Mac Pro enclosure is lacking

[sparkie7]

not enough PCI slots (to have all the expansion cards), not enough power (to drive multiple high end graphics cards), not enough drive bays

I love the industrial all aluminium grill design, but its not big enough to accommodate everything for some power users.

Its time for  to re-design the MP box IMHO

[jav6454]

Point is? Remember, Apple controls what expansion you use, so it's not like you are going to have variety at hand to super-mega-über expand your Mac Pro...

[sparkie7]

Point is?

errr.. at risk of stating the obvious.. it isn't big or expandable enough for some users

if you have to ask, you aren't in the category

so if a user wants a fibre-channel card + RAID card + 2 graphics cards, they can't. And have to think up of a messy alternative outside of the enclosure

[Hellhammer]

Point is? Remember, Apple controls what expansion you use, so it's not like you are going to have variety at hand to super-mega-über expand your Mac Pro...

I agree. Apple's line up is and has always been very limited meaning that users have to make compromises and live with the features Apple offers if they want or need a Mac. OP, you're clearly a member of small minority that needs something very expandable and powerful. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't care about that group of people, so it's kinda "take it or leave" deal.

[sboerup]

I definitely don't fit in the "need more space category", but I also find it rather limiting. I think they should have at LEAST 6 HD bays (not including the extra you can already put in), and at LEAST 2 extra PCI bays. Yes, these machines can definitely crunch some numbers, but, having a little extra expansion would be very nice.

[jav6454]

errr.. at risk of stating the obvious.. it isn't big or expandable enough for some users

if you have to ask, you aren't in the category

so if a user wants a fibre-channel card + RAID card + 2 graphics cards, they can't. And have to think up of a messy alternative outside of the enclosure

Hellhammer already nailed my point. You are part of the group Apple doesn't cater to.

However, a custom built PC will cater to you as you have all the expansions you want at native 2.0+ x16 PCIe's (and you get 2 not one) and depending on manufacturer multiple PCIe 1.x at x4 or x1 configurations for other expansions, such as RAID or USB3 add-ons.

Also, Mac Pros only support 4 HDDs, which makes using RAID 1+0 kind of silly since you use up all 4 bays just to do that. A Mac Pro can hold either RAID 1 or 0 depending on your need. However, like I said, a custom built can hold that 4-drive RAID 1+0 (or 0+1) and still have space for those SSDs.

Recall, using a Mac Pro only gives you only one x16 native PCIe slot and the rest are bottlenecked at x4 speeds. So having space for 2 HD5870s or 2 GTX480 isn't going to help as one of them will be bottlenecked. That or Apple eliminates the other expansion slots to run the extra bandwidth to the new PCIe at x16.

[nrajack]

Why is it nobody here is even thinking about an expansion chassis for the MacPro? Magma makes a bunch of chassis that'll work - giving you more pcie slots and drive bays as well. Hell, the ProTools people use them all the time.

[brentsg]

Compromises are always made in these things. There are always going to be some people who need more because if they made it big enough to please the extreme users then the other 90% of potential customers wouldn't want the monstrosity.

[jav6454]

Compromises are always made in these things. There are always going to be some people who need more because if they made it big enough to please the extreme users then the other 90% of potential customers wouldn't want the monstrosity.

You can build something like the design of the Mac Pro and have it not be a monstrosity.

[seek3r]

Hellhammer already nailed my point. You are part of the group Apple doesn't cater to.

However, a custom built PC will cater to you as you have all the expansions you want at native 2.0+ x16 PCIe's (and you get 2 not one) and depending on manufacturer multiple PCIe 1.x at x4 or x1 configurations for other expansions, such as RAID or USB3 add-ons.

Also, Mac Pros only support 4 HDDs, which makes using RAID 1+0 kind of silly since you use up all 4 bays just to do that. A Mac Pro can hold either RAID 1 or 0 depending on your need. However, like I said, a custom built can hold that 4-drive RAID 1+0 (or 0+1) and still have space for those SSDs.

Recall, using a Mac Pro only gives you only one x16 native PCIe slot and the rest are bottlenecked at x4 speeds. So having space for 2 HD5870s or 2 GTX480 isn't going to help as one of them will be bottlenecked. That or Apple eliminates the other expansion slots to run the extra bandwidth to the new PCIe at x16.

No, the Mac Pro gives you *2* x16 slots. Still not great, mind, considering the other 2 are bottlenecked at x4, but let's not make it worse than it is. You do, in fact, have space for 2xHD5870s, though you'd have to pull power from the HD leads in the optical bay for the second card because the 5870 uses 2x6-pin plugs, and there are only 2 provided from the mother board - a single plug card you use 2 of without the power issues.

