Mac Pro Advice

[apolloa]

I just bought a nMP last month, 6 core with D500s. I am very happy with it. You can get good deals on EBay from reliable sellers. Mine was a brand new unopened BTO Mac Pro (only option on it was the 512GB vs 256GB storage). I picked up AppleCare for it and I am very content.

Originally I was looking at upgrading internal storage and thinking of getting an eGPU - but at this point since it is covered for 3 years by AppleCare, I don’t think I will bother.

A single D500 benchmarks a little better than the 560x in the 2018 MBP15. The 6-core CPU Geekbench is right around 20k multicore on my machine. I picked up 64GB RAM for around $275 on Amazon. I feel like it is a great option value wise compared to what is available today.

Look for a 6-Core D500 machine with 512GB that is either new or certified refurbished and has the full year of Apple warranty. You should be able to pick up one for $2k USD (or less). I’ve seen 3 year AppleCare warranties on eBay for $75.

You might have to search and message some sellers, but you can find one for sure. I didn’t want a used machine (I was afraid someone would be dumping their GPU issue), and I wanted a new machine covered by Apple in case I was hit with my own GPU issue.

I haven’t played games with mine so I can’t comment on that. I think it would do fine for anything that a gtx 1050 can run.

Thanks for the post, I would have to go second hand unfortunately, the six core on eBay is expensive new. But I didn’t know you could get Apple Care on there! It seems the D500 may be more resistant to issues. I live in the U.K. where I can only dream of paying your prices for it

I do admit, when it comes to good games, I am an occasional boot camp gamer. I do have a small game collection on Steam that I do use with my Windows 7 boot camp partition. My favorite games have been Prey (FPS), XCOM2, DayZ and a bunch of other games. I really can tell you, everything runs very smooth on my machine. I have to add, in order to close bottlenecks in this old system, Windows is installed on a SATA2 SSD. All new games are installed on the fastest PCIe SSD card I have. The Samsung 951 does around 1300MB/sec to help keep that Nvidia card on fire. I don't have my 1gen HTC VR goggles anymore, but this was a great setup to run all VR games on it. As long as you do games on boot camp, everything works just fine on the 5.1.

The trouble starts once you play games on MacOS. A bad example is "The Bureau/Xcom". It plays slow and struggles big time once more enemies are coming in. In my opinion, it really depends on the software and driver side. Metro Last Light was really doing fine on the Mac side, the last two Deus Ex titles have been great so far as well.
To wrap it up: You can be happy with gaming on a 5.1 cMP. If you do your homework on fast PCIe card SSD's, a fast GPU and boot camp with Win7 or newer, you will do just fine for most games. It will not be an experience like on a 5000 US Alienware Gaming System, but for advanced casual gaming, I think the 5.1 can do surprisingly well.
I couldn't be happier. Since I do have so many different applications on it, and use that tank for so many different things/tasks as well as playing/recording BlueRays, I think there is just not a better Mac out there at the moment when it comes to the versatility of usage. I just never could have run my old Xbox 360 on an iMac, - on the Apple Display, it works great with the Dr. Bott Video Link adapter.

Of course, I absolutely love the new iMac Pro, but for this kind of money, I wouldn't go for it. Apple never was good on GPUs or good cooling.
For both issues, the 5.1 was the big, big exception. That's the reason why the cMP is definitely a keeper.

Thanks for the post, yeah if I didn’t like to service my machines without ungluing them! The iMac Pro is one awesome machine, had a good play with one, very fast and looks great in black, but the price! I would like to see what the new Mac Pro is like, but I fear Cooks Apple is profits first, I think it’ll start at 4 grand in the U.K., out of my comfort zone anyway.. and then you’ve got the monitor.
Do you think it’s possible to game in a virtual machine with something like the RX580 on a CMP? As in games running at 30 FPS or higher?

 

[pat500000]

Have 5,1 mp with 580 rx pulse. Plays some games pretty well. You could do bootcamp thing...

 

[apolloa]

Have 5,1 mp with 580 rx pulse. Plays some games pretty well. You could do bootcamp thing...

