You're repeating yourself now. We already had that discussion. You're ok with external drives and some of us aren't. No need to go at it again.
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Opinions: Does the New Mac Pro qualify as a Workstation?
- Thread starter Dr. Stealth
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You're repeating yourself now. We already had that discussion. You're ok with external drives and some of us aren't. No need to go at it again.
I think I'm going to invent a helium operated enclosure system so the boxes can float in air and be off the desks - that way people who want them but don't want them can have them without having them.
OK, but this is besides the point. Even if we accept this nonlinearity due to human dwell as being true the trouble is that we're talking minutes per frame in the cases when interactive previews can't be used economically.
Sure. A few small USB trailers, and a few more after you add a PCI to USB 3 trailer hitch.
As opposed to 36 Thunderbolt cargo shipping containers, plus an extra 4 USB 3 smaller trailers.
Pro, workstation, power.. they're all just words.
The more relevant thing is that they switched out the form factor. If that doesn't work for ya, well, I guess you'll have to find a way to adapt. It sucks, but that's what it is.
I think if your gut instinct is to stick with the Mac Pros you'll just have to accept that this is what it comes down to and buy one. And I hate putting it that way! If apple was going to listen to their customers there would've been a mid-end Mac tower years ago!
The more relevant thing is that they switched out the form factor. If that doesn't work for ya, well, I guess you'll have to find a way to adapt. It sucks, but that's what it is.
I think if your gut instinct is to stick with the Mac Pros you'll just have to accept that this is what it comes down to and buy one. And I hate putting it that way! If apple was going to listen to their customers there would've been a mid-end Mac tower years ago!
Well then you're not a professional! Go to the Mini forum you lewzer! /s
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If its cheaper, great. Now what are the odds of that being the case?
Unfortunately, one can't eliminate the human so we're obligated to accept their nonlinear contribution to the Workflow - all Workflows.
Your observation for 'interactive previews' may be a reasonable point, but that's also an inadvertent narrowing to just one specific Use Case.
As such, you're at risk of committing the logical fallacy of:
"Since it doesn't provide benefit for me, it can't be beneficial for anyone".
-hh
Again this is irrelevant to anything I was talking about. It's an entirely different topic. You can bring it up on your own if you like but it's besides any point I was making. I guess I could use it to strengthen and support what I'm saying but it's only a besides the point addition.
I worked on a workstation 5 years ago that had 16 cores. The Mac Pro maxed out at 8 back then. Nothing new here.
hey wait.. you flipped that argument around. i thought it was your posse(
) that was using the "you should use an imac because you're not pro" lineWhat does wanting storage inside or outside of the main box have to do with being a professional?
Additionally Apple needs more than just pros to buy a Mac Pro. Enthusiasts and people who like, but do not need, powerful computers help keep the sales numbers up.
Every well-heeled amateur who buys a Mac Pro or a Canon EOS-1Dx helps keep production up and prices reasonable.
It really doesn't, but those supporting a tower form-factor were hit with those arguments about why the Mac Pro "doesn't need" / "shouldn't have" internal storage because "professionals" don't need it. For the record, I'm with you on both of your points.
If you're talking about the old Mac Pro in the first part there then I'm not clear where you're getting that from, PCI to USB? Try cards that let you reach speeds which make TB weep with envy. Internal storage options which will do the same.
You are never going to win the argument that this new Mac Pro is more expandable than the old, or that TB is some 'Dawn of a New Age' for power users. Facts are stubborn things and TB is not everything some are convincing themselves it is.
An informed opinion about TB:
http://www.zdnet.com/why-thunderbolt-is-irrelevant-to-pc-oems-7000018180/
http://www.zdnet.com/why-thunderbolt-is-irrelevant-to-pc-oems-7000018180/
I dunno how informed he is. He doesn't sound too informed when he says "3D modelers" need a high bandwidth - which he claims not just once but twice. The only 3D Modeling that might benefit from such is iterative animated mesh and that's about as common as bird's teeth.
Of the 5 or 6 points he uses to support his opinion I think only 1 or 2 of them are at all true - and even then there's lots of exceptions to them. <shrug>
His very short opinion-essay which offers no actual data can be summed up in his single sentence: "But that's always been the rub with Thunderbolt. It is, essentially, too good, and that pushed it into pro territory, and it means that pretty much anything with a Thunderbolt port on it is going to come attached to a hefty price tag." Which is only true in a very present context. Will it go the way he depicts? I dunno but it seems highly doubtful to me.
But that's the way with about 60% to 70% of the ZDNet opinion essays I read too: They lack supporting reference data and are sooner than not proven to be wrong. I pretty much read anything from the ZDNet regular authors with a grain and a tongue in the cheek.
I was set on maxing out an iMac 27 but.....
This thread has tempted me to buy a new Mac Pro. iMac threads are no where near as interesting to read.
What worries me about the new Mac Pro is that my cat might knock it over and cause it to roll off the edge of my desk.
This thread has tempted me to buy a new Mac Pro. iMac threads are no where near as interesting to read.
What worries me about the new Mac Pro is that my cat might knock it over and cause it to roll off the edge of my desk.
I dunno how informed he is. He doesn't sound too informed when he says "3D modelers" need a high bandwidth - which he claims not just once but twice. The only 3D Modeling that might benefit from such is iterative animated mesh and that's about as common as bird's teeth.
