Why I feel the nMP is not over priced

[beaker7]

I didn't find an option for a second GPU, TB2 or PCIe SSD.
And the cheapest I can find them is $8500.
But you do get more cores.

Yeh. Obviously a direct comparison cannot be made. No need for TB2 on a workstation with slots. Or if you did then one would have to add in the cost of an external PCI-E chassis with 4-6 slots to a Mac Pro when doing said comparison.

But if one's work relies on CPU power or CUDA computation you're not looking at nMP anyway so...

 

[ugahairydawgs]

I just bought a Dell T7610 with dual E5-2697 v2's for less than $6k with business discount. Similar horsepower in nMP form is about double.

What exactly are you looking at? I just pulled up the same config on Dell's website and it is $8599. Similar Mac Pro speced out with 12 core Xeon instead of 10 is $8499.

 

[Quash]

What exactly are you looking at? I just pulled up the same config on Dell's website and it is $8599. Similar Mac Pro speced out with 12 core Xeon instead of 10 is $8499.

Yup the list price of the dell is higher, but in my experience with dell you can get huge discounts on their list prices. At least you can when buying Xeon servers. So all these comparisons you see everywhere are kind of silly. Not saying that the Mac Pro is bad value or anything. Just saying don't compare them with the web config, but ring dell and find out what you can actually buy one of these things for. You might be surprised. That would be a fair comparison. It still comes in a rather ugly uninspiring case with windows on it though

 

[Frong]

Regarding your issues:
1 - Is 512gb not enough? As you could get a 1TB SSD and split it, and keeping your data/non active projects in an external Thunderbolt SSD/HDD (I'll be doing this except my nMP will mostly come with 256GB SSD only)
2 - Chances are someone will create a case to compliment the nMP in a few months time, I'm speculating here but I'll be surprise if I dont see external HDD casings to compliment the nMP in the coming 6 months.
3 and 4 - Apple has done this before and nothing to be surprised at since they are known for throwing out standards in favour of better ones.

1: No 1TB isn't ok, I have 8+TB including 2TB backup for each Win/OSX.
2: Two boxes will hardly help.
3: No dvd is clearly showing Apple believes they only target some special type of pro, but they are wrong.
4: In hope they really become the standards, SCSI has been a good example of half failure.

Mac Pro is a long series of disappointment since the Rev1.1 and it's weird it ends in some solution not at all targeting the same range of users. The point is the new Mac Pro is a Mac Mini and that's always been a bad choice for me.

I'm more interested in the new one than any other after rev1.1 but it seems the new is too much out of my loop.

I'm less angry about Apple than about me, I should have prepared myself better to switch fully on Win side.

 

[shaunp]

It depends

For a workstation, compared to say the Dell T7610 or a HP Z810, the nMP offers good value, but at the cost of expandability. Look at Anandtech's review and there are limitations to the current Intel workstation chipset. With the nMP most of the bandwidth goes to the graphics cards, and rightly so for a workstation aimed at the professional video and graphics market. If you need more CPU or want 10GigE, or want to connect to FC storage the nMP might not serve your needs so well.

As an general purpose desktop I feel the nMP represents poor value for money. Most of use don't need workstation class components, but if you don't want an iMac you have two choices the mini and the nMP. There's a hell of a price difference between them that can't be ignored. I've just bought a Core i7 Mini with a Pegasus 2 array. The Mini will be fine for most of my tasks, but not for gaming. I'll be keeping my PC for games until a point where the mini's integrated graphics are good enough for gaming, or there is a a new product based on the nMP or the nMP has more configuration options. At that point I'll ditch the PC and mini and replace them both with the one machine. The storage and my display will stay. Why bother with all this? Because I don't feel the nMP represents good value for my needs, and it might be better to just replace mac mini's every 2 years or so.

 

[Frong]

2 computers, 2 keyboards, 2 displays, 2 mouse/trackball? It never worked well for me, I tried it a short time, and also tried keyboard/display switch, it doesn't suit home usage for me.