They only advertise 1 x16 slot on the specs page because when shipped the other x16 lane is always occupied by a video card.

The x4 lanes aren't really all that bad now either, because, unlike my '08 model, all slots are now pci-e 2.0, which means double the throughput of pci-e 1.1, with 4 lanes of pci-e 2.0 @ 500MB/s per *lane* you're looking at 2GB/s aggregate on those x4 slots. That's higher than most fiber channel variants can hit right now and higher than most RAID solutions people are going to be using. If you need more, well, you're not the market for this machine, what can I say - though if you really need more than the back of napkin ~80TB of *local* space I see you would need to use to fully saturate the total lanes through RAID in this machine (assuming full theoretical bandwidth usage - not happening using RAID 5 or 6 - you have 2*(4*500MB/s) + 16*500MB/s = 12GB/s to work with in bandwidth, if at full SATA saturation you're looking at 300MB/s per drive you can drive 40 drives at full speed, or, at the moment, 80TB using 2TB drives) while leaving one vid card in.... I'd question why you need 80TB of local storage and why, when spending *that* much on disk you care about a single mac pro in the calculations.

Also, it's rather easy to use all 4 HD sleds for spinning disk and add SSDs to the optical bay using the extra 2 SATA plugs on the motherboard. I seem to recall people mentioning that in the current revisions ('09 and '10 models) there are already even SATA cables run up to the optical bays, which makes installation trivial, no harder than adding another optical drive.

[jav6454]

No, the Mac Pro gives you *2* x16 slots. Still not great, mind, considering the other 2 are bottlenecked at x4, but let's not make it worse than it is. You do, in fact, have space for 2xHD5870s, though you'd have to pull power from the HD leads in the optical bay for the second card.

They only advertise 1 x16 slot on the specs page because when shipped the other x16 lane is always occupied by a video card.

We are going here by what is available and assuming everything is being used (ie all bays are used up, all optical devices are used up). So in that case a 2nd 5870 is out of the question.

[eponym]

Apple probably feels their market share is too small to invest in anything other than a middle-of-the-road workstation enclosure.

I'm almost certain they'd sell more units and make more profit if they changed it to one smaller/simpler enclosure (i.e. prosumer) and one bigger high-end enclosure.

[jav6454]

Apple probably feels their market share is too small to invest in anything other than a middle-of-the-road workstation enclosure.

I'm almost certain they'd sell more units and make more profit if they changed it to one smaller/simpler enclosure (i.e. prosumer) and one bigger high-end enclosure.

The Prosumer market is normally oriented towards the variety of options/custom built computers. Apple wouldn't fit there because of the small hardware options.

However, there would still be people falling for that... sigh.

[seek3r]

We are going here by what is available and assuming everything is being used (ie all bays are used up, all optical devices are used up). So in that case a 2nd 5870 is out of the question.

I'm going to go on a limb and bet that's a very small segment of the actual market for this machine, to have everything maxed out and saturated in the box, in which case this isnt the machine for you.

I do a lot of work in the cluster based scientific computing world, and for my NAMD or NWChem jobs my mac pro doesnt cut it either, I need a lot more cores, a lot more ram, a fast interconnect (the job I *just* submitted to the cray machine I'm working on right now will eat 96 cores)... The right tool for the right job is important, and trying to make one product fit everything in high-end use isn't going to happen. The Mac Pro is a decent compromise on the workstation side of things, it won't fit everyone or everything.

Oh, btw, my answer to your hypothetical would be to remove the optical drive, use an external since the bandwidth on FW won't be a problem there, and use the power leads from the optical drive for the second video card. Though, to be fair, that might not be enough power on its own, in which case I'd use the bay for a 5.25" power supply, which you can pick up at newegg.

[jav6454]

Sad truth. On the optical drive issue, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having the Optical drive in the Mac Pro from the start?

[cube]

One of the things that have always pulled me back from getting a Power Mac G5 or Mac Pro are the optical bays. I don't want to have to mess with bezels.

[seek3r]

Sad truth. On the optical drive issue, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having the Optical drive in the Mac Pro from the start?

True, though if you're doing content creation chances are the external won't hurt and if you're not... I don't know about you but I barely use my optical drive

[jav6454]

True, though if you're doing content creation chances are the external won't hurt and if you're not... I don't know about you but I barely use my optical drive

I barely use it as well, but there are people who do and it defeats the purpose.

[brentsg]

You can build something like the design of the Mac Pro and have it not be a monstrosity.

I think you missed my point.

