I gathered that and sorry about the confusion. How about using the mini as a dumb terminal / workstation while the processing is done on the pro? I don't know, just thinking aloud back to the days when I was in computing.
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What are you going to do until the 2013 upgrade of the Mac Pro?
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I gathered that and sorry about the confusion. How about using the mini as a dumb terminal / workstation while the processing is done on the pro? I don't know, just thinking aloud back to the days when I was in computing.
I've just ordered the parts to build up a Hac. It's been close to four years since my last one, and from what I've heard it's significantly quicker to get it all up and running now
All done. This thing is so fast!
Just ended up ordering a AMD 6870 PC video card for my 3,1 2008 Mac Pro.
Been wanting to use the new Final Cut Pro, but the MP's stock video card is
not compliant. Was waiting to see what was announced to see if it was worth upgrading my current system or just spend that money on whatever was released. Since we didn't get much of anything, I'm just going to upgrade my system and get a few more years out of it. I'll probably also get a SSD for a new boot drive and install a USB 3.0 card depending on how the new Apple USB 3 compatability shakes out.
Been wanting to use the new Final Cut Pro, but the MP's stock video card is
not compliant. Was waiting to see what was announced to see if it was worth upgrading my current system or just spend that money on whatever was released. Since we didn't get much of anything, I'm just going to upgrade my system and get a few more years out of it. I'll probably also get a SSD for a new boot drive and install a USB 3.0 card depending on how the new Apple USB 3 compatability shakes out.
All done. This thing is so fast!
Congrats! How long did it take you or better: if you have to rebuild today how long will it take you to do it again?
One thing I always do when installing a machine is make a log of all actions undertaken in a simple text file. Then if I need to redo then I have a play script to go by.
Sweet. Could you post your system specs for others to follow? I need something to replace my mini with multiple hard drive capable for my movie streaming.All done. This thing is so fast!
I will be going with option number 1.
I just upgraded from 6GB of RAM to 12GB.
Bought two more external firewire 800 drives.
In a few months I will be upgrading my stock 2.66GHz processor to the W3680.
I use my Mac Pro as my main desktop machine, and also do all my video editing on it. I think the 2013 Mac Pro update would need to be major for me to want to purchase it. For right now I am happy with Firewire 800, and my current Mac Pro once it gets the CPU upgrade.
I just upgraded from 6GB of RAM to 12GB.
Bought two more external firewire 800 drives.
In a few months I will be upgrading my stock 2.66GHz processor to the W3680.
I use my Mac Pro as my main desktop machine, and also do all my video editing on it. I think the 2013 Mac Pro update would need to be major for me to want to purchase it. For right now I am happy with Firewire 800, and my current Mac Pro once it gets the CPU upgrade.
Spec in sig is still going strong (it is still the 5/6th fastest Mac you can have!).
GPU will be upgraded from the 6870 to a 7870 or 670, whichever gets decent support first.
Might get 32GB ram.
GPU will be upgraded from the 6870 to a 7870 or 670, whichever gets decent support first.
Might get 32GB ram.
Thuderbolt isn't the blocking issue here.
Last year there were no LGA1155 motherboards with Thunderbolt either from anyone until Apple introduced several.
It isn't that hard. You hook the discrete Thunderbolt controller to x4 PCI-e lanes ( of which an E5 Xeon has plenty) and to a display port ouput which a wide variety of discrete GPUs and your are done.
It is almost ridiculously easier to do with it is a 1155 motherboard because the CPU/GPU output comes out of the same support chips as the x4 PCI_e lanes you are also likely using. For example one of Intel's board
[overview on a couple here http://www.anandtech.com/show/5884/...part-2-intels-dz77rek75-asus-p8z77v-premium/1 ]
Both outputs coming from one support chip just makes it easier. It isn't necessary. It is actually a little odd that Intel runs the video output to the I/O Hub in the first place. The GPU is in the CPU package. With a different pin outs and modest increase in internal circuits the signal could just as well come out of the CPU package. In the next iteration, Haswell, it probably will ( along with x4 PCI-e lanes to hook the TB controller to. ).
