More like Xeon tax.

The new Mac Pro has a ton more PCIe lanes and DDR4 channels. It's a completely different league, it can't be directly compared to mainstream platforms that only have dual-channel and 16-24 lanes.

EPYC would've been a better value, but it's still not cheap. Big computers with lots of memory and I/O capacity will always look ridiculously expensive next to mainstream desktop.

Threadripper exists for PCIe + DDR4 (less than the reported 2TiB because of no RDIMM support, but theoretically could hit 2 TiB if people start producing 256GB UDIMMs.

But... 64 lanes of PCIe 3.0. 32 cores. 64 threads with SMT. 80MB of cache (think of all the locality!). 256GB of RAM support (if you're using more, you're probably doing scientific compute and you're probably better off on Linux anyway, I'd assume). ECC support. 1700 USD. Quad channel RAM.

Xeon W-3175X? 48 lanes of PCIe 3.0. 28 cores. Probably no more Hyperthreading after Zombieload. 512GB RAM support. ECC support. $3000 USD. Hexa channel RAM.

And better yet? Competent TR motherboards with all the RAM/GPU/whatever support you need go as low as 400 CAD.

Also, if you're less Mr. Moneybags, the 2920X exists. 12C/24T, same memory and IO capacity. 650USD.

But wait, there's more! TR 1900X is older, but: 8C/16T, 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, quad channel RAM. Same kind of memory support: 256GB. 300USD.

A far shot from "ridiculously expensive" considering 300 USD (or even 650 USD) is less than some mainstream desktop CPUs. The 9900K is 490USD. The 9980XE is 2000USD.

Also, TR3 with PCIe 4.0 is on the horizon, and Zen 2 with PCIe 4.0 is here. 24 lanes of PCIe 4.0 has equivalent bandwidth to 48 lanes of PCIe 3.0: same as the Xeon W-3175X.

Big computers with lots of memory and IO capacity can be decently cost effective. You just can't ask Intel.

It will be ironically funny when people start posting benchmarks of macOS on their (Hackintosh) Threadripper based workstations. ;)

Don't worry, by the time this baby ships, you'll be able to get Ryzen 3900X's that are PCIe 4.0 instead of the Mac Pro's PCIe 3.0. Only 24 lanes, but that's all you'll need.

New ryzens have 24 and pci express 4.0.

Support ecc as well.

No, even with Xeon and buying from big OEMs it still will be twice as cheap.

Do you have a quote for that? It was true for a while on cost/performance because the previous Mac Pro was never upgraded but outsight of that anomalous period the major players tend to be fairly competitive if you’re comparing equivalent parts.

Dell Precision 5820 Tower - Intel Xeon W-2145(8c,ht), 32gb ecc, Quadro P4000, 256gb NVMe - 3600$

Well, that's cool, but that's comparing Apples to Linux-Oranges, I guess.

I do have a Linux box with a fast Intel CPU and it's nice and fast, but a Mac it ain't. I'm happy to pay more for a Mac machine, if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications. I won't be buying the Mac Pro anytime soon, though, I'm not willing to pay that much. But there are people who are and I'm glad there is something being offered there.

>if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications

That's such an oddly specific reason to require MacOS. Can you say more? I can't say I've ever had a problem with copy/paste in Linux, in any application.

If this issue were serious enough to me to consider doubling my computer's price tag, I'd at least first look at Hackintoshing, which tends to be pretty solid these days when you can pick out specific hardware in advance.

I suspect the issue is that in Linux the copy paste comnands are specific to each application, which can be annoying when copy pasting between multiple alplications., without a lot of configuring.

Hmm, that sounds like a possibility, though as a practical matter every UI application I can remember using on Linux uses Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V, and terminal applications use Ctrl-Shift-C / Ctrl-Shift-V - because Ctrl is for sending signals to applications (like Ctrl-C). That's universal enough that I don't see any issue. (Actually I prefer it to the way Apple separates Cmd and Ctrl, which I find infuriating because of the awkward finger positioning it requires.)

Ctrl-Y, a la emacs. E.g. Matlab uses that by default.

It’s funny you bring up working copy/paste, because lately i’ve been having problems with ‘pboard’ just randomly dying on my Macbook.

Not to come out over-defensive, but your base configuration (I guess?) doesn't include a GPU, I bet your caches are significantly smaller, and also no ECC ram. I also bet your storage is considerably slower.

No that price included a RTX2080 which is a pretty decent card and better than the base config in the new Mac Pro.

Platform supports ECC all Ryzens do, though it’s on the board vendors to support it officially.

Cache size no idea, will not that the new 3900X would obliterate the sky lake Xeon (12 cores vs 8 and comparable or better IPC) on in the Mac Pro base confit, it’s an 8 core older architecture against AMD’s new best consumer processor and its 499 vs intels neatest equiv at 1100, it’s not even remotely close at the moment.

My point was that ECC ram is twice as expensive. Cache is super expensive (your consumer chip will have significantly less), so are PCI lanes (again, consumer chips have significantly fewer of these), and also your Ryzen chip doesn't have AVX-512 support which is important for e.g. video work.

ECC ram can actually be a negative in certain use cases. Recording studios don't like the extra latency the ECC adds for MIDI for example.

ECC does not add latency and MIDI isn’t even sensitive to additional clock cycles in buffered memory (we are talking Nanoseconds here)

Audioland is a magic place where even different brands of hard drives can "affect the sound quality."

I'm not even a bit surprised by these outlandish claims of ECC RAM latency affecting MIDI timing.

Sources?

>On the flip side over in Linux land I built an 8 core 16T desktop with 64GB of RAM and two 27” 4K HDR monitors for less than half the price of the base Mac Pro.

I am betting at half the price of Mac Pro, it doesn't include support for ECC, and hence Memory aren't ECC, the CPU aren't Server Grade ( Even on the AMD side you will need to use at least EPYC ), motherboard aren't Server Grade, with less PCI-E slot and not a decent case with decent power supply. Yes Ryzen supports ECC, but it is not tested as such, and broad vendor have to do their testing as well. And testing is expensive. ( Hence why Server Grade CPU are expensive )

Honestly I love AMD and loathe Intel. But these kind of comparison all over the internet is like saying I could get a 500hp Nissan GTR over 500hp Ferrari at half the price, but why did we not ever see that argument in Cars forum and only on tech forum.

And what 27" 4K HDR monitors are you using? I've been looking for something similar for a while and haven't seen much with those base specs...

LG 27UK650’s, good for the price.