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Didn't adjust anything. Figured Mac Pro lovers would provide no less than a tier1 recommendation.

The point is, no tier1 vendors make WORKSTATIONS that are 4P outside of some one-off specialist setups here and there because 2P is the sweet spot for cost, size, and performance in a workstation context.

I agree that 2P will sell more than 4P and that 4P has a much smaller audience. I'd rather roll my own, regardless of what tier anyone places Gigabyte, Tyan and Supermicro in. I'm a special case and love it. I'd rather keep my money in my pocket.
 
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Most people base decision making on marketing propaganda and hope.

Hope can be reframed as expectations, which factors in "needs" as well.

I don't think people who buy workstations base their decisions on marketing, not to mention there isn't a whole lot of marketing going on for these types of electronics. This is not PS4.
 
What else would people base their decisions on?


For me - most importantly: $$$ available + needs.

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Most people base decision making on marketing propaganda and hope.

Could be true, but I don't know the stats. I've never seen a Gigabyte, Tyan or Supermicro add in any of the more popular media and I've never parted with my money based on marketing propaganda and hope. In fact, I bought my refurb cMacPros without ever seeing any ad, except that on Apple's online store, but I did hope that they were worth the costs and they've yet to let me down. Rather than paying more for the "new car smell," I just as soon buy what I need and can afford and buy a deodorizer.
 
I wonder if he meant "hype"

Certainly an Apple forte

Dilute a solid tech advance to 1/10 it's originally announced speed...how do you sell it?

Call it something impressive...like..."THUNDERBOLT"
 
Imaginator- I haven't seen a 'million dollar client' post house (or even a mid-level post house) use anything else other than Fibre Channel with SAS RAIDs. There is currently not a Thunderbolt multi-user RAID sharing environment without going from Thunderbolt-10Ge-FibreChannel as the interconnect.

I would love a Thunderbolt2 switch. Please, Imaginator, describe how one of your clients (that spend millions each year) have their systems NOT use PCIe cards to do their work. We would all love to know what the secret all these clients are using!

Imaginator seems to have left the conversation a few pages back.
 
There is currently not a Thunderbolt multi-user RAID sharing environment without going from Thunderbolt-10Ge-FibreChannel as the interconnect.

Can you even share Thunderbolt RAID's? I think you can mount them on one desktop at a time.
 
I wonder if he meant "hype"

Certainly an Apple forte

Dilute a solid tech advance to 1/10 it's originally announced speed...how do you sell it?

Call it something impressive...like..."THUNDERBOLT"

I think that he meant "Hope", but Apple does master "hype," and in most cases justify it. I'm just not sure whether the nMP will justify it; so, I'm content letting others be the test subjects and I'll roll my own unless I see a true need for a refurb nMP. I know that refurb and new [n] are somewhat contradictory, but such is life.
 
There are Thunderbolt raids, they are great for 1 or 2 systems to share.

You can share a Thunderbolt RAID from a connected system just like any other volume. The speed is limited by your connection, not by the OS/filesystem.

You CAN connect two computers that have thunderbolt1-2 and share files at thunderbolt1-2 speeds...

I would LOVE to hear how Imaginator's clients use Thunderbolt- I don't need names, just how they get by using Thunderbolt and without any PCIe cards.
 
That's not a "redesigned" version of Windows - they're the same Windows Server binaries with the dual-socket licensing restriction relaxed. In fact, you can buy two licenses for Server Standard for $733 each and run Server Standard with quad sockets.

Okay, so a bargain then at $1500 for Windows. Still around $10K worth of CPUs. And still a different (and more expensive) motherboard and chipset (without USB3 support) than a single or dual. More of everything. At the end of the day, a quad socket Mac Pro would have been so expensive that Apple would have a very hard time selling them.


Please explain in more detail. Surely the E5-1600v2 are workstation processors. What is there about "optimized for servers" that is harmful for a workstation?

Not harmful, just uninteresting. As in, I see Intel has released new and even more expensive Xeons, that aren't any faster. Yawn. Starting in 2011, when the E series was introduced, Intel focused its engineering development almost entirely on server needs and away from advancing brute horsepower favored by workstations (and me). Things like virtualization, energy efficiency and management features were the priority in these CPUs. None of that makes the machine go, Vroom. I am hoping to see something interesting in the E5 V3 set to bow latter this year. All my Windows machines are of the same vintage as the olde Mac Pros I'm going on about. I want to buy something, but not what Apple is currently offering.
 
So, like going from a single i7 to dual socket Xeon.

No.

So like, doubling the CPU's from single to dual. Look I realise it's not a standard setup, but it could always be done if Apple wanted.

Anything could be done, but what is done has to have a certain mass appeal and be sellable at a price that is serves that appeal.


I doubt it'd be much trouble for Apple to release an OS that could run on 4 processors.

