Mac Pro vs. Hackintosh

[gpzjock]

More like 95% of users want "plug and play" Macs - most are opting for iOS devices as the systems get closer in basics. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple develop an iOS based line of iMac / mini machines to add to the phone and pad offerings and an OS X Pro line of air, book and towers for those with OS X needs. Price point could drop or be maintained on iOS machines and Proline is already expensive. The line of A (X) chips will have to get more robust and a stronger GPU.

I agree, I would expect Apple to develop any SoC based on 64 bit ARM architecture for plug and play performance and power.

Semiaccurate often get it wildly wrong but I personally like the idea:http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/

It looked like a silly idea 2 years ago but January this year they added more fuel to the fire:http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-capabilities-increase/

Could all be fiction ofc, Charlie M is a first class fabricator too....

 

[MacVidCards]

Not really. Intel Dekstop/Mobile designs are going to be stuck at 4 x86 cores for at least a couple of steps into the future.

To get the "ultimate" core count... sure using two CPU packages helps get there faster sooner. But single package but more than four and is still Xeon E5 (or bigger) baseline designs only.

The transistor budget in the mainstream designs is being thrown at GPUs infrastructure. So far for Xeon E5 is still throwing transistors at the x86 core count war. E5 2600 v2 caps out at 12. E5 2600 v3 probably will cap out at 14.

Mainstream Desktop will be capped at 4 because attempting to wipe out the AMD/Nvidia low end discrete GPU business is a primary Intel objective. More transistors allocated to the Intel GPU makes that all the more likely. (e.g., just look at newest entry iMac. Discrete GPU .... gone. Intel eDRAM present. )

This isn't Apple backing themselves into a corner at all. Intel needs expansion. CPU+GPU+eDRAM is the easiest path to keep their fabs at nearly full capacity. Beating on that isn't backing into a corner. So the primary way to crank x86 core count is still Xeon E5 in the workstation market ( or buy into the E5 1600 variant that is a subset of Core i7).

And there are 4 memory controllers in E5 v2. Adding more is more a pin count issue more so than single package if they want to go that way once get adjusted to DDR4.

Do you realize that no matter what anyone types on this forum you will disagree with a 1000 word essay that says almost nothing?

Xeon selling point over i7 is fact that you can link 2 on same board. By switching to a single CPU only Apple has gotten rid of that justification for not using i7 CPUs, especially for cheaper models.

That was my point, that is 100% correct no matter how many words you throw at it.

Sometimes it is best to consider if your desire to correct everyone else is actually clarifying anything or is just pointless blather.

 

[Gav Mack]

Is a Mac Pro ever been classified as mainstream desktop class? It's a workstation with server grade parts and intel will still offer the higher core and best grade (bigger cache, higher clock) chips to the server and workstation market else they risk giving market share and prestige to AMD. Intel won't forget for one minute the kick up the backside they got when AMD launched the Athlon 64/X2 Opteron CPU's.

 

[kenosecon]

No. The "Core i7" line up that Intel puts out is muddled. Part of it. (generally x7xx or xYxx were Y < 7 ) is the desktop/laptop mainstream architecture implementation and x9xx is based of the same baseline as the single socket Xeon implementaiton (at this point Xeon E5 1600 ). The sockets are different. All the core i7 aren't the same.




Since he is trying to clone an Mini or iMac ( what comparing to) , the mainstream variant is appropriate.

Just like there are multiple groups of folks. costs matter more than performance and getting a complete system. Going to more affordable components is always going to play more to that crowd.

long story short he is poor and went for a poor system.
a pro is not poor as he makes money using the machine. using a bad machine will get you a bad job or at least not as fast/good as it could have been

----------

The Ivybridge i7 in the previous generation iMac is more powerful than the 4 core Xeon W3530 Apple were using in their Mac Pro range from 2010:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-W3530-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770K

Please do not equate a label or a brand to a reflection of performance.
The "Toy" CPU hands the previous generation's "Pro" CPU its @rse in the real world.

If you have to have a Xeon CPU the cost of it and the motherboard goes up considerably.

