I got my hands on the new Mac Pro this week, it's hard not to be wooed by the cute (it's very small) little powerhouse, it was an almost religious experience for this Mac fanboy.
Even better I had the chance to try it out on some familiar apps during the demo, as we've already said in a previous post right now most apps are not optimised for the new Mac Pro, so most of the apps in the Apple store were things like Final Cut - it was fast. Although I'm guessing not having my trusty Mac Pro next to it to compare speeds, that some of it may have just been my wishful thinking as I was trying hard not to buy it.
Stack Overflow Public questions & answers; Stack Overflow for Teams Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers; Jobs Programming & related technical career opportunities; Talent Recruit tech talent & build your employer brand; Advertising Reach developers & technologists worldwide; About the company. Buying a new Mac computer can be an expensive affair. However, if you have an old Mac Mini lying around, like we do, you can easily upgrade it to work like a new computer. Here we show you how you can upgrade a 2011 Mac Mini for use in the current year. You will need the following items for this project: Set of Torx screwdriver bits.
However when the mist has cleared it is time to sit down and do some sums.
If I was to replace my current Mac Pro - 2010 Quad Core 2.8, 24GB Ram with a new Mac Pro and upspeccing it on the way then this is the bill I'm left with. https://tom-soft.mystrikingly.com/blog/santa-idea-mac-os.
- 3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache
- 16GB (4 x 4GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
- 1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Everyone knows what that white screen and grey Apple logo means, and when that OS X wallpaper pops up you can even guess which version of the operating system you are using. Take a look at the screenshot and you'll immediately recognize OS X 10.7 Lion, along with the usual ‘About this Mac' screen. But wait, there's something different.
£3939.00 inc VAT
However, I also have a HDX card and a UAD card so I need something to put those guys in, so a Magma Expressbox sets me back £835.00 inc VAT
I also have 4 3TB internal drives as well as a 1TB SSD drive so I need a high speed chassis for these as they won't fit inside the new Mac Pro. A decent USB2 4 bay drive unit to host the 3.5 drives is around £150.00 inc VAT
Total cost for this system is just shy of £5000.00 inc VAT with the cables needed.
However if I'm not bothered by having the sexy little beast and not being entirely up to date then there is an alternative option, that is a used top of the range old Mac Pro, today I got the price of this Mac Pro (5,1)
- 2.93Ghz 12 core
- 48GB
- 1TB SSD
Total cost of this system is £2700.00 inc VAT
Total cost of this system is £2700.00 inc VAT
Even better, I can simply buy one of these and swap out my 1TB SSD drive and all the internal drives and cards in a matter of minutes.
There are pros and cons for both options, here they are:
New Mac Pro
Pros
- Latest generation processor
- Thunderbolt and USB3 connectivity
- Small
- Quiet
- 4K monitor support with dual GPUs
Cons
- No internal expansion
- No ESATA support
- Firewire only with conversion cables
- Expansion chassis needed for HDX/UAD cards
- Not many applications take advantage of power
- Costly to upgrade from base models, for example 256 to 1TB drive upgrade £640
Old Mac Pro
Pros
- Hosts HDX/UAD cards
- ESATA, USB, Firewire support
- Some bargains to be had for top machines
Cons Negra es la noche mac os.
- Old technology
- Noisy
- No Thunderbolt
- Possibly unsupported by future software
One big area of improvement for the new Mac Pro is the graphics performance, but for many Pro Tools users this is not really going to be as important as it is for those working in video, 3D or graphics.
Of course my comparisons here are Mac v Mac and don't even add into the equation possibilities such as a PC running a Hackintosh, this is where you could build a latest generation super powered PC with Thunderbolt and then run Mac OS X on it.
So returning to where I started, seeing and holding the new Mac Pro was like bumping into Megan Fox - cute, sexy and utterly irresitable (for me anyway), for those who prefer the other sex then I would say Daniel Craig, but then in view of the size of the new Mac Pro then Tom Cruise may be a more appropriate comparison. However when you start to do some comparisons both in terms of cost and performance, then it may be a better option to take an alternative route as I've suggested here.
Some people will simply buy a new Mac Pro, I know how the Apple spell works, trust me I own EVERYTHING they make, yes really EVERYTHING. I've seldom regretted any Apple purchase and you won't change my mind otherwise, but I wanted to give an alternative view for those who may be thinking of shelling out several thousand pounds on one - it is truly gorgeous and a simply amazing piece of design, but it may not be the best computer for all Pro Tools system.
Some reading this will think that to compare the new Mac Pro with the old Mac Pro is simply insane, well that depends on what you need the computer to do, I'd like to counter anyone with the insane view of this article and suggest that making a £5000 purchase without serious consideration is insane. Discuss.
One of our community Andreas was able to install a copy of Pro Tools 11 on a demo Mac in the Mac Store. The test was: Stereo AUX track with 10 x Avid Channel Strip (native). Here are his findings:
Run (itch) (karanvir3215) mac os. Black new Mac Pro: 100-102 Tracks
HDX Single Card: 28 Tracks
Silver Mac Pro Quad Core 2.8 GHz: 65 Tracks Santa idea mac os.
Buffer Size in all tests was 256, Dynamic Plug In Processing: Off.
We've just ran the same test on a Mac Pro 2010 2.93 12 Core, this is our result.
Yes, that's 150 tracks and counting.
Another of our community Stuart McCredie, who is using a 15 inch MBP Retina. Haswell 2.6GHz, 16GB ram & 1TB ssd saw this post and sent us this email…
Too Silver For A Seam (demo) Mac Os Catalina
I'm up in the wilds of the Highlands recording at the moment. Broken timeline - prologue mac os. Had an idle 5 minutes so obviously was on your site immediately. Attached is screen shot of stereo aux tracks with 10 instances of Avid channel strip. Result was 159 channels (first Aux + 158 duplicates), sample buffer was also 256. Got the same 28 channels of DSP on HDX as your guy did too.
Heavy use tracking the band all week via thunderbolt chassis & HDX. Faultless.
Too Silver For A Seam (demo) Mac Os Download
Thanks Stuart for thinking of us first and taking the time to report your findings.