I doubt it would be much trouble for Apple to release an OS that would let me queue, pause and prioritize file copies, compare folder contents, or set up multi-parameter searches and sorts. But they don't do that either.

Probably less. And that's a good point because if all you want is more processors, you can always get more computers and make a render farm. If your task can run on 24 cores, then chances are that you can parallel compute it. Pixar does not buy 4 socket servers, they buy dual or single socket Xeon servers and runs them in parallel.

I have no idea what Pixar does. But yes, if you are going for maximum core density, you get some generic 1U server chassis and stuff them full of CPUs. Any version of the Mac Pro is a inefficient occupier of space.

No, I don't think the new Mac Pro needs defending. Other than the dual GPU standard, it's the Mac Pro I have wanted for years.

It might not need defending, but that is all I see day after day in these and other forums. And no matter how much anyone does like it, the truth is still that it isn't really much faster than it's aging predecessor. And there is a big cost to that little bit of improvement.

Where is Firewire now? It's a dead spec, and you wanted Apple to continue with a dead spec?

FireWire didn't die, it was killed, by lack of development and USB3. Faster FireWire speed would have opened up all sorts of new opportunities.

Think of their resale value as well. I don't think you will be able to get decent money out of a cMP in 2 years. They will be garbage. But I'll sell my nMP in couple of years and get a new one.

I don't buy computers to sell them, I buy them to beat them mercilessly for as many years as they are relevant. Then I donate them in bulk to schools where my tax break is better than any potential return from dicking around on eBay.

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Can you even share Thunderbolt RAID's? I think you can mount them on one desktop at a time.

Thunderbolt is not a protocol. It is just a PCIe extender. One that is currently slower than PCIe. And any storage that allows multiple simultaneous users has a controller (like a server operating system) that facilitates all that file sharing. You could build a switch that has a bunch of Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapters, but all that does is let you use expensive Thunderbolt cables instead of cheap fiber runs.

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There are Thunderbolt raids, they are great for 1 or 2 systems to share.

You can share a Thunderbolt RAID from a connected system just like any other volume. The speed is limited by your connection, not by the OS/filesystem.

You CAN connect two computers that have thunderbolt1-2 and share files at thunderbolt1-2 speeds...

I would LOVE to hear how Imaginator's clients use Thunderbolt- I don't need names, just how they get by using Thunderbolt and without any PCIe cards.

I think we would also love to hear about a RAID that can share to multiple users over Thunderbolt.
 
The 2009 won because it offers means to connect at truly high speed and uses a common standard to do so. So it can and has been kept current.

The nMP lost because it only offers connections at 1/4 the speed of the 2009. So it is already done being upgraded. Done. No amount of shiny TB docking stations are going to up the 1/4 speed limitation.

And I think it bears repeating here what the actual difference is between TB2 and PCIe I/O speeds, in case it's not clear to anyone:

TB2
20 Gbps = 2.5 GB/s (that is, 20 gigabits per second = 2.5 gigabytes per second, based on 8 bits per byte)

which is a little more than

PCIe 1.0 x8
250MB/s x 8 lanes = 2.0 GB/s

and that in turn being the same as

PCIe 2.0 x4
500MB/s x 4 lanes = 2.0 GB/s

So a single PCIe 2.0 x4 slot can almost saturate a single TB2 connection.

And then there's PCIe 2.0 x16:

PCIe 2.0 x16
500MB/s x 16 lanes = 8.0 GB/s

Not even two TB2 ports (or one TB3 port at 40 Gbps aka 5 GB/s) can match that kind of I/O speed.

BTW, the above PCIe numbers basically double with PCIe 3.0, so 2.0 GB/s becomes 4.0 GB/s and 8.0 GB/s becomes 16.0 GB/s.

Not saying TB isn't innovative tech, but in terms of I/O speed, it's got some catching up to do before it can truly compete with PCIe.
 
Not saying TB isn't innovative tech, but in terms of I/O speed, it's got some catching up to do before it can truly compete with PCIe.

If you want to run memory, GPU's, or other CPU's over thunderbolt, yes it does. But for the rest of the peripherals people actually use, it doesn't.
 
Anything could be done, but what is done has to have a certain mass appeal and be sellable at a price that is serves that appeal.

If the old Mac Pro had such a mass appeal, I doubt they would change anything about it.


I doubt it would be much trouble for Apple to release an OS that would let me queue, pause and prioritize file copies, compare folder contents, or set up multi-parameter searches and sorts. But they don't do that either.

This one is already answered. Apparently OS X already supports 4 processors, but only up to 32 cores.


I have no idea what Pixar does. But yes, if you are going for maximum core density, you get some generic 1U server chassis and stuff them full of CPUs. Any version of the Mac Pro is a inefficient occupier of space.