If Apple redesigned the Mac Pro to address the needs of every extreme user, then it would have a bigger power supply, more optical drives, quite a few additional hard drive bays, some SSD slots.. etc, etc.

This would make the enclosure significantly larger than it is, and this would be unacceptable and unnecessary for most users.

[jav6454]

I think you missed my point.

If Apple redesigned the Mac Pro to address the needs of every extreme user, then it would have a bigger power supply, more optical drives, quite a few additional hard drive bays, some SSD slots.. etc, etc.

This would make the enclosure significantly larger than it is, and this would be unacceptable and unnecessary for most users.

1. Mac Pro supports a 1kW PSU. So there would be no need for a bigger one. All Apple has to really do is add more expansion cords.

2. Bays agree and make them SSD compatible.

3. Larger enclosure is nice for more stuff. However, it is not necessarily the case. You can become more space efficient. See the RAM risers. You can make the RAM modules attach like on a regular PC and save up space.

4. Extreme users (like I said) go with a custom built and variety of options. They do not pick Apple.

[Hellhammer]

I think you missed my point.

If Apple redesigned the Mac Pro to address the needs of every extreme user, then it would have a bigger power supply, more optical drives, quite a few additional hard drive bays, some SSD slots.. etc, etc.

This would make the enclosure significantly larger than it is, and this would be unacceptable and unnecessary for most users.

People would still complain. Apple only offers few GPUs and they are expensive compared to their PC brothers so some people would whine about the lack of this and that GPU and about their price. Another issue is not-so-well GPU drivers and lack of support for CrossFire and SLI. Then add the lack of native Blu-Ray support, lack of USB 3.0, faster FW....

There are so many things that the Mac Pro lacks when compared to its PC behemoths but Apple would have to change as a company to start offering such things. Apple likes to keep their lineup simple and not to offer loads of models or BTO options. I'm sure most people would want a mid-tower, an xMac instead of überexpensivesupermegahyper Mac Pro. It doesn't matter what Apple comes up with, some people just can never be satisfied. I would of course love more options and models but honestly, they don't seem too likely.

[TheBritishBloke]

Woah woah woah...

So.. 2 Optical Bays, 4 Disk bays, 3 PCI-E slots aren't enough? Oh, and if you have a two processor versions, 8 RAM slots isn't enough?

The Mac Pro is great for expandability.. Try and find a BRANDED PC which has the expansion capabilities of the Mac Pro if you completely ignore price etc.

[jav6454]

Woah woah woah...

So.. 2 Optical Bays, 4 Disk bays, 3 PCI-E slots aren't enough? Oh, and if you have a two processor versions, 8 RAM slots isn't enough?

The Mac Pro is great for expandability.. Try and find a BRANDED PC which has the expansion capabilities of the Mac Pro if you completely ignore price etc.

4 PCIe ports. Even though one is used, you can free it up.

[seek3r]

Woah woah woah...

So.. 2 Optical Bays, 4 Disk bays, 3 PCI-E slots aren't enough? Oh, and if you have a two processor versions, 8 RAM slots isn't enough?

The Mac Pro is great for expandability.. Try and find a BRANDED PC which has the expansion capabilities of the Mac Pro if you completely ignore price etc.

OK, now this is a bit off in the other direction. If you ignore price, even just going workstation and not looking at servers, the Dell Precision T7500 will beat all of those specs, for more money (though not really all *that* much more), more noise, and of course no osx.

The Mac Pro is a compromise, as is *any* machine. It sacrifices *some* expandability for less noise and ease of maintenance (for the consumer at least). The point I was making before is that the compromises aren't onerous, nor do they need to be blown out of proportion. Most people complaining about them either don't really need the extras or aren't the right market for a MP, but the compromises do exist

[Macinposh]

Also, Mac Pros only support 4 HDDs, which makes using RAID 1+0 kind of silly since you use up all 4 bays just to do that. A Mac Pro can hold either RAID 1 or 0 depending on your need. However, like I said, a custom built can hold that 4-drive RAID 1+0 (or 0+1) and still have space for those SSDs.



"Kind" of wrong.

Have 5 drives allready MP and adding the sixth internal next week, you can use the free sata slots on the mobo. Just to rectify.

Running a 1+0 system with fifth drive in slot nro 1 holding backup system and bootcamp.

[jrko]

A macbook pro is not big enough - To me a Mac Pro is huge and needed, just not affordable at the moment.

I have 2 Voyager Sata caddies with the pop out drive system and move through 6 drives, 4 firewire 800 drives, CF car reader in the Firewire 400 and all the USB ports are used. What a mess :mad:

No complaining about the Mac Pro please :confused:

Need one - cant afford one :(

[jav6454]

"Kind" of wrong.

