The Case For Personal Responsibility - R we sheep or shepherd?
http://www.giga.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Mac-Pro_2013_Mac-Pro_2013.jpg
I´m also a musician and mixing engineer so in top of ALL THAT... I need to still get Magma Expansion chassis for my Pro Tools and UAD-2 PCIe cards. And that´s not going to be cheap!
Nice one Apple!
No one computer company can satisfy everyone's need because those needs vary greatly. With the nMP Apple has chosen to pursue what it believes to be a larger MP market. Those who feel left out in the cold because they need lots of fast PCI-e slots should look into the TYAN FT72-B7015 [
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?...FbNj7AodzxUARA ] - a Dual CPU Nehalem/Westmere LGA 1366 (~$3,700 w/o video card, CPUs, ram, storage and OS) server board. It has ten PCIe 2 x16 slots (two of which have x4 signals [equivalent to current TB max speed] and the other eight can cradle eight double wide PCIe cards at x16 signal speed), two PCI-Ex1 slots and one PCI 32 bit slot. With all of those fast slots, those who need fast PCIe slots for PCI-e raid storage cards, PCI-e audio/video/dsp/dongle cards, render farms and compute nodes may have found their match. In mine, I run 8 Titans fully tweaked on the factory PSUs without any additional PSU assist.
I. A middle range configuration - $10,494:
1) Eoptionsonline sells x5680s (3.3 GHz base/3.6 GHz Turbo) for $890 each [
https://www.eoptionsonline.com/CSea...=AND&DisplayMode=List&SearchPartNumbersOnly=0 ]. Dual x5680s may offer performance similar to the nMP if current Geekbench scores are accurate indicators.
2) For about $756, you can fill the 18 ram slots with 18 sticks from 6x Kingston KVR13R9D8K3/12I DDR3-1333 12GB (3x4GB) ECC/REG CL9 Memory Kits (Part no. W12G8R13KI] from Superbiiz to have 72 gigs of ram.
3) For about $2946, you can get a Super Talent RAIDDrive II 1TB RAID0 PCI Express x8 Solid State Drive(MLC) - PCIe Gen.2 x8 lane host interface, Max Speed - Read 2.4GB/s, Write 2.8GB/s, Minimum 10 year data retention, Built in wear leveling algorithm and error detection and correction [
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=R2S01T1 ].
4) For about $282, you can get a RAID 0 system consisting of 2x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive (3.5 inch) [
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W30EFRX ].
5) For about
(a) $1,030, you can get a GTX Titan (6GB) video card (CUDA and OpenCL compute, but Radeon 7990 has better OpenCL performance) (unlocking the Titan's double precision prowess with Nvidia Control Center utility and tweaking the clocks with the EVGA Precision X utility yields single and double precision floating point peak performance in excess of that of Tesla K20X {Tesla K20X costs $3,500+}) [
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130899 ]
or
(b) $920, you can get a SAPPHIRE HD 7990 (6GB) video card (only OpenCL compute) (it has 2x the single and double precision floating point peak performance of a FirePro W9000 {FirePro costs about $3,400}).
So for about $10,494 ($3700 + $890 + $890 + $756 + $2946 + $282 + $1,030), w/o costs of OSes, you will have dual 3.3 GHz X5680s, 72 gigs of ram, a high end 6GB video/compute card, 1 TB of extremely fast PCI-e storage (Read 2.4GB/s, Write 2.8GB/s) , 6 TB of Raid 0 storage, leaving you with 8 empty PCI-e x16 slots for your other needs, e.g., audio, video, effects, storage, compute (like Titans, Radeon 7990s, FirePros, Teslas and XeonPhis), etc. You can vary the options to better suit your desires, needs, and budget. But you will have to be the master of your system's growth and you'll have the room to do so.
II. A high end configuration - about $14,294 (using latest TYAN 2011 CPU chassis [see, below - about $1,500 more] and 2x E5-2680s V2 - 12 cores {about 2x performance of single 12 core and total about $2,300 more than 2x x5680s }), w/o costs of OSes: For those with a need for PCIe 3 interconnect, there's the soon to be released TYAN B7059F77AV6R [
http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000346 ], with eight PCI-E Gen3 x16 slots, two PCI-E Gen3 x8 slots (one for mezzanine card), three PCI-E Gen2 x1 slots, and one PCI 32-bit slot. It appears that this Sandy/Ivy Bridge version will cost about $5,200 w/o video card, CPUs, ram, storage and OS. Here too you can vary the options to better suit your desires, needs, and budget.
Keep these suggestions in mind, at least, until (or revisit them) when the nMP hits the streets and compare the options, values, gotchas and prices. Unfortunately in these internet speed times, we must constantly analyze our needs and prioritize them; then patronize whatever vendor can supply each of us with what we need for the price at which we need it. Too much complaining about another business's strategic decision might just be a waste of our precious time, especially if we aren't exploring our business strategies and the best ways to fulfill them. Just don't let the rug be pulled from under your business plan twice - Pull it from under me once, shame on you and me; but pull it from under me twice, shame only on me.
