New Mac Pro

[Polygon]

Does Thunderbolt take bandwidth away in a way that regular PCIE does not?

Ok i failed on this one, but a main difference between this and pcie still exists: latency.

[Polygon]

Poly, why dont you not hold back and tell us how you REALLY feel?!?!

:P

I really feel that this will be a very niche product aimed at graphic designers.
Oh you want to use it in a studio environment? Too bad you have to pay for dual graphics cards that you will NEVER use. Same goes for video production, unless every software out there is optimized to work with firepro graphics.

[deevey]

This is not a PRO machine. This is just a nice-looking, heavily engineered prosumer unit which is going to look just oh-so-damn-cool together with those harman kardon soundsticks.

So High End Video producers are the Only "Pro's" who require high powered Mac's ?

At a guess I'd say that its actually a smaller market Segment to Apple than you think compared to Graphic Artists, Photographers, Musicians, Games Developers, Recording Studios, Live Visual Artists, right down to your lowly Wedding Video Cameramen and Smaller Video Studios.

"Pro" just means you make a living from it ... and Yes there is Thunderbolt for using a RED card if you really want, be that limited to Thunderbolt speeds.

Why not wait unit it gets released, demoed and Benchmarked then you can start moaning if it turns out more expensive and slower than anything else you can buy from someone else at half the price ?

Same goes for video production, unless every software out there is optimized to work with firepro graphics.

Premiere is and no doubt FCPx is as well ...

[Polygon]

So High End Video producers are the Only "Pro's" who require high powered Mac's ?

At a guess I'd say that its actually a smaller market Segment to Apple than you think compared to Graphic Artists, Photographers, Musicians, Games Developers, Recording Studios, Live Visual Artists, right down to your lowly Wedding Video Cameramen and Smaller Video Studios.

"Pro" just means you make a living from it ... and Yes there is Thunderbolt for using a RED card if you really want, be that limited to Thunderbolt speeds.

Why not wait unit it gets released, demoed and Benchmarked then you can start moaning if it turns out more expensive and slower than anything else you can buy from someone else at half the price ?

No they are not. Just as the mbp has now become a very consumer-oriented product, so has the mac pro in this latest iteration.

But while i do understand the categories of users that you mentioned would benefit from something like this, you have to understand that almost all pros in various sectors, be it audio/video or visual, would benefit a lot from expandability, especially given the fact that nowadays mac is the to-go platform for this kind of userbase.
If they want to expand their storage, they have to do it thru thunderbolt, which, while fast at certain things, still lags behind sata6 in terms of latency and sheer reliability.

They could at least have offered a version with a lower end single graphics card.

[makar1]

Ok i failed on this one, but a main difference between this and pcie still exists: latency.

Where are you reading about Thunderbolt having a latency problem? TB2 on the new Pro is has several times more bandwidth than SATA also.

And has there been some declaration that the Pro will only come with 1 single specification?

[SlvrDragon50]

No they are not. Just as the mbp has now become a very consumer-oriented product, so has the mac pro in this latest iteration.

But while i do understand the categories of users that you mentioned would benefit from something like this, you have to understand that almost all pros in various sectors, be it audio/video or visual, would benefit a lot from expandability, especially given the fact that nowadays mac is the to-go platform for this kind of userbase.
If they want to expand their storage, they have to do it thru thunderbolt, which, while fast at certain things, still lags behind sata6 in terms of latency and sheer reliability.

They could at least have offered a version with a lower end single graphics card.

Upgradeability for sure. I refuse to buy anything proprietary unless I absolutely have to. Video cards progress so quickly that a card can become dated in just a couple years unless you buy the absolute top of the line (which will cost another arm and leg). Even then, it's much easier to upgrade as you go instead of buying a whole new tower every 5 years.

I don't think this is exclusive to high end video producers, but I can't see anyone else really using it. I would lop graphic artists and gamer developers and all under the same umbrella since it's very similar.

[djdust1724]

try picking it up here for cheaper, if you are going for a mac pro. http://www.ipowerresale.com/ , saves you a good chunk of cash

[Polygon]

Where are you reading about Thunderbolt having a latency problem? TB2 on the new Pro is has several times more bandwidth than SATA also.

And has there been some declaration that the Pro will only come with 1 single specification?

I tried installing windows on a 7200rpm thunderbolt drive (my cousins rmbp). Result? Thing was slower than a friggin' ide drive.

Also, yes. there has been. "This is the first Mac ever that comes standard with dual GPUs." AMD FirePro graphics, two of 'em.

[makar1]

That doesn't appear to be anything to do with latency. Nor does it seem to be an accurate representation of Thunderbolt performance. All the reviews I can find show a huge improvement over USB 2.0 drives.

[deevey]

If they want to expand their storage, they have to do it thru thunderbolt, which, while fast at certain things, still lags behind sata6 in terms of latency and sheer reliability.

I haven't seen any issues noted with reliability (with the exception of cables potentially being easy to break) and latency should be negligible as its designed to be low latency .. transfer rates are almost double that of SATA6

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...hnology-3.html

I agree they should have perhaps offered a lower end version and GPU options, and they might yet. The fact is we just don't know if whats being displayed right now is the only version or the highest end version available.

I would have thought that the Majority of PRO's would be using external drive arrays or using network transfers anyhow with the internal drive being dedicated to OS duties rather than just dumb file storage.

you have to understand that almost all pros in various sectors, be it audio/video or visual, would benefit a lot from expandability

I completely understand where you are coming from, however I think thats the game, they want to change attitudes to upgrading bits and bobs and build a machine thats SO good that 99% of user will not need to do anything other than plug in a single cable to add their external storage, Sound/graphics cards or whatever other devices are required.

I'm not saying thats right, but it is what it is - we don't know if the graphics can be changed or anything yet, if there will be upgrades available etc .. everything is just speculation.