Have 5 drives allready MP and adding the sixth internal next week, you can use the free sata slots on the mobo. Just to rectify.

Running a 1+0 system with fifth drive in slot nro 1 holding backup system and bootcamp.

Yes, however, the consumer only sees 4. Remember, The ICH10R chip supports native 6 SATA ports. However, Apple only gives you 4 bays. You gotta find the space for the rest.

[deconstruct60]

I'm almost certain they'd sell more units and make more profit if they changed it to one smaller/simpler enclosure (i.e. prosumer) and one bigger high-end enclosure.

Not necessarily. Cherry picking out all of the potential upsides isn't a balanced analysis of what will happen to the product line up ecosystem. This ignores several very real factors.

1. You going to create more expensive super-max model ( drive pricing up). Once you prune off the super-max enclosure the number of units sold will go down from Mac Pro numbers. That means the number of users you will have to amortize costs will go down ( fewer people paying for more custom designs. ). You also have increased support costs because now have products to cover and configurations to test/certify/diagnose. Also will have yet another team with is largely constructing the same thing CPUs/memory/etc. the only minor variations here are a couple extra support chips and more/less wire routing. More parallel design teams, more costs.

So most likely the "overhead tax" assigned to the "super-max" users will go up much more than it will on the "mini-tower" folks.

The spin here is that magically more users are going to flow in to fill the gap. That's isn't particularly likely. Apple will still have 4-6% of overall market. If the "super-max" crowd is 1% of the overall PC market then 6% * 1% is 0.06% of the market. That's not a big group to chase after for a multilbillion a year corporation. Bubba Gump's custom PC internet business... yeah alot, but for Apple no.

Even if you do get folks to flow into "super-max" market you are also going to get folks flowing out. Right now Apple has decent pricing for folks who are in the middle of the targeted market. Those folks will see box increase in costs for value they don't really leverage.

If look at HP/Dell/Lenovo there super-max boxes are higher. The farther up their product lines you go the more and more Apple mark up margins start to match there or even look a bit better. Same diminishing small market segment factor drive up prices on their side too and they sell many more units (because folks want Windows and to lessor extent but significant in this specific hardware market, Linux. )



2. The mini-tower model is going to cannibalize a subset of the iMac market. Again that doesn't increase overall profits at all.

Additional, secondary effect of decreasing the number of LCD panels sold by Apple which will have cost increases along parts of other lines since impacting their economies of scale. Even more costs if force Apple to jump back into much more broadscale commodity monitor business.

Even though the base Mac Pros sell less in number because priced a bit high compared to mini-tower alternatives their development costs are very low because just an extremely minor change from what the mid/upper Mac Pros. So as long as they grow the Mac Pro chassis base some, then they are lowering costs aggregate costs (hence making more profit).

Decouple the more base level Mac Pros from the upper end versions by turning them into mini-towers and the price will likely have to fall back. You'd have to increase volume just to tread water. The amount of profit is lower per unit and have increased cannibalization by significant amount.

Likewise support/certify/diagnosis queue is bigger and more expensive because have split one product into two.


Don't your breath to see Apple do this.

Yeah sure Apple could build a Super-max workstation. They could also build:
2U , 4U servers
Grid in a cargo container boxes
a smaller screen Macbook to crack the sub $800 barrier.
A toughbook like ruggedized Laptop
PCI expansion boxes
RAID boxes ( oh wait they did and canceled that)
etc. etc. etc.


In short, Apple operates differently that most of the PC vendors. Many of the PC vendors have super low margin models at the lower product lineup extreme and super high end margin models at the highest end product lineup extreme . They try to blend the lows with the highs to get an acceptable rate.

Apple puts approximately the same margin on everything. Low and high. The high end stuff isn't there to prop up the low end stuff and the low end stuff isn't there to drag down the high end stuff. Apple's Mac business is oriented toward finding the sub 8% of the personal computer that wants to buy the subset of possible products they make and selling them to just those folks. They aren't even trying to sell something to everyone.


So when folks come up with laments of "well they are missing me" .... that doesn't matter. "Well there are 10,000 people like me" ... still doesn't matter. Apple spins like they are small company but if there aren't significant economies of scale in it they aren't doing it. 10,000 folks isn't huge scale.
As the overall PC market grows by 10's of millions a year 8% becomes an increasing larger number (relative to 10K-100K range. ). In that sense, Apple can stretch claim "small" while still not trying to filling smaller niches in the market.