Motherboard: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008UG5LTG/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86-21
£253

E5 Xeon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008HQKVD0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86-21
£288

If you want a top spec Xeon the price skyrockets: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Xeon-E5-2690-LGA2011-Retail/dp/B007H4JSZK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381876842&sr=8-1&keywords=Xeon+E5-2690
£1,723

There is an i7 which keeps up with that one too:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Hyper-Threading-Technology-Virtualization-Directed/dp/B00EONTZIC/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1381868120&sr=1-1&keywords=Intel+Core+i7+4930K
£445

Don't believe me? http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2690-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4930K

Is it really worth it just for the "Pro" label? Performance wise no, for the ego trip possibly. Unless you really do need all the workstation grunt you can muster, a decent i7 rig will run all you want, at a speed you can accept, for much much cheaper. I love my Mac Pro but my Hack works faster simply because I built it out of newer parts.

On the subject of resale, I have owned 3 iMacs, 1 eMac and a Mac Pro. I have sold one of them (the eMac) the rest will be in use till they die and if I can ressurect them they will be in use till they die again. Ditto the Hack.

more powerful for what? for games? go ahead and buy your toy...

and why a pro should be worried about money? we make money using those machines... a lot of money.
its pretty obvious we want the best out there to make the best work we can and get the most money from our time.

----------

Well he did say iMac in his post and not Mac Pro, and it was a response to a guy saying you couldn't build a cheaper but faster hackintosh iMac equivalent.

if that's the case I'm sorry but the title of this thread is mac pro vs hackintosh... no imac vs hakintosh

 

[gpzjock]

long story short he is poor and went for a poor system.
a pro is not poor as he makes money using the machine. using a bad machine will get you a bad job or at least not as fast/good as it could have been

----------



more powerful for what? for games? go ahead and buy your toy...

and why a pro should be worried about money? we make money using those machines... a lot of money.
its pretty obvious we want the best out there to make the best work we can and get the most money from our time.

----------



if that's the case I'm sorry but the title of this thread is mac pro vs hackintosh... no imac vs hakintosh

I was replying to a question about iMac equivalents within the thread, please suppress your pedantry long enough to allow that.

To be perfectly honest my comparisons are not directed at the " Pro" users who can comfortably afford multi thousand dollar Macs. A Hackintosh is a project in itself, an exercise in experimentation and discovery. If you are in the happy position of affording all the new equipment you desire to make you even more profit, good luck to you.
For the rest of the population who have a choice to spend their time doing something different with technology this is also a valid act of free will. Please don't look down on someone else just because they don't do what you do or think the way you do. It just makes you look narrow minded and shallow. I'm sure you aren't really, it just looks that way from your response.

I initially bought a Mac Pro in 2008 because I could afford one and it was the best machine for Design and Photoshop use for my GF's artwork. Penniless artists don't attract income that fast and building a Hack which was 25% faster than that '08 Octo made more sense this year when we decided to expand our hardware. The '08 Mac still performs very well today, the Hack augments it wonderfully too.
£1200 for a faster, newer machine when £3500 would have been the asking price for a new Mac Pro with similar performance. That is not a toy whatever your latent snobbery tells you. In fact I find the term toy derogatory when any decent performing machine can be used for a practical purpose, within reason.
Economics dictate circumstances and choice. I am happy I can choose and even happier with the results. I hope you enjoy your more expensive kit just as much and that it makes you the profits you obviously hold in such high esteem, for as long as it needs to keep you content. Each to their own and let us all live as we choose.

 

[kevink2]

Isn't the main benefits of Xeon's the capability to use ECC memory and to have multiple physical CPUs?

At work, last year they bought a bunch of desktop PCs for Office Automation work. Xeon's and 6GB of RAM (and installed 32 bit Windows!).

I didn't see the point in the extra money for the CPUs, especially since these were single CPU systems.

The next time I buy a desktop Mac, I haven't decided yet how I'll go. Might be a nice iMac, or a build my own Hack.

When I bought my 08 MP, it was not so much the CPU, but because of the memory limits of the Macs at the time, only supporting 4GB of RAM.

