All in all the new Mac Pro is a good update to its aging predecessor. Apple did a great job with the new chassis and build a desktop that’s extremely dense with compute. When I had to dust off the old Mac Pros to prepare them for this comparison I quickly remembered many of the reasons that frustrated me about the platform. The old Mac Pro was big, bulky, a pain to work on and was substantially behind the consumer Macs in single threaded performance. The new Mac Pro fixes literally all of that. If you have a workload that justifies it and prefer OS X, the Mac Pro is thankfully no longer just your only solution, it’s a great solution.
The only Mac Pro review that matters. Still want one. Won’t buy one – but want one.
Looks like your link points to the last page of the very long, in-depth article. Here’s the link to the first page:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/
Thanks, fixed it. On my Jolla no less!
My favorite quote actually comes from that last page:
Like you said, the Mac Pro is something I want down to my nerd core, but I’ll never buy one. I simply can’t justify the cost of any high-end workstation when what I have now is still more than I need. And, by the time my system is outdated enough to replace, something as powerful as the 2013 Mac Pro will be pennies on the dollar in the used/BYOPC market.
In the mean time, it’s definitely drool-worthy.
Edited 2014-01-01 20:29 UTC
I feel exactly the same about the new Mac Pro as I did about the original NeXT Cube. I really, really want one but short of winning the lottery know I will never own one.
I was too young to realistically “want” a NeXTcube (I was in high school when they were a thing), as in there was no way I’d ever get one living in a poor household with no job. But on a school trip to a local college I got to play with one, and I was blown away. It made the Macs and PCs at my high school look like antiques.
I guess it explains why I like the look of my Lenovo ThinkCentre so much; the case has design cues that were obviously lifted from the cube’s look.
I’m reluctant buying one. I’m afraid my coworkers think it’s one of these:
http://is.gd/g1Ecqq
http://is.gd/mrOCMN
http://is.gd/QDidF9
But it probably won’t work for me.
I own a 2011 mac pro, 8 core nehalem … but i don’t run os x on it. I run linux on it.
There are some problems that come with this. The biggest ones being EFI and the SMC.
Out of the box, the fans won’t ramp up and it will fry itself … not good. I currently run a hacked-up version of smcfancontrol, but it’s far from perfect, and certainly not as refined as OS X’s own fan control.
I think the new one will probably be much worse for hardware support in leenucks than the old one was/is.
in summary:
gpus are alternating between 650 and 850MHz under load (should stay at 850)
cpu is clocking down to 2GHz under load (should stay at 2.7)
both are heating up to more than 95°c under load (nothing i’d be comfortable with)
Yeah, the machine is overheating under load and needs to be throttled. Great thermal design!
Note: The noise levels are impressive though. It could be that max load situations could be fixed by allowing higher RPMs. I am prone to believing Apple might have put in artificial maximums just to avoid high noise outputs.
Edited 2014-01-02 17:16 UTC
It’s interesting how the GPUs are handled in Windows. They use the FirePro driver, but they lack ECC and use CrossFireX rather than CrossFire Pro.
CrossFire Pro is for high-end OpenGL apps, allowing it to operate in Windowed mode (And with OpenGL, which IIRC CrossFireX doesn’t do). OSX doesn’t do CrossFire, and you’re not going to buy a MacPro to run Windows, anyways.
ECC is really only needed for some compute tasks that you’re not likely to be using a Mac Pro for.
It is interesting, how good is OsX in utilizing the premium hardware.
Very cute system, but for that kind of money, I would rather build my own workstatione which I can completely service myself.
And you can build some amathingly beautiful workstations and still save enough money to go on a nice vacation next summer. If you are not comfortable building yourself, find a local retailer that will cater to your needs.
I don´t want to know how much people will pay down the road for the privilege of a GPU replacement.
On top of everything else, this hardware comes from a company that, if J Applebaums findings are true, does not believe in the privacy of its customers.
I wonder how long before somebody actually tries to dispose their coffee into the top of it, mistaking it for a wastebin.
Bare feats.com has some very interesting comparisons to upgraded mid2010 Mac pros… The 2 x 6-core edit builder macs running at 3.46ghz hold their own against a late 2013 Mac Pro.
Now I am sufficiently happy with these new Mac pros after all, but I will tell you, a two processor Mac Pro, with 2 x 12 core possibility would have put to rest CPU concerns. For the price, I can certainly agree with others who say it is nice, but I will not buy one.
Yeah, I really like the design. But personally I’m still about 5 years from the point where I might regain enough confidence in anything containing an AMD/ATI GPU to consider buying it.
Every time over the last 15 years when my resolve faltered, there’s been something or the other completely f*cked up about my ATI purchase (no full screen multi-monitor on 9800 Pro, 2 X1900XTs that just fried and died, 5850 driver hell, and general driver incompetence/premature abandonment). I don’t care what philosophical issues people have with Nvidia, for me they always deliver.