[nanofrog]

Why is it nobody here is even thinking about an expansion chassis for the MacPro? Magma makes a bunch of chassis that'll work - giving you more pcie slots and drive bays as well. Hell, the ProTools people use them all the time.
There's Cyclone (http://www.cyclone.com/products/expansion_systems/index.php) as well.

But, there's a downside, as you're pushing everything across a single slot in the workstation (potential to throttle, and added latency). Nor are they inexpensive. But they still have their uses.

[seek3r]

1. Mac Pro supports a 1kW PSU. So there would be no need for a bigger one. All Apple has to really do is add more expansion cords.

2. Bays agree and make them SSD compatible.

3. Larger enclosure is nice for more stuff. However, it is not necessarily the case. You can become more space efficient. See the RAM risers. You can make the RAM modules attach like on a regular PC and save up space.

4. Extreme users (like I said) go with a custom built and variety of options. They do not pick Apple.

Extreme users, in my experience, rarely actually build their own boxes. Extreme *hobbyists* go with custom built, extreme *users* make money on their hardware (or the hardware is paid for by grants, which you justify with publications) and don't want to waste time building boxes (not *always* true, there's a cluster at MIT right now I got shown last year that is motherboards and PSUs ziptied to wire shelving, because it fit the needs of the users, but that's not the normal situation).

Saying extreme users don't go mac is foolish. Extreme users pick apple when the situation is appropriate for it. For example, my workstation is a mac pro, but my *research* runs are on dell, cray, HP, IBM, or supermicro compute nodes, not xserves. I do my analysis and some test runs on my workstation, but apple doesn't make a product that works well for high density HPC.

If you want a good example, go to the annual supercomputing conference (lots of extreme users, lots of extreme hardware on the conference floor). You'll see tons of macbook pros in people's hands, and plenty of mac pros running vis boxes and front end interfaces. The *clusters* are not apple. As I said before, the right tool for the right situation.

[deconstruct60]

not enough PCI slots (to have all the expansion cards), not enough power (to drive multiple high end graphics cards), not enough drive bays


What are the root causes driving all of these drive bays and PCI slots.


Historically you had the following.

Cards which fit into NuBus/PCI/PCI-e slots that had either limited bandwith at the connector or limited bandwidth to the CPU/Memory. So "more" cards needed because couldn't go 'wide' enough.

Had drives with latency and bandwidth problems relative to the speed of CPU and slightly lessor extent memory. So more spindles to masks these problems.


That gets set as some generic rule that "power" is measured by number of sockets and slots. The more are required to get work done.

The modern trend lines is that can do more with the fewer slots:

Instead of one monitor or even two monitors graphics cards can drive 3 (or more.... some of the AMD/ATI technically can drive 6 but run out of edge space on card for connectors. )

PCI-e 2.0 and upcoming PCI-e 3.0 uncork the bandwidth problem to the CPU. Unless talking about bleeding edge Infiniband cards .

Drives.... use fewer spindles... that is the space waster. It isn't as neccesary now for a larger population of users.


Users also have to pick a solution. Some of this is also from dragging old legacy stuff into the future. Had an big direct attach storage RAID set up but now putting in a Fibre SAN set up. Want Mac Pro to do both. .... pick a side. If put bulk storage on network ... do it. Go SAN and/or NAS. The "do everything" approach is where run out of slots.

There are a small subset of users whose problems keep growing bigger faster than the slot/socket improvements come. Sure the Mac Pro isn't for them. However, for many folks their workload isn't expanding faster as the hardware is getting better. The objective for the Mac Pro marketing folks at Apple is to find more of those folks. Not try to find more of the folks the solution doesn't target. There are going to be at least as many folks who used to require to extreme custom workstation than can use a more mainstream Mac Pro now with modern gear, than there are folks who still can't merge into the Mac Pro product stream.

[cube]

How many actual PCI Express lanes does the new Mac Pro have?

[jav6454]

How many actual PCI Express lanes does the new Mac Pro have?

Original Post:
4

Edited:

4 physical lanes. Electronic lanes 40x

[seek3r]

How many actual PCI Express lanes does the new Mac Pro have?

40, dual x16s and dual x4s

[cube]

40, dual x16s and dual x4s

Isn't the chipset 36-lane?

[jav6454]

Isn't the chipset 36-lane?

The X58 chip has 40x lanes. However, x4 of those are relegated to the DMI or the connection between the ICH10R bridge and the X58. That leaves x36 lanes open, which translates into either x16, x16 (making x32) and x4 or as Apple has it. x4, x4, x16 with another one in the unknown (claimed to be x16).

