Apple's Top Spec Mac Pro and Pro Display Will Cost At Least $50,000 (theverge.com) 335
Apple announced this week that its new Mac Pro starts at an already pricey $6,000, but the company neglected to mention how much the top-of-the-line model will cost. From a report on The Verge: So we shopped around for equivalent parts to the top-end spec that Apple's promising. As it turns out: $33,720.88 is likely the bare minimum -- and that's before factoring in the four GPUs, which could easily jack that price up to around $45,000. For all that dough, big-budget video editors and other creative types get a lot of firepower: a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor, an almost-impossible-to-comprehend 1.5TB of RAM, 4TB of SSD storage, and four AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo GPUs -- assuming you can afford one. Add in a Pro Display XDR monitor (and a Pro Stand to go with it), and you're looking at a workstation that could clear $50,000. Keep in mind too that these estimates are based on market prices for these (or similar) parts: Apple historically has charged far more for its pre-built configurations than for a computer you'd build on your own.
Such is trickle-up economy I guess (Score:2)
BTW I am sure some idiots will vote me down as if I care. The point is I am an Apple user and happy with my old devices. These days however Apple pushes devices with lower and lower quality at each iteration. So I doubt, besides the cost, if I would stay an Apple user in the near future...
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But what's the alternative?
A computer running Linux doesn't cut it. The hardware support won't be great. It may mostly work, but it won't be seamless. Linux has also been ruined by systemd, PulseAudio, GNOME 3, Wayland, and so much other modern software, to the point of being too unstable and too unusable.
Chromebooks are laughable, in my opinion.
FreeBSD is a good option. It can have the same hardware troubles as Linux has, but at least it's stable and robust.
I find this hard to admit, but it's looking like Windows 10 and a Surface device may be the best option for most users.
Unfortunately there are answer to all your points I can give but the cost would be sounding like a Linux fanboi, who is using Apple, which is strange to say the least.
However I need to tell this: Almost all items you mentioned are either solved or are not a cause of concern in comparison to MacOS. Most important one was issues centred around systemd, but these are mostly gome and/or dealt with in the time since its introduction to the ecosystem.
I have two issues with Linux desktop that stops me from switc
Re: Such is trickle-up economy I guess (Score:4)
Second is a more philosophical/questionable point that is rooted in my laziness. I reinstall my desktops around once a year. Installing program set I use (around 20-25 programs) take 4-5 days in Linux but 1-2 days in MacOs, as installers in MacOs are easier faster to use.
Why would you need to do this? I've not reinstalled an OS in over 10 years because it just needed to be reinstalled. This applies to both windows and linux installs. I assume Apple would be the same. I know this used to be the case but it hasn't been for quite some time. A well maintained OS should easily last the life of the computer, sometimes even longer.
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Okay, I can see this. I haven't done any real system level development on my workstation in a while. That didn't even enter my mind when I posted.
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Linux fans are like opera (small o, the performance genre) fans, terrified that their little niche would become (ptui!) popular. Systemd and PulseAudio have made Linux usable by more people, so Linux fans have to hate it in exactly the same way that opera fans were required to hate Andrea Bocelli when he expanded the audience for opera.
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Well that's the thing...WHAT are you actually using your computer for?
If you are a typical, non computer consumer, well,
Wow.. That sounds super reasonable. (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, how could anyone justify such a ridiculous price to just to have a Mac?
You can get a massively cheaper Windows machine which all the major SW vendors support. You could even upgrade your Windows machine when a new graphics card line comes out. NVIDIA, AMD? Which ever you want.
Do people really delude themselves into thinking they can complete a task 10 times faster on a Mac than a Windows box to justify the extravagance?
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A few things to consider here.
1) First a similar spec windows machine won't be "massively" cheaper if you can even get it.
2) That similarly specked windows machine also very likely won't work reliably at all. I am not saying you can't by a nice a workstation from HP or dell and slap 6 GPUs in it; but those configurations are basically NOT tested in the Windows world and going out side the nine dots like that means in my experience you will probably suffer - and if its your business that suffering will cost
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If you want reli
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That similarly specked windows machine also very likely won't work reliably at all.
