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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#571

Post by abryzak »

vbezhenar wrote: post #397
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.

That's not true. If you let Windows manage your drivers, you won't have any popups. Drivers will be updated as part of standard Windows update. Now if you want latest drivers and you're intalling GeForce Experience application, then yeah, it'll notify you of new drivers once in a month. It's just a standard Windows notification and if you installed that application, probably you want to stay on latest drivers, so why…

Often when I plug one of my Razer mice into a different USB port I get a big pop up with a prompt to install their Synapse software that takes two clicks to dismiss.

Re: New Mac Pro

#572

Post by war1025 »

llampx wrote: post #186
duskwuff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step up from 256GB is 2x512GB, and there's configurations up to 2x2TB. My guess is that the 256GB configuration is meant for users that work primarily with data that's kept on network storage.

There's no professional that would buy a machine with 256GB of storage. Let's call it what it is - a throwaway configuration meant to hit a price point.

I consider myself a professional (at least in that I get paid to do what I do), and I don't think my work hard drive has more than probably 40GB used on it. So 256GB seems like excessively plenty.

Re: New Mac Pro

#573

Post by Fomite »

pdpi wrote: post #331
tolmasky wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread. > It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a platinum album, get an Oscar nomination, or bring a revolutionary industrial design to market. Wait, what? When I say "for pros" I mean able to support latest specs. Something that had the latest NVIDIA cards, or could at least USE the latest N…

Music, graphic design, video have been the core Apple "Pro" markets since forever. Developers focused on anything other than the Apple ecosystem are a relatively new addition to that lineup, and one that Apple hasn't _really_ ever catered to.

There was a time when research science was on that list as well, and Apple effectively abandoned them - and continue to do so with nonsense like utterly lacking cuda-capable GPUs.

My lab has grant support. I've bought workstations just as expensive as this recently, but then new Apple ones are non-starters, even if I've been using Macs since I was in 2nd grade.

Re: New Mac Pro

#574

Post by sorum »

sixothree wrote: post #369
bayindirh wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multimedia professionals do not store their data in internal/primary drives. They generally have RAID boxes with either Ethernet or thunderbolt connection. Most video editing/rendering is done on big storage arrays anyway. So 256GB storage is more than enough for most serious multimedia professionals.

I'm not entirely sure my Lightroom cache would fit on this drive...

That's what a scratch disk is for

Re: New Mac Pro

#575

Post by lambdasquirrel »

arvinsim wrote: post #532
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything about the base specs are just good enough. I’m not defending it per se, but if you spec’ed the machine for any given purpose, whether software dev, or rendering, it’d probably raise the cost by at least $1-2k, and then you’d have the “real” machine. So, the reason the price looks egregious is because most of it is just base cost. This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are m…

> This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are making that $500k a year and are looking for a Porsche over a Corvette. Is this what "Pro" means now?

Yes. Move to Vermont or Michigan, get 3 of those new monitors, plus this machine, and bask in the glory as they warm your room in the winter with the heat turned off.

Re: New Mac Pro

#576

Post by derefr »

xienze wrote: post #563
derefr wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the iMac Pro and Mac Mini didn’t exist to segment that market back then; all the tiers of professional hardware were rolled into just “the Mac Pro.” Roll those back in and the pricing tiers look more equivalent.

The Mac Mini has been around since 2005...

Yes, and the post I was replying to was citing 2003 prices.

Re: New Mac Pro

#577

Post by devonkim »

hinkley wrote: post #372
asaph wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are making that $500k a year and are looking for a Porsche over a Corvette. What about an EV such as a Tesla?

I was tempted to make a joke about the Porsche or Corvette being luxury vehicles but I've noticed we spend way too much time nitpicking after fine details. It deflects from the thesis to do so and I'm not a fan. I can understand GP's point just fine without getting into quibbles over that. Instead I took umbrage with the idea that a $3000 laptop which is our primary tool is a luxury item. I think it's one of many sig…

While I tend towards being a cheapskate on many physical things I also understand diminishing returns, and to me once you hop to the other side of the price-performance curve I define that as a luxury. For me, I get a lot more value out of a laptop and accompanying software ecosystem that helps me be more productive for my typical development cycle, and a lot of the stuff at the OS and above is pretty darn subjective and context-sensitive to the kind of development cycle.

