Mac Pro 6,1 - Happy Owners?

[cosmichobo]

G'day,

Just a steakybeak really, nothing more... I'm curious if anyone who is using a Mac Pro 6,1 would care to step forward and tell us about their setup...

When the beast was announced, I seem to recall being put off (not that I was in the market!) due to the requirements to add hard drives... I'm wondering how exactly things are going, and if you have any regrets...

Cheers!

cosmic

PS I dreamt about the Quadra 840av for 4 years... so maybe 2018 will be my year.

[Arkhum_Eramak]

I've got one; eight core, 32Gb RAM, Dual D700s. I've been enjoying it immensely. I was one of the people who didn't understand the whinging about the "external drives" and spaghetti mess though, my Mac Pro 4,1 had about a million cables coming off the back of it - four fibre cables, two ethernet, full video breakout, three monitors, firewire, USB, etc. The new Mac Pro has actually simplified things for me greatly - I finally upgraded my old Xserve RAIDs to a Thunderbolt 2 Areca system - that's four cables down to one and four times faster. Using Thunderbolt I've also been able to buy a Tb breakout dock to add a few USB3 and Firewire to my desk, Thunderbolt connects my video IO, it's actually much tidier than my old Mac Pro. It was a massive investment though - don't get me wrong - but a very forward looking one in my opinion.

But best of all? In a single pelican case I can put my 8-disk Areca RAID and my Mac Pro and have a full power workstation on site when required. It's not something I require often, but when I do need it boy howdy is it easy.

[mjankor]

Very tidy, powerful system. I'm running the quad core with D700s.

I'm using a couple of SSDs on thunderbolt (one for Bootcamp, one for data), and a couple of big hard drives (one normal 3TB and one raid 4TB)
27" screen. Not the Thunderbolt one. I found it wasn't necessary as the ports on the mac are pretty easy to get to.

It's actually tidier than my old iMac as it sits in the corner of the desk and all the cables are tucked out of the way.

Cool feature - I had an early one that developed a noisy fan. I had to take it into the Apple store. The Mac Pro fits into a Kata 3n1 camera bag easily. That made it so easy to take into town.

[cosmichobo]

Thanks for the replies, Arkhum_Eramak and mjankor - and can I just say - SO ENVIOUS! (Both of the gear, and the need to be using them)

I've had to stop a few times when walking past Apple vendors just to go and look at this shiny little devil in a cylinder... I imagine after time you'd get a bit blasé... hell, I used my TAM for near a decade, went from "Yes, it's amazing isn't it!" to "Oh, that old thing...".

It's good to know that there are fans of the 6,1 out there. I know at the time it divided the community, but obviously moving forwards some of the issues people had have been resolved, and one day there'll be a glut of them on the second hand market for me.

[Syrecx]

I have the most basic version of 6.1. Using 2-3 Apple Cinema to have my gaming/working/whatever needs.

In making such an investment, everything worked well as expected, multi-tasking and having over 30 windows at a time and everything was smooth as hell. Never had to close any windows. Not having to upgrade your video card for 6 possible monitors is handy compared to the previous 08 mac pro.

Also, having spent so much, what is an additional promise raid drive at the time. 4 RAID system ….for mainly iTunes and any other backups I need. Sweet work station at home which gives me the wow factor everytime I walk in.

[Thingme]

I have the Late 2013 Mac Pro6,1 as well, with 2x D700s, and 64 GB RAM. A real beast.

But I've a confession. It's lapsed into disuse and has not been booted since a few months after acquisition.
An important reason is its lack of support for a Retina display.

I have a much better gaming Mac in the fully optioned 5k Retina iMac.
The iMac is built for games whereas the Mac Pro is aimed at graphics and video creators.

Alas, I am so committed to the game Elder Scrolls Online that the creator/designer side of me hasn't had a chance.
Being retired explains why I've easily dropped out of editing/creating. Maybe one day I'll get back on the MP.

[AfterBurner_1]

@Thingme; that's a crime, but as your retired it's entirely understandable. I'm beginning to out grow my current Battlestation, my A1297 17" MBP.

If your thinking about moving it on send me a pm.

I've been thinking and erring about these especially given they are overdue for the 2011v3 update resplendent with DDR4, chip and core bumps. though, Given how long it took Apple to get it's Highly custom implementation together I'm not holding my breath and instead predict the the next 'bump' to the MBP and Mac Pro would be the SkyLake Server variants.

still e5 chips but naming would be "Xeon E5-6890" for example as these would be "6th Gen" also brings PCIe 4.0, DDR4, AVX3.2 according to Intel's roadmap.

Skylake is due in the next year and given the product cycle that the dear Mac Pro has, generally skipped a whole generation of architectures, then it should be on the money as a prediction.

Sorry if that got off topic and rambling but

i'm not remotely convinced of the value of the current Mac Pro given both the Chipset C602J and the Processors (Ivy Bridge-EP) are effectively EOL in a matter of months.

Id hold out for either the refresh or replacement.