Why?
I am not saying you can't by a nice a workstation from HP or dell and slap 6 GPUs in it; but those configurations are basically NOT tested in the Windows world
GPUs are so poorly supported by MacOS I don't know whether to assume you are serious or just being sarcastic.
Re:Wow.. That sounds super reasonable. (Score:5, Informative)
2) That similarly specked windows machine also very likely won't work reliably at all. I am not saying you can't by a nice a workstation from HP or dell and slap 6 GPUs in it; but those configurations are basically NOT tested in the Windows world and going out side the nine dots like that means in my experience you will probably suffer - and if its your business that suffering will cost your real money in terms of time and wages
Ah, yes it will and yeah they are. Any machine you buy in this class that is running windows will be a tested professional workstation. As for windows itself, its more than capable of working at this level. While windows workstation might have some issues at this level, a server based windows install will not.
Yes, you can use windows server in a workstation and it will perform just fine. It used to be the case that some commercial software wouldn't run windows server but I've not seen that in 15 years. But at the level we are talking about now you wouldn't be running that software in a machine of this class.
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Xeon E3 users will surely get upset if they want to buy a supported configuration.
This kind of sucks. A Xeon E3 is nothing more than a rebranded i7 with ECC memory.
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Right but their firm will still bill them at $250/h
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Could anyone justify that much on any single workstation? Probably very few.
For example, you can buy Apple's extremely overpriced storage, or you can buy a proper NAS and backup system for your valuable data. After all, if it's worth spending $50k processing it, it's worth spending a few bucks to secure it as well.
Similarly, if you want 28 cores and 1.5TB of RAM, you probably actually want some kind of distributed system. If you think you need 4x high end GPUs you probably want them in a separate box that d
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Re:Wow.. That sounds super reasonable. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can get a massively cheaper Windows machine which all the major SW vendors support.
You should help everyone out and post a link to those massively cheaper Windows boxes with 1.5 terabytes of RAM.
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You should help everyone out and post a link to those massively cheaper Windows boxes with 1.5 terabytes of RAM.
Dell offers a machine that can hold 1.5 terabytes of RAM. Someone on MacRumors looked it up, and the RAM costs you $46,000. Now I have no idea if this is a Windows box :-)
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The world’s most powerful workstation, the Precision 7920 Tower, provides ultimate performance and scalability to grow alongside your vision for even VR and AI applications.
Starting at $2,049.00
1.5TB 24x64GB DDR4 2666MHz LRDIMM ECC
+ $24,267.03
1.5TB 12x128GB DDR4 2666MHz LRDIMM ECC
+ $45,946.50
2TB 16x128GB DDR4 2666MHz LRDIMM ECC
+ $61,331.94
3TB 24x128GB DDR4 2666MHz LRDIMM ECC
+ $91,403.47
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I was able to price out a dual processor, 10 cores, HP Z8 G4 with 1 TB of ram for $31,425.
Re:Wow.. That sounds super reasonable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how could anyone justify such a ridiculous price to just to have a Mac? You can get a massively cheaper Windows machine which all the major SW vendors support.
No, you couldn't. I just went into a Supermicro configurator, 12x128GB DDR4 LR ECC RAM = $40k. The most expensive 28-core Xeon is $13k from Intel. These complaining about maxed configurations ignore that you're putting in tens of thousands of dollars of exotic parts. I'd probably guess a final price tag closer to $100k rather than $50k, but it's only in the remotest sense a workstation anymore. It's a dedicated server in drag, it just so happens to be at your desk rather than in a rack.