[cube]

The X58 chip has 40x lanes. However, x4 of those are relegated to the DMI or the connection between the ICH10R bridge on the X58. That leaves x36 lanes open, which translates into either x16, x16 (making x32) and x4 or as Apple has it. x4, x4, x16 with another one in the unknown (claimed to be x16).

Yes I think in the Mac you would be able to configure:

x16+x16+x4
x16+x8+x4+x4

With AMD 6100 and only 1 SR5690 bridge (for 2 CPUs), you can actually configure:

x16+x16+x4+x4+x2
x16+x8+x8+x4+x4+x2
x8+x8+x8+x8+x4+x4+x2

The last 6 lanes I showed as X4+x2 can actually be configured in upto 6 slots in any combination of x4, x2, x1.

There's an additional x4 going to the southbridge.

[jav6454]

Yes I think in the Mac you would be able to configure:

x16+x16+x4
x16+x8+x4+x4



This may well be it.

[cube]

This may well be it.

Also x16+x16+x1+x1

[jav6454]

Also x16+x16+x1+x1

x1 lanes would be pitiful if you happen to have a RAID or Fibre Channel card in there. Besides, Apple guarantees (in the Technical Specs page) 2 x4 PCIe lanes with physical x16 support.

[cube]

x1 lanes would be pitiful if you happen to have a RAID or Fibre Channel card in there. Besides, Apple guarantees (in the Technical Specs page) 2 x4 PCIe lanes with physical x16 support.

Yes, but it looks like you wouldn't be able to configure 2 x4 if you already configured 2 x16.

[jav6454]

Yes, but it looks like you wouldn't be able to configure 2 x4 if you already configured 2 x16.

Which means that used up lane is x8.

[cube]

Which means that used up lane is x8.

You should be able to do x16+x16+x1+x1, not only x16+x8+x4+x4.

[nanofrog]

x16+x16+x4
This is the configuration used in the 2009/10 MP's. Those 4x lanes are "shared" by both slots 3 and 4 by using a PCIe switch (located on the backplane board, which is where the slots are soldered).

Slots 1 and 2 are dedicated.

[cube]

This is the configuration used in the 2009/10 MP's. Those 4x lanes are "shared" by both slots 3 and 4 by using a PCIe switch (located on the backplane board, which is where the slots are soldered).

Slots 1 and 2 are dedicated.

I imagine x16+x16+x1+x1 is possible, otherwise having those 2 slower slots instead of just 1 makes no sense.

[nanofrog]

I imagine x16+x16+x1+x1 is possible, otherwise having those 2 slower slots instead of just 1 makes no sense.
It's possible, but a waste of lanes. And though dedicated, would be slower (4x, even with latency due to switching).

As per the 16x + 16x +4x configuration, I managed to get pics and part numbers off of the backplane board, which revealed the PCIe switch.

[seek3r]

The X58 chip has 40x lanes. However, x4 of those are relegated to the DMI or the connection between the ICH10R bridge and the X58. That leaves x36 lanes open, which translates into either x16, x16 (making x32) and x4 or as Apple has it. x4, x4, x16 with another one in the unknown (claimed to be x16).

fair enough, I didn't think about internal allocation

[jav6454]

PCI-e 2.0 and upcoming PCI-e 3.0 uncork the bandwidth problem to the CPU. Unless talking about bleeding edge Infiniband cards .


PCIe 3.0 is double the bandwidth of current PCIe 2.0 In other words, here is how much a PCIe x1 transfers over it's 3 revisions

At x1 speed or in other words per lane
PCIe 1.0 @ 250MB/s
PCIe 2.0 @ 500MB/s
PCIe 3.0 @ 1000MB/s

PCIe 3.0's extra bandwidth means now we can have x8 lanes electrical lanes to a physical x16 and still have enough bandwidth for a GPU or High Speed Expansion card. Which means now LGA 1156 owners have an easier time with multi-GPU setups not having bottlenecks.

However, as per Apple systems, PCIe 3.0 will only make newer GPUs not bottleneck at the x4 links (that would be 4GB/s vs 2GB/s)

[deconstruct60]

PCIe 3.0 is double the bandwidth of current PCIe 2.0 In other words, here is how much a PCIe x1 transfers over it's 3 revisions


Or Apple can get rid of the switch, so the last two don't have to share a 4x. 8x + 8x + 4x + 4x . For GPUs that arent' blocked on the current 16x's this is really same situation using fewer wires. If put sufficient memory on the GPU side of the PCI-e bus is there often a need for high speed? [ putting aside graphics cards swapping frame buffer data. That's it driven because separated the computations. ]

Suspect though if they have switched the last two slots, they'll keep that set up because the stuff jammed in the last two 4x slots will more likely be v1.0 and v2.0 stuff and not bleeding edge v3.0 stuff. So the relatively marginal latency increase is even less in most cases.

