Ok guys I apologize..I just joined this forum to express my frustration regarding the fact that we are still waiting and the old Mac Pros are still expensive. There's no need fight/argue for this..
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Waiting till Day 600.
- Thread starter iNeedAMacPro
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Hi, guys:
The new 2012 Mac Pros will come out pretty soon and they will be very powerful in comparison with iMacs and minis.
Many people will be happy with the new Mac Pros and with the new technologies coming with them.
With my fingers crossed, I am looking forward to reading the tech specs of the 2012 Mac Pros.
The new 2012 Mac Pros will come out pretty soon and they will be very powerful in comparison with iMacs and minis.
Many people will be happy with the new Mac Pros and with the new technologies coming with them.
With my fingers crossed, I am looking forward to reading the tech specs of the 2012 Mac Pros.
I highly doubt it will be 50% better then what you can buy right now. Maybe 20%, its usually an incremental change.
Someone coming from a 7 year old computer like the OP the change would be monumental. I would think the increased productivity would trump the months lost waiting for a marginal increase from what we have now. Thats if he would really use the Mac Pro to its potencial.
Hey, no need to apologize. I'm not out to argue here. A lot of us are waiting, just like you. I am too, in a way. I work on the 2010 model, but the lab I work in will likely buy one once it finally does refresh. (We're crossing our fingers that it will support >128 GB of RAM) So, I get it, it sucks, but the 2010 is still a great, great machine. For some tasks the 2012 will probably make a large difference over the 2010 (an extra 2-4 more faster cores and more memory), but if you're not pushing the current Mac Pro as hard as possible it likely won't matter a whole lot. For example, I'm working on the 8 core 2.4. The step from that to the current 2.93 12 core, is probably going to be larger than from the current 8 core to the next base dual processor base model.
So, if you're "getting by" on a machine from 2005, the difference from the 2010 to the 2012 probably won't matter to you. But that's an assumption on my part. If you have stuff piling up, you can't finish and its costing you money, you should probably just buy the computer you need now. The maybe 10-20% speed increase of the 2012 over the 2010 likely won't matter.
Not a case of liking or not liking your response. I didn't - and don't - have an emotional reaction to this topic. We're waiting for a new computer to be released. Getting upset over such a thing is a waste of everyone's energy.
If you think it's a mindless attack, report me to the moderators. If they agree, the post will be taken down and I'll get a warning/ban. And I'll take it without complaint. But in my view, we're all adults here, and expressing firm disagreement with somebody else's point of view is part of forum life. In my opinion, you were too quick to get upset about it. In your opinion, I was too quick to criticise you. Fine. We can differ on that. And I've already apologised.
I hope that that's the end of the matter. If not, perhaps better for us to resolve our remaining differences in private.
With regard to the topic, I think the OP's right to wait. I've said so already. And I certainly don't think he should be buying a 2011 Mac Mini, because they represent horrible value for money. As for the iMac, I never recommend them to a 'power' user because such a person will always own their own monitor and, usually, will demand more flexibility from their hardware than can be found in an all-in-one. I think both the Mini and the iMac are likely to be inappropriate for the OP's needs.
That's how all these threads go, don't worry about it. In the longer ones at least one person usually gets banned. Who knew workstations were such a hot issue eh?
I should probably make an inappropriate suggestion about somebody's mother. Just to quicken things up a bit.
People just feel the need to tell other people what they "really" need. In fact if someone wants a Mac Pro simply because they like the sound of it or the look of it or whatever, who the heck's business is it to tell them otherwise, and further, why on earth would anyone care? 
Generally, you would be right. However, in the $6000 range this could easily be a switch from 12 cores to 16 cores. Even if the new cores showed no improvement that is still 33% increase for workloads that can linearly scale up based purely on core count. Throw in 16 cores which are 10-15% better and you can be nudging closer to 50% than 30-40%.
