Teddy, I don't know whether you are correct or not more generally, but I am curious to know what D700/W9000 GPU card equivalent you are using to get that price. And does that price account for a single or dual GPU setup?

Thanks,

James

On Dec 21, 2013, at 4:46 PM, Teddy Gage wrote:

     James, you can do whatever you want, but don't misrepresent the facts. A custom PC with similar render numbers on many benchmarks than your new mac pro will actually run you closer to $1,200-1,500. You could literally buy three hex-core computers for the price of that single mac pro. In terms of render power, that's a far cry from "a couple hundred dollars" difference. Yes the Pro has many bespoke custom parts. But they are more or less matched to 90% by regular high end PC components. For example nobody "needs" ECC RAM at 200% markup or Xeon-class chips at 300% markup. Regular DDR4 RAM and i7 chips are just as good, if not faster, in many cases. 

     You don't have to build it yourself, and you don't have to buy it from Dell or HP, who also charge a hefty markup closer to Apple's, which is where a lot of these inaccurate numbers are coming from. There are tons of mid-level workstation builders out there with great reliability and good warranties. Your justification is fine, I'm not here to tell you how to spend your money. But your comparison is simply not accurate if you understand computer hardware and benchmarks. 

On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 5:10 PM, James Culbertson <albion@speakeasy.net> wrote:

I'm looking at buying a 6 core base processor, 512GB SSD, 32GB RAM, and dual D700s (and AppleCare) for about $5500 + tax. Thunderbolt peripherals extra of course.

From what I can see an equivalent cost workstation PC isn't all that different. Building one yourself is cheaper I assume but that's still not really worth the time based on my hourly/daily rate.

Then there is the cost of equivalent GPUs on the PC side. As I understand it a D700 is pretty equivalent to a W9000 at over $3000/GPU. But even the D300 is a pretty good deal. Someone correct me if I am wrong here.

In any case, if there is a couple of hundred dollar premium (GPUs aside) for having what I personally consider a superior system (knowing full well that what each of us considers a superior system varies immensely) and I can pay for it on average with about 2 weeks of work... well, what's the debate really about?

James

On Dec 20, 2013, at 12:11 PM, Søren Christensen wrote:

I was trying to configure a HP Z workstation and a Boxx workstation with the same specs (cpu, gfx card etc)as the new mac pro.

They ticked in between 38-51% more expensive than a new mac pro. With normal sata6 ssdnand  with smaller category gfx cards (And off course pcie slots).

With one gfx card they where still expensiverl...

I find it quite odd that people are ranting about how expensive the mac is maxed out when pc counterparts cost the same or a lot more for the same configuration.

In my case the mac pro comes as a blessing and the form factor is very welcome. I do a lot of live visuals and virtual scenography where gpu performance and multiple (more than 3) outputs is a must. And super fast ssd speeds to handle xx amounts of realtime hd video layers a necessity. This small wine-cooler-look-a-like  design (Bodum, anyone?) fits in the hand luggage. Touring with mac pros has become fun again :-)

Looking forward to see some real world cpu and gpu tests. What has been clear for a long time is that gpu power is the new 'black'. Lets hope that the all-in bet on opencl pays off.

Cheers,

Søren

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On 20 Dec 2013, at 20:20, dennis@reelsolutions.com wrote:

You say "Not interested in starting any mac vs. pc debate..." Then 
"I imagine they are mainly for rich nerds to show off?" ... Ok...

Count me in as a rich nerd I guess - I'll be buying one. I've never regretted buying a Mac, when I've gotten a bad one (1 in 16+years, they've been great at correcting the problem).

I've made a couple PC purchases I'd rather not go into... 

Why make an assumption how long it will take to get repaired? I had a MacPro way out of warranty that had a power supply go bad; I guess they didn't have the part because they gave me a brand new base model MacPro for no charge at all, they didn't even charge for the diagnostic fee. (And they let me pay the difference to upgrade it to the fastest MacPro). What a waste of money!

This was for a 4+ yr old machine, they weren't obligated to do anything. Time to receive the new machine was about a week ( mainly because I requested a non-stocked configuration).

HP wants $3,749 for the 12 core Xeon chip, they're not cheap.

800.00 to upgrade from a 256GB SSD isn't bad considering it will do 1200 MB/s. To match that speed, you can't really replicate it easily (RAID adds latency).

mho... Dennis Wilkins

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