Yes that is in my OP, just want to know about the virtual machine performance.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Thanks for the post, I would have to go second hand unfortunately, the six core on eBay is expensive new. But I didn’t know you could get Apple Care on there! It seems the D500 may be more resistant to issues. I live in the U.K. where I can only dream of paying your prices for it



Thanks for the post, yeah if I didn’t like to service my machines without ungluing them! The iMac Pro is one awesome machine, had a good play with one, very fast and looks great in black, but the price! I would like to see what the new Mac Pro is like, but I fear Cooks Apple is profits first, I think it’ll start at 4 grand in the U.K., out of my comfort zone anyway.. and then you’ve got the monitor.
Do you think it’s possible to game in a virtual machine with something like the RX580 on a CMP? As in games running at 30 FPS or higher?

My recommendation, - stay away from virtual machines.

The RX580 does not provide boot screens & boot camp capabilities, - therefore I would not go for an AMD card without bootscreen capability.

Check out this link below. It tells you exactly how strong the dual D700 GPU solution on the MP 6.1 is, compared to other mac options. This should help and cure...

https://barefeats.com/rise_of_tomb_raider.html

 

[apolloa]

My recommendation, - stay away from virtual machines.

The RX580 does not provide boot screens & boot camp capabilities, - therefore I would not go for an AMD card without bootscreen capability.

Check out this link below. It tells you exactly how strong the dual D700 GPU solution on the MP 6.1 is, compared to other mac options. This should help and cure...

https://barefeats.com/rise_of_tomb_raider.html

Hmm yes and no, trouble is those cards they’ve used, the Frontier Vega and 1080ti, are between 700 to a thousand pounds!! And I am NOT spending that! That’s for the latest games to be maxed out at 4K, not 8 year old ones!
But that does show that an egpu with the 2013 Mac Pro works great

Also others have said you can easily work around the boot screen and that AMD is better as it supports Metal?

 

[bookemdano]

NVIDIA cards support Metal too (680 and up I think) but I guess there are two Metal families and NVIDIA cards only seem to support Family 1 whereas some AMD cards support 1 & 2.

However I have not seen Apple explain any distinction between those two in terms of actual functionality. And the fact is that even their 2015 iMacs and MBPs have GPUs only capable of Metal family 1, so color me skeptical that they're going to require family 2 for anything anytime soon.

Also, I would say that yes the lack of boot screen can easily be worked around except for two groups of people:

1. People who want to use FileVault whole-drive encryption on their boot drive. It's *technically* usable but you get a black screen at the screen where you would need to enter your password which makes it so frustrating as to basically be unusable.

2. People who want to go back and forth between Windows and macOS (which applies to you). You can easily choose to boot into Windows from macOS by using the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences.

The problem comes when you want to get back to macOS. You basically have to jump through hoops to ensure that your macOS drive is HFS+ (Mojave especially tries to convert all installation targets to APFS now and doesn't give you the option to disable that conversion). If your macOS disk is HFS+ then you can use the Boot Camp control panel in Windows to choose to reboot back in macOS.

But if your macOS volume is APFS then that method won't work. The other usual method is to hold the option key after rebooting and use the picker to select your macOS disk. But without boot screens you can't use that method. Bootchamp is an option but I think I read that it's not currently working on the newest versions of macOS (might be wrong about that). So the last ditch method is to do a PRAM reset... each and every time you want to reboot back to macOS. That sucks.

So yeah, bootcamp is becoming more and more of a pain, and Apple doesn't seem to care about it anymore.

 

[apolloa]

NVIDIA cards support Metal too (680 and up I think) but I guess there are two Metal families and NVIDIA cards only seem to support Family 1 whereas some AMD cards support 1 & 2.

However I have not seen Apple explain any distinction between those two in terms of actual functionality. And the fact is that even their 2015 iMacs and MBPs have GPUs only capable of Metal family 1, so color me skeptical that they're going to require family 2 for anything anytime soon.

Also, I would say that yes the lack of boot screen can easily be worked around except for two groups of people:

1. People who want to use FileVault whole-drive encryption on their boot drive. It's *technically* usable but you get a black screen at the screen where you would need to enter your password which makes it so frustrating as to basically be unusable.

2. People who want to go back and forth between Windows and macOS (which applies to you). You can easily choose to boot into Windows from macOS by using the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences.

