I know some of my antique games just can’t run smoothly on my win7 rig. Microstuttering et all, i’m calling on too much performance hehe
Vintage systems with vintage old cases 
Components that were about to be thrown in the trash at local computer shops etc etc.
Flawlessly means that… well… i don’t really know what it means, but there’s a certain…satisfaction in seeing a computer crunching away a session of doom2
Darn yeah we derailed this thread but it’s becoming AWESOME!
Best card for an “old” system, without a doubt, is the GF4 Ti4600.
The good news is, they’re only about £15 now 
I used to have a Quadro FX3000 which was pretty badass; managed to get it second hand for £200 which was an insane price at the time, but the guy I bought it off had just upgraded to the 4000 (to play Quake & Unreal, I should add).
I got an old Dual G5 sitting somewhere with a hacked firmware version of a BFG6900 hehe I loved that card
An fx4k to… play quake? what? xD
My i7 that got replaced by this machine is running an Linux server with GCC and Apache on it.. lol… we do it because we CAN poly!
Back to topic please.
padi party breaker
If we go back on topic we’ll probably step into someone’s hatemachine again.
There is speculation that major digital audio manufacturers might be working on incorporating thunderbolt technology more effectively. Most believe that companies like Avid and Apogee might be working on AD/DA converters that have a built-in Thunderbolt converters. This would go hand in hand with new Thunderbolt optical cables as seen here. I’m hoping they develop a system where they push out directly to Thunderbolt, reducing latency even more.
The only thing I’m not sure about is how they’ll handle DSP technology in the future. If the scene seems to be moving away from PCI-E in terms of connections, then an-out of box DSP solution would be needed. It wouldn’t surprise me if Avid or Apogee would put out “DSP Racks” that can be connected to your converter of choice and put out multiple digital signals, including Thunderbolt. This would actually be very smart, as it would make things more modular since you wouldn’t be tied to specific computers that had to have physical PCI-E cards installed inside. You’d be able to switch out computers on the fly, making such a set-up ideal for live or on-site recordings.
I’m also sure that if they we’re to focus on a more modular solution like this, they could improve latency across the converters and the DSP racks. As technology gets better I’m sure they could make it so the latency is at the current 0.7 MS they have for Pro Tools HDX. Which in term would make the only latency bottle-neck the computer hooked up to your set-up. It would be ideal since it could potentially future proof itself for a long time, as long as transport methods don’t change too rapidly.
Here’s hoping.
That’s kind of my point. With a custom built computer you have the ability to go between gaming AND firepro if you ever need it. FirePro excels where gaming is sluggish and vice versa.
All the rest, a custom built computer will always demolish that Mac. I’m sure if you swapped out balakoth’s GPUs with FirePros it would annihilate the Mac Pro.
You could also put a pair of gaming graphics cards in a TB enclosure if that’s what you wanted, but again it makes no sense to buy any Mac for gaming.
The SSD in that rig would have to be swapped out for a PCIE version too for it to keep up.
You can always start another thread to continue it. If you do, let me know and i’ll move the posts over there.
Because they changed their format? Again before their new FirePro setup, they offered high end gaming consumer cards as standard in their setups, you could upgrade to a better option, for double the price you could pay for such an item on newegg per say though.
And yes I would, but not beat their performance. They arent putting $1600 PCIE SSD drives in there my friend. And even at that price point you are getting maximum 810 read/write.. which is still not the 1250 they want to claim at this point. Real world statistics trump marketing hype every day, everything they list is the Pure maximum the machine could push, and yet most likely never will. (Unless you are using it as a Folding Machine.)
But when hardware actually needs speeds faster than 6 GB / Sata 3 PCIE will be an easy upgrade. But if you want to nitpick, the extra money I would have spent on going PCIE in the first place would be minimal, but a complete waste for my audio production applications the computer serves at this point.
Mac Pros are always a normal base price of 5k without displays. I full expect it to be the same for their base 12 core model (the lowest end FirePro really isnt that expensive.. Cheaper than my 7970 Reference card). With their 16 core models fully decked out Im sure reaching 30k easily as any machine could.
In the end you pay for the design, the brand, and the operating system. Apple isnt designing anything special in these machines besides the chasis, the manufacturers already putting this hardware in “professional” windows and linux based systems have been doing it for awhile and at a lower price point.
I have nothing against Apple per say except price. I would have probably bought a Mac Pro instead had they not wanted to charge me double price for literally every upgrade. Oh and probably the fact OSX feels weird no matter how many times i try to use it again lol. Linux and Windows for to long
Technically Slvr if i took out the water cooling, I could do two FirePros high end and two 750 PCEI SSDs for the same price I built it for So in the end, I will win on price to performance since I would then be using the exact same hardware, except my motherboard which would be an ASUS Server board.
Given that the entry-level Air is now pushing 800MB/s it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch for the Pro to peak at 1250. Obviously this will be for sequential rather than random access but it’s still a huge improvement over SATA.
The reason its a stretch is that SSDs in the 1250 range cost around 2k for a 750. Seems like a stretch unless its an upgrade option.
The problem with this, as PCIE gains popularity the technology is growing fast and dropping in price fast. The things Apple is offering later this year, are going to be significantly more expensive than what will most likely already be on the market. I didnt see any findings of exclusivity with Samsung on their new PCIE drives. So we will have to wait and see on that aspect I suppose.
And while 1250 sequential read and a little slower write might be nice.. Unless random write speeds start exceeding, or need to exceed Sata 3 speeds its quite an investment thats going to dramatically improve during this new Mac Pros lifespan. And at a ridiculous price point.
Im always a skeptic though, since the airs just started shipping this week, I want to see some real world performance vs some write ups by some guys who got a Test model etc.
Don’t worry i was joking 
1tb ssds are pointless in a consumer environment, which in turn makes the 1tb in his rig mean either: 2 512gb ssds in RAID, or a 1tb revodrive-style pcie ssd. Both of these offerings are on par with apple’s, which is, on paper, capable of 1.25gbps/1gbps r/w speeds.
On paper: read= not real marketing hype
You’re getting max. 1gbps reads from that thing, and even that is far fetched
Nah not happening. A 6core xeon is what, $1500? That makes $3k just for the cpus, incl. 2 GPUs, ecc memory which ain’t cheap, and the ssd (i’ll have a good laugh when they will put a 128gb ssd as standard )
Plus the design, i think you’re looking at at least 6.5k for a 12core model…
Also, no dual 8cores here, so 12cores max. Apple probably did so because of the max tdp that the “shared cooling core” or whatever it’s called can handle.
2.8, 8 Core Intel E5 cost me 1200. The 6 core 2.4s can be had for 400 to 500 dollars.
When I priced the Pro before the release, two lowest end 6 cores and standard setup put it at 5,800 bucks.
They also announce it as 12, but I can bet money they will ahve 16 for the ugprade option. They seem to advertise as whatever their base model will sell as.
They are using the E5 line, and only the lowest flag ship models are 6 cores.