The Price is Right: Mac Pro - Steve Jobs Figure Prize

[palmer 0]

I don't have a problem with Bring Your Own Desktop. As to sarcastic comments regarding charging less - no, you charge more for it, and in time you don't need an expensive laptop anymore.

 

"So, your day rate is $500....? And you want $100 a day for your machine....? Y e e e a h . . . . . do you think you could just bring your machine in and we'll just give you $500 for the day? If we decide to take you up on that second hold that we have on you- you'll have guaranteed work for 10 whole days!"

Edited November 12, 2013 by palmer

[kitkats 0]

I've been paid a supplement to my day rate for bringing my desktop in to a studio before. And I've also ran productions where I had to hire in extra machines for the job. If I had to hire a freelancer and he or she offered a rate for their desktop-class kit that was lower than the (high) rates I pay the rental company, I would take it. I don't see how you can argue with the simple economics of that.

 

Granted I am only one individual, but, you know - 'be the change you want to see in the world'. I never offer second holds, and I don't work for greedy, tight-ass people. The relationships I have with the studios I work for are way more friendly, honest and mutually beneficial than this nasty, exploitative idea people seem to be expressing. And if that was my experience, I would look elsewhere instead of complaining and being downtrodden. It's really easy to be negative and sarcastic, and it might make you look like you cynically know more than someone else for five minutes, but sincerity and a positive approach is more useful in the long run.

[vozzz 2]

Granted I am only one individual, but, you know - 'be the change you want to see in the world'. I never offer second holds, and I don't work for greedy, tight-ass people. The relationships I have with the studios I work for are way more friendly, honest and mutually beneficial than this nasty, exploitative idea people seem to be expressing. And if that was my experience, I would look elsewhere instead of complaining and being downtrodden. It's really easy to be negative and sarcastic, and it might make you look like you cynically know more than someone else for five minutes, but sincerity and a positive approach is more useful in the long run.

 

Agreed.Greedy tight-ass people are also the people that are a pain to get money out of, and if more people didn't work with them the world be a better place =)

[simonfarussell 0]

So, the maxed out spec on the MacPro US store comes to...

$9,599.00!

 

Bargin!

 

Annoyingly if you max it out on the UK store it comes to £7,779.00, which is $12,737.00

[creativebloke 0]

So, the maxed out spec on the MacPro US store comes to...

$9,599.00!

 

Bargin!

 

Annoyingly if you max it out on the UK store it comes to £7,779.00, which is $12,737.00

 

Is that including sales tax? If so makes a weekend trip to nyc justifiable

[simonfarussell 0]

 

Is that including sales tax? If so makes a weekend trip to nyc justifiable

 

I don't know about sales tax. Also I don't know about warranty. But it could make a trip over the pond totally justifiable with some room to spare.

[AromaKat 1]

Yep, $9599. I think Chris C pretty much nailed it with his estimate of $9525.

 

There isn't too much about maxing it out that seems unnecessary either. I'd be fine with 32gb of ram, 64 would be kinda needlessly geeking out for me personally. I think I would be okay with a 512gb of system OS as well. Its been comfy with a 256gb system drive since no media is ever stored on it, but since a secondary drive for application cache cannot be added internally I would need the extra space for that. The 12 core is a no-brainer but a $1,300+ markup is painful... Anything less than 12 cores feels a bit pointless. The 6gb per gpu is mandatory.

 

The configuration to pretty much match my current workstation comes to $7999.

 

Anyone here who is picking one of these up should get the 6gigs per card upgrade option. I posted a page or so back a bit on my experiences with GPU processing across multiple cards. In short, even though there are 2 cards, a task that uses GPU processing can only utilize ram on one card.

[ChrisC 2]

 

I think Chris C pretty much nailed it with his estimate of $9525.

 

Why thank you! I certainly can spot a bargain when I see one

 

Pretty undecided at this point. Price isn't the issue, it just doesn't seem like the machine I'd configure. Maybe now it's out, we'll get some proper benchmarks and see what use can be made of all that graphic hardware - other than running six monitors at once of course.

[Grundly 0]

 

The configuration to pretty much match my current workstation comes to $7999.

