The new Mac Pro seems like a great workstation, to you know, do work. Like video editing. Or iOS development. Or any myriad of creative professional tasks.
You have no idea what you are talking about. What the hell do you use 128GB of RAM to do?
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PCVS you are incorrect on your price assumptions.
Right now the sweet spot on price is 16GB ECC/Registered DIMMs. Going to 32GB DIMMs is cost prohibitive, but 16GB ECC/Reg DIMMs are cheaper than 8GB ECC/Reg DIMMs per GB.
Not to mention, you cannot find reputable brands that actually offer 16GB unbuffered non-ECC DIMMs right now, much less 32GB models. If you know of any, please post a link.
All prices current on Newegg.com as of 2013-06-14Code:Price Cap $/GB % more/GB Description
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63 8 7.87 0.0% Kingston DDR3-1333 8GB DIMM unbuffered non-ECC
70 8 8.75 11.0% Kingston DDR3-1333 8GB DIMM ECC/Registered
128 16 8.00 1.6% Kingston DDR3-1333 16GB DIMM ECC/Registered
737 32 23 292.2% Kingston DDR3-1333 32GB DIMM ECC/Registered
That's just it. People can throw around specs and numbers, but they don't think about how they are used and where the sweet spot is. The only computers I've ever run into that have over 64GB of RAM were either enterprise VM's or scientific workstations that were crunching multidimensional matrices. Scientific computers have to have massive RAM due to needing to keep all variables in memory. A 3D matrix with a million points on each axis each representing an algebraic expression which all needs to be solved simultaneously or whatever needs memory. Mac Pros are NOT used for that though and the market is very limited. I also do not see Mac Pros used for VMs that often.
4K work needs between 2-3GB per GPU, so they are right on target there.
there is definitely a market for this thing. not for me but my brother in law (he does video production for netflix) and an old work colleague (owns his own design firm) both are ordering it day 1.
I agree with some of your technical observations (albeit without the "!!!" dramas...)
Even so, it's amazingly capable for a computer roughly the size of a desktop air purifier.
From their webpage:
Graphics •
"you’ll be able to do things like seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video while simultaneously rendering effects in the background — and still have enough power to connect up to three high-resolution 4K displays"
Anyway, I run autocad just fine with my old HP desktop, and have never felt a need to display 'fruity' talismans to prove hipster status lol
A lot of developers think they need a Mac Pro, when in reality a Mac Mini or iMac are more than enough. I've talked to iOS app developers that run 12-core Mac Pros just to compile simple iOS apps. The only people that really need a Mac Pro are video, audio, and 3d artists. Practically everyone else should use an iMac or Mac Mini. Even for video, audio, and 3D you need to assess how much the extra render time is worth to you. In most cases we are only talking about a few minutes more to encode video/audio. The people that I've seen be the most vocal are in the "prosumer" dudes that pretty much mess around with audio/video as a hobby. The iMacs come with 680M's now, that's enough juice to make any kind of indie videogame that you can imagine.
It looks cool, but does it work well? I have some major issues with Mac, so probably wouldn't try it unless it had some very good reviews on it. I have to agree that it does look they took a little bit of the Dyson idea and applied it to their computers.
umm .. I talked about alot of things , not only the RAM .. the main disadvantage , the low end GPU they are using , and no CUDA option . and no high End GPU Option.
as for what I do with 128GB of ram ? simple , 64GB RAM DISK. have you tried RAM DISKS on Quad channel DDR3 ? I use RAM Disk on my GAMING MACHINE and I cant look back at all !!! 16G ram for system + 48G Ram DISK on my SandyBridge-E system.
I cant live without it .. even SSD is slow now ! IOPS is CRAZY
and dont worry I never turn off my machine , is 24/7 and when ever I have to, I just press a button for 15 minute back up to the SSD .
RAM disk? Feels like we are in the early 2000's when those were all the rage.