The Mac Pro Review • Hacker News Board

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#41

Post by deviltry » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:50 PM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #19

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.

Their game reviews are not that great when their long game reviewer left and replacement was brought.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#42

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:52 PM UTC

icegreentea wrote: post #17

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.

What are the odds the Haswell Xeons will use the same socket as the current Xeons?

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#43

Post by brudgers » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:53 PM UTC

What I found interesting is that the system used for all the benchmarks is significantly more expensive than the systems listed on the first page - 12 cores, 32gb Ram, and a 512gb SSD prices out at $7699, nearly double the cost of the more expensive of the two configurations listed on the first page, and it's still 10% more expensive than the "Most Expensive Configuration Upgrade Path" on page two - which means your wallet will be $700 bucks lighter.

And that's probably generous - from the GPU analysis appears that the tested unit has D700's which bumps the price to $8299 - a configuration that isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. About the only thing left to upgrade on the test unit is the RAM to 64gb.

Since the article calls itself a review, it would be better if the review unit was accurately described. It seems to me there's a bit of bait and switch because the performance numbers presented are not for the $3000 or $4000 presented in the article's lead.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#44

Post by makomk » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:53 PM UTC

yapcguy wrote: post #23

leephillips wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like Anandtech but they have come into criticism recently, from some of their long-time readers, for fawning over Apple products.

I can see why. They've been quite selective in what they compare the Mac Pro to in this review, for instance, because otherwise it wouldn't have come out so well. When they're arguing that it doesn't need expandability, they compare it to laptops and desktops that aren't expandable. Yet when it comes time to justify the pricing, they exclusively compare it to workstations that are aimed at a completely different market to desktops or laptops and have far more expansion options because that market expects them. If they compared the pricing to desktops and laptops or the expansion options to workstations, the Mac Pro would look a lot worse.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#45

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:54 PM UTC

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.

Hah! I had P410 cache controllers on 'next day' warranty service that took 3 weeks to replace. I swore I would never have an HP server in my data center again if I could avoid it.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#46

Post by Moto7451 » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:55 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #14

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.

When I worked at a pharmacy doing IT work, they purchased some desktops from HP with a multi year on site support deal. One day we had a computer's Hard Drive die so we called them up to fix it, which they did... and nothing more. I asked them about putting Windows back on it (as the restore partition was nowhere to be found) and the guy said "not our department."

I ended up torrenting an HP restore ISO and thankfully the BIOS's licensing key matched the ISO.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#47

Post by umsm » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:58 PM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #37

A 1 year warranty is such a joke for this much money. I think this and the new mbp where should anything break you need a full replacement basically, need to have some serious warranty coverage changes. 3 years minimum in my mind. Just another way to nickle and dime you on something like an almost required extended warranty. Apple, your stuff is mostly nice. Fix your product warranty and maybe I'll open my wallet.

Isn't it worth it to purchase the Applecare warranty for $250 which extends the warranty period to 3 years?

When you're spending $3k on a computer, I don't see how $250 will really affect the bottom line...

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#48

Post by smackfu » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #43

What I found interesting is that the system used for all the benchmarks is significantly more expensive than the systems listed on the first page - 12 cores, 32gb Ram, and a 512gb SSD prices out at $7699, nearly double the cost of the more expensive of the two configurations listed on the first page, and it's still 10% more expensive than the "Most Expensive Configuration Upgrade Path" on page two - which means your…

The systems listed on the first page are the advertised base models from Apple. The unit they benchmarked for the review is presumably a review unit that they had no choice about.

OTOH, it's a little surprising that Apple gave out 12 core review units, since the 8 core seems to be better at benchmarking.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#49

Post by sbuk » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 11:02 PM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #36

Watabou wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like your dislike of Apple somehow means that Anandtech is the one who is biased? Really? Come on now.

He wasn't speaking for himself, he was talking about some of their readers.

Reading his other comment, he's talking for himself.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#50

Post by glasshead969 » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 11:03 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #44

yapcguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Anandtech but they have come into criticism recently, from some of their long-time readers, for fawning over Apple products.

I can see why. They've been quite selective in what they compare the Mac Pro to in this review, for instance, because otherwise it wouldn't have come out so well. When they're arguing that it doesn't need expandability, they compare it to laptops and desktops that aren't expandable. Yet when it comes time to justify the pricing, they exclusively compare it to workstations that are aimed at a completely different mark…

I feel like he addresses the new design as a risk which he thinks something that should be taken. If that's something target market doesn't appreciate,then ultimately this will be a failed product. But Mac Pro is targeted towards a different audience than a HP workstation. Its targeted towards Hollywood and Animation community where there is a lot of Thunderbolt penetration.