Your math has the Apple multiplier in it. (Score:2, Informative)
TWELVE (12) 128GB DDR4 ECC RAM STICKS: $17,867.88
The easiest thing on our shopping list is RAM. The new Mac Pro has 12 user-accessible DIMM slots that take DDR4 ECC memory. For the maximum of 1.5TB of RAM, we need 12 128GB sticks of RAM; at roughly $1,388.99 each, that rings up to a whopping $17,867.88 for memory. But just imagine: with $18K of RAM, you might even be able to keep three whole Chrome tabs open at once!
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/3/18651208/apple-mac-pro-how-much-top-spec-pr
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You can get a massively cheaper Windows machine which all the major SW vendors support.
Did you bother reading the article _at all_?
The prices quoted in the article are based on adding up the market prices for the parts. So that's the price you pay for a Windows machine (or Linux machine) with the same parts.
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Did you bother reading the article _at all_?
This is /. so of course not :)
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Seriously, how could anyone justify such a ridiculous price to just to have a Mac?
Nobody. Because nobody needs to pay that much money "just to have a Mac". You only have to pay that much if you want a Mac with insane specs. Any other PC with specs like that will also cost silly money. I don't know how much, but it'll likely be in the same ballpark.
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I can put together a Threadripper system for much less than an intel system with a similar numb
The video playback world disagrees with you (Score:5, Interesting)
We run video playback systems for large format/high resolution displays. We typically use stuff like Watchout, Disguise, and Millumin depending on content and playback venue.
If the content is ProRes - Millumin is a great playback choice - and if you have many high resolution video walls - you want as many 4k60 outputs as you can get.
When you start demanding many 4k60 video outputs hardware cost goes through the roof. Just because your video card says it can support (6) 4k-60 outputs does not mean that the rest of your machine can supply the card with data at those rates.
We have Watchout racks that cost $40-$50k. It is very possible that ONE high-end Mac Pro running Millumin will replace an entire Watchout playback rack. The minute the new Mac Pro becomes available we will probably buy a top spec model to see if we actually can reduce our Watchout footprint.
The new Mac Pro may be too expensive for your desktop, but there is definitely a market for these things.
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Seriously, how could anyone justify such a ridiculous price to just to have a Mac?
You can get a massively cheaper Windows machine which all the major SW vendors support. You could even upgrade your Windows machine when a new graphics card line comes out. NVIDIA, AMD? Which ever you want.
Do people really delude themselves into thinking they can complete a task 10 times faster on a Mac than a Windows box to justify the extravagance?
Businesses that do graphics and video editing are the customers. They prefer Macs.
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In the past their "pro" machines were used by a lot of high-end consumers as well, but I think this one really truly is just targeted at professional high-end work for people who want/need an Apple (i.e., macOS)
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The storage is absolutely user-upgradeable. Apple even demoed a RAID array that can be added internally as a PCI component, and with four TB3 ports, external storage is a no-brainer as well. The on-board SSD can be as big as 4TB, but you're most likely just going to put the OS on it, so it doesn't really need to be that big. Besides, starting with Catalina, the OS is automatically installed onto a separate partition from the user data and is made read-only. Just because the T2 chip encrypts data doesn't pre
This business model worked so well (Score:5, Insightful)
For Sun, and SGI, and HP, and IBM, and NeXT, and Intergraph, and E&S, and, and, and, etc. etc. etc.
Re:This business model worked so well (Score:4, Interesting)
For Sun, and SGI, and HP, and IBM, and NeXT, and Intergraph, and E&S, and, and, and, etc. etc. etc.
But Apple is not a server or workstation company. They don't need to make money from this; they can actually afford to lose a few millions. What's in it for them is that they will have the right to say that they've got the most powerful workstation you can buy. Wouldn't everyone want to buy a phone from the company that sells the most powerful workstations?
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Re: This business model worked so well (Score:2)
It's more fair to say that Apple bought the wreck that was NeXT at a bargain price after the crash of the workstation market.
Apple simply wasn't up to developing a next-gen OS on their own.
The mythical mid range Mac (Score:2)
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Between the mini and the pro, that doesnâ(TM)t force a built in screen like the iMac. Apple used to have a product like that, it was called the Centris. Bring out a modern Centris and you will get a lot of sales from Prosumers.