 

[roadbloc]

Yes, that is safe to assume.

Game changer

 

[Nicholas Savage]

Xeons tend to get you stuff like big caches, hyper threading, multi-cpu support, more cores, vtx and vtd support. More PCIE lanes. Etc. Some intel features show up on the xeon line first and crawl down into the more standard product lines later. The enthusiast grade sockets for example; 1366 and 2011 have a chunk of the features from the concurrently released xeon lines. Some of the motherboards for those cpus will support xeons for example.

Not going to speak to the definition of what a 'Pro' user is or what they spend their money on.

A while back I built a pair of hacks using 1366 socket hardware 9xx series i7 cpus, not because of cost reasons but due to the aging nature of the Mac Pro product line. I run one as a workstation and the other as a file/utility server. And yes, running a hack is definitely a labor of love. Difficulty of dealing with it definitely varies with what hardware you use. Getting a DSDT patched for full compatibility, ensuring that sleep works. Finding a fully compatible ethernet chipset, graphics board, etc can be irritating. Your audio drivers generally need to be tinkered with after every system update. A little care needs to be taken to not put your mac into an unbeatable state when you tweak your kernel extensions. Actual usable information out on forums and wiki sites is cluttered with lots and lots of noise from users who are repeating incorrect info or are spouting bull.

Is it worth it? For me? Yeah. I have a single cpu mac workstation that beats the snot out all but the more expensive 8+ core Mac pro models for a fraction of the price. I have a beefy mac os x file server with zfs and hardware raid backed storage. Together; both machines cost way less than a fully pimped pro bought from apple. The price, however, is a bit of effort taken to keep things working smoothly.

 

[Aika]

If you NEED a Mac Pro, then you need a Mac Pro. I'll be the last one to argue with you. If you need that mythical machine that slots between the iMac and the Mac Pro, and you don't mind getting some electrons on your hands, a Hack might be for you.

This is exactly how I see it. There's a lot of people stuck in the middle that Apple won't cater to, probably because the margins wouldn't be worth it to them. That they have ignored the whole Hackintosh thing probably says that they don't care about this market and have no intentions of making a sub $2000 PC tower which is fair enough. Nobody in their right mind is running a Hackintosh laptop so Apple aren't threatened in the slightest and can dismiss this as a hobbyist scene.

That said it's a shame that Macs are becoming increasingly bespoke and not friendly to user upgrades. It wasn't that long ago that you could upgrade the HDD and RAM on your laptop and replace the battery. Now if something goes wrong outside of warranty or you want to upgrade the RAM because you couldn't afford to pay the Apple RAM tax to max it out when you bought it, you are completely screwed. Those beautifully engineered computers have come at a cost and I don't know if it has been worth the compromises to function and that the asking price is worth it, especially in the case of the Mac Pro.

My next computer will most likely be a Hackintosh using one of the tonymac recommended builds.

 

[ugahairydawgs]

That said it's a shame that Macs are becoming increasingly bespoke and not friendly to user upgrades. It wasn't that long ago that you could upgrade the HDD and RAM on your laptop and replace the battery. Now if something goes wrong outside of warranty or you want to upgrade the RAM because you couldn't afford to pay the Apple RAM tax to max it out when you bought it, you are completely screwed. Those beautifully engineered computers have come at a cost and I don't know if it has been worth the compromises to function and that the asking price is worth it, especially in the case of the Mac Pro.

It only costs $200 to buy the 16GB RAM upgrade on a MBP direct from Apple. Doesn't hit the bargain basement, but not out of line for a decent 16GB RAM pack of 12800.

 

[calaverasgrande]

Xeon selling point over i7 is fact that you can link 2 on same board. By switching to a single CPU only Apple has gotten rid of that justification for not using i7 CPUs, especially for cheaper models.

i7 do not support ECC ram.
i7 have less cache than Xeons. A lot less.
Even with PCIe based flash storage, it is better to have a large, fast, on die cache than a smaller one for most computing.

