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Wait for new Mac Pro or go for the windows alternatives?

Thanks again everyone for the post! After reading some of the comments it seems that people think I am just getting the Mac Pro for gaming and that is not the case at all! I will be playing some WoW on it but I am not going to be playing every triple A game that comes out on the market. I could really use the power for video editing and rendering as well. If I wanted a straight gaming machine I would make a Windows machine for a good grand. But anyways thanks again for the replies everyone!

Thanks!
 
Dr. Stealth said:
Gaming on Apple computers died when the Apple II line was disconnected.

The Apple II was geared toward Education and Gaming. The Macintosh was the Professional computer geared primarily for Desktop Publishing and basically a failed attempt at competing with IBMs and Clones (PCs) in the office place.

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An iMac will have better gaming performance than the new Mac Pro. The iMac has gaming class GPUs. The workstation class GPUs of the New Mac Pro are not designed for nor ever intended to be used for gaming. Sure you can play games on it but what a waste of hardware and money.
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No, a Mac Pro will demolish any iMac in gaming. FirePro GPUs are top of the line cards that are significantly more powerful than the ones in the iMac, and you get two of them.
 
Dr. Stealth said:
An iMac will have better gaming performance than the new Mac Pro. The iMac has gaming class GPUs. The workstation class GPUs of the New Mac Pro are not designed for nor ever intended to be used for gaming. Sure you can play games on it but what a waste of hardware and money.
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The iMac has mobile GPUs intended for laptop use. I would hardly call them "gaming class". They do well with games, but they're definitely not top notch by any means.

The workstation cards in the Mac Pro are more powerful in gaming than anything you can get in the iMacs... and are infinitely more powerful than them with workstation jobs. They're not intended for gaming, but for what they can do, they still outclass the iMac mobile GPUs. And like philz mentioned... there are two of them.
 
I wander if there are going to be some Nvida options latter on. But having said that AMD cards do seem to pull ahead with OpenCL applications.
 
Dr. Stealth said:
An iMac will have better gaming performance than the new Mac Pro. The iMac has gaming class GPUs. The workstation class GPUs of the New Mac Pro are not designed for nor ever intended to be used for gaming. Sure you can play games on it but what a waste of hardware and money.
Click to expand...

This is just totally wrong. ATI workstation GPUs have almost not performance difference in games, and the GPUs staged for the Mac Pro are way more powerful than an iMac GPU.

Price will be the real issue, and we don't know anything about that though.
 
Workstation GPUs in general are the same cards that consumers buy but with drivers tuned for workstation tasks. They also offer features such as ECC. They are not optimized for 3d gaming. I have no idea how the current crop of workstation cards and drivers perform in 3d gaming, but I do know that at current retail prices, that spending $1500 or more for each of them wouldn't be my first choice.

For the prosumers in this thread hoping apple will make this machine in some form/configuration/price that it could fill the xmac void - forget about it. You are dead to them, and have been for about 4 years now. Or you can fantasize about an i7 version with dual gtx770 nvidia cards in SLI for $2100. But seriously windows 8 isn't that bad.
 
sbarton said:
I have no idea how the current crop of workstation cards and drivers perform in 3d gaming
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Fortunately you can look that up:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firepro-w8000-w9000-benchmark,3265-19.html

There is absolutely no performance issue. In these benchmarks the professional variant (W9000) is even beating the consumer version (7970.)

If Apple wanted to be price competitive (and they probably do), it would not surprise me if they used rebranded 7970s-as-W9000s to save costs.
 
sbarton said:
Workstation GPUs in general are the same cards that consumers buy but with drivers tuned for workstation tasks. They also offer features such as ECC. They are not optimized for 3d gaming. I have no idea how the current crop of workstation cards and drivers perform in 3d gaming, but I do know that at current retail prices, that spending $1500 or more for each of them wouldn't be my first choice.

For the prosumers in this thread hoping apple will make this machine in some form/configuration/price that it could fill the xmac void - forget about it. You are dead to them, and have been for about 4 years now. Or you can fantasize about an i7 version with dual gtx770 nvidia cards in SLI for $2100. But seriously windows 8 isn't that bad.
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I still have to wonder why Apple is not willing to sell different version of the Mac Pro. When I say different versions I mean just high end Mac with the i7 etc... and then the upper level with xeon processors and workstation graphics etc... But if they only sell one the can make more profit, being since there is nothing to necessarily compare it to.
 
NickRichyRich said:
Hello everyone,

I have been thinking a lot and trying to make a hard decision. To give everyone some background I am a college student going for my major in Computer Information Technology and minoring in Human Computer Interaction. I wouldn't really consider my self a gammer but I am really into World of Warcraft.

