Mailing List AE-List@media-motion.tv ? Message #52293
From: Dann Stubbs <dann@darkskydigital.com>
Subject: Re: [AE] (OT) New Mac Pro - Who's getting it?
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2013 20:04:33 -0500
To: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
i wonder about the future upgradability as people are saying - apple has never done that route very well

especially in such a box where putting in future potentially hotter chips could be bad, and anything "custom" like boards (the round circuit board in the sunflower imac for example) or chip sets/processors that are "apple only" are destined to always be more expensive then mass market commodity chips or processors, in three months there will be faster mass market processors and other chipsets that will surpass what is on this new mac for half ht cost unfortunately. bus speed is not everything as i had an SGI Indigo2 and i remember the Indy and 02 has massive bus speeds but it didn't save them either. despite their fancy cases (the SGI 02 actually looks a lot like the new mac)  usually mass market = cheaper and that unfortunately wins in the end usually

if i remember right apple has in the past with many new versions of hardware used sockets on the first batches (possibly to allow for upgrade/swap if issues or for hardware development issues/changes) but i think future versions will be soldered as it's cheaper and ensures the pay for your next hardware upgrade that is what keeps apples hardware business in business

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Dann Stubbs  -  dann@darkskydigital.com
Dark Sky Digital -  http://www.darkskydigital.com

http://www.RenderKing.com  Value Priced C4D, VRAY Render Farm
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On Dec 28, 2013, at 7:03 PM, Jim Lang wrote:

The NYT gave it a positive review, but emphasized the big price tag.  I believe it's made stateside, so am willing to cut Apple a little slack.


On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 8:35 PM, James Culbertson <albion@speakeasy.net> wrote:
FWIW, the first tear downs of the new mac pro have found that the CPU is removable, in all cases using the same standard socket. So, that leaves open the possibility of future upgradeability.

James


On Dec 23, 2013, at 10:20 AM, Dave Bittner wrote:

I’ve switched our main edit suite system to a 27” i7 iMac after realizing that it renders about three times faster than the 2008 Mac Pro it’s replacing. I’ve got a 30” monitor hooked up to it, and a fast external RAID via a cheap Thunderbolt to SATA adapter. We’re running AE, FCPX and Maya on it, primarily, and for what we do it’s plenty fast. (We are rarely under tight delivery deadlines where rendering speed would make or break us. In fact, the biggest bottleneck these days seems to be h.264 encoding for delivery.)

As for the new Mac Pro, if you need the speed it doesn’t seem the price should make all that much difference. Even if you replace it after two years, a couple of grand difference in price shouldn’t break the bank for an active shop with a decent number of projects coming through. It’s amazing to me that after all these years people are still shocked - Shocked! - that there’s a premium for Mac OS workstations. For our small shop it’s worth it, since we know the Mac OS and know how to troubleshoot it. 

Interesting times, with all of these incredibly fast machines for choose from. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play Marathon on my Quadra 700…





On Dec 22, 2013, at 12:33AM, Robert Houghton <gfxguy74@gmail.com> wrote:

I think I might not get the Mac Pro, while the features such as the increased bandwidth, accuracy and workstation class video cards are nice they seem to be overkill for what I do which is primarily motion graphics with a growing amount of 3D animation. When honestly looking at it, unless you happen to have a monitor with retina-type resolution already (I don't presently), the iMac when maxed out at 27" seems to be a good buy. The only thing really holding me back is the mobile video card on the iMac unless someone can tell me that it can hold a candle to a full power video card like a 770 or 780. I do know that a Dell equivalent to the Mac 27" will run about $650.

       -Rob


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Dave Bittner - Pixel Workshop Inc.
www.pixelworkshop.com
410.381.8555
Twitter @bittner







 
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