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The Mac Pro Review

anandtech.com

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Re: The Mac Pro Review

#11

Post by green7ea »

lemonberry wrote: post #8
songgao wrote: post #7

Does anybody know how much work is required to run Linux on this thing? I read some documents but found them complicated enough that I don't want to deal with on my daily computer. Also there seems to be driver problem related to thermal issues. So I ended up with virtual machines every time considering installing Linux on Mac. Anybody running Linux on Macbooks or Mac Pro? Does it work well?

I think Linus runs linux on a Macbook Air. Techcrunch interview here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium... *edited to add link

He switched to a chromebook pixel recently:

https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#12

Post by thirdsight »

codex wrote: post #9
thirdsight wrote: post #4

I'm glad they mention the HP Z420. The killer for me on the Z420: three-year Mon-Fri 8-5 next business day, parts, labor and 24x7 phone support, They come to me. Edit: to all the naysayers: I'm in the UK. HP here is pretty good. We have over 200 machines on next day and we've had only two (!) problems and they were relating to part supply resulting in a quick purchase on Misco that arrived next day.

In most locations you can get 4-hour support by buying AppleCare Premium.

Not in Europe which means that isn't most locations!

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#13

Post by melvinram »

e40 wrote: post #6
thearn4 wrote: post #5

Do a lot of folks here generally like Mac desktops? I've grown to like Macbooks because I do like working on a portable UNIX-y platform, and have had generally bad luck with Linux laptops in the past. On desktops though, I'm willing to put more effort into settling software update issues/device conflicts, since I probably have to do that anyway to write performance-optimized code (depends on the exact purpose of the…

After running every version of Windows since 3.1, I've decided to go Mac for my desktop. I run stuff on it 24/7 and have 6 external disks, so a MBP is out of the question. The cost of external enclosures, though, for the new Mac Pro makes it out of reach ($3000 + $2400 = $5400... I can put together a nice hackintosh for $1700).

The DIY PC route is still going to be more affordable. If we go the Ivy Bridge E route and opt for a Core i7-4930K, you get more cores than either of the options above for around $600 for the CPU. Adding in another $330 for a motherboard, $180 for 12GB of DDR3-1866 memory, $1400 for two W7000 GPUs and $220 for a fast SATA SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) we’re at $2730 for a configuration that would cost at least $3499 from Apple. That’s excluding case, PSU and OS, but adding another ~$350 takes care of that and still saves you some money.

As the AnandTech review points out, you're looking at $2700ish if you opt for hardware that is apples to apples comparison... regardless of whether you went with hackintosh, Linux, or Windows.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#14

Post by x0x0 »

thirdsight wrote: post #4

I'm glad they mention the HP Z420. The killer for me on the Z420: three-year Mon-Fri 8-5 next business day, parts, labor and 24x7 phone support, They come to me. Edit: to all the naysayers: I'm in the UK. HP here is pretty good. We have over 200 machines on next day and we've had only two (!) problems and they were relating to part supply resulting in a quick purchase on Misco that arrived next day.

Hi. I'm a hp warranty victim; an so's old laptop had 3 year next business day support. On three occasions those lying sacks of shit made us mail it to them for a week at a time. Don't believe it; your "next day" warranty is just a donation of beer money for hp execs.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#15

Post by guelo »

Wow. For me, the big takeaway from this review are the benchmarks showing the iMac and MBPs beating out the Mac Pro. That shows that this machine is really for niche markets like professional video editing. Makes you wonder why Apple even bothers.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#17

Post by icegreentea »

guelo wrote: post #15

Wow. For me, the big takeaway from this review are the benchmarks showing the iMac and MBPs beating out the Mac Pro. That shows that this machine is really for niche markets like professional video editing. Makes you wonder why Apple even bothers.

In general, the MacPro loses out in single-thread performance only, since Xeons are typically one architecture behind. When the Haswell based Xeons come out, Apple will refresh the Mac Pro line, and you'll get parity single-thread performance.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#18

Post by PhineasRex »

songgao wrote: post #7

Does anybody know how much work is required to run Linux on this thing? I read some documents but found them complicated enough that I don't want to deal with on my daily computer. Also there seems to be driver problem related to thermal issues. So I ended up with virtual machines every time considering installing Linux on Mac. Anybody running Linux on Macbooks or Mac Pro? Does it work well?

I run Linux on a Macbook Pro (late 2013). It works remarkably well considering this hardware came out a few months ago. The only thing that doesn't work are the Thunderbolt ports (they work for everything except monitors, which crashes the machine after ~10 minutes).

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#19

Post by leephillips »

M4v3R wrote: post #2

AnandTech hardware and Ars Technica's software (especially OS X) reviews are works of art by themselves. The level of details that goes into these pieces is nothing short of amazing. They are examples of tech journaling done right.

AnandTech is often the only place that measures and reports anything about the screens of computers, tablets, and phones aside from how many pixels they have (color space, color accuracy, etc.). For this alone they are gold.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#20

Post by marincounty »

thirdsight wrote: post #4

I'm glad they mention the HP Z420. The killer for me on the Z420: three-year Mon-Fri 8-5 next business day, parts, labor and 24x7 phone support, They come to me. Edit: to all the naysayers: I'm in the UK. HP here is pretty good. We have over 200 machines on next day and we've had only two (!) problems and they were relating to part supply resulting in a quick purchase on Misco that arrived next day.

Yea--I spent an embarrassing amout of time trying to fix a HP laptop. The Nvidia chip didn't touch the cooling bar--I think--long time ago. Customers eventually won a lawsuit, but I wasen't notified? HP really need to clean up their image. If any Sonoma State Grads read this--forward to the next CEO.
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