I’ve been shopping for an upgrade for my workstation while i came across this,
at first i poopoo'd it as id usually do with this line of workstations; but this one... this one is different!
for some reason (later will be obvious) it caught my attention; at first i started to notice the very odd design,
under the hood even more strange; but there was something about it i can’t explain, i kept on investigating;
under the hood there top of the line Xeon CPU processor (they vary in cores from 4 to 12 each),
ram specks out the roof at 64GB 1866Ghz, M2 SSD with up to 1gb per second read write!
my jaw dropped as i read these specs; i couldn’t believe what i was reading at first,
this thing doesn’t even look like a PC; let alone a high end unit; what in the world is going on here,

 

yes, this is Apples new Mac Pro, if you haven’t had a look at this trash can from hell; i can only suggest you do it now!
http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

it was really lovely and exciting to read these; but once i saw it was an Apple i lost all the excitement,
the next day this trash can wouldn’t get out of my mind; i found myself learning more about this oddly shaped super PC,
i was and still mesmerized by the craftsmanship and the design; but the specs OMG the specs, what a shame its only for OS X,

 

next for fun i wanted to know if it’s possible to run windows on this monster; i know we can dual boot with MacBook’s and such;
but a full blown workstation wasn’t something i thought doable on a mac pro platform; turns out with boot camp (a Unix based boot loader) that is very easily done,
and actually many do use this with windows; allot more research and few days later i find myself writing this; i think everyone should know about this,

 

one other thing that troubled me was; how do you expand, and why did they jam these useless dual overpriced AMD's there is beyond me;
after processing and more research i got it; you ignore them! just as you would an onboard gpu,
and instead you use Sonnet external Thunderbolt chassis, http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3d.html

all problems solved! Mac Pro with dual Quad Xeon at 3.7Ghz each, with 64GB Ram at 1866Ghz, 1Tb SSD M2, and Sonnet chassis with two GTX 980's,
could you ask for a better or stronger (practically) stock PC for your application?

 

 

 

Isn't it Small Chris! If it were larger I'd mistake it for my kitchen bin and be throwing cat food cans, spaghetti hoop cans and all manner of discarded comestibles into the top. :smile:
 
Seriously though, Apple do nicely with design. Even my daughters MacBook Air is beautifully designed.
 
I love the way the guy in the video dabs his greasy, sweaty acid soaked fingers all over the gold contacts on the ram. I'm so fussy about such things. :smile:

 

Are you going to buy one Chris?

lol, i know it is just ridicules how tiny it is,

I’m itching to setup a system like that; with external sonnnet and GTX 980,

it’s so out of my budget; but i can’t help it I’m so mesmerized by it;

the unconventional trash can shape takes care of heat dissipation perfectly!

what a genius and gutsy design, I’m flabbergasted!

 

stay tuned in the next few days ill know if I’m making this crazy move or not,

It is a  gutsy design indeed, I like the central airflow idea.

 

Trouble is I've just shown your video to my daughter. She's an IT girl [data analyst/developer] and like my son and me love such tech.

 

The moral of the story is never show sexy tech to your daughter. They tend to want one.  :smile:

that’s my problem too; i am an IT guy myself (well... was :smile: )

 

i don’t know if i can restrain myself with this one, it’s an irresistible trash can, (the first ever)

the design is one thing on its own we can go on forever,

combine the specs it comes with; even the most basic is mind blowing for this tiny stool,

that kind of stuff will keep me up at night until it’s in my hands; and then I’ll be walking around with it all day :wub:

 

ok raise your hand if your SSD can read and write 1GB per second? anyone?

that’s what i though :wink:

Yes my PC can Chris. I borrowed it from Jim Kirk.

