# bro gone mad, wants a mac pro



## doomgiver (Apr 22, 2011)

my bro has gone mad, says he wants to buy a mac pro.

so he goes to the fanboy site, and challenges me to beat the "rig" (read, apple cart) he has selected.

i've got NO experience in dual processor systems, so im turning to you guys for help. make a rig that can beat the puny apple cart.

...........................................................................
Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores)
64GB (8x8GB)
Mac Pro RAID Card
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
Two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Two 18x SuperDrives
Apple LED Cinema Display (27" flat panel)
Apple LED Cinema Display (27" flat panel)
Apple Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad
Apple Wireless Keyboard
............................................................................

the total comes to $18k or 800k rupees.
as you might have guessed, its just a hypothetical testosterone fueled duel of good(me, intel, amd, nvidia, hell, everyone) vs the Evil only known as apple.

price no object, but do try to keep it within 800k rupees


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## desiibond (Apr 22, 2011)

ETA: 20 minutes. look for the config that i pick in this same post.


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## vickybat (Apr 22, 2011)

To be honest, the apple config is pretty good except for the paltry 5770cf setup. The cpu config is actually a skulltrail platform that allows two cpus to be fit simultaneously.

Look out for recently released sandybridge based xeons. They are much faster than older nehalem based westmere cores.


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## desiibond (Apr 23, 2011)

Here is one config:

Dual Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5645, 2.40GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s [Included in Price]
48GB,1333MHz,DDR3RDIMM,ECC(6DIMMS) [Included in Price]
Dual 6.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 6000, Quad MON, 4 DP & 2 DVI [Included in Price]
or

2.5GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000, DUAL MON, 2DP & 1DVI [Included in Price] + NVIDIA® Tesla™ C2050 Computing Processor [Included in Price]
[Tesla processor by nVidia is a supercomputing processor, based on FERMI that is like a tonne of nitro in CPU intensive tasks like simulations etc. check this:*www.vizworld.com/2010/06/nvidia-tesla-c2050-fermi-benchmarking-results/ and this: *www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html. With Tesla onboard, you can select a slightly slower CPU setup too but still get impressive performance ]

4x 600GB 15k RPM HDDs, C24 All SAS drives, RAID 5, 4 drive total configuration
PERC6/i SAS/SATA Hardware RAID Card - For Connecting Internal Hard Drives [Included in Price]
16X DVD+/-RW, Data Only
2x  Dell UltraSharp™ U2410 24in HAS Wide Monitor, VGA/ DVI/ DP/ HDMI [$599.00]

This comes to around 18000$ but literally pawns that mac pro. Even if you join two of those Mac Pro, they won't be able to touch the graphics rendering and 3D rendering capability of this one. 

The Dell Online Store: Build Your System

CPU: this one's and mac pro's are from same family so not much to differ here.
GPU: 
Dell: 448 CUDA cores, 1030.4 Giga FLOPS, 6 GB GDDR5, 384-bit memory, 144 GB/s memory bandwidth, probably the best card on earth for video rendering. (in case you want to bring the price down, select single 3D GPU and that will cut the cost by 4600$ but still pawn dual HD5770 with ease.
macpro: 520 GigaFLOPS,  1GB, 256-bit, 51.2 GB/sec memory bandwidt and this thing literally sucks at 3D rendering. 

HDDs:

Dell: four 600GB HDDs running at screaming 15000 rpm SCSI drives.
macpro: four whatever 7200rpm desktop grade drives.


For Gaming:

Alienware AREA-51 ALX:

Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 990x Extreme Six Core Processor (4.0GHz, 12MB Cache)
12GB Triple Channel 1600MHz DDR3
Dual 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580- SLI Enabled
256GB Solid State Drive
1.2TB RAID 0 (2x 600GB SATA-II, 10k RPM, 32MB Cache HDDs)
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Dell UltraSharp U2711 27-inch Monitor
Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Burner (Writes to DVD/CD/BD) and DVDRW

And the usuals. Total price is around 9000$. *configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/co...=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=alienware-area51-alx


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## doomgiver (Apr 23, 2011)

OH YEAH!!!
total pwnage!!!

but what is SAS?


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## modder (Apr 23, 2011)

Serial attached SCSI


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## Krow (Apr 23, 2011)

Anything but Apple for that price. Honestly, I'd never buy a Mac Pro unless I wanted to use Final Cut Pro.


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## doomgiver (Apr 23, 2011)

i'll eat my hat if final cut pro is better than any other foss alternative.

lol, i have a friend, whos an apple fanboy. he was the one who put the 'a' poison in his mind.

he's a genius, but prefers apple. sometimes, i wanna strangle him with his magsafe cord.
he actually tripped me on the cord to prove that it is useful.


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## infra_red_dude (Apr 23, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> i'll eat my hat if final cut pro is better than any other foss alternative.


Boy, you have some weird fascination... I bet the hat will taste awful!


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## ico (Apr 23, 2011)

Final Cut Pro is 50x better than any FOSS alternative. I've used both PiTiVi and Kino. They don't come close.