Frankly Apple stuff usually is a tad behind the latest tech.
But the build quality is excellent. Every year we recycle dozens of old computers at my job. We get rid of everything that is 4 years old, as is the standard in most large businesses.
Its a pretty good lesson that the PC's going out the door are thrashed and almost unusable. The Macs, especially the Mac Pros are still perfectly viable computers.

I'm a computer hardware tweaker so you would think I'd have a hackintosh. I certainly have the parts if I cared to build one. But for me at least it defeats the value of a Mac to me.
I like my Apple products to be appliances. Turn them on and they work. I do not want to have to chase down any conflicts or glitches. I don't want to worry about thermal management.
I do that all day long at work.
My work Mac, studio Mac and home Mac are all suited to their tasks and carry them off with reliability (10.8.5 notwithstanding!).
If I want to play with computer hardware for fun I'll build a windows PC for gaming on.

The real zinger to me though is that any hackintosh is one Apple update away from being bricked.
At some point they can just insert a piece of code that further closes the already pretty closed ecosystem and it may render not only your OS non-functional, but I wouldn't bet money that any App store purchases would be honored. Not for that machine at least.

Apple is inexorably moving to not just a walled garden, but a domed garden that you can't even water the plants in. If you want the Apple curated experience buy a Mac. If you are just testing the waters or super broke go for a hackintosh. But I think it is a fools errand to build a "turbo" mac from off the shelf parts for a production machine.

 

[Aika]

It only costs $200 to buy the 16GB RAM upgrade on a MBP direct from Apple. Doesn't hit the bargain basement, but not out of line for a decent 16GB RAM pack of 12800.

£160 here and that's not a good price for a 8GB upgrade. That's double what they should be charging.

 

[ugahairydawgs]

£160 here and that's not a good price for a 8GB upgrade. That's double what they should be charging.

If you look at it as adding 8GB....then yeah, it would seem overpriced. But if you compare it to the outright price of buying a 16GB kit, then then price is right on line.

 

[Aika]

If you look at it as adding 8GB....then yeah, it would seem overpriced. But if you compare it to the outright price of buying a 16GB kit, then then price is right on line.

That's an interesting, if unconvincing way of spinning it.

 

[energyboy]

If you don't mind fiddling with things and all you care about is the OS and benchmarks, then a hackintosh is not bad.

If you don't like fiddling with things, you appreciate the Mac Pro case and whisper quiet operation.. and you want to be legit on your licenses, then the real deal is where it's at.

For me a hackintosh was just a gateway drug.

Thing is, I'm about to throw down some serious cash on a hacktintosh and the parts I've selected would make the older tower Mac Pro sound like a jet engine;

- Fractal Design R4 case (with insulation for sound dampening and the the quirtest 120mm fans on the market, next to Noctua fans)
- Noctua NH-D14 heat sink with two 120mm Noctua fans
- Seasonic fanless 520w power supply

You won't hear a thing with that setup. I had a Mac Pro a while back, and while it was pretty quiet, it wasn't 'whisper' quiet as you say.

I didn't list a GPU as that depends on your preference while some can be modded to be passively cooled however not higher end models. I think a nice power-to-noise ratio card would be something like a GTX 650 however that card is now entry level.

With an Intel 4770 Core i7 CPU, a system like that would run for about $1,000 and allow you to swap parts at will. I've got a MacBook Pro right now, but once I do any kind of heavy lifting, like Handbrake encoding, my temperatures rise to 90C or more with fans running at 6,000 RPM. I know the new Mac Pro is nearly dead silent, but its well out of my price range unless I wanna create a large dent in my bank account... also the GPU's in it suck for gaming.

 

[mrsavage1]

I was going to make a hackintosh but i keep reading in a lot of tonymac threads that they are still dealing with random freezes and Kernal Panics. A big no no for my main workstation.

 

[teeck2000]

If you are doing work on the computer I would recommend against a hackintosh. I moved from a MP 3,1 to a hack and now back to a 5,1. If you are doing anything more than regular light use than Hack is not as good.

 

[energyboy]

If you are doing work on the computer I would recommend against a hackintosh. I moved from a MP 3,1 to a hack and now back to a 5,1. If you are doing anything more than regular light use than Hack is not as good.