The problem comes when you want to get back to macOS. You basically have to jump through hoops to ensure that your macOS drive is HFS+ (Mojave especially tries to convert all installation targets to APFS now and doesn't give you the option to disable that conversion). If your macOS disk is HFS+ then you can use the Boot Camp control panel in Windows to choose to reboot back in macOS.

But if your macOS volume is APFS then that method won't work. The other usual method is to hold the option key after rebooting and use the picker to select your macOS disk. But without boot screens you can't use that method. Bootchamp is an option but I think I read that it's not currently working on the newest versions of macOS (might be wrong about that). So the last ditch method is to do a PRAM reset... each and every time you want to reboot back to macOS. That sucks.

So yeah, bootcamp is becoming more and more of a pain, and Apple doesn't seem to care about it anymore.

Oh dear, that’s not good. That’s a much more in depth explanation, thanks. So how would you say get around the boot screen issue with a 1070GTX, or even a 1060GTX, these cards run games better I think then AMD. Then again how would you get around it with an RX580? Is there a workaround?

Or is that why you flash the cards?

 

[pl1984]

You're probably better off looking into an iMac than a Mac Pro. As you can see Apple's Mac Pro offerings aren't quite up to your tasks. Better yet save a lot of money and purchase a PC.

 

[bookemdano]

Oh dear, that’s not good. That’s a much more in depth explanation, thanks. So how would you say get around the boot screen issue with a 1070GTX, or even a 1060GTX, these cards run games better I think then AMD. Then again how would you get around it with an RX580? Is there a workaround?

Or is that why you flash the cards?

http://www.macvidcards.com/store/c2/Nvidia_GPUs.html

That's the only solution that currently exists for higher-end NVIDIA cards with boot screens. Keep in mind that those require installing new versions of the NVIDIA web driver after each macOS update (even minor updates), which sometimes breaks things and sometimes are delayed in release by a couple of days. I usually waited a few weeks to a month before installing any updates to macOS just to make sure there was a usable web driver available.

Currently zero solutions for boot screens on an RX 580 (other than buying a cheap GT120 or something and installing both cards, but that eats up a valuable PCIe slot). Some of us still hold out a tiny glimmer of hope that Apple will produce an EFI driver for the 580 since it's Apple's "recommended" card for the cMP 5,1 on Mojave. But time is getting short and so far it's been radio silence from the mothership.

 

[crjackson2134]

I just want to throw this out there.

I have a AMD HD7970 that has the MVC flashed EFI.

* It has boot screens, so boot picker & recovery aren't a problem
* It has Metal Support 1 & 2
* It's just as fast on Mojave as every macOS since Mountain Lion. Pretty fast...
* You can use FileVault with no issues at all
* It has the same device id as the D700 in the nMP so it will be supported a while longer
* It's nearly silent 98% of the time
* It has 5.0GT/s connection speed in both macOS/Windows
* It uses Mojave's built-in Drivers so it's plug-n-play
* It's seamless when needing to update (including BootRom) - Fully Supported

Cons:

* It's an older card & MVC doesn't sell them anymore (you can get one and flash it yourself)
* It's not as fast as newer Nvidia cards when editing/rendering video on some editors other than FCPX
* It's not as fast as newer Nvidia cards when gaming on windows, but it's no slouch either
* There may be other Cons that I'm not aware of at the moment

I'm not pushing this option, just making sure you know that it does exist. I plan on getting an RX580 myself once all the boot screen and FV hullabaloo is sorted out. For now I'm standing pat with what works.

 

[bookemdano]

I just want to throw this out there.

I have a AMD HD7970 that has the MVC flashed EFI.

* It has boot screens, so boot picker & recovery aren't a problem
* It has Metal Support 1 & 2
* It's just as fast on Mojave as every macOS since Mountain Lion. Pretty fast...
* You can use FileVault with no issues at all
* It has the same device id as the D700 in the nMP so it will be supported a while longer
* It's nearly silent 98% of the time
* It has 5.0GT/s connection speed in both macOS/Windows
* It uses Mojave's built-in Drivers so it's plug-n-play
* It's seamless when needing to update (including BootRom) - Fully Supported

Cons:

* It's an older card & MVC doesn't sell them anymore (you can get one and flash it yourself)
* It's not as fast as newer Nvidia cards when editing/rendering video on some editors other than FCPX
* It's not as fast as newer Nvidia cards when gaming on windows, but it's no slouch either
* There may be other Cons that I'm not aware of at the moment

I'm not pushing this option, just making sure you know that it does exist. I plan on getting an RX580 myself once all the boot screen and FV hullabaloo is sorted out. For now I'm standing pat with what works.

