Looking to buy a new Mac Pro.

Okay, so I'm looking at buying a new mac Pro and I've only got 5000 GBP to work with and I don't have Unity Pro currently either so would the 4 core, dual GPU model going for 2500 GBP be okay or is it just a rip off? Any help would be great,

Thanks
Affection56k

 

We had opportunities to evaluate them closely, as our creative director is ex-apple staff. Here's our findings:

1. the 4-core mac pro is not better nor faster than a kitted out imac 27"

2. the 6-core mac pro is required at minimum to make it worth purchasing, at at present it is only worth purchasing one if you will either stress 6 cores constantly (ie Logic or 3D Rendering) or you use Final Cut Pro X.

3. The GPUs are largely wasted for nearly all purposes.

It's a great machine but the software just isn't there to take any advantage of it. In addition to this you can get a 27% discount if you know apple staff, or you can get a 15% discount if in education, or have a family member in education.

Ultimately we went with the 27" iMac with 1TB ssd, upgraded everything in sight and it still came out cheaper (and arguably faster) than the entry level mac pro. I just can't see any sane reason to recommend one unless you're going to use 6 cores.

As for me, I went for a scan.co.uk 3xs system pre-overclocked to 4.5ghz, hydro cooled etc - all hunky dory with classic shell. I don't even miss my beloved mac any more.

It's good if you've got your heart set on a mac pro for some reason, but we are going to wait until it's most important feature - the dual gpus - are actually used. Which I'd imagine would be a couple of years. Scan's pcs are way, way faster than the entry level, but not faster than the 6 core mac pro if you'll be doing 6 core tasks (which unity won't).

I'd recommend a serious Gaming PC (it's not for gaming, but the specs are ideal for it) from 3xs - something with 16gb ram, 4.6ghz overclocked haswell 4770k and pre-installed with 8.1 and classic shell - you can configure it then to your exact visual behaviour on the os side. Get yourself a 500gb Samsung SSD (their 3xs systems page makes it as easy as apple to configure). It's kinda the apple of the pc universe.

I use my mac mini for any remaining ios phone tasks, but I can't see myself missing out on this bang for buck tbh - even though our creative director will only use macs. He chose a fully loaded iMac this time round.

Depends what you'll be doing with it though!

 

Buy a normal Mac,

replace the Core i7 CPU with a Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70GHz,

replace the hard disk with Raid SSD.

Zoooom

 

fiddling with bits isn't everyone's cup of tea tho

 

I'll never get a mac pro. I can already do everything on my Macbook Pro late 2011 edition so I see no reason to move up. Plus at the time I needed the firewire port for my audio interfaces I owned.

 

If you absolutely want a mac pro I'd recommend waiting for at least the second gen.

 

I think the mac pro's are generally just unnecessary unless you need the 4k video output, or the additional GPU compute power. Really the only people who need these things right now are people doing 4k video editing.

I use the current top of the line macbook pro retina with the 750m in it and that is more than plenty fast enough for anything I do. Which can be quite intense, just last week I was using it to retopolgize million+ polygon meshes exported from Rhino to Modo.

You know you have to keep in mind that computers are really damn fast today. My new top of the line retina macbook is actually a little faster than my old professional workstation from 5 years ago which was an octocore xeon workstation with fancy nvidia GPU. Which is why I personally have moved all to the macbook for all my work, it is a little faster than the the 3D workstations I have been using for the past decade for professional work, and I didn't feel I needed more speed, more portability benefits me more. The need to go to like the bleeding edge is just not necessary anymore. Just the $2000 iMac is actually faster than than my macbook pro retina I have, and would be great for any and all 3D work. A $3,000 iMac is really quite a good way to go (everything maxed with 512 ssd).

 

I'm a big mac fan, but my latest PC with win 8.1 + classic shell actually does convert me back to windows. It took this particular combination of performance and os tweakability to do it now. I have an incredibly minimalistic os with not a metro in sight, and its nicer than even osx - does take tweaking it though! Of course I use my apple keyboard.

I think Apple need to think long and hard about their current lineup. They can't improve the imac any further without doing a dump on their mac pro entry level, and that's a bit of a problem when you think about it. In any case, PC for me, for next 3 years.