Lastly, does your brother really need to spend 8 lakhs? Does he really need that kind of performance?

and there is no point in blindly hating Apple. Mac OS X is great. If your brother likes it, then he should go for it.

and if by any chance your brother goes for Mac Pro, then he should avoid nVidia GTX 500 series cards. They won't work because of lack of drivers. HD 6000 series will work.


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## mitraark (Apr 23, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> i'll eat my hat if final cut pro is better than any other foss alternative.



Ok , we do hate Apple , and for good reasons , but let's not get carried away.


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## desiibond (Apr 23, 2011)

ico said:


> Final Cut Pro is 50x better than any FOSS alternative. I've used both PiTiVi and Kino. They don't come close.
> 
> Lastly, does your brother really need to spend 8 lakhs? Does he really need that kind of performance?
> 
> ...



agree with you o final cut pro part but, a 5770 for 3d modeling workstation? it will work but i can get a much better config with a screaming 3d GPU, purchase something like Sony Vegas or adobe creative suite etc and still save a lot of money by not going for mac pro. end result is that i will get tasks done much much faster and the rendering will be lot more precise if i pick quadros, not to forget that we are looking at dual FullHD display setup that can take the life out of 5770s. heck, i can setup cluster of midrange workstations with decent h/w for that price as my own datacentre.


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## ico (Apr 23, 2011)

you don't have to get the card from Apple. 

If it is compulsory to get, then sell it off and buy a card from somewhere else.


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## desiibond (Apr 23, 2011)

and if i go with ATI firepro cards, with eyefinity setup and six displays, i can make every apple fanboys eyes turn sore and mouth dry.



ico said:


> Final Cut Pro is 50x better than any FOSS alternative. I've used both PiTiVi and Kino. They don't come close.
> 
> Lastly, does your brother really need to spend 8 lakhs? Does he really need that kind of performance?
> 
> ...





ico said:


> you don't have to get the card from Apple.
> 
> If it is compulsory to get, then sell it off and buy a card from somewhere else.



yes. but with limited set of compatible cards and drivers, picking something that apple doesnt recommend is, well, am not sure. would be similar to running gnome 3 on ATI cards. 
right now, quadro is on top and as you said, they are not exactly compatible with macs.


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## ico (Apr 23, 2011)

yup. that is one problem. Quadro 6000 will not work. Only 4000 will work.

Another thing is outdated OpenGL support. Mac OS X is still stuck on OpenGL 2.1.


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## vickybat (Apr 23, 2011)

Yes fermi based quadro's are very powerful workstation cards and more so than their amd firegl counterparts. Better to go for non-apple workstation for better flexibility.

If quadro is coming under budget, then i see no point on not going for it.


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## desiibond (Apr 23, 2011)

yes. combination of a single 8 core Xeon (sandy bridge), running at around 2.4GHz, a single top of the line Quardo 6000 and a single Tesla computing card are any day much better and cheaper than a dual xeon (westmere,nehalem), dual ATI cards. (do note that Tesla heavily depends on apps that supports CUDA)


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## doomgiver (Apr 23, 2011)

ico said:


> Lastly, does your brother really need to spend 8 lakhs? Does he really need that kind of performance?


its all hypothetical.



mitraark said:


> Ok , we do hate Apple , and for good reasons , but let's not get carried away.


yup, too much of a good thing


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## Krow (Apr 23, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> i'll eat my hat if final cut pro is better than any other foss alternative


So, when are you eating it?  FCP is better than all FOSS alternatives.


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## MatchBoxx (Apr 23, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> my bro has gone mad, says he wants to buy a mac pro.
> 
> so he goes to the fanboy site, and challenges me to beat the "rig" (read, apple cart) he has selected.
> 
> ...



you are ****ing rich, man!


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## vickybat (Apr 23, 2011)

Krow said:


> So, when are you eating it?  FCP is better than all FOSS alternatives.



How about adobe creative suit and sony vegas pro *desiibond* mentioned?

Aren't they good alternatives?


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## doomgiver (Apr 23, 2011)

Krow said:


> So, when are you eating it?  FCP is better than all FOSS alternatives.



the hat tasted of.... hair gel.... and leather. bleh, i've eaten worse at my mess. no problems here 



sammy_cool said:


> you are ****ing rich, man!



no, im not, its the opposite, really!!!! its all hypothetical, like, IF i had that much money, THEN i'd buy it.


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## Krow (Apr 26, 2011)

vickybat said:


> How about adobe creative suit and sony vegas pro *desiibond* mentioned?
> 
> Aren't they good alternatives?



Both are not Free and Open Source Software. They aren't even Open Source, forget free (as in freedom to see source code).

Also IMHO, Adobe Premiere Pro and/or Sony Vegas Pro both can not match FCP. Both are good for end-users who like to make movies at home without spending lakhs of rupees on editing rigs. But no match for FCP.

FCP competes more with Avid than Adobe/Sony for editing purposes.

Hope that answered your query. I have used Premiere Pro and Avid. So feel free to ask any more.


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