The iMac has a discrete GPU hooked to its Thunderbolt controller. It isn't rocket science. It was done last year.
There is nothing about socket 2011's PCI-e lanes or discrete GPUs that make it any harder if just willing to wire up a solution. It takes more motherboard space to do it without a iGPU but the Mac Pro isn't that pressed for motherboard space. There are plenty of competing workstations out there with more PCI/PCI-e slots , more discrete SATA controllers , motherboard SATA headers , etc. that clearly demonstrate it is well within technical possibility to put a bit more on a motherboard than the current Mac Pro does.
They looked like they screwed up. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. This is a big FUBAR one though.
It isn't there flagship model. You are smoking something pretty strong if you think the Mac Pro has been their flagship model anytime over the last 5-6 years.
That is ridiculous statement. If Apple introduced brand new Xeon E5 with all the possible features and bleeding edge new GPU video cards from the mainstream market and the only feature missing was Thunderbolt, then overwhelming response would have been positive.
The majority of Thunderbolt kool-aid drinkers that would have been disappointed, but they aren't a major fraction of the Mac Pro market.
And there would a very small subset of folks who have highly mobile jobs with some very expensive Thunderbolt devices with no PCI-e equivalents ( that is an extremely small number of devices of a relatively extremely small pool of Thunderbolt devices ).
If you are implying that Apple has to wait until Intel builds a reference board with discrete controllers and flush out the majority of the design details before Apple can copy off their "homework" ... I can't image they would be pissed. Can't really be pissed if just perpetrating you have a skill set that you don't. Perhaps they could be pissed that they didn't hire any compentent designers but that's about it. Putting Thunderbolt on a board isn't rocket science.
The vast majority of vendors aren't doing it primarily only because the controllers are expensive and the technology isn't broadly rolled-out.
"... Right now, the necessary Thunderbolt controller chip from Intel costs more than quadruple that of the equivalent component for an earlier high-speed connection technology, FireWire. ..."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57...-go-mainstream-with-help-from-apple-and-acer/
Most board and system vendors are squeezed for margins don't want the margin hit. 4x FW controller cost is trivial for the Mac Pro to handle. The only bump in cost if would be if Apple started shipping with two GPUs on board (one PCI-e card and an embedded one to supply Thunderbolt with Display Port signal or higher priced PCI-e card because some custom kludge to get the DisplayPort off the card. ).
So there is another vendor whose workstation's CPUs top Intel's ? Apple not being able to do their own "homework" wasn't Intel's problem.
The delay of the E5's can be laid at Intel's feet. They Apple screwed up the Mac Pro development process on top of that ... is purely Apple's FUBAR.
Hi all,
I too was waiting for the new mac pro as we need an additional system. So i just bit the bullet and picked up another 6core system today and I'll deal with what happens in 2013 as i'm sure we'll need one more (we have a 2008 that is starting to act up a bit).
But mostly the reason for my post is when i was ordering the 6core today, interestingly enough when the sales rep read the company profile and confirmed we do photography (just one of many things we do and it's easier to leave it at "photography") he said "oh, if you do photography, you should really go with the imac" and that for photography imac's are perfect.
So not really wanting to get in a debate on whether or not an imac is sufficient vs a macpro for what we do, and while I would love to think that in this day and age a company would really not want me to waste an additional $1000 on a computer they deem I may not need, does anyone else find it interesting that a sales person was trying to talk me out of purchasing a mac pro? and to buy an imac instead?
Curious.
Perhaps they are indeed trained to say photographers = imac and maybe i'm reading into this a little bit too much, who knows...
I too was waiting for the new mac pro as we need an additional system. So i just bit the bullet and picked up another 6core system today and I'll deal with what happens in 2013 as i'm sure we'll need one more (we have a 2008 that is starting to act up a bit).
But mostly the reason for my post is when i was ordering the 6core today, interestingly enough when the sales rep read the company profile and confirmed we do photography (just one of many things we do and it's easier to leave it at "photography") he said "oh, if you do photography, you should really go with the imac" and that for photography imac's are perfect.