+ a keyboard, hah.

[levante 0]

I've been paid a supplement to my day rate for bringing my desktop in to a studio before. And I've also ran productions where I had to hire in extra machines for the job. If I had to hire a freelancer and he or she offered a rate for their desktop-class kit that was lower than the (high) rates I pay the rental company, I would take it. I don't see how you can argue with the simple economics of that.

...

...The relationships I have with the studios I work for are way more friendly, honest and mutually beneficial than this nasty, exploitative idea people seem to be expressing...

 

I'll second that. I only work for people that i like and i only bring my own box if i get an extra day rate. Almost never had a problem with that. I'll even work more efficient on my own system and most clients appreciate that.

[iline 0]

To those wondering about graphics cards advantages in Cinema4D:

 

AFAIK Cinema 4D does not employ CUDA or Open CL and isn't likely to for a while. Which is a massive fuxing failure on their part, looking at the extreme beauty of Maya's Viewport 2.0 - SSAO and realtime displacement anyone?

If you render using Octane or V-Ray then you'll see a difference in render speeds.

Physical Renderer needs CUDA, needs it. Displacement maps need CUDA - where's tessellation support, huh?

Having a decent graphics card means that your viewport is accelerated, pretty much. Big whoop.

Interestingly enough, having a CUDA card with After Effects has an unexpected advantage: Lloyd Alvarez supported CUDA processing in the latest version of Background Renderer and fuck me it's quick

[kitkats 0]

Interestingly enough, having a CUDA card with After Effects has an unexpected advantage: Lloyd Alvarez supported CUDA processing in the latest version of Background Renderer and fuck me it's quick

 

Huh? The support page states it was last updated May '11

[JoelD 0]

Soooo...anyone plug one in yet?

 

Wondering if the D500 would be enough, or is there a strong argument on why I should get the D700?

 

Been hovering my cursor over the buy now button but still not decided on configuration. I should do it before the shipping date slips to May.

[AromaKat 1]

 

Wondering if the D500 would be enough, or is there a strong argument on why I should get the D700?

 

From what I currently know and understand about GPU processing is that sharing vRAM between cards isn't possible. You can share processing power, but then both cards share the vRAM of one. So... the decision is between having 3gb or 6gb max. I ran into this issue when doing a lot of GPU sims, which is why I had to pick up the 6gb titan.

[ChrisC 2]

And look what arrived the other day... he's found a natural home too ;-)

 

Now I can ask, face-to-face, what would Steve do?

 

Edited September 4, 2014 by ChrisC

[kitkats 0]

…and what's your assessment of the machine now you've had some time with it? Personally waiting for next upgrade and hoping for a 6-core base model and gigabit ethernet

[AromaKat 1]

 

Personally waiting for next upgrade and hoping for a 6-core base model and gigabit ethernet

 

Do you mean 10 gigabit ethernet?

 

I was eying one, but like you, decided to wait to see what v2 is going to be. I'd be looking for 10gbe and dual processor config options.

 

 

 

 

ChrisC - you should put him on a ball bearing or something, with some wings attached to the base so he dances when you render and the fan kicks into overdrive :-)

Edited September 4, 2014 by AromaKat

[ChrisC 2]

Like the wings idea - the fans are pretty silent but do kick out some heat. Maybe a propellerhead would be fitting.

 

Machine is great - zero issues. Fast enough, the SSD is a breath of fresh air but that was obvious. Only snag is that I've got so much plugged in that the power button is pretty much unreachable.

 

Every now and then I get some use out of the graphics brains in there, Cinema editor speed is better of course - but I bet if one of those FirePro things was totally dead it would take me a long time to notice. Maybe some apps will make more use of them some time soon *ahem, AE. Maybe not.

 

Overall - zero regrets, but yep if I'd waited until now I'd probably be holding off for rev2.

 

[kitkats 0]

 

Do you mean 10 gigabit ethernet?

Yes of course, I was half asleep.

 

Chris - yeah, the lack of real-world GPU leverage was why I held off. Nice to feel future-proofed, but by the time the (OpenCL) future arrives the rev.2 must be out and I can get by with the old one and a RMBP until then (hopefully).