 

just install mac into a VM on a cheaper more powerful PC. its legal, and cheaper, more versatile, and you can custom build your computer. Now you can test you builds on mac, linux, and pc. just saved you a couple grand right there. unless you need a computer that looks like a wastebasket seriously just put your computer in a corner, look at the screen and save the money for investments on your game.

 

Correct me if I am wrong but this is not legal and in addition takes quite a bit of hackery to get a "hackintosh" up and running in this fashion with quite a few bugs. One of the original reasons I switched from Windows PC to OSX for desktop couple years ago as it was just such a pain to keep checking out my unity project to my crappy macbook to test on Apple devices.

 

I have been using and buying Macs for the last 22 years and bought me a "Windows" machine a few weeks ago. I am currently very happy with that move and I think Apple would really have to do a lot to convince me to come back. Lately I feel that you get smaller screens and mediocre hardware but pay 100-200 dollar more than previously. The Mac Pro doesn't tempt me at all. I've spend good money and hand picked components to build my own PC. You can read about it on my blog if interested:

http://thomaspasieka.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/new-rig-is-ready/


Thomas

 

I think for unity all you need to be happy is a Mac mini with 16GB RAM and SSD.
If you need a machine with more GPU power to test your games on it then build yourself a 2nd windows machine for that task.

A Mac Pro makes sense if you are a professional audio user as you always can need more CPU power for the realtime DSP stuff. Compared to the other audio equipment a Mac Pro is one of the cheapest parts anyway.

I also switched to hand selected fast PC Hardware for some time but I never could get used to windows (I'm a Mac user since 1991 and used it mostly as a hackintosh), for me windows is still a no go. Recently I've switched to a mini (the last one that had a radeon) and it was just great because over the years I've found out that my PC hardware just sucked in overall quality (troubles that had nothing to do with the main usage as a hackintosh). I will never ever return to PC hardware although I know I could make a faster and cheaper "Mac" with it. Beside that my power bill went drastically down, my PC hardware had costs of 50-60 EUR a month for power only. (you could buy a mac mini for that after 10 months) - the power consumption of a Mac Pro is also extremely high, so you will rip yourself off just because the machines (Mac Pro or great windows rig) wastes so much energy. Power consumption of a mac mini is excellent (11 watt when idle, usually peaks of 38 watts when working) you will save money each day. If a mini is not good enough go with an iMac, I haven't seen a new Mac Pro at all yet, but what hippocoder said was already always true over the last years so I doubt it will change with the new one.

 

Yep we use both here at Simian Squared - horses for courses. We actually went for the iMac fully kitted out for the artist because:

1. the cinema display is beyond awesome for artists.
2. 27% discount
3. importantly, he knows logic (he's apple certified and trained in it) and final cut - it would cost us more money to re-train him in lost hours for pc equivalent software.

So sometimes your choice to use a mac probably isn't going to be about the special build or whatever, but about using what makes sense for your business. In my case as lead programmer, the fastest PC money can buy (within reason) and an iMac for him. A mac mini will always have truly dismal 3D performance though. We use my mac mini as the project's server, it's always on and costs nothing to run

 

My opinion: It usually makes sense to mostly test on low end iOS devices and it also makes sense not to use the fastest machine for (mobile or not) development (if something has a huge impact on performance then it's nice to feel that already on the development machine) - for game development the only task I see which needs a machine as fast as possible is stuff like calculating light maps. On the other hand it's clear that it's always more fun to work with the fastest machine you can get, but possibly you will waste some time when you find out late that you are running into performance issues on your desired low end hardware.

 

Do you really feel you can be more productive in Windows than OSX? That was always my deal breaker for Windows as a primary OS. Perhaps though we use the systems too differently for this to be properly answered. I could understand how if your just in an IDE all day coding away, different OS's make no impact on productivity because it's all dependent on the IDE. Conversely though I handle everything, coding, 3D modeling, texturing, sound, emailing clients, sending files back and forth all around the office. It always seemed to me OSX has these little things in it here and there that make crazy multi-tasking, and managing tons and tons of files, and multiple projects, through multiple applications much more manageable. I don't know if your as crazy a multi-tasker as me and work with as many people collaboratively for the benefits OSX offers in this department to appear as prevalent. But still would like to hear your comparison of productivity and workflow in windows vs osx.