However, even if double, PCI-e is just treading water against Infiniband (IB)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/29/infiniband_roadmap/page2.html

It is making very similar changes at just as fast a rate (if not faster. )
For the relatively pedestrian FC and Ethernet cards available for Mac OS X it does get better with the 2x speed up. Perhaps the 1x IB card could show up though because might get by with one of the 4x slot better. It is more a software issue though I think.

[wonderspark]

This is the configuration used in the 2009/10 MP's. Those 4x lanes are "shared" by both slots 3 and 4 by using a PCIe switch (located on the backplane board, which is where the slots are soldered).

Slots 1 and 2 are dedicated.
So, since I have the Apple RAID card in the top 4x slot, would it be better to use the free 16x slot for my eSATA card, or leave it in the 3rd (4x) slot I have it in now? I wasn't aware of it being a shared slot.

[StofUnited]

Here is a somewhat intelligent blog on this topic:

http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/the-state-of-apples-professional-line/

and another that shows some more good info:

http://www.osnews.com/story/23652/Apple_Loved_You_Pro_Users_Loves_Your_Money_More_Now

[deconstruct60]

Here is a somewhat intelligent blog on this topic:

osnews.... one


No, that is not a particularly intelligent discussion. It is a particularly concise characterization of the mindset that many folks are trapped in this forum, but is dubious a characterization of value.

For example take his first chart with Cinebench performance and system pricing.

Instead of plotting Cinebench and price, how about plotting $/c-bench. (i.e., how much does one c-bench point cost you. )

G5
3314 7457 10969 14673 15445
1999 2199 2299 2499 2499

0.60 0.29 0.21 0.17 0.16

As you can see the $/c_bench is going down over time. That means you are getting more bang for your buck with the newer systems. However, that doesn't particularly support the "Apple is gouging me premise" so you get the misdirection graph which doesn't clearly outline the value proposition. Since you are getting more value it should be a huge problem to pay more to get more value. if you get more it is generally ok to pay more if you can make more money with having more.


Plow past the misdirection (becoming fixated on CPU/System price ratio) about not getting as much value now and see that the blog is really about just simply paying less. It is railing against the computers not getting cheaper over time so that a more broader set of folks can afford them ( or that same folks can afford to buy other stuff and a Mac Pro.). Neither one of those is about the value proposition of the Mac Pro itself over time.


P.S. the second chart on beefier models

7002 9873 18833 19911 21144
3299 2499 2799 3299 3499
0.47 0.25 0.15 0.17 0.17

There is is a hiccup. That is in part because Intel is kneecapping the entry level dual package offering that Apple is using. The 2009/2010 models are more sensitive to detuned I/O and Apple is juicing the margins a bit more.
There wasn't a good component cost reason for the price jump between the 2009 and 2010 models. It makes the hex's $3,600 price point look a bit better given there is just a $200 gap for two less cores rather than a $400 one. If Apple had kept the price the same as 2009, it would be pretty close to the 2008 level.

[nanofrog]

So, since I have the Apple RAID card in the top 4x slot, would it be better to use the free 16x slot for my eSATA card, or leave it in the 3rd (4x) slot I have it in now? I wasn't aware of it being a shared slot.
The switched nature of Slots 3 & 4 are only a problem when both slots are being used simultaneously.

As per your situation, lane configuration is more of the issue when just looking at the specifications (8x lane card stuffed in a 4x lane slot). So moving it to Slot 2 (16x lanes) would make better sense by that logic (doesn't take into account real world conditions though). This basic logic actually holds true for most cases (i.e. if you were running an ATTO or Areca, and using sufficient drive counts; n >= say 5 SSD's or 12 mechanical HDD's).

Realities to consider for your card:

There's been mention that it will only work in Slot 3 or 4 due to the SATA port data connections over PCIe traces in the 2009/10 systems.
The card isn't fast enough to saturate the 4x lane slot anyway (it's a slow card for what you get - the price/performance ratio is horrible). 4 ports is the biggest limitation here, and it doesn't work with SSD's according to Apple (ignoring the rest of the card, such as the processor used).


So I'd put the time in to read the manual that came with your card to verify #1, and check your throughput data to check #2 (worst case, in an '06 - '08 system, Slots 3 & 4 are Gen 1.0 = 250MB/s per lane, so the slot is capable of 1GB/s, double that in '09/10 systems). Not sure of the card's specification in terms of lane spec (Gen. 1.0 or 2.0), but it's just not fast enough to matter from what I've seen anyway.