Not happening, Apple's solution is clearly eGPU, DAS/NAS or some other docking function rather than expansion cards and replaceable parts. They overdid it on the pro side with the trashcan design, but I'm still surprised that that they went back to standard SODIMMs on the Mac Mini. I'm not sure how many prosumers care anymore, if you're not sure it's fairly easy to spend a bit extra to get 32/64GB RAM now instead of 8/16GB. Same with an 8/12 core CPU instead of 4/6 core and hook up a 10TB external drive if
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The Centris was a low cost option @ ~2k.
Not compared to PCs that would blow its doors off @ ~1k.
The mobo was definitely not shit for the day,
It was shit compared to Macintosh II motherboards.
the case was acceptable in that it was tool-less and functional,
Centrises marked the first time when Macintosh cases had sharp edges inside that could cut you.
System 7 was very much a functional, usable OS.
System 7 was unreliable crap. It exploded constantly, especially while running older software that ran fine on 6.0.7.
You are high.
I have to deal with my MacOS PTSD somehow.
Who the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
...does Apple think they are? SGI?
Yes but $50k today is only $1,937 in 1913 dollars (Score:2)
Inflation Calculator [usinflatio...ulator.com]
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Expensive, sure, but compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
You made a bad choice (Score:2)
Having lived in in 1998, I would have taken the SGI machine every time. It was amazing at the time (I used one in collage).
The new monitor is nothing like that example though, because a monitor is widely useful, and may of the features of this monitor are very much above what other monitors can do. The monitor is a lot more timeless purchase...
If you just want or need a 4k monitor that is fine, but to not pretend there is not a lot of utility to such a large monitor so well calibrated, that can also rotate
Sounds about right... (Score:3, Informative)
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Can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these? (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody to to say it.
other pro workstations have 2 cpus at that cost (Score:2)
other pro workstations have 2 cpus at that cost with more pci-e lanes. Or you can go AMD and get more pci-e lanes and lower cost.
Market it as a server? (Score:2)
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Even Apple doesn't use Apple servers. iCloud runs on Google's and Amazon's cloud.
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Well, they did mention that they would have a rack-mount kit...
Yes, there is a business case (Score:2)
A machine like this can be put to use not just for video rendering, but for high-end modeling and simulation. The top software packages for that can cost over $200K per seat plus ongoing support costs. When you're paying that much for software, $20K either way for hardware doesn't matter much. Sure, you can build an equivalent machine yourself for less, but it's worth the extra money to have "one throat to choke" when something breaks and downtime is expensive.
Bad track record... (Score:2)
Yah but AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
Fact is, that 28 core Intel looks very sad compare to 64 core AMD Rome. Rejected.
Car analogy (Score:2)
There are lots of luxury brands I either can't afford or wouldn't pay for. That doesn't mean after sitting or riding in one I don't walk away thinking what a nice car it was. I'm pretty sure most who used this thing would feel the same way.
The benefit/cost ratio always goes way down as price goes up. That's life, deal with it. The fact is that Apple is the only company in tech that has the clout to offer an actual luxury line. This is no different than people spending an extra $10k on their carbon fiber ora
1.5 TB RAM? That's all? (Score:2)
an almost-impossible-to-comprehend 1.5TB of RAM
The Dell 7920 desktop takes up to 3 TB of RAM. I guess that is totally-impossible-to-comprehend level.
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I wonder if 1.5 TB is enough to safely work without a swap file?
They're not really hiding it anymore are they? (Score:2)
Instead of "The Computer for the Rest of Us"... (Score:2)
It's "The Computer for Just Us 1%ers."
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Vanity.
If you were that worried, you'd be plugging into a render farm even for local previews, etc. surely?