 

yep its legal, you can use your copy of osx in up to 2 vm machines.

 

There are certain things I use my mac for but I mostly use my windows.

 

My research tells me otherwise, can you post a link to the license agreement on apple's website?

 

I think you are misreading that, you are allowed 2 vm copies on a Apple computer already running OSX.

Source: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX109.pdf

 

Found it, apparently you can install it up to two apple computers provided you bought the OS. Never mentions windows computers. I could've accidentally read over it though.

 

Just do this instead. 100% legal and fast Mac.

 

wonderful except for the SSD part.

 

What happened?

 

SSD's are generally fine as long as you don't run your OS on there. If you do, then expect the lifespan to shorten significantly due to the fact that the OS will write to that drive multiple times.

 

Time is money for our business.
If a developer works faster, he goes home early. If he spends all day waiting for 'processing...', 'baking...', 'compiling...'.


The 'switch platform' to another platform is a big turn-off and time waster.

 

And when the SSD running the OS fails then what? Are you going to spend more time and money away from your project to replace the SSD?

BTW, I wasn't saying to switch platform. All I was saying was to use the SSD as a backup for important files.

 

SSDs lasted more than a year without failing.

Yeah, like the company here has no backup facilities.

Re-install OSX takes a few hours. It is not like 5 years ago when you have to spend a week re-installing.

 

The switch platform button in Unity > File > Build Settings > Bottom of screen, switch platform.


Even with cache server it takes almost 2 hours for Unity to process, after pressing that button.

 

That's odd, I could have sworn for *years* that installing your OS on your SSD was one the main use-cases of SSD's.

That's odd, I could have sworn for *years* that using a SSD for backup was one of the worst possible use-cases for a SSD given its comparatively small size and performance characteristics compared to HDD's and other back-up mediums.

 

It is certainly one of the best uses.

 

One would hope that the life-span of SSDs have improved greatly from the time when SSDs were known to only last a small while. If they're starting to come out with Hybrids HDs where they install the OS on the SSD and documents on the HD, one would think that it has improved enough to replace. In addition to that Apple is coming out with full SSD computers, given my experience and reputation of Apple computer, I'd expect all apples to last 5+ years, I know that's not much hard-drive wise, but that's just my experience I usually upgrade around that time frame.

The people users before me has offered more info about the Mac Pro than I know. However, if you decide to not go down the Mac path, Building your own windows computer, can be fun, interesting, satisfying, educational, and cheap but yet powerful.

Here's a few website to look into

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ (Ask around, I bet theres some Unity user's there who know some good hardware for Unity)
http://pcpartpicker.com/
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

 

I doubt you can't be as productive on Windows as on OS X (although my feeling clearly says you can't be as productive on windows, but this is just a feeling). For sure it's just a serious matter of taste only. For example I also don't like a lot of the newer "productive" features of OS X and I just don't use it. But on Windows I completely feel like being blocked by the system, it's obvious that windows is not made for people like me, for me the way windows works seems to be highly illogical and unproductive. But when you are working mostly with Unity there should be no difference (except this strange feeling that won't go away)

I also don't trust SSDs but use it as system drive. The way how SSDs fail is an interesting experience, in my case the computer just freezed because the SSD was totally gone, it was as dead as dead means not even detectable by the hardware anymore. I know this can happen any second and this is why I always have a (SuperDuper!) clone of my drive.

 

I remember working on someone's computer about a month ago that had an SSD as his only drive. The drive failed and was completely gone when he called me. He said he only had the drive about 3 months beforehand and this was his second SSD he went through. God that guy was a pain to deal with.

 

I'm way more productive in windows. Because I keep saying it: the OS isn't there any more. It gets in the way LESS than osx did! That's what brought me back.

To do this you need windows 8.1 and Classic shell. It obliterates everything, brings back start menu (with spotlightish search), kills charms and all that metro nonsense, and allows you to build your own start menu + (finder stuff tweaks) and so forth with a couple of clicks. Essentially I now do not have an OS. That is productivity - just seeing apps. I don't even have a recycle bin, the desktop is just a single colour.