Nice list. The one con that's a show-stopper for me is that since it uses that 7950 EFI, when plugged into a 4K monitor via DP 1.2, the cMP won't boot. Not even just won't show boot screens but it physically prevents the cMP from booting. So you have to use a different input (which then doesn't get you 4K @ 60Hz), unplug the DP cable or disable DP1.2 on your monitor temporarily.

Those were my experiences with a flashed 7950, and I think I remember the same thing happens with the 7970, RX 280, etc. since they're all using the old Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition ROM.

That obviously won't affect everyone, but with 4K becoming cheaper and more standard it is a consideration. Other than that issue (and I think it won't boot on Windows in EFI mode, right?) it would be ideal.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Oh dear, that’s not good. That’s a much more in depth explanation, thanks. So how would you say get around the boot screen issue with a 1070GTX, or even a 1060GTX, these cards run games better I think then AMD. Then again how would you get around it with an RX580? Is there a workaround?

Or is that why you flash the cards?

Reading this, I guess it is not a good time for you to purchase a new system. To be honest, I would wait and see if you can wrestle till the end of the year. I think its too late to go for a 5.1, too late to go for the current consumer iMac (new 2018 is coming soon) and too expensive to go for the expensive iMac Pro.
Wait for the new iMac 2018 is the best option in my mind. By then also a 6.1 will drop again in prizes. Bookemdano is completely correct regarding the new file system. Because of that, I have three different systems on my tower. One causal OSX El Capitan for private things, one Win7 for gaming and one HighSierra for Video stuff. It has been geek heaven so far, but I don't know if I would jump on that bandwagon 5.1 in 2018.

 

[crjackson2134]

Nice list. The one con that's a show-stopper for me is that since it uses that 7950 EFI, when plugged into a 4K monitor via DP 1.2, the cMP won't boot. Not even just won't show boot screens but it physically prevents the cMP from booting. So you have to use a different input (which then doesn't get you 4K @ 60Hz), unplug the DP cable or disable DP1.2 on your monitor temporarily.

Those were my experiences with a flashed 7950, and I think I remember the same thing happens with the 7970, RX 280, etc. since they're all using the old Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition ROM.

That obviously won't affect everyone, but with 4K becoming cheaper and more standard it is a consideration. Other than that issue (and I think it won't boot on Windows in EFI mode, right?) it would be ideal.

I don't think it has the same 7950 EFI OOTB, but rather very similar or modified from the OOTB version. I corresponded with MVC at the time, and IIRC he made some "Adjustments". Pretty sure they were unrelated to the issue you mention though.

You are correct that I don't have a 4K monitor so I can't say personally, but I'm sure it's as you say. In any case, it's a good solution barring the 4K problem.

Here's what the product page says...

 

[apolloa]

Reading this, I guess it is not a good time for you to purchase a new system. To be honest, I would wait and see if you can wrestle till the end of the year. I think its too late to go for a 5.1, too late to go for the current consumer iMac (new 2018 is coming soon) and too expensive to go for the expensive iMac Pro.
Wait for the new iMac 2018 is the best option in my mind. By then also a 6.1 will drop again in prizes. Bookemdano is completely correct regarding the new file system. Because of that, I have three different systems on my tower. One causal OSX El Capitan for private things, one Win7 for gaming and one HighSierra for Video stuff. It has been geek heaven so far, but I don't know if I would jump on that bandwagon 5.1 in 2018.

iMac is not an option, only one I like is the Pro, but too expensive plus I have to unglue it to service it! I personally think a nMP with a egpu with an RX580 is more sensible reading on here, at least it’s easy enough to connect a monitor to the internal cards. But it’s also more sensible to wait for the prices to drop as you say.

You lot certainly imply Apple are going out of there way to make it hard!

Certainly food for thought, I didn’t then no it would be such a hassle to get into boot camp then back out again!

