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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#151

Post by abakker »

sdan wrote: post #105
mcphage wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3D modelers want NVIDIA cards, not Radeon, as NVIDIA supports CUDA What do 3D modelers use CUDA for? I know it gets used for machine learning, but I'm not familiar with what else.

I've heard that CUDA can help decrease render times on Adobe Premiere Pro and several other programs. I'm guessing that includes 3D modeling software like Fusion 360 or something to help with various molding and simulation features.

FWIW, I've done some pretty complex part simulations in F360, and it's not that slow, on my Vega MacBook pro 2018. But, if it is, Fusion has online-sim calculator or renderers that are pretty affordable.

Re: New Mac Pro

#152

Post by beezle »

joezydeco wrote: post #69
aczerepinski wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Hollywood media makers are there? As an Apple shareholder should I be excited to learn that they made a specialty computer for this demographic?

How many Corvette owners are there? As a GM shareholder should I be excited they made a car just for mid-life crises?

2015 was a banner year, nearly 35,000 sold in the USA. Only about 19,000 last year. Estimates from a number of years ago were of about $10,000 profit on each sale

Re: New Mac Pro

#153

Post by threeseed »

JimDabell wrote: post #88
fooey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people still keep waiting for Apple to support gaming in any way at all. Worse than just not supporting gaming, they're antagonistically blocking companies like Nvidia who tried to fill in the gap with external GPUs. https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/18/apples-management... If you want to game, you buy Windows, end of story.

> I don't know why people still keep waiting for Apple to support gaming in any way at all. They just announced PS4 and Xbox One gamepad support and had Mojang on stage to demo a new version of Minecraft in this very keynote.

Those were for iOS not MacOS.

Question is why people keep wanting MacOS to be a hardcore gaming platform.

Re: New Mac Pro

#154

Post by kickopotomus »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #44
bluedino wrote: post #17

The thing the Mac Pro does is magically make the price of every other computer look that much better. $6000 for a computer? Johnson, that's insane. What about $4999 for an iMac Pro? It comes with a display. Great, order it! What about $2499 for a Mac Mini with 32GB and 1TB SSD? Great, order it! What about $2499 for a Macbook Pro? Great, order it!

The 1987 Mac II released at $5,498, $12,125 adjusted for inflation. Granted, that included a monitor. IMO these things are designed for companies like Pixar, Disney, and aerospace, the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" world.

Hardware was many orders of magnitude more expensive to manufacture in 1987[1]. The base model that you get for $6000 is not impressive at all by today's standards. The max specs would make it a powerhouse but it probably will also cost ~$12000.

[1]: http://www.singularity.com/charts/page59.html

Re: New Mac Pro

#155

Post by mcphage »

ptrott2017 wrote: post #141
mcphage wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3D modelers want NVIDIA cards, not Radeon, as NVIDIA supports CUDA What do 3D modelers use CUDA for? I know it gets used for machine learning, but I'm not familiar with what else.

I used to develop professional 3D tools and CUDA is used to accellerate features in 3D software including: scene manipulation, simulation, real time rendering, ray tracing, rendering shader effects and video encoding etc.

Thank you!

Re: New Mac Pro

#156

Post by snazz »

banachtarski wrote: post #122
snazz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue this is good for users, because vendor-supplied drivers always seem to have crappy updater software running at all times and send pop-ups at all hours on Windows. Vendors really need to better support open-source drivers for user experience purposes, but they don’t because they want more control over their market.

Don't conflate the updater with the driver itself. Apple could have enforced a policy around integration with the system update functionality or something, but the driver supplied by the vendor will always be better/faster because it can exploit internal knowledge about the hardware.

Yes, I get that. All I’m trying to say is that the current user experience with third-party drivers for anything (especially nVidia graphics cards) is not the kind of thing Apple would want to inflict on their users.

Re: New Mac Pro

#157

Post by _bxg1 »

Shivetya wrote: post #23

I know being expandable is important here but I am stunned by the fact that an iMac Pro actually comes with better SSD and Video Card for less money and you get a screen to boot! 256g SSD is shameful, I don't care what they were thinking. No Nvidia support mentioned so I know a few that just wrote it off for that oversight alone. They will probably hold out just to be sure but that was the hope for them and others. W…

The branding distinction between "iMac Pro" and "Mac Pro" is just incredibly confusing.

Re: New Mac Pro

#158

Post by phire »

mcphage wrote: post #70
Shivetya wrote: post #23

I know being expandable is important here but I am stunned by the fact that an iMac Pro actually comes with better SSD and Video Card for less money and you get a screen to boot! 256g SSD is shameful, I don't care what they were thinking. No Nvidia support mentioned so I know a few that just wrote it off for that oversight alone. They will probably hold out just to be sure but that was the hope for them and others. W…

> 580X is old, 2017 old Is it? This site claims it came out in March 2019 but I definitely can't keep the various graphics card lines separate in my head: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-pro-580x.c3398

The 580X is just an RX580 that has been clocked a few percent higher.

But it gets worse, the RX580 is an identical design to the RX480, with just a few silicon tweaks to clock slightly higher.

Clock for clock, the 580X preforms identically to the RX480 that launched in August 2016.

Re: New Mac Pro

#159

Post by empath75 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #2

That price is just absurd. I waited for Mac Pro announcement to decide whether I'll stay with Windows or jump to macOS. Macbooks are not for me, but I hoped for a remotely reasonable priced computer, something like $2000 with another $1000 to expand with more memory, etc. But $6000 for 8-core CPU, 256 GB SSD, GPU that is less powerful than my old $200 NVidia 1060? It's just laughable. Otherwise seems like a good mach…

Why is the iMac pro not what you want?

Re: New Mac Pro

#160

Post by addicted »

threeseed wrote: post #139
old-gregg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, 580X is old (it's the same hardware as RX 480 from 2016) In fact, everything in that machine is old: the Xeons they use are rocking the Skylake core form 2015, with all of the recently discovered side-channel vulnerabilities. The upcoming AMD Threadripper 3 CPUs with PCIe4 would be a much better Pro offering. Clock-for-clock they are beating Skylake now, rumored to have up to 64 cores. Also, PCIe4-based RAID 0 a…

Don't forget that Apple can see AMD and Intel's future roadmaps. AMD definitely has a superior offering with Threadripper 3 but we haven't seen what Intel is going to offer in comparison. And switching CPU manufacturers is never trial.

Intel’s public roadmap has been highly unreliable. They’ve been delayed by years, and that was before the recent vulnerabilities were discovered. I’m not convinced about the value of their roadmaps.

That being said, if you were only allowed to pick one platform to sell to your customers, in a machine which should last years, then Intel would definitely be the safer bet. It’s also the platform most of the software providers are likely gonna optimize first.

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