All my temp files, even my user account and desktop are on the 3TB barracuda drive. All my apps, my *main* work folder and os are on the 1TB Samsung Evo 840 SSD. 16GB ram pretty much shoots paging in the head.

Plus you can secure erase the thing if it ever fills up. In my case it probably won't. SSDs have come a long way. The fact my utterly huge abomination of a project takes 2 seconds to compile and 1 second to run really pleases me. No dll's either.

It's behaving like the empty project would on my old machine.


But bear in mind once again if this sounds like a pro-windows ad, because we split our machines 50-50 mac and pc. PCs where brute strength is needed and Macs where it makes sense.

 

That's what brought you BACK, possibly that's the point? So you were already used to windows because you actually was a windows user before? You are a "Switcher"? "it gets in the way LESS than osx did!" possibly because you was always a windows guy just with a mac.

It might sound trivial to switch systems… but different ways how systems handle things will be saved pretty deep in your brain when you use a system over 8+ hours a day because we are kind of zombies in front of a screen during that time.

 

I'm not a primitive user, I've been developing since 1981, and using every computer since. Don't make that assumption. For a while OSX was more efficient than even windows 7. Now it isn't as efficient as 8.1+classic shell. I did have to use Ifranview and tweak that too, but I have everything going now how I like it. By contrast, OSX required no tweaking on my part.

Metro is incredibly harmful for productivity, so it does take tweaking to streamline the os into a thoroughbred. OSX still holds the edge if you want to do server based stuff, so we use OSX for our server based stuff (as opposed to Linux which we actively avoid).

Perhaps give me an example of your power-workflow in OSX? because mine amounted to swiping or tabbing between apps, light use of terminal and generally just working on several things at once. I didn't have a problem with it.

Windows is virtually identical, just less bloat (in my configuration). I suspect I would have probably been just as happy with an iMac except, well, I can't develop on console with an iMac, and if we come down to it, Apple's been S***ting on people for too long now with really bad GPUs and generally piss poor prices for things like SSDs and internals in general, plus zero respect for developers. They should be actively courting people to port their main apps to Mac, but they don't. It's taken them years just to upgrade to OpenGL 4.1. We're on 4.4 already, it's just stupid. By contrast, windows always has you updated with latest possible DX11, and there's no compatibility issues there either, so whatever reason there is, doesn't fly.

Why I went Windows this time:
1. the apps I need for my job are windows based
2. the speed I get for the price is WAY better than Apple's offering
3. I had a dreadful fear of Windows 8.1, I read the nightmare, saw metro but still took the risk. After some tinkering with things to completely eliminate metro, my fears were entirely unfounded.
4. I had the PC built for me (yes, spoiled by Apple) and used only the highest quality components.

Basically, they're similar enough with a few tweaks that it doesn't matter. But you're right - I do know both os's well so you should seek opinion from others.

 

Okay, I would like to adress the most commonly asked questions.

Q) What OS have you used most of your life?
A) Mac OS, my first computer was a book g3 clamshell running Mac OS 9, I've only ever used Windows when I was in high school.

Q) What is your workflow like?
A) most of the time I have atleast 15 different applications, 20 tabs on safai, 10 finder windows and music playing in the background. Basically I multitask alot.

Q) What platforms do you plan on developing for?
A) Playstation mobile, my friend has the beta for unity.

Q) What programs do you use?
A) I use Pro logic 9, Photoshop, itunes, inkscape, blender, safari, xcode and mircosoft office.

Q) Would you consider Windows?
A) Only if there no point using Mac OSX, then yes.

If i've missed anything els then please ask again.

 

I haven't - I've said that the way how a system works will be saved deeply inside of a users brain. Anything that is different will leave a general bad feeling. That has nothing to do with "primitive users" (whatever that might be)

That's the main point

What is swiping in OS X? Must be some of the new stuff that I never use. Possibly for people who use a trackpad? (have I mentioned that I also hate notebooks of any kind because of their non existent ergonomics? others love them)

It's much easier to show you an example of my workflow on windows: I always have a strange feeling like being just a second away from vomiting (really) and this is a huge problem for me (me like me the single person, not anyone else) <- that was my "work"flow in windows lol.

