New Mac Pro

It's almost certain that the base model will ship with the

You'll be forking out a ton for dual workstation graphics cards too.

I'm actually with Polygon on this one.

Anyone using audio DSP cards looks to be left out in the cold. Which is pretty much anyone using large Pro Tools I/O's or other pro level audio converters. It really is quite a bummer because I was looking forward to seeing a more powerful Mac Pro that would add to the processing power of utilizing DPS cards.

I'm not excluding the options of adding something like the Silverstone PCI-E expansion chassis to this product. We'll just have to wait and see how that ends up working out. If anything I'm just a little disappointing that this Mac Pro has lost this built-in functionality.

In terms of audio, all I really care about is latency + processing. I'm sure thunderbolt is a great transfer method, it just lacks the power you get from DSP cards. I'm only saying this because I've mixed movie scores that have 100+ tracks, and then processing + latency becomes pretty crucial. Chiming in because I consider that pro level work if anything.

In all honesty I was just expecting to see the same old Mac Pro design with beefier CPU, Memory and HD options.

It did not feel sluggish when compared to an ssd, it felt 1980-era 2gb hdd sluggish. I remember the load time for windows was around 5 minutes. Not the loading screen itself, but the time it took to fully load the desktop


And it was not my laptop but my cousin's.. so no, no benches atm. I'll try getting another free TB drive, because the one she had at the time was brand new (this is why she let me try installing windows on it in the first place, it's probably filled up with docs by now)

transfer rates are almost double that of SATA6

Also if it had so much latency wouldn't it be almost completely useless for displays ?

Where did you hear about Thunderbolt having much latency? I can't find anything related to that.

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/community ...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.



I completely understand where you are coming from, however I believe 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.

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?

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.

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 believe 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 ?

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

:P