I imagine $50,000 per user buys an awful lot more for your money in a big rack, connected to dumb machines, that push all the actual rendering to the rack and get the results back and just put them on the screen. Especially when you factor in that "not everyone will be pushing the limits of the hardware 24/7", and the guy who's there alone at night gets the whole farm to himself and/or can run the bat
Agreed, story is ridiculous. $2,000 Olive Garden (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the story is a bit ridiculous. How many people are going to max out every possible option, getting four of the best graphics cards, 1,500 GB of RAM, 28 Intel cores, etc? I suppose a few people will, only a few.
What's even more ridiculous is some of the people posting here seem to think that Apple is advertising a $50,000 computer. Not any more than Olive Garden is advertising a $2,000 dinner - _IF_ you ordered four of everything on the menu sure it would cost that much. The idea of a menu is that you order what you want from the menu, not that you need to order everything on the menu.
Re:Agreed, story is ridiculous. $2,000 Olive Garde (Score:5, Insightful)
I can assure you that there are plenty of professionals out there who know that time is money and this machine is going to save them time. 1.5 TB of RAM, 28 cores and four Vega II video cards will enable them to do their job faster, and recoup the $50,000 in a reasonable amount of time. Ergo, they'll sell plenty of them to people whose workflow can take advantage of horsepower like this.
64-128GB of RAM I can see (Score:3)
I can imagine a decent number of people could get enough benefit from 64 GB - 128 GB to make it worthwhile.
I suspect that number of people who would actually use 1,500 GB on a regular basis is probably significantly lower than the number who will be wasting the money buying more RAM than they actually use.
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Outside of HPC I doubt there is a single task that can actually use 1.5TB of ram. You see those levels of memory on VM hosts that run multiple guests. workloads just don't efficiently scale up that way. That's why scale-out is a buzzword and everyone invests in VM's and load balancing. Otherwise we would all build our infrastructure around a small number of super computers instead of datacenters of servers.
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Outside of HPC I doubt there is a single task that can actually use 1.5TB of ram.
You've never edited video before have you. There are people who complain that NVMe RAID isn't fast enough for them. They are the ones who max out their RAM and use it as a scratch drive.
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> I can assure you that there are plenty of professionals out there who know that time is money and this machine is going to save them time
And those professionals also know that a properly spec'd Threadripper based workstation can save them the same amount of time AND $35,000 to boot.
In addition, almost nobody's workload needs anywhere close to 1.5TB of RAM in a workstation. Most workstation jobs are I/O, GPU, or processor bottlenecked. Massive RAM is most useful for enormous database servers, and no s
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No, they're advertising a hobbled $6,000 computer. The price goes way up from there to get baseline storage amounts and decent specs.
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Describe “hobbled”
Base configuration only has 250GB of storage. For a workstation.
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Dell doesn't sell anything that hobbled for storage in that model range, I'm sure.
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Sadly, they do https://www.dell.com/en-us/wor... [dell.com] I'm surprised as well.
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I have to admit--that surprised me. Heck, the iMac Pro comes with 1TB standard. And upgrading an iMac from a 256GB SSD to a 1TB SSD at Apple's prices comes to $600.
Yeah, it's an awesome machine. But it could be a little better out of the box.
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...so?
My laptop workstation has a 240GB SSD. It's barely used, because all of my actual work data exists on centralized storage in a data center in another state. That way when (not "if") my laptop is lost, damaged, left behind, or simply busy elsewhere, I can use any of my company's thousands of other computers around the world to continue to be productive... you know, if I weren't posting on Slashdot, instead.
There are few workloads that mandate large amounts of actually-local storage. 250 gigabytes ought
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Yea, I want my computer to have limited upgradability so the peak price with all the specs maxed out isn’t too much.
Let’s wait for the outrage with the next iPhone where you can add a Testla to you phone order only for and additional 200k
NO It's Not rediculous. the article is MISLEADING (Score:3)
The article is outrageously misleading.
what the article says in reality is that the new MacPro has so much capacity tht if you fully stuffed it with NON-apple sourced add-ons to it's full capacity you could actually stuff over 50K$ worht of parts in to it.
It's a statement about how amazing the capacity of this system is.
