501–510 of 731 posts
Lack of NVIDIA support is a deal-breaker. The AMD ecosystem is just so far behind when it comes to frameworks like CUDA, OptiX, cuDNN, etc.. Why can't Apple open up kernel-level support by cooperating more with NVIDIA? This state of things seems completely bizarre to me.
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It's funny this just came out when it did. I was just looking at getting an older Mac Pro 5,1 and upgrading all the components in it like a few friends have done. For under $2K you can have a machine that competes with newer machines that cost twice that much. If you're a professional creative type, these machines are the real deal: The Most Powerful Mac Is 6 Years Old and Not Sold By Apple - https://www.vice.com/en_…
The big issue with older mac pros is for how long is it able to install the latest versions of MacOS?
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It runs macOS and those consumer grade computers don't. If the best colorist in the area is working on your film, you give them the tools they ask for.
The color graders here run 10-bit/color HDR monitors that have a wide gamut. Apple doesn't have monitors that support this. (The new one _might_ do the trick; we'll see.) Everyone here doing professional color work is on PCs supplied by Thinkmate. This is standard in Hollywood, too.
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On the flip side over in Linux land I built an 8 core 16T desktop with 64GB of RAM and two 27” 4K HDR monitors for less than half the price of the base Mac Pro. Oh and it has an RTX2080 which beats an RX580 so badly it’s practically attempted murder. I bet the apple tax I really do (typing this on a 5th gen mini) but the base model is hilariously expensive and in a world where I can buy a 12 core/16T for 499 that bea…
More like Xeon tax. The new Mac Pro has a ton more PCIe lanes and DDR4 channels. It's a completely different league, it can't be directly compared to mainstream platforms that only have dual-channel and 16-24 lanes. EPYC would've been a better value, but it's still not cheap. Big computers with lots of memory and I/O capacity will always look ridiculously expensive next to mainstream desktop.
Support ecc as well.
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On the flip side over in Linux land I built an 8 core 16T desktop with 64GB of RAM and two 27” 4K HDR monitors for less than half the price of the base Mac Pro. Oh and it has an RTX2080 which beats an RX580 so badly it’s practically attempted murder. I bet the apple tax I really do (typing this on a 5th gen mini) but the base model is hilariously expensive and in a world where I can buy a 12 core/16T for 499 that bea…
More like Xeon tax. The new Mac Pro has a ton more PCIe lanes and DDR4 channels. It's a completely different league, it can't be directly compared to mainstream platforms that only have dual-channel and 16-24 lanes. EPYC would've been a better value, but it's still not cheap. Big computers with lots of memory and I/O capacity will always look ridiculously expensive next to mainstream desktop.
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On the flip side over in Linux land I built an 8 core 16T desktop with 64GB of RAM and two 27” 4K HDR monitors for less than half the price of the base Mac Pro. Oh and it has an RTX2080 which beats an RX580 so badly it’s practically attempted murder. I bet the apple tax I really do (typing this on a 5th gen mini) but the base model is hilariously expensive and in a world where I can buy a 12 core/16T for 499 that bea…
And what 27" 4K HDR monitors are you using? I've been looking for something similar for a while and haven't seen much with those base specs...
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You would if you had a storage appliance on a SAN, as the SAN is almost certainly faster than a single SSD. This is an extremely common setup for video production, so it’s not out of the target market at all.
There are plenty of cheap NVMe SSDs that can push 3.5Gbytes/sec (Samsung 970, Adata XPG). Even with dual 10Gbe NICs, you can't match that, nor the low access times of local storage. But I do agree that SAN storage is the norm here.
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The new Mac Pro, like Mac Pros always have been, is for music/TV studios and design agencies that bill their time starting at $500/hour. It's really not for individuals, and that's ok. Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread. I'm thrilled about it even though I know I'll never touch one. It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a…
That was basically my takeaway as well. Writing/compiling code just isn't "pro" anymore — doesn't require pro hardware. The new Mac Pro is meant for professional studios . And to think music studios need so much horsepower when "Sgt. Pepper's" was recorded on 4 tracks…
What audio effects there were in Sgt. Pepper’s were generated in analogue effects pedals and synths. Today, those same effects are expected to be simulated, in parallel, in realtime, on the DAW you’re producing the track on. (And modern music genres use way more effect layers. Modern pop music is a fifty-deep effects tree with one-second-long samples at the bottom, with full-fidelity rendering of such monitored in real-time as performers feed vocals and other live input in.)
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If you spec something with similar workstation grade hardware, you'll be in the same ballpark. Gaming PC hardware isn't comparable.
Prices from newegg SuperMicro 5039A-i 730 Xeon W-2145 1175 4x8GB ECC RAM $74 x 4 = 296 AMD Radeon RX 480 415 SAMSUNG 970 PRO 512GB 160 Total: 2776 So Apple charges more than x2. And if one would use Ryzen and consumer GPU, price would be massively reduced.
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It's a product with a price tag and spec sheet anyone can find. Can't really see how they can be any more transparent.
It's not a transparency issue, this dark pattern exists everywhere. You advertise "New X starting at $x" which is low enough to attract customers. But the thing you sell for $x is actually lacking in some small but important capacity making it unattractive for actual use. Then you sell an upgrade for the target price and customers are more willing to pay because it feels like they're paying a small premium for the th…