Buy Mac Mini's then. :) I always said rack mounting Mini's could build some cheap render farm.


It might not need defending, but that is all I see day after day in these and other forums. And no matter how much anyone does like it, the truth is still that it isn't really much faster than it's aging predecessor. And there is a big cost to that little bit of improvement.

If you own the 2010 Mac Pro, yes the improvement is very small. But I had the 2008 Mac Pro, and for me this was a huge improvement. Workstation computers were really fast to begin with, so they didn't get much faster over the last few years. Not like the iMacs or the Macbooks. And that was the reason I didn't upgrade in 2010 since it wasn't a big improvement over my 2008 model.



FireWire didn't die, it was killed, by lack of development and USB3. Faster FireWire speed would have opened up all sorts of new opportunities.

It's irrelevant how it died. This is tech, if something has died it was most likely killed by some other tech anyway.

I don't buy computers to sell them, I buy them to beat them mercilessly for as many years as they are relevant. Then I donate them in bulk to schools where my tax break is better than any potential return from dicking around on eBay.


I bought a 2006 Mac Pro for 3000$, then sold it for 2200$ in 2008, and bought a 2008 Mac Pro for 2750$. So from 2006 to 2013 I spent a total of 3550$ for my Mac Pro's other than memory/hd/gpu upgrades which did cost another 1500$ probably. I think that's good business.


Thunderbolt is not a protocol. It is just a PCIe extender. One that is currently slower than PCIe. And any storage that allows multiple simultaneous users has a controller (like a server operating system) that facilitates all that file sharing. You could build a switch that has a bunch of Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapters, but all that does is let you use expensive Thunderbolt cables instead of cheap fiber runs.


We all know what Thunderbolt is, I just didn't see any TB RAID's that allow sharing so far. The one I own (Caldigit T3) cannot be shared over TB.
 
Whoa, maybe you missed this ENTIRE article, GPU's are now playing a huge part in processing of video/photos/etc. In fact 6 of the 8 tests were both GPU and CPU tests. Guess what? Both are running modern (current) video cards. Therefore the cMP is NOT the same cMP released 3-4 years ago, but rather a hybrid of Modern GPU with an aging CPU. What you also are missing, is that x86 processors (especially workstation since they are now a generation behind) aren't gaining much processing power (clock for clock) anymore. All X86 processors have virtually plateaued and instead more is being concentrated on GPU's.

Might not have a problem with any other arguments you might raise but this one is crap. The whole point of the oMP is that upgrade is easy. You are supposed to upgrade parts as required.
 
Most people base decision making on marketing propaganda and hope.

to an extent.. yeah.
likewise, most people aren't making the same type of decisions as you (and the majority of this forum- 'informed buyers' (or whatever))

just for fun, pretend you're more ignorant about the inner workings of a computer.. that's how most people are.. even a lot (most) of the power users who are using the power of a mac pro to help create awesome stuff using a computer.

so what decisions are you faced with in that scenario when it comes time to buy a new computer?

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some people just want the best macintosh ever made when it comes time to buy.. or people buying maxed out or near max iMacs.. and mbps.. they're buying the best computers to date because they're the best ones.. and thats cool.. it's totally fine.. most people want the best computer because even though it may be more computer than their needs, it's still sweet to use it.. it would be sweeter to facebook on a macpro than it would to on a mac mini.

anyway, if you want a mac, and you want a badass mac and you're willing to spend a bit of cash-- what computer will you get?

and if you opt for a mac pro, have you made a bad decision? (not 'you' but the just for fun you)
 
Is this possible?

Call me a nut, but I really like the old MP and the new MP.

I'd like to have one of each on a multiprocessing network.
Is this possible?
Or even practical?
Or maybe a really dumb idea....

Thanks!
 
Might not have a problem with any other arguments you might raise but this one is crap. The whole point of the oMP is that upgrade is easy. You are supposed to upgrade parts as required.

What's crap about it? In 2010, the radeon 280x didn't exist, PCIE SSDs did not exist, heck even the CPUs didn't exist (they were released in 2011). The only parts that did exist was the motherboard and RAM! So all the parts responsible for benchmarking are 1-3 years old do to say a 4 year old computer beat a new computer is ludicrous...
 
We loaned him the R9 280s

That's it.

He got other pieces from his own stuff or other vendors.

I don't write anything for him, have never met him in person.

You scratched his back. It's a shame that you use this forum to bolster your endeavors.

It's more of a shame that this forum allows it.
 
You scratched his back.

What are you talking about??

I send him stuff for review. Just like other vendors.

If the performance is lacking, we lose.

When he is done testing, he returns whatever I send him.

It's how review sites work. Or did you think he buys all of that stuff?

He discloses that he gets loaners from vendors.

Please educate yourself.
 
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