At the top end of the price range the incremental jumps are typically larger when get substantive core count bumps. However, the price : performance ratio is usually not as good except for those whose data creation rates are highly valuable.
If the workload can't scale linear with cores... then it is not the 50% that is loopy. It is spending $6000.
I agree and I can wait a couple months. It would bother me though to buy a 2010 machine for the same price as it was the day it was released, and then see a new one with new features come out soon.
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Because March 6th is the highly rumored date of the new Xeon launch.
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012011301_Launch_dates_of_Intel_processors_in_Q1.html
It is the Cebit conference in Germany and in an odd way if Intel is going to be "late" might as well be almost a whole year late. This way Xeon E5 class products go back to be released in March/April time frame. Actually it also somewhat simplies things to since the Xeon E3's are in the April/May time frame. So anyone who wanted to do a E3 and E5 line up bump could do it at about the same time.
By the ninth (and even more so by the 18th when hit 600) it should be extremely clear what the prices and availability will be for the general PC market for systems utilizes these new products ( Dell and HP are highly likely be shipping by that date. Even Intel will be shipping "white boxes" by that time. ). It is doubtful there is going to be a huge delay after the "official" launch since the processors are already shipping to vendors.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/20/intel_q4_2011_server_drilldown/
So the pre-launch ramp-up is already in motion. System vendors will probably spend most of February building up inventory to meet the demand of a almost 2 quarter late launch. It is not just Apple who is in the "over 365 days" old category; all the workstation vendors in same class are in the same boat. Customers at other vendors may have been able to move down market in similar form factor but not across.
P.S. The E5 2600's
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2011/2011102701_Prices_of_Xeon_E5-2600-series_CPUs.html
The 2650 , 2660, and/or 2665 ( or 2670 )
I have no clue why folks keep pointing to Core i7 as being the penultimate of performance or desirability for a Mac Pro.
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People just feel the need to tell other people what they "really" need. In fact if someone wants a Mac Pro simply because they like the sound of it or the look of it or whatever, who the heck's business is it to tell them otherwise, and further, why on earth would anyone care?
Mm, seconded.
need (require) and want ( desire ) are two different concepts.
Anyone who wants to drop $2-6K on a machine primarily to hear the fans blow is going to catch grief if presents that as a "I need a Mac Pro to hear fans blow". Usually these are present as "I am doing xxx kinds of workloads. I am going to buy a mega whopper Mac Pro tricked out like this ...... ". The latter often are indicative of a disconnect between wants and rational technical requirements.
In contrast, these threads almost never look like "I got a $5000 bonus and I want to buy a fancy Mac Pro just to play around with. Which optional features/components can I get deliver the most enjoyment tinkering around with..... " . There would be few if any "you really need" comments there since spending the money is the primary 'requirement' not computational functionality.
I honestly don't care to report anything. So long as you're not spouting Nazi propaganda, or some such thing, I really don't care to report occasional attacks to mods. I will however point out that your post was essentially just "What? That's stupid." You say we're adults? Ok, have an adult conversation. If you think something is stupid, by all means, explain why you think that. Just saying something is stupid, in so many words, is the childish thing to do. Then getting worked up after I don't nicely explain what you misunderstood after your insightful comment certainly doesn't help. And if you think I'm too quick to get defensive over your attack maybe you should practice this technique on a greater number of people. I don't think you'll find a lot of variability in the general attitude you receive afterward.
That may be, but we haven't really heard much about what the OP is doing either. If he needs his own matte screen, yeah, don't get an iMac. But if that's the case, and he doesn't need more than 16 GB of RAM or profession grade GPUs, the Mini is actually a pretty good value. Even to the poster, goMac I believe, who had a 2008 Mac Pro. If you don't necessarily need more "heavy lifting" but just have more work than that computer can handle in general, connecting a Mac Mini via Ethernet to the Mac Pro could be a very economical choice. This is particularly true if you're losing money now because the 2008 Mac Pro just can't keep up, but isn't necessarily unable to do anything. $800 for a Mac Mini is not a lot compared to months of work not get done.