It is time for me to upgrade my computer and get something that is going to last me for awhile. I have been considering waiting for the new Mac Pro, being since I prefer Mac OSX over Windows and I have been dabbling into app development for OSX and IOS. I also prefer how everything Apple simply works together with ease. But I am worried that If I go with the Mac Pro I will be disappointed with the graphics performance in WoW being since I record much of the game footage for the guild and edit it. With a Windows machine I know I can just throw in another graphics card and everything should be fine. But I would really prefer the whole Mac experience compared to the aging and some what misguided Windows platform.

If anyone has some advice it would be greatly appreciate! Really just here to learn and get a greater perspective. Again I would like to stress that I am not going to be using the Mac Pro as a gaming machine but would like to make sure that I will get the performance that I am looking for something that I know is going to be a large investment.

Thanks
Click to expand...
If you can afford to wait, which would rather have?
If you can't afford to wait, the decision is already made.
 
\-V-/ said:
You can upgrade the internal GPUs... from what I've read.
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What? Where did you read that?

There may be a few BTO options for the new Mac Pro, but they're going to be very proprietary and may require professional installation or the warantee could be void. I see no indication there will be aftermarket GPU upgrades for the new Mac Pro. Moreover, it's very possible it wont have anything other than dual FireGL cards--which are pretty overpriced or underpowered for games. For the price of a single W9000, you could buy a 2010 MacPro with dual GTX670's in SLI with external power which would run way better in gaming--a whole bad ass gaming machine for the price of a single workstation graphics card.

Granted, we don't know the price Apple will place on the New Mac Pro. I would bet a chunk of change you could by a better performing rig for gaming in terms of GPU for much less.

NickRichyRich said:
Thank you very much! That makes the decision very easy lol
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For this guy, if he absolutely must have a mac, I'd recommend a 2010 Mac Pro Hex core with an aftermarket NVidia graphics card. It will have more upgradability and will likely be much cheaper for the performance (for gaming, if not for other tasks as well)
 
Last edited:
Hi NickRichyRich. If you are inclined in getting the new 2013 cylinder Mac Pro, might be prudent to wait for a few more months after it's released so as to get more reviews and feedbacks from other users. It's a new hardware with a new OSX.
 
Dr. Stealth said:
Gaming on Apple computers died when the Apple II line was disconnected.

The Apple II was geared toward Education and Gaming. The Macintosh was the Professional computer geared primarily for Desktop Publishing and basically a failed attempt at competing with IBMs and Clones (PCs) in the office place.
Click to expand...

Apple ][ was never a gaming machine either it was already defeated by the C64 in that regards well before the Mac even hit the scene.
 
MattInOz said:
Apple ][ was never a gaming machine either it was already defeated by the C64 in that regards well before the Mac even hit the scene.
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Most game were cross plateform then. Major companies like Epyx and Origin released their games on Apple 2, C64 and Atari 800. All of them used the same CPU the 6502 (or it's derivative the 6510 for the C64) and games were small enough to make porting quasi trivial.

Ironically, those company made games that were as fun on 32k than some modern incarnation that take 4gigs...

Me I was plateform agnostic. I had a C64, and Atari 800XL and a TRS CoCo 2 during that time. I still have the Atari and C64. I also have an Apple 2e and two Amiga 1000.
 
GroundLoop said:
Bad choice of words. It is a proprietary form factor for the card. I believe that GPU cards in that form factor will not be available in the retail market. Either way, I don't think that you will be able to upgrade them easily after purchase.

GL
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define easily? Some folks think working on a Mac mini isn't easy. They're quite wrong. It's easy but takes a half hour. Based on what we see with the new pro, I expect it'll be easy and will take less than a half hour to make changes.
 
Omnius said:
define easily? Some folks think working on a Mac mini isn't easy. They're quite wrong. It's easy but takes a half hour. Based on what we see with the new pro, I expect it'll be easy and will take less than a half hour to make changes.
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I would assume that it would be similar to replacing a CPU in any common PC (not that difficult). I believe that the difficulty would be in acquiring a GPU in the appropriate form factor. My gut is telling me that Apple is not going to make Mac Pro compatible GPUs available in the retail channel.

GL
 
GroundLoop said:
I would assume that it would be similar to replacing a CPU in any common PC (not that difficult). I believe that the difficulty would be in acquiring a GPU in the appropriate form factor. My gut is telling me that Apple is not going to make Mac Pro compatible GPUs available in the retail channel.

GL
Click to expand...

I would be inclined to disagree. What we can visibly see about the form factor doesn't suggest it would require any excessively radical changes on the manufacturing end. Really, I think we can expect that retail GPUs will be available within 6 months of the 2013 mac pro's release but that even those sold by 3rd parties will have the associated "Apple Tax" because the form factor is marketable only to a smaller market of machines. Honestly, I think the after market GPU selection will be limited by comparison to what is currently available to us and prices will reflect it. Manufacturers will likely make a premium on the deal.
 
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