History as shown that trying to explain why you (a single person) can't use windows to a windows user is as hopeless as trying to explain a Logic user (musician) why you can do serious audio editing for movies on Pro Tools only. (and why no one on the planet seriously tries that in Logic)

PS: I don't do server or network stuff at all - I just don't need it (except managing my webserver)
So maybe it's like 2 people talking about a drilling machine, one who needs it to build machines and the other one who builds houses with it.

? They actively talking even to small developers like me: I just had a meeting with two of their managers last week because they've asked for. I would not call this behavior zero respect.

That's right but that was always the case so actually I already consider this as a normal state to be versions behind.

DirectX is from Microsoft itself, it would be pretty strange if they would not use their newest version.

Why? As said before it's a matter of taste - obviously something in windows is extremely against my taste that makes it unusable for me. Although I don't like most of the new features (almost everything since 10.3) because they are way too much windows like.

 

I see no need for a Mac Pro except for Logic, but that depends on the amount and kind of plugins you are usually using. What is your current machine and what are your current problems with it?

 

What is the point? They both do the same Job.. It's a slight preference nothing else. The ONLY reason we have macs around is for our music studio's where we use logic / pro tools and Apogee Symphony's.. Which it's hard to get comparable products on PC (Well until the Lynx Hilo came out anyway).

Mac's are just ridiculously expensive for what they are and support less products that you might want to use, also there limited by GL versions and games. Which Windows isn't, personally I don't give two flying monkey's what anyone uses.. If you like Mac's and can achieve your goals with them, then buy one if not buy a PC and windows.

 

A quad core 2.5GHz powermac g5 with 16GB of ram and a flashed nVidia Geforce 7800. The reason i want to upgrade is obvious, it's a powerpc mac.

The only reason I have pro logic installed is when I'm bored and just want to mess around. So everything is just like it is as soon as it's installed.

 

? That's the point. Exactly what I am saying.

 

I replied a couple of minutes after you ..

I didn't see yours

 

I have the same old G5 here, you will be absolutely happy with an iMac.

 

Awesome, so a stock imac, will do fine? Also, is there anyway I can get my files from my powermac g5 and put them in the imac?

 

iMac G5?

I would go with a BTO with fusion drive or SSD and upgrade to at least 16GB.

As there is no firewire on the new Machines anymore (except via Thunderbolt adapter) usually you could connect your internal G5 drive with a cheap IDA/SATA to USB adapter to the iMac and use the migration assistant. But on Mavericks the lowest supported system to migrate from is snow leopard so this won't work. But migrating from Leopard works with Mountain Lion, so maybe you could install ML for this task on the new iMac (but check first if it's possible to install any earlier system on your next machine, but I think the current iMac is still older than Mavericks so this should work)

 

sorry, I didn't mean to type imac g5. lol
How would I get a copy of ML? I can't really pirate anything as this iMac is being bought with my grant for my business.

 

The problem is not the copy, the problem is that you need SL or Lion to be installed first before you can install ML unless the machine came originally with ML out of the box. (the new machines can run ML but Mavericks is their original system now so I guess trying to recover via internet will load Mavericks) - there are ways to create a USB-Stick to boot from but you would need access to another newer Mac and as said SL or Lion must be already installed.

Better migrate by hand or use another older Mac of a friend to migrate to SL, L or ML and then migrate from this copy to your new machine.
But you will need another external drive for this task.

And remember PPC Applications does not work on the newer OS X versions at all anymore (the period of transition is over)

 

Okay, I have a friend with a 2009 MacBook, so I'll ask him if he can do it. Also If i bought a time machine, would that fix the problem of doing everything by hznd if my friend said no? Sorry for the bunch of questions by the way.

 

You mean a time capsule? No, that's just a time machine compatible overpriced NAS with WLAN router. I don't think you can migrate from a backup created with leopard, but I don't know it. But you can try that first (with any external HD, no need for a time capsule)

If your friend has a macbook 2009 then he should have a snow leopard DVD, I see absolutely no reason why a friend of you should not install SL with his machine on your external HD as it does not affect his own system at all. Just install it, boot from it, migrate the content from the G5 leopard disk and then connect this disk to your new machine and migrate the content again. Takes just some hours to do.