From an overall productivity standpoint, because the biggest bottleneck to programmer productivity is mental and physical health, data would imply that I should spend more on exercise equipment, a better chair that keeps me from getting injured than on a laptop that gets maybe another 10% faster compile of already less than 30 seconds (incremental compilation anyone?) for the $1k difference between a 15" Macbook Pro and a 13" Macbook Air. No amount of money I dump into any hardware or software will make AWS provision its resources everything faster either, and that's what I sit and wait on the most for feedback rather than direct code compiles. And a fat CI / CD server is not run on my laptop unless I'm running Jenkins locally or Concourse.

Re: New Mac Pro

#578

Post by dethac »

floatboth wrote: post #364
noir_lord wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Threadripper exists for PCIe + DDR4 (less than the reported 2TiB because of no RDIMM support, but theoretically could hit 2 TiB if people start producing 256GB UDIMMs.

But... 64 lanes of PCIe 3.0. 32 cores. 64 threads with SMT. 80MB of cache (think of all the locality!). 256GB of RAM support (if you're using more, you're probably doing scientific compute and you're probably better off on Linux anyway, I'd assume). ECC support. 1700 USD. Quad channel RAM.

Xeon W-3175X? 48 lanes of PCIe 3.0. 28 cores. Probably no more Hyperthreading after Zombieload. 512GB RAM support. ECC support. $3000 USD. Hexa channel RAM.

And better yet? Competent TR motherboards with all the RAM/GPU/whatever support you need go as low as 400 CAD.

Also, if you're less Mr. Moneybags, the 2920X exists. 12C/24T, same memory and IO capacity. 650USD.

But wait, there's more! TR 1900X is older, but: 8C/16T, 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, quad channel RAM. Same kind of memory support: 256GB. 300USD.

A far shot from "ridiculously expensive" considering 300 USD (or even 650 USD) is less than some mainstream desktop CPUs. The 9900K is 490USD. The 9980XE is 2000USD.

Also, TR3 with PCIe 4.0 is on the horizon, and Zen 2 with PCIe 4.0 is here. 24 lanes of PCIe 4.0 has equivalent bandwidth to 48 lanes of PCIe 3.0: same as the Xeon W-3175X.

Big computers with lots of memory and IO capacity can be decently cost effective. You just can't ask Intel.

Re: New Mac Pro

#579

Post by askafriend »

ghobs91 wrote: post #299

$1000 for a monitor stand is the pinnacle of arrogance from a brand.

How is it arrogance?

Have you ever bought a nice pice of furniture? This stand is a super low volume, custom design. It's solid milled aluminum and likely very hefty since it needs to handle a 32" monitor (which itself is probably pretty hefty). Not to mention the intricate hinge design that they say is rock solid (not an easy feat to achieve).

This whole system is built to compete against $25k-50k reference monitors.

Here's a page of Table Lamps from Restoration Hardware for a sense of perspective:

https://www.restorationhardware.com/catalog/category/product...

And the whole reason they don't include the stand with the monitor is because it's built for media production houses that already have rigs set up with their own mounts.

They're not building this for designers to run Sketch or developers to run Xcode.

This is for production servers, processing Pixar movies, and YouTube features. It's a machine that will be expensed as the cost of doing business.

Re: New Mac Pro

#580

Post by projektfu »

macNchz wrote: post #414
seltzered_ wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were even higher in the early 90's. In 1993 the Power Macintosh 8100 (one of the first ppc computers) started at $4200 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_8100

I found the invoice a while ago for the professional desktop publishing setup that my parents bought in 1993...a Quadra 800 mac, upgraded video memory, a flatbed scanner, b&w laser printer, a 20" monitor, a 14400 modem and some kind of fancy magneto optical drive or something for FedExing large files. Total price was $13k at the time.

March 1989:

Mac IIcx, 16 MHz 68030, 4 MiB RAM, 80MiB HD: $7069

Radius two-page display (19”): $1495

Monochrome video card: $699

Extended Keyboard II: $229

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