Of the 5 or 6 points he uses to support his opinion I think only 1 or 2 of them are at all true - and even then there's lots of exceptions to them. <shrug>
His very short opinion-essay which offers no actual data can be summed up in his single sentence: "But that's always been the rub with Thunderbolt. It is, essentially, too good, and that pushed it into pro territory, and it means that pretty much anything with a Thunderbolt port on it is going to come attached to a hefty price tag." Which is only true in a very present context. Will it go the way he depicts? I dunno but it seems highly doubtful to me.
But that's the way with about 60% to 70% of the ZDNet opinion essays I read too: They lack supporting reference data and are sooner than not proven to be wrong. I pretty much read anything from the ZDNet regular authors with a grain and a tongue in the cheek.
When tb got out, i was really thrilled by it. But it has failled to make an impact yet.
Since its release, beside apple, do you know any pc oem who make a real use of tb? Dell and hp have only one model using it, lenovo has two laptop but acer just dropped it.
There are no tb display beside the apple one. Asus announced one in 2012 i've never seen it. If you know about others then please feel free to link them.
Asus has good support for it, and other diy mobo provider offer it on their top end mobo, but how many of those who bought those top end mobo really make use of tb? The price of tb ext hdd compared to usb3 is greater and bring only marginal benefit to the vast majority of people, just like firewire did in fact, hence why it lost to usb.
yeah, i didn't get what he was saying there.. i thought he was saying 3D modelers need all sorts of storage which then must be super fast.. idk, i started a new project on monday.. 5 days worth of drawing (long days at that) and my working file is now at 48.3MB
Yeah, it's pretty rare that a modeling project with maps and all ever gets over a couple of gigs and all that loads up into RAM at one time with the model. My super huge models (in the gigs) load up over the interconnect in just a few seconds.
Yeah, I think it's been established that it's currently too expensive for the every-man. My crystal ball is in the shop right now but if history is any indication it should be about half what it is now in about a 12 to 18 months and then the buying will start. <shrug>
Workstation? I remember in the middle 90's that workstations were expandable but this was not done by the users. I think the "pro" users of late are using desktops which have evolved so much power that workstations are redundant as a concept. Few users were owners then too.
I remember using an SGI Iris which had a gargantuan price tag even without adjusting for inflation. The LCD 3D specs cost more than most Mac Pro rigs described here.
What will qualify the Mac Pro as a "workstation" is not mips, blips and pips but what those who use it to create and produce.
It is always easier to find 9 reasons why something might fail rather than one reason why something might succeed.
I remember using an SGI Iris which had a gargantuan price tag even without adjusting for inflation. The LCD 3D specs cost more than most Mac Pro rigs described here.
What will qualify the Mac Pro as a "workstation" is not mips, blips and pips but what those who use it to create and produce.
It is always easier to find 9 reasons why something might fail rather than one reason why something might succeed.
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But that's the way with about 60% to 70% of the ZDNet opinion essays I read too: They lack supporting reference data and are sooner than not proven to be wrong. I pretty much read anything from the ZDNet regular authors with a grain and a tongue in the cheek.
I require reference data to verify that 60-70% statistic!
The topic is, and has always been, about how to improve the Workflow.
Yes, I do believe that you are willing to rearrange the facts to be exactly backwards so as to try to bolster your claims.
Unfortunately for you, the facts aren't reversed: a hardware-based 100% improvement in rendering speed will generally result in more than a 100% improvement because of the nonlinear effects of the man-in-the-loop for their responsiveness time contribution to the overall workflow and its net productivity.
The macro process is that the user period interval for how frequently they check for a hardware update has a nonlinear correlation to the hardware response times and the faster the hardware response time is, the shorter the human's period interval is ("for checking on it").
BTW, we see this everywhere in everyday life: we check the toaster to see if our toast is done more frequently than we check the oven for the pot roast.
IIRC, human perception is able to resolve down to around 8%-10% differences. The implications of this are that even the difference between a mere 4-core and a 6-core CPU can be noticeable by its operator.
- - - - - -
FWIW, what really underlies the entire "# CPU Cores" debate is an anticipated technology shift which has the potential to make the CPU core count effectively moot. We have faith that this transition point is probably coming through the leveraging of GPUs through OpenGL, GCD, etc ... and the unknown is the timeline: will the watershed event occur finally in 2014, or is it still a few more years off?
Setting aside the classical chicken-egg paradoxes (and that GCD's been in gestation since 2009), the basic implication for a business looking to buy hardware today is that it depends on if their workflow can employ it and what the state of development is within all the components of the same to determine when is the right time to invest in the 'paradigm shift'.
Perhaps there is a lot going on behind the scenes at the software developers such that by the time the new Mac Pro ships the necessary software tools will be in place ... but by the same token, the indicators don't appear to be particularly overt, which makes a contemporary investment commitment to this future path premature and a business risk.
-hh
Quantum enclosures can be both here and not here and might be more practical than the less stable helium boxes.
I was set on maxing out an iMac 27 but.....
This thread has tempted me to buy a new Mac Pro. iMac threads are no where near as interesting to read.
What worries me about the new Mac Pro is that my cat might knock it over and cause it to roll off the edge of my desk.
I don't think it would roll that far with all the wires and cables sticking out of it
Apple is marketing the nMP like some piece of stand-alone art. But in reality you'll probably barely see it behind all the enclosures, wires, and cables necessary to make it like the old Mac Pro