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Mac Pro

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Re: Mac Pro

#341

Post by duncan_bayne »

codex wrote: post #338
duncan_bayne wrote: post #335

It's disturbing to see so many people drooling over this hardware. Granted, it's tasty-looking, but: - http://www.defectivebydesign.org/apple - http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-plan... - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337939,00.asp Give some thought to the above before buying an Apple device, please.

These are critiques of Apple's other products and software, but none of them apply to this specific hardware. Are there specific criticisms of this Mac Pro hardware?

These are critiques of Apple. In buying a Mac Pro, you're lending financial support to a company that does the things spelled out in those articles.

Re: Mac Pro

#342

Post by mturmon »

bnastic wrote: post #176
fuzzywalrus wrote: post #134

I've been using the same Mac Pro since 2008. I bought an ATI Radeon 6970 around a year or so ago and extended its life that much more. For most of my computer's life, its had a PCIe eSATA card and an external case. It works great still but its starting to show its age. I can't say I'm too excited about a computer that's relegated to an much more expensive Mac Mini. Thunderbolt 2 is nice but its a poor substitute for…

> Thunderbolt 2 is nice but its a poor substitute for internal drive bays and 16x PCIe. Why, exactly? I don't know how many lanes will be in the Thunderbolt2 (haven't checked the specs), but I have a Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID storage (4 drives), which is really fast. SSD sys drive + Thunderbolt storage = win in my books.

Agree (I have a Pegasus TB RAID also). Thunderbolt changes the calculus for system upgrades. Glad to see someone exploiting this.

Re: Mac Pro

#343

Post by mbell »

bingaling wrote: post #219
mbell wrote: post #208

Personally I couldn't care less about the design, it would be sitting behind several large screens anyway and the thermal ideas sound interesting.... That said.... 4 ram slots???? Really? 12 cores, 2 GPUs and I get 32GB of ram? Maybe 64GB if 16GB dimms in standard sizes become a thing? That kills it completely in my book.

Why not 32gb dimms? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226...

The linked dimms have 43% lower bandwidth than what Apple has specced (PC1866 vs PC1066) and are over twice the $ per GB.

Re: Mac Pro

#344

Post by Sealy »

grecy wrote: post #282

Some pictures coming out are extremely interesting. This one seems to show the the "CPU board" with the single CPU, and RAM on each side... OK http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/proces... This one shows the two "GPU cards" - notice the one on the right has a white connector, bottom middle, which is for the SSD. Otherwise, they are almost identical (I see slightly different components at the top) ht…

-I think the big question here is how are the three "cards" joined together?

These days PCIx (and similar) extender cables are used commonly on server builds. I wouldn't be surprised if apple used some sort of equivalent ribbon to connect the graphics cards.

Re: Mac Pro

#345

Post by codex »

glenra wrote: post #70

"Okay, we COULD just label the ports with regular high color contrast paint. Say, white paint on a black background or black paint on a white background. But that would be TOO EASY and the panel would then really 'pop' against our otherwise monolithic clean design. Which would be distracting." "But during actual use the ports are going to be on the BACK of the device (so you won't see it) and will have random stuff p…

"Why don't we have LED lights on the ports? That way people can see them when the machine is in the shadow of a desk."

"How do we turn them on?"

"Today, when people have trouble seeing ports, they tilt the machine to give it more light. So we'll detect that."

"Hey, so now we don't need garish colors on our ports!"

"Bonus."

Re: Mac Pro

#346

Post by jfb »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #262

It's light on RAM slots and monitor connections. Four ram slots? That maxes out at 64 Gig of RAM. What happened to the old 128 Gig? Sorry, dropping $999 ea. on a single monitor, much less multiple monitors, is just stupid. The difference at the screen between a Thunderbolt display and a display costing half as much isn't enough to warrant the extra cost. The former machine had a visually distinct box with tons of spa…

I like the equivalence between "a machine I'm not going to buy but must be just so" and "serious workstation".

Re: Mac Pro

#347

Post by Sealy »

gamache wrote: post #58
jmduke wrote: post #19

Apple is doubling down on their segmentation here. They're clearly abandoning (I don't mean this in a pejorative sense) a mass appeal with this new iteration and targeting it specifically to 'actual' professionals: graphic designers, video editors, etc.

I don't see it that way at all. The Mac Pro has always been about the top 1% power users. The appeal was twofold: it was a bitchin'-fast machine you could stuff with as many cards and drives as you want, and it ran OS X. This new design removes the former selling point. 12 core max (same as current)?? Four RAM slots (down from eight)?? 1/6th the volume (i.e. space to plug stuff in)?? This offers almost no advantage o…

-Thunderbolt-to-PCIe breakout module (which is what many power users have been doing in the years since the last update)

Do you have any examples of this? I did a quick google but didn't find anything. My imagination is telling me that looks like some sort of motherboard with slots in it...

Re: Mac Pro

#348

Post by 65a »

ScottBurson wrote: post #331
rsync wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that tip. I might just do that. Perhaps reload my mac pro with snow leopard one last time, get another year or so out of it, and then "switch" to linux on an old school workstation like this. Hate to abandon all of my mac VMs, though. I don't think a non-mac vmware host can run mac VM guests... without a lot of mucking around, that is...

I'm fairly sure I've seen people run OS X as a vmWare guest on either Windows or Linux.

It's entirely possible on VirtualBox, but it requires you to have a similar processor to an existing Mac, and some additional wizardry. I can verify it works for some virtualization software through at least Snow Leopard...not sure about Lion and beyond (but probably).

Re: Mac Pro

#349

Post by snuze »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #144

As a design asthetic I find it fairly interesting. By working toward a design managing the thermals in a way that allow for more heat removal while allowing it to not sound like a 747 on takeoff is good. I suspect your typical desktop machine will benefit from that kind of thinking. Also for a long time Intel was trying to push all of the expansion boards outside the case with USB, and Apple seems close to achieving…

Thunderbolt was co-developed with Intel.

Re: Mac Pro

#350

Post by wmf »

Sealy wrote: post #347
gamache wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it that way at all. The Mac Pro has always been about the top 1% power users. The appeal was twofold: it was a bitchin'-fast machine you could stuff with as many cards and drives as you want, and it ran OS X. This new design removes the former selling point. 12 core max (same as current)?? Four RAM slots (down from eight)?? 1/6th the volume (i.e. space to plug stuff in)?? This offers almost no advantage o…

-Thunderbolt-to-PCIe breakout module (which is what many power users have been doing in the years since the last update) Do you have any examples of this? I did a quick google but didn't find anything. My imagination is telling me that looks like some sort of motherboard with slots in it...

It looks like http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc...
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