years or whatever and Firefox greets me with 'Welcome back - haven't seen you in an eternity. Shall we clean up the user profile a little?'. Firefox of course had been running that entire time...
They're absolutely chips that started from iOS chips and thus have weird limitations as a result. But we're in uncharted waters insofar as what Apple considers irrelevant for a consumer product, "nice to haves" that will end up in the chips eventually, and/or important things that will be in their higher-performance products.
Maybe the limited monitor support and TB lanes will remain a thing on the M2 or n or whatever. Maybe stuff Apple does on its high-end chips will trickle down to the Mn later on.
But I also don't think that the M1 was an "accident". Apple didn't just change chips after throwing a dart on the board. They had this stuff in the pipeline. Compared to the apology 7,1 Mac Pro their plans were undoubtably more firm than mid 2017 "guess we need to make a new machine"-type stuff.
The question I guess is how siloed the Mac Pro team was compared to the ARM stuff. It seems weird to me to pour all that time and sweat into a platform that would be irrelevant when your ARM machines come out, but stranger stuff has happened, and certainly right now the situation with non-Apple GPUs seems dire. We will see.
The apology for a 1-off brainfart design that went nowhere (2013), being another 1-off that goes nowhere, would be a difficult thing to justify.
Ive been really enjoying my 7,1, Cant say any other computer has given me this level of satisfaction or confidence for my job. I don't have any complaints so far and I honestly believe It's the perfect machine for me, its inspiring, expandable and capable, Im also Looking to upgrade to 28 cores and the new MPX GPUs that got leaked some days ago.
I don't really see the point of people still complaining about this, there are many options available if you decide a Mac Pro isn't for you, even more so than launch day.
I don't really see the point of people still complaining about this, there are many options available if you decide a Mac Pro isn't for you, even more so than launch day.
I disagree. I think people should rage on the price. Particularly since rumors are that the Mac processor replacement for this may also be hugely overpriced. If people dont complain, apple wont correct things.
That said, you want to know what will make this machine the holy grail? If apple's new Mac Pro replacement does not come out with PCIe cards that can take regular PC Cards like the current one. Then, there will be a run on this machine.
That said, as much as I enjoy mine, and agree with you that it's been a solid machine, it's seriously overpriced for what it is.
Here’s what I found last week, seems promising
Apple Mac Pro exclusive AMD Radeon Pro W6900X GPU pops up on Geekbench, beats RX 6900 XT in Metal API tests
Overall, the Radeon Pro W6900X is somewhere between an RX 6800 XT and an RX 6900 XT. Since it is noticeably faster than the RX 6900 XT in the Metal API tests, the professional card could be getting 32 GB of VRAM. The clocks will most likely be lower though, so it might only feature a more...
Sincerely respect your opinion. And I’m not also too fond of the price, considering what’s out there. Since Apple obviously makes it’s main revenue from other classes of devices and services this seems more like halo product in many senses. It’s not cheap.
That being said, Im making a decent living out of my Mac Pro, it’s proving to be a great tool for my needs and even before the new comes out this machine has payed itself many times over and will continue to be around like my 11 year old 5,1.
I purchased mine shortly after they were released and added a card for additional USB ports. The only issue I have is occasional reboots during shutdown - for or five to date. I use it for Logic Pro and occasional FCP projects. Looking forward to upgrading to the next Mx version.
Every's talking price. A 2009 Mac Pro (8 core, 2.93) was $5,899. That's $7,343 today. A 2010 Mac Pro (12 core, 2.93) was $6,199. That's $7,592 today. A 2019 Base mac pro (8 core, 3.50) is $6K.
Lou
Lou
oh sure, I mean I owned an R4600 Indy and an Ultra 10 I get that workstations are expensive. I think some of us are gun-shy about picking up a 7,1 because we remember having ppc workstations that wound up with early graves. If Apple doesn't manage to get an m-series Pro to market within 6mo I'll probably pick up a 7,1 or just totally give up and buy an iMac or something.
I just don't know how generous Apple will be to the 7,1 or what I should even reasonably expect.
I just don't know how generous Apple will be to the 7,1 or what I should even reasonably expect.
You are comparing high-end cpu-versions to entry level. The 12 core Mac Pro in 2010 was a beast and the fastest Mac you could buy back then. The 2019 8 core Mac Pro today is beaten by the iMac in Geekbench scores. If you want to have a fair comparison, you should take the 28 core 2019 Mac Pro and this one starts at $12999.
I confess I was confused about that comparison of entry level vs high end prices. I thought it really highlights the massive price hike that has happened.
Not sure I'd compare the Mac Pro to an Indy of a bygone era either. That was the low-cost ticket out of the home computer space - like an Amiga on steroids but without the silly meditations. The Mac Pro is simply another - albeit beefy - desktop computer, no? Only standout feature might be that add-in Afterburner card for those who require it. In comparison it would have been really hard to find any other machine with a featureset like the Indy back then, only massively more expensive models.
The price argument will go on forever but that really isn't the major issue with the 7, 1 - even if it was half the price it still wouldn't be a good option for a lot of creative work. Photoshop is still going to be faster and more responsive on the M1 Mini which is utterly shameful and deeply embarrasing for Apple. We really needed great single core performance for Adobe CC work, and we wanted the GPU rendering support that Apple promised us before it was launched.
I had the cash ready on day one, but I was dismayed to see the specs - those achingly slow Xeons again, no GPU rendering out of the box and yet another waiting game to play for Apple to catch up. Buying that machine wouldn't have improved my workflow or allowed me to do anything that I'm not currently able to do.
A new Mac is supposed to inspire you creatively, to allow you to bust out of the limitations of your previous hardware so that you can create all those crazy ideas you had but were held back. That is how the 7, 1 was presented to us prior to launch but it just didn't deliver. It says a LOT when I'd rather be on a 5,1 and 1080ti with my M1 Mini than a 7,1 for 3D work/graphic work.
Apple have got so much to make up for with their next wave of Pro machines. I hope they EOL the 7, 1 and give us the true creative dream machine that we need.
I had the cash ready on day one, but I was dismayed to see the specs - those achingly slow Xeons again, no GPU rendering out of the box and yet another waiting game to play for Apple to catch up. Buying that machine wouldn't have improved my workflow or allowed me to do anything that I'm not currently able to do.
A new Mac is supposed to inspire you creatively, to allow you to bust out of the limitations of your previous hardware so that you can create all those crazy ideas you had but were held back. That is how the 7, 1 was presented to us prior to launch but it just didn't deliver. It says a LOT when I'd rather be on a 5,1 and 1080ti with my M1 Mini than a 7,1 for 3D work/graphic work.
Apple have got so much to make up for with their next wave of Pro machines. I hope they EOL the 7, 1 and give us the true creative dream machine that we need.
Totally disagree, just loosely speaking of 3d: Animation in Maya, modeling in ZBrush and working Nuke make the 5,1 feel unusable, even with the same 1080ti I have installed. Have you even tried your workflow on a 7,1? it's a day night comparison really.
This is what always feels off for this topic, the complaint of underperformance while praising things like a 16 RAM SOC, I mean, its cool if that works for you and all, but it doesn't mean the Mac Pro is a letdown for creatives that really need it.
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