It seems Nvidia are only a sensible option if you can flash the card easily? Are the firmware and tools needed easily available? Or can you find flashed cards on eBay? macvidcards seems overpriced to me.

 

[bookemdano]

You lot certainly imply Apple are going out of there way to make it hard!

Mac Pro users are the most aggrieved Mac users IMHO. Even the Mac mini was upgraded in 2014 (it was a crappy upgrade, but an upgrade nonetheless). Until they gave everyone new hope recently by admitting the nMP was a failed design and pledging to make something better this was a really bleak forum lol.

Certainly food for thought, I didn’t then no it would be such a hassle to get into boot camp then back out again!

And the APFS thing applies to all Macs, not just the cMP. Course other Macs have the boot picker option, but it's still crappy that they don't seem to be interested in fixing the Boot Camp control panel to work with their new file system that they force on everybody as of Mojave.

It seems Nvidia are only a sensible option if you can flash the card easily? Are the firmware and tools needed easily available? Or can you find flashed cards on eBay? macvidcards seems overpriced to me.

Fortunately the NVIDIA state of things can be expressed very simply:

GTX 680 - You can flash it yourself. There are lots of posts (and a list of flashable 680 models) here, and plenty of people who have done it before and can answer questions.

Every other NVIDIA card - You can't flash any of them yourself (at least no means of doing so has been found/disclosed). The options for those are to pay MVC's rates, or take a huge gamble and buy one from eBay that was flashed by someone who stole MVC's ROM and figured out how to quasi-make it work. There are lots of reports of various "issues" buying some of those eBay cards, and not many folks here would recommend that route. That leaves you with MVC. Yes they're overpriced... such is life with monopolies. So far no one but him has a solution for boot screens at 4K resolution. So for those who need that (or those who like NVIDIA cards in general but want something better than a 680) he's the only game in town.

 

[TinyWorkshop]

strange.... I have a 4,1 > 5,1 + rx580 an I can switch from Mojave and Win 10 without any problem...
and my volume is apfs....

you need only to use this script:

do shell script "bless -device /dev/disk1s1 -mount /Volumes/EFI -setBoot -nextonly" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart

the Mac will restart in windows10... and when you will shut it down , the next time will restart in macOS



all this without bootcamp and boot screen ....

 

[crjackson2134]

So far no one but him has a solution for boot screens at 4K resolution. So for those who need that (or those who like NVIDIA cards in general but want something better than a 680) he's the only game in town.

Well said, it's worth the cost if it's something you have to have, or something you demand. That's just the way life is...

 

[bookemdano]

strange.... I have a 4,1 > 5,1 + rx580 an I can switch from Mojave and Win 10 without any problem...
and my volume is apfs....

you need only to use this script:

do shell script "bless -device /dev/disk1s1 -mount /Volumes/EFI -setBoot -nextonly" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart

the Mac will restart in windows10... and when you will shut it down , the next time will restart in macOS



all this without bootcamp and boot screen ....

Nice, but not nearly flexible enough for cases where you want to boot to Windows and then stay in Windows after it installs four months worth of @#^&*@ Windows Updates and needs to reboot like three times

 

[MisterAndrew]

strange.... I have a 4,1 > 5,1 + rx580 an I can switch from Mojave and Win 10 without any problem...
and my volume is apfs....

you need only to use this script:

do shell script "bless -device /dev/disk1s1 -mount /Volumes/EFI -setBoot -nextonly" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart

the Mac will restart in windows10... and when you will shut it down , the next time will restart in macOS



all this without bootcamp and boot screen ....

Exactly. Except just make sure to change "disk1s1" to the correct Boot Camp EFI partition of your Boot Camp install if yours is different.

 

[TinyWorkshop]

Nice, but not nearly flexible enough for cases where you want to boot to Windows and then stay in Windows after it installs four months worth of @#^&*@ Windows Updates and needs to reboot like three times

wrong, if you install like this there are no problems with updates.
I've already done several cumulative updates

if you create a user that launch automatically the script at login is like having a full working graphical bootcamp

the only thing that's important is leaving macOS as boot drive

 

[bookemdano]

wrong, if you install like this there are no problems with updates.
I've already done several cumulative updates

if you create a user that launch automatically the script at login is like having a full working graphical bootcamp

the only thing that's important is leaving macOS as boot drive

Nice idea but it's still kinda hacky as it requires an extra boot to macOS just so you can reselect the "Windows" user each time.