Why?

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Late 2013 Mac Pro Vs. Hackintosh (Full In-Depth Comparison) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVMhKaq3MDY

 

[superdx]

I was seriously considering a Hackintosh as there were a few items that were deal breakers for me on the nMP. But after reading tonyxmac, various gaming forums for Hackintosh enthusiasts, I came to the conclusion that for the Hackintosh community, the journey of building and constantly fixing/maintaining their Hackintosh is just that. I'm not convinced that many of these people spend as much time as possible to get work done, because they would need to spend equal or more amounts of time to fix kexts, deal with kernel panics, figuring out which hardware component is causing problems, or tweak config files just to stay up to date with Apple OSX releases. I'm sure some get lucky with their builds, or some even smarter guys are able to diagnose what problems occasionally pop-up. But that's not me, and I'm not interested in the journey. It's like a full time job.

Even if you go with all the recommended parts lists that tonyxmac produces, it's no guarantee you'll have a stable system.

I decided to just keep upgrading my 4,1 and hope that Apple includes Nvidia GPUs next refresh. 2 years to go before my 4,1 totally starts becoming outdated, go Apple go!

 

[NOTNlCE]

As the owner of both a Hack and a Mac Pro, I can safely say that with the proper hardware, a Hackintosh is almost as reliable. Sure, system updates break things, but they're easily fixable. The real difference is the maximum performance. Mac Pros will always outperform a hack in the CPU area because Socket 2011 processors don't have power management in OS X. Kernel Panics are rare on Tonymac recommended hardware, unless you're doing something incorrectly. However, I've been woking with Hackintoshing for years, and understand far more about the way OS X works than the average end user, or even the average Hackintosher. I think Hackintosh computers are amazing, personally, but I will have to agree that they are no replacement for a Mac Pro tower, especially when 4,1s are still outperforming the top of the line CPUs that can be used.

 

[Gav Mack]

I built two hackintosh systems using that Quo haswell mobo a few months ago. Has the genuine Texas FireWire chip and thunderbolt onboard. Flashed it with the 'community' created EFI and after pestering them for a few weeks to see if anything needed fixing they haven't. Not heard one dicky bird from them since, no glitches or gripes just like a real Mac. If Quo do produce an LGA2011 version I'm going to seriously consider it as a future upgrade option to my 3,1.

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Z77MX-QUO-AOS

http://www.techspot.com/article/720-building-a-hackintosh/

 

[brentsg]

Thing is, I'm about to throw down some serious cash on a hacktintosh and the parts I've selected would make the older tower Mac Pro sound like a jet engine;

- Fractal Design R4 case (with insulation for sound dampening and the the quirtest 120mm fans on the market, next to Noctua fans)
- Noctua NH-D14 heat sink with two 120mm Noctua fans
- Seasonic fanless 520w power supply

You won't hear a thing with that setup. I had a Mac Pro a while back, and while it was pretty quiet, it wasn't 'whisper' quiet as you say.

That hasn't been my experience at all. My last homebuilt PC used all quiet components, Noctua fans, etc. It was far louder than my 2010 Mac Pro.

My MP was completely silent, as in get down on hands and knees and press an ear to the front grill to hear anything.. this is even during heavy load. The first component I added that contributed anything notable is a GF 680 card. It's still the quietest machine I have owned.

I'm not saying your setup won't be quiet, but you don't get a lot quieter than a machine that wouldn't appear to be on if it wasn't for the indicator light.

 

[balamw]

My MP was completely silent, as in get down on hands and knees and press an ear to the front grill to hear anything.. this is even during heavy load.

I had both a 2008 and 2009 MP on my desk. Under light load they were very quiet, but under max load I definitely knew they were busy.

Even my MBAs are quite noisy under full load, but overall much quieter than any PC I've owned/built.

B

 

[gpzjock]

I had both a 2008 and 2009 MP on my desk. Under light load they were very quiet, but under max load I definitely knew they were busy.

B

My Mac Pro 3,1 is ~10 dBA quieter than me Hack under any conditions, load or idle. Impressive engineering.