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Sorry, dude. I feel like there's an interesting point in here somewhere, but I'm not quite seeing it.
What do you mean?
Interesting that you've read me as defensive and worked-up. I honestly was not emotionally invested in this topic at all. And I don't mean "interesting" in an insincere and mocking fashion: I'm genuinely surprised.
For me, you seemed to get excessively pissed-off about something that - I didn't think - was particularly offensive. You've clearly got a tongue in your head [metaphor], and I expected you to robustly challenge my point; whereas instead, unfortunately, the debate went nowhere because you got so annoyed, and became (in my opinion) much more interested in pointing-out to the board what a prick I am. In doing so, you may (or may not) have missed that I actually agreed with your subsequent post: as usual with protracted forum spats, it will probably be revealed that we, ultimately, largely agree with each other.
The way you've caricatured my post is not altogether wide-of-the-mark, but the fact of the matter is that you understood what I meant without me having to explain it to you. You understood that I was saying to you, "a 2012 Mac Pro would be infinitely [knowing exaggeration] more powerful than a 2011 Mac Mini: someone who's waiting for the former will not find comparable functionality in the latter". You clearly understood that. So did I really need to spell it out...? If you think so, fine. I'll bear it in mind in future. And for the avoidance of any doubt, I again apologise.
EDIT: I really would like to draw a line under this. If you have anything further to say, please send a PM. I'm not trying to have 'the last word': I just think that enough public space has been taken-up with this now.
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Again, nobody's business but their own. Why would anyone care why some stranger buys a MP? A sale is a sale. But regardless, a persons personal experience as to what is fast enough, smooth enough, flexible enough or whatever, is going to be quite different from person to person.
I just get tired of seeing posts to the effect of you don't need a MP to do what you do, such and such is fast enough. Personally, I need a Mac Pro to do what I do, period the end!
But are we likely to see 16 core Xeons if we don't have 8 core i7's out? At least I have not heard if 8 core i7 are out.
Well, it don't take a rocket scientist to see that it's well past the average update cycle (347 days), and that they have been coming out slower and slower, and that a few years ago they were being updated twice as often as they are now.
It's obvious that they are no longer as serious about the Mac pro as they were before they became obsessed with ios gadgets.
And if they keep bastardizing osx any more, it probably won't even run on a Mac Pro anyway. Their goal seems to be to merge both operating systems into something that runs on an arm processor and uses the cloud to store everything.
That don't sound like a viable Mac Pro environment to me.
Of course we must bear in mind the decision Apple made a long time ago to stick with the Xeon processors for the Mac Pros, right? And we're all aware that MP Sandy Bridge Xeons aren't available yet and won't be till Spring? So given all of that: what should Apple have done to update the 5,1 Mac Pros?
jas
It isn't 16 core Xeons packages that matter. It is a 16 core Mac Pro. Nobody uses just the processors themselves. It is the system themselves and benchmarks derived by using the systems (not the solely the processor) that counts.
There is a 12 core Xeon Mac Pro available right now. Has been for almost 2 years. With two 8 core E5's you can ship a 16 core Mac Pro. The package core count jumps by 2, but the system core count jumps by 4 if used as a pair. It is highly unlikely Apple is going to ship a 8 core, single package model. Single package is extremely likely going to cap out at 6 (with E5 1600's ).
Lion comes out with launchpad now every one thinks its going to be iOS..ha. Go talk to Microsoft about Windows 8 Metro. Apple still has iOS and Mac OSX separate.
In that case I'm going to wait and see how it turns out when its released. Hyper threading only does so much and is not the same thing as real cores. You might see 15%-20% difference with hyper threading but only so much. You will see an improvement with the sandybridge processor, but I'm skeptical if it will be 50% better then what we have now.
Benchmarks, while it has interesting data, I'm more concerned with real word testing, something benchmarks try to simulate.