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High spec Apple Mac Pro running Windows Bootcamp – general advice

We have a user who is prepared to pay for the best. He works in finance and runs powerful Microsoft Excel number crunching applications as well as things like Bloomberg.
However he loves Mac hardware.

He wants us to buy a Mac Pro with three high quality screen attached, fully loaded if necessary but he wants it running boot camp so that he uses it as a Windows computer.

My reaction is that if he spent the same money on a windows PC like Dell, it would result in better performance but I could be wrong. Either way he seems very keen on this Mac hardware solution.

Can I get some opinions? Will boot camp give good performance or is it going to compromise his work spending £5k / $8k on a Mac in order to use it for Windows only?
He'll spend what he needs to get great performance.

Another way to ask the question, ignoring cost, is there any downside to running Boot Camp on a high spec Mac Pro and also is there any specific upgrade specification that should be considered to improve use in these circumstances?
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David Johnson, CD
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he could easily spend $10K US.. The software should run fine, just go through the memory and CPU options.. Hope he is happy with his trash can computer.. Note: Thunderbolt accessories and cables are required
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Thanks for the comments. Interesting what you say about the new retina iMac. I'm writing this on my mobile, but can't one upgrade the mac pro processor to match the new iMac?
I thought you could go really far with ow much you upgraded the mac pro?

Also is that right about excel not taking advantage of using multiple CPU's? Is there other financial apps that might do so?
 Thanks again
 Very useful so far.
Oh also he wants three very expensive apple screens too, another reason why the iMac might not be suitable. Than again I suppose it probably can support additional screens now and if they were 5k screens too, that means he can have three very good screens.
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I assumed that the client was originally considering the Mac Pro, a cylindrically shaped desktop computer. It uses the Xeon series of CPU, as opposed to the Haswell i5 or i7 in the Retina iMac. Even though the CPU in the Mac Pro is replaceable, I don't believe the Haswell chips will fit in the socket or be compatible with the rest of the motherboard.

From the original description of a client who "works in finance and runs powerful Microsoft Excel number crunching applications as well as things like Bloomberg," I assumed he was interested in stock trading. That would also explain the interest in multiple displays. While it is true that worksheet functions can take advantage of multiple CPU cores, I believe a trader would be more interested in using custom-written software (possibly in VBA) to perform stock trading. VBA doesn't take advantage of multiple CPU cores, so if you want better performance, then higher clock speed and more calcs per tick are the way to go--hence my iMac suggestion. The Mac Pro, however, is optimized for graphic and video work, where software is already optimized for multiple CPU cores and that approach will improve your overall speed of workflow. Here is a third-party comparison of the two alternatives: http://www.marco.org/2014/10/16/retina-imac-vs-mac-pro

The Retina iMac does support multiple external displays, but they won't be 5K because that takes too much bandwidth. Apple developed a custom TCON for the Retina iMac just to support the built-in display--an approach that isn't compatible with driving external 5K displays. You can use an external 4K display, however.  It has also been reported that two displays offering lower resolution (up to 2560x1600) can be supported by the Retina iMac http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1808291 

If your client is developing software for stock trading, then the utmost in speed is perhaps not so important. I have been doing software development for a hedge fund for the past year using my 2009 MacBook Pro laptop & Parallels emulation.

But if your client is running software that has already been developed to perform high-speed algorithmic trading, then he will want to go the BootCamp route. Unless his software developer says that the software supports multiple CPU cores, he will get better performance out of the Retina iMac than the Mac Pro.
OK. Just to clarify, and sorry I did not make this clear before. the end user is wanting a Mac Pro (not a Mac "Book" pro). So the black cylinder model. he would not consider the laptop. So the talk of the touchpad is irrelevant really as this would not be a consideration.

I would have though the processor options in this would have been better than any iMac if upgraded, especially if you look at the price to move to the top processor which is a Xeon X5 12 core which adds £2400 ($4500) to the price. More than the top iMac itself.

I could be wrong though.

So on that looking at the Mac Pro, you can see how the base hardware can very from £3500 to £10000 if you increase the processors and memory and storage. Quite significant jump.

Also from what I see, although the Mac Pro is multi core, it's main processor does not seem to in multiples. It has multiple cores but there is only one. As Apple say "Quad-Core and Dual GPU"

So questions summary:
1) Does this information change any opinions from what have already been expressed?
2) With the more information, are there opinions on what spec's to choose. For example, for Excel based calculation is paying £2400 to upgrade the processor going to make a difference. I think this is the sort of thing my client wanted to know from me. I just wanted to go a bit further and get an overall feel.

Thanks again.
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OK thanks. My last post was sent at the same time as another. I will add some more details about what I know.
I know the users purchased third party plug ins for Excel. We've had some fun trying to troubleshoot issues when some of them have caused crashing.
He runs Bloomberg on the screen. He does do some kind of trading, but I've never understood exactly what he does but it is a finance company and I'm sure it's trading related.

He has a three screen system now and he paid a lot for the three screens, but he himself has already decided he wants three top quality Apple screens for his new setup.

Also he already has tried both solutions. At his home a few years ago we setup an IMac running Windows in Boot Camp, and parallels which we set to be able to access the windows partition from Boot Camp (At the time I studied if there is a compromise in having Boot Camp available and parallels to access that Boot Camp partition from Mac OS).
At the same time he also bought a power multi processor expensive Dell Precision rig.
Over the years since, his preference is the Boot Camp mac. However I think this is partly the Mac is SSD and the Dell was not. Although we upgraded the Dell to have a SSD recently, the Dell only supports Sata 2 so he is not utilising the full benefits.

Never the less the office PC is the one he has experiences more issues with, even though it might actually be that he uses it more and more heavily.

So, wanting to give him the best advice, I'm weighing up the options. He's pretty savvy himself, but I think he likes this type of research and always runs it by me, and I like to run it by EE amongst other places.
I think you have enough discussion from me on the iMac vs Mac Pro issue.

One further item to discuss is whether your client runs 32-bit or 64-bit Excel. Microsoft recommends 32-bit Excel because of compatibility with drivers and controls. Your client's trading platform, however, may suggest using 64-bit Excel--it is worth checking.

If your client uses the BI add-ins (PowerPivot, PowerQuery, PowerMap), those are reported to be more stable in 64-bit Excel than in 32-bit.
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I'll just comment here that currently boot camp will not happily support any version of windows greater than windows 7
That's incorrect.  I've installed and run Windows 8 preview, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 on several systems without issue.  What problem are you having with Windows 8?  My only issue is that Windows doesn't support the full touchpad capability that OSX does.
Boot Camp works perfectly fine with Windows 8, it just depends on your Mac. You can check the compatibility table in this page to check if your Mac model supports Windows 8: http://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204048
Thanks for the input on this. I have passed on a summarised view of details to the client.