Now why is it so much more than you are used to hearing. It's because this thing supports a newish 64bit PCI bus with higher speeds. It also supports additional bus and power conne
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And for those of us who want to move away from Windows and just want something to last more than a year? What are we left with? Either cough up enough money for something which costs a large fraction of a new car, or go out and buy a new car?
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Depends on what you want it for...what jobs to you do with your systems?
You could get a macbook pro, and run it with external monitors, keyboards, etc....as a type of work station and take it mobile with you too....and its plenty powerful for normal things, even ligh
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For that capacity, you’re talking about $50/h + data storage and exchange costs. Even at $20/h you’re still talking about 1 year before you start saving.
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This is designed for high end video editing, period. Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm will think nothing of buying dozens of these, fully loaded, to edit their next few movies.
$6k is an entry point. Apple obviously designed this beast with the high end in mind, then asked, "How can we strip it down to an 'entry level' model for regional TV studios.
And then, because they're Apple, they always want to have Good, Better, and Best options, with the Better capturing the lion's share of sales. So they'll sell a ton o
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Jesus, if you have that much trouble installing and maintaining something like Ubuntu, you either have really shoddy hardware, or are a complete idiot.
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Flamebait aside, the AC's correct.
In certain *cough* "creative" *cough* industries, the hardware doesn't matter to the people making decisions. The tech folks who have to deal with it care, but they aren't the ones deciding what gets put in the offices for the "creatives" who make the money.
The divas^H^H^H^Hesigners who hold management's collective ear aren't concerned with costs, or function, or how hard it is to keep a modern office environment operational. They care about "clean lines" and "silent operat
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Actually, MacOS is what it's called now. Apple hasn't called it OS X for two years. I guess you were too busy trying to come up with good insults to make sure that you had your facts straight.
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Considering their base unit only has 32GB RAM at $6000!? That's some seriously fucking expensive RAM!
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At the price listed, we would expect MORE storage though. Their $6000 base model only has 256GB SSD, that's it.
And also, they didn't mention anything network related that I've been able to find other than "dual NICs"... It could very will still just be 1gbps NICs. I'm HOPING they'd include 10gbe, but considering how skimped the storage is... eh!? WHO KNOWS!
"But you can add a 10gbe NIC" - not so easy when all PCIe slots are populated by GPUs. Then the alternative is external thunderbolt NICs. This starts to
Re:and just 4 TB of storage (Score:4, Interesting)
In the keynote, they specified that the NICs are 10gbe.
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PCIe x4 on one of the two on-board M.2 slots or PCIe x4 via Thunderbolt 3, what's the fucking difference?
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NAS over 10Gbit is just fine for editing.
No way. You'll get about 1 GB/sec out of that. .5556 GB/sec at 23.976 at 8 bit color for UHD. .6945 GB/sec at 10 bit color. .7408 GB/sec minimum if you're working with film (as in movies, not celluloid) since you'll be at DCI 4K in 10 bit. .8890 GB/sec if your source is 12 bit.
Even if you only consider the lowest end modern source (UHD, 23.976, 8 bit), scrubbing or scanning through the video will be a pain.
1.3905 GB/sec at 60 FPS at 8 bit color for UHD.
1.7381 GB/sec at 10 bit color.
1.8539 GB/sec minimum if
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This probably isn't your area of work.
https://lumaforge.com/jellyfis... [lumaforge.com]
10GbE Speed: Between 650 - 1000 MB/s
(5200 to 8000 Mbps)
Your typical clickbait YouTube personality uploads UHD 60 FPS 8bit or UHD 30 FPS 8 bit, and edits in something better.
4k 60p ProRes is 1257 Mbps, so there's plenty of overhead there for them. In reality, they'd shoot h.264 and edit from an iMac. They wouldn't have a 10Gb NAS, but if they did, it'd work just fine.
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The base model is USD$6000.
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Build a Rome box for a small fraction of the price and kick its tail righteously.
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Vanity project all the way.