Hi Martin,

i don’t know why i was convinced this is a dual xeon cylinder, turns out its a single Xeon,
nevertheless any CPU with FC/LGA2011 socket can be fitted there;
I’m just bummed out bit realizing its a single cpu instead of dual,
my mind associates xeons with mutli cpu by default i guess,

I wondered where you got that from, but as I hadn't looked at the specs as closely as you I assumed I'd missed something. Happens to us all.

 

Still a great machine though.

As with any other Apple product, the design is phenomenal yet the components are as 08/15 as in any self built computer. So, for me and my PC requirements, I really do not see any sense in spending this much $$ just because of the design, even more because the workstation GPUs apple usually uses do not really work well for the games I play, such as FSX and P3D.

 

Just as an example: the cheaper one, for 3000$, has a quadcore Xeon with 3.7GHz, 12GB RAM (1866MHz) and Dual Firepro (useless for gaming purposes). If you consider comparable specs for a "normal" computer, you will end up below 1500$. So, I do not see any reason to spend 100% more just for the design, unless you really make use of those FirePro's and the OS X operating system. Certainly a NO-GO for flightsimming (maybe X-Plane would run perfectly on such a machine...).

considering i was bit confused; the design coupled with specs are still phenomenal,

price wise it is bit pricey for what we need; to make this cylinder an overkill Sim platform...

one will need to upgrade the CPU to the 18-core E5-2699 v3; then you have something out of this world contained in that cylinder,

pushing over 40Ghz without turbo and over 64Ghz with turbo; now that’s something, but that something also costs a hefty bill,

but on the other hand it’s a trash can that can sit on your desk, no big boxes or water cooling and complicated builds,

one wire to the Sonnet box with GTX 980, from there one wire to the monitors, and daisy chain from there,

clean and unstoppable setup right there, but expensive nonetheless, this can all be done to the existing cylinder,

but as is it is nor geared for what we need unless additional 5k is added on top

 

about the GPU’s; not sure why they put AMD in this beautiful masterpiece,

it’s like putting ketchup on a filet mignon,

Ehm, you can not simply multiply the GHz of a single core with the number of cores, this leads you nowhere. Fact is, the single core clock of the E5-2699v3 is 2.3GHz with a turbo of 3.6GHz. As long as your software does not support extensive multithreading, the 18-cores are useless and as such, a 4.0GHz i7 6700K overclocked to 4.5GHz on all four cores offers you far more performance on a single core, and this for a pricetag that is 10x less (!). And as a matter of fact, for FSX and P3D (which works best on four logical cores only), such an 18-core CPU would actually not be an "overkill", but a bad performer instead.

 

And regarding FirePro's: you can again not compare gaming hardware such as the known 980 or Fury (X) with those workstation graphic cards. They are simply intended to be used in different fields and you can certainly not use the criteria eventually valuable for gaming cards for those professional graphic cards...

with affinity mask manual settings you can distribute over more than 4 cores evenly, (not sure about extensive with 18 though)
the base assumption of 4 cores with the highest Ghz is default preference for FSX, we have P3D today thats not limited to 4,

 

if the statement (I’m not sure where it came from) that FSX prefers more Ghz throughput than cores is true,
than the following is also true, i look at the sum of active single cores each contributing its Ghz to a global pool,
it’s not about more Ghz from a single core rather; the whole bandwidth and throughput availability; collectively with threads,

if that was the case than intel would make a 4 core 4Ghz gaming cpu and be done with it;
since they can’t really push further than 4.somthing Ghz and still be safe;
they can multiply cores and each will add bit throughput without pushing the limits of a single core,
the 2699 Walls’s through natively from 2.3 to 3.6 safely today! thats allot of efficency,

with affinity mask manual settings you can distribute over more than 4 cores evenly, (not sure about extensive with 18 though)

the base assumption of 4 cores with the highest Ghz is default preference for FSX, we have P3D today thats not limited to 4,

 

You will find some threads here on avsim clearly showing that the more cores Prepar3d uses, the higher the initial VAS goes (logic, for every process on a single core, VAS must be allocated). So, yes, you might use Prepar3d on a 18-core CPU, but eventually with only some MB of VAS remaining and then: OOM. Never forget, that also P3D is still a 32bit application with its limits. And, whether you believe it or not, you will not see better FPS the more cores you add for P3D while you will certainly see more FPS if you raise the single core clock from 2.3GHz to 4GHz. Fact.