So not really wanting to get in a debate on whether or not an imac is sufficient vs a macpro for what we do, and while I would love to think that in this day and age a company would really not want me to waste an additional $1000 on a computer they deem I may not need, does anyone else find it interesting that a sales person was trying to talk me out of purchasing a mac pro? and to buy an imac instead?
Curious.
Perhaps they are indeed trained to say photographers = imac and maybe i'm reading into this a little bit too much, who knows...
All done. This thing is so fast!
Post your shopping list please, I may make a Hackintosh this year too. My MP Octo 2008 is staying Snow Leopard to support my legacy equipment and software, I quite fancy a new rig to play with Mountain Lion on and use with newer stuff (Nvidia cards etc.).
A hackintosh as an in-between until the real Mac Pro update would be another way to go.
What's a reasonable amount you have to spend to put a good unit together?
Is it hard to sell a hackintosh when the Mac Pro comes out?
What's a reasonable amount you have to spend to put a good unit together?
Is it hard to sell a hackintosh when the Mac Pro comes out?
I'm thinking about doing one of these
http://www.pssclabs.com/hpc-workstation/double-cpu
Probably just going to go back to linux. I'll miss textmate though, made my life soooooo easy.
http://www.pssclabs.com/hpc-workstation/double-cpu
Probably just going to go back to linux. I'll miss textmate though, made my life soooooo easy.
A hackintosh is just a home-built PC when it comes to selling it.
They don't go for much...
It took me maybe 5 hours to get it all up and running, and I'd wager that about 3 of those hours were with the software (with the rest being trying to fit everything into the case). If I did it again then I could probably do the software part in 1-2 hours.
Bear in mind that you may need to tweak things for your own requirements, but here's what I got:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H - Notably this board doesn't have compatible sound (which isn't an issue for me) and also has no FireWire (I decided that I could live without it). You may wish to get a different board if you need those features. Also note that this board only includes two SATA cables so you may need to buy some extras.
CPU: Core i5-3750K (Ivy) - Can also take an i7.
Video: EVGA GTX560Ti (1 GB) - In a single-display configuration, I need to use DVI port 2 or I get a black screen. I don't have a second display to test with, so please do some research if you need two displays. I also haven't yet tested HDMI.
Case: Antec New Solution NSK 4000-B II - I absolutely do not recommend this case. Despite having four 3.5" bays, only two are accessible once you have a video card in there. And I don't know how widespread this is but on mine the cutout for the I/O plate wasn't square and I couldn't get the plate to sit in there properly. On top of that, it's just generally a pain to work with.
PSU: I got a 700 W Thermaltake which seems to do the trick; it has enough connectors etc.
SSD: OCZ Agility 3 - This one apparently doesn't need a TRIM hack. It's not the fastest in the range but coming from a magnetic drive the difference is phenomenal
That's most of the important stuff. For the actual installation I used:
UniBeast 1.3 - Creates a bootable installation flash drive. Be sure to use a USB 2 port as there are no USB 3 drivers on there and it'll drop the device partway through the boot.
BridgeHelper 5 using these instructions. With version 5, in step 11 you no longer need NullCPUPowerManagement - but if you don't install it then you also need to add an extra step of installing BridgeHelper to the hard drive before rebooting.
To get the video card running at anything over 1024x768 then you need the OpenCL Enabler. Edit: I was getting intermittent display corruption with this method. I've installed this driver which works without the enabler and hasn't caused corruption yet.
Troubleshooting
If your hard drives don't show up during installation, go into EFI (press Delete on boot) and make sure that they're using AHCI instead of IDE.
As noted above, don't try booting from a USB 3 port. The USB 3 ports aren't working in OS X at all, but I expect that a driver will be included in 10.8 (or may be extractable from this year's laptops).
The "UserDSDT" installation expects a DSDT.aml file on your desktop. I've attached mine (taken from version F4 of the Gigabyte ROM) but honestly I'm not sure whether you actually need it (I didn't have to make any tweaks to it whatsoever).
Hard drives show up in Finder as external with an orange icon. There's a fix for the icons in MultiBeast under "Disk"; it only fixes the icons and the system still thinks that they're external. This doesn't seem to actually cause any problems though.