Certainly preferable to having to do a PRAM reset each time but not as good as Bootchamp or the boot picker.

 

[apolloa]

So it seems their are no guarantees how long you can use a TB2 egpu for, the cMP might lose support soon, your limited with Nvidia cards on which ones can be flashed otherwise you pay a premium for them, and Apple thanks to its new file format system makes you jump through hoops just to use boot camp if you dare to use a better GPU then the one they supplied.

Wow, kinda crazy. Ok so let’s ifnore some of this, I presume al if this goes away with a Thunderbolt 3 Mac like I presume any new Mac Mini that comes out? Apple fully support TB3 egpu and more so with AMD cards right?
Or perhaps I should just go against my options and wait for the iMac Pro to drop to reasonable second hand prices.

 

[orph]

and for a new idea, if your thinking of an egpu then a macmin?
https://egpu.io/external-gpu-desktop-mac-mini-r9-fury-x/
https://egpu.io/forums/builds/mac-mini-late-2012-sonnet-breakaway-box-350-sapphire-pulse-rx-580-8gb/
https://egpu.io/gsearch/?q=macmini
it's an option,

the D700 is a ATI HD 7970 (aka R280? as well) i think (at a lower core clock maybe)
i cant recall what the lower cards are

so to see if a D700 has the speed to play your game lets look at a review
https://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/17
about 60FPS at 1080p with a single card

review of HD 7970 crossfire
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_hd_7970_crossfire_review,15.html
1080p he go's from 44fps on one card to 87fps on two

for more mac side reviews look at http://barefeats.com he's been doing mac reviews for ages.
http://barefeats.com/tube07.html
http://barefeats.com/tube06.html



also want to point out the cmp uses a first gen i7 and i think the nmp uses a second gen i7 equivalent there both dated by today's cpu's

 

[TinyWorkshop]

So it seems their are no guarantees how long you can use a TB2 egpu for, the cMP might lose support soon, your limited with Nvidia cards on which ones can be flashed otherwise you pay a premium for them, and Apple thanks to its new file format system makes you jump through hoops just to use boot camp if you dare to use a better GPU then the one they supplied.

Wow, kinda crazy. Ok so let’s ifnore some of this, I presume al if this goes away with a Thunderbolt 3 Mac like I presume any new Mac Mini that comes out? Apple fully support TB3 egpu and more so with AMD cards right?
Or perhaps I should just go against my options and wait for the iMac Pro to drop to reasonable second hand prices.

you have already decided

 

[apolloa]

and for a new idea, if your thinking of an egpu then a macmin?
https://egpu.io/external-gpu-desktop-mac-mini-r9-fury-x/
https://egpu.io/forums/builds/mac-mini-late-2012-sonnet-breakaway-box-350-sapphire-pulse-rx-580-8gb/
https://egpu.io/gsearch/?q=macmini
it's an option,

the D700 is a ATI HD 7970 (aka R280? as well) i think (at a lower core clock maybe)
i cant recall what the lower cards are

so to see if a D700 has the speed to play your game lets look at a review
https://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/17
about 60FPS at 1080p with a single card

review of HD 7970 crossfire
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_hd_7970_crossfire_review,15.html
1080p he go's from 44fps on one card to 87fps on two

for more mac side reviews look at http://barefeats.com he's been doing mac reviews for ages.
http://barefeats.com/tube07.html
http://barefeats.com/tube06.html



also want to point out the cmp uses a first gen i7 and i think the nmp uses a second gen i7 equivalent there both dated by today's cpu's

Hmmmmmmmm you had me sold with the first paragraph! Will need to investigate this like further. Thanks so much for the links, the idea of stuffing an older bit upgradable Mac Mini into the egpu box is attractive. Very cool.
[doublepost=1533124158][/doublepost]

you have already decided

Nah, I would kick myself for paying Apple Tax if I got an iMac Pro! Plus so many cool ways to use older Macs these days. I will look more into the Mini idea as well I think. It did cross my mind before.