 

if the statement (I’m not sure where it came from) that FSX prefers more Ghz throughput than cores is true,

than the following is also true, i look at the sum of active single cores each contributing its Ghz to a global pool,

it’s not about more Ghz from a single core rather; the whole bandwidth and throughput availability; collectively with threads,

 

This would only be true, if the software you use can perfectly use multithreading. Neither FSX nor P3D nor any other modern video game is capable of this. Sure, software such as those Xeon processors are intended to be used with are capable of such extensive multithreading, but that was not the question here. Simply look at some reviews, usually you see that a 4 core CPU running at 4GHz provides FAR better results than an 6 or 8 core CPU 3GHz per core, even though the "total" GHz of the 6 core with 3GHz is more than the 4 core with 4GHz.

 

if that was the case than intel would make a 4 core 4Ghz gaming cpu and be done with it;

 

You do not understand. It is a combination of both. Yes, a pure single-core software would still run faster on a Intel 4 core 4GHz processor compared to whatever number of cores with only 3GHz, this is easy to understand, no? Now, nowadays software is partially capable of multithreading, but as there is a) no need for extensive multithreading for most of the software and B) still mostly only CPU's with 4 or 6 cores, there is no need to have a software made capable of extensive multithreading. Some examples:

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

You see? Yes, the E5-2699 v3 with 18 cores https://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html is on top there, but look at the 6700K. With its 4GHz, it basically compensates for a lot of the missing cores. So the E5-2699v3 has, using your calculation, a total of 41.4GHz and reaches 24'000 points. Yet the 4GHz 6700K with a total of only 16GHz, reaches 12'200 points. Surprising, no? Although the E5 has 2.6 times (260% !!) more "total GHz", it is only 96% better. Where do the remaining 160% go? Same if you compare identical architecture, so Xeon with Xeon: the 8 core Xeon with 3.2GHz (E5-1680v3) with a "total GHz" of 25.6GHz, has almost as much points as the monster with 18 cores and 41.4GHz. Wonder why? Because the almost 1GHz plus per core for the Xeon 1680v3 and the 1.7GHz plus per core for the 6700K is for todays software far more important than number of cores. Of course, if you would replace PassMark with a software which is even better capable of extensive multithreading, the 18-core CPU would again increase its advantage. But inversely, if you have a software being less capable of using extensive multithreading, the CPU with more GHz per core would come even closer to the 18-core monster than in PassMark. And believe me, most Software (Games, Flightsims) are far less capable using extensive multithreading than PassMark...

All this discussion points out is that how more of the calculations in P3d and XP10 should be shifted away from the CPU to the GPU.

clearly this is not a perfect world in harmony yet; allot of elements need to come to play together,

managing VAS is not the CPU’s job or concern; these cores and massive processing will come to play later on with DX12;

the current architecture of 10 and even 11 isn’t flexible enough to accommodate HDR and many new features,

we are very lucky these days that we have a talented team actively developing and making the right decisions based on recent technology and advances made,

 

I’m not pushing a recent GPU on my system yet;

you can see Rob's monster rocking P3D on all single threaded 8 cores not fully utilized,

it would be cool to have an additional gauge now to see how much processing is on the GPU compared to the CPU at a given time,

 

BTW that’s the only table on passmark that annoys me;

they don’t indicate what they pushed it to; just a score, no voltage, no Mobo info, nothing,

 

@Jay

calculations and priority are logically being shifted to GPU these days!

but not all have capable GPU's yet so this has to be very moderate atm,

or you may get adverse result on lower end systems,