OK, I think that's enough of a novel for now
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I've never used Geekbench so I don't know whether this score of 9705 is good or not (although I didn't follow the recommendation of closing all apps). If that score seems suspiciously low then let me know so I can investigate what might be going on.
Well, apparently you have to pay for Geekbench to do a 64-bit test which I'm not prepared to do for the sake of posting numbers on forums
I'll try it again later once I'm not in the middle of installing software etc.
I'll try it again later once I'm not in the middle of installing software etc.
Upgrade - I put 8 gigs in the 1,1 - have 14 gigs now. ssd drive also. Did the video card a year ago Radeon HD 4870. The NVIDIA 7300GT is in there too, in case i need 4 monitors going.
Seems like a lot of people are doing that here - guess there are still a good chunk of people who are not jumping ship
Seems like a lot of people are doing that here - guess there are still a good chunk of people who are not jumping ship
Well, apparently you have to pay for Geekbench to do a 64-bit test which I'm not prepared to do for the sake of posting numbers on forums
I'll try it again later once I'm not in the middle of installing software etc.
Even in 32 bit mode, that's slower than my 2007 2,1 Mac Pro. Are you sure everything is working right?
[darn it]
I'm one of those people who has needed a MP for years and put it off. Sheesh. I can't put it off any longer and just got a 2012/3.2. If you need it then you need it, and after spending a couple weeks following used MP's on Craigslist and not seeing any attractive options [impressed with MP resale value!], the time has come to pull the trigger, despite everything.
OWC Accelsior coming on Tuesday with a ram upgrade.
Although I was hoping for a larger update, I'm thrilled with finally moving up to a MP. I can't even tell you how much fun it is to load it up with redundant systems to protect my work. MPs start making a lot of sense when you start pushing their options. HD-SDI card + color accurate NTSC monitor: here I come. Can't wait to see what my videos actually look like.
I'm one of those people who has needed a MP for years and put it off. Sheesh. I can't put it off any longer and just got a 2012/3.2. If you need it then you need it, and after spending a couple weeks following used MP's on Craigslist and not seeing any attractive options [impressed with MP resale value!], the time has come to pull the trigger, despite everything.
OWC Accelsior coming on Tuesday with a ram upgrade.
Although I was hoping for a larger update, I'm thrilled with finally moving up to a MP. I can't even tell you how much fun it is to load it up with redundant systems to protect my work. MPs start making a lot of sense when you start pushing their options. HD-SDI card + color accurate NTSC monitor: here I come. Can't wait to see what my videos actually look like.
My 2 MPs are still going strong - the 2008 octo 3.2 is still the main workhorse, and I recently put a 5770 and another 8gb ram in it, so apart from an SSD, there's not a lot more I can do to boost its performance.
I've considered the switch to a decent Xeon PC, but it's not something I would consider lightly, especially whilst there still does appear to be a real pro mac update coming eventually - not happy about the daft delays, but what can you do when your entire Eco system is iOS/OSX based? Plus in reality, unless you do go down the build your own route, the costs are very similar.
Hacintosh is not a realistic option for a professionally used machine IMO, and I just couldn't be bothered with any hassle that would incur!
So, I could spend £3.4k on a refurb 12 core 2.66 and double my Cinebench rendering scores immediately ( I use Cinema 4d daily) to tide me over until whenever the new machines arrive with ivy bridge Xeons hopefully, or just save my cash and keep going with my 2 8 cores that effectively combined give me the same CB score anyway!... Hmmm
I've considered the switch to a decent Xeon PC, but it's not something I would consider lightly, especially whilst there still does appear to be a real pro mac update coming eventually - not happy about the daft delays, but what can you do when your entire Eco system is iOS/OSX based? Plus in reality, unless you do go down the build your own route, the costs are very similar.
Hacintosh is not a realistic option for a professionally used machine IMO, and I just couldn't be bothered with any hassle that would incur!
So, I could spend £3.4k on a refurb 12 core 2.66 and double my Cinebench rendering scores immediately ( I use Cinema 4d daily) to tide me over until whenever the new machines arrive with ivy bridge Xeons hopefully, or just save my cash and keep going with my 2 8 cores that effectively combined give me the same CB score anyway!... Hmmm