So to keep things simple, leave it where it is, and leave Slot 3 empty. ;)

[deconstruct60]

Here is a somewhat intelligent blog on this topic:

http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/the-state-of-apples-professional-line/



This one has the problem that it wanders all over the place.

One fundamental core problem with this one is that it doesn't take into account users switching between products. There are more folks now using iMacs instead of Mac Pro and it is better fit. That is not to say there are not folks for who it is a worse but Apple can't be everything to everybody. Again this long dissertation doesn't even try to quantatively measure value ($/performance or preformance/$ )

This is the other trap. "Power" == number and variation of gadgets I can easily plug into my computer. Also the other minor trap that the less than 5% of the "Pro" market users every were really the primary target for the machine previously.

MBP ... you can still replace he hard drive and memory. Can you do it with an indy car pit stop speed? No. Is it fairly straight forward ? Yes. The huge chuckle is that if look at Mac Pro instead of MBP the memory upgrade has gotten easier. So if that is such a major plus for the "Pro" users it went up, not down. .... But alas that doesn't match the presumed state of the world so just bury it with gobs of paragraphs on the MBP (and practically ignore the 17" model. )

For Mac Pro have already point out can do more with fewer slots. Nevermind the fact that Apple hasn't had a 6 slot expansion card machine in almost a decade. If it was such an absolutely critical factor how come the Mac Pro market hasn't completely collapse in that time period? ... absolutely nothing in the article addresses that.

[jav6454]

The switched nature of Slots 3 & 4 are only a problem when both slots are being used simultaneously.

As per your situation, lane configuration is more of the issue when just looking at the specifications (8x lane card stuffed in a 4x lane slot). So moving it to Slot 2 (16x lanes) would make better sense by that logic (doesn't take into account real world conditions though). This basic logic actually holds true for most cases (i.e. if you were running an ATTO or Areca, and using sufficient drive counts; n >= say 5 SSD's or 12 mechanical HDD's).

Realities to consider for your card:

There's been mention that it will only work in Slot 3 or 4 due to the SATA port data connections over PCIe traces in the 2009/10 systems.
The card isn't fast enough to saturate the 4x lane slot anyway (it's a slow card for what you get - the price/performance ratio is horrible). 4 ports is the biggest limitation here, and it doesn't work with SSD's according to Apple (ignoring the rest of the card, such as the processor used).


So I'd put the time in to read the manual that came with your card to verify #1, and check your throughput data to check #2 (worst case, in an '06 - '08 system, Slots 3 & 4 are Gen 1.0 = 250MB/s per lane, so the slot is capable of 1GB/s, double that in '09/10 systems). Not sure of the card's specification in terms of lane spec (Gen. 1.0 or 2.0), but it's just not fast enough to matter from what I've seen anyway.

So to keep things simple, leave it where it is, and leave Slot 3 empty. ;)

Couldn't say it better.

Honestly, for a Pro system and the price Apple charges, you'd think they do a better job with the PCIe lanes than this screw up they have with x4 lane switches.

If anything, Apple should offer one of those 2.0 x4 slots are x8 and make slot 3 PCIe 1.0 at x4 (directly from the ICH10R). That would make having a peripheral card in there much more worthy and allocate precious bandwidth resources elsewhere needed.

[cube]

The right way would be to use Opteron instead of Xeon.

[nanofrog]

Honestly, for a Pro system and the price Apple charges, you'd think they do a better job with the PCIe lanes than this screw up they have with x4 lane switches.

If anything, Apple should offer one of those 2.0 x4 slots are x8 and make slot 3 PCIe 1.0 at x4 (directly from the ICH10R). That would make having a peripheral card in there much more worthy and allocate precious bandwidth resources elsewhere needed.
It was essentially forced by 2x decisions:

Slots 1 & 2 = 16x lane for graphics cards.
Apple RAID Pro; as there were only 4x lanes remaining, they had to either only have 3x slots, or use the PCIe switch.


They most likely figured not many users would be using Slots 3 & 4 simultaneously, so the performance hit wouldn't affect many users. So the 4th slot would be beneficial for more users than would be affected by the compromise.

[wonderspark]

Well, I had the choice of putting this NewerTech 6G eSATA card into slot 2 or 3, and I chose #3 thinking it would leave me the x16 for something else in the future, while making good use of the x4 slot. Now that I know that slot isn't dedicated, and might be an issue with my RAID card in #4, I moved the eSATA card to #2. It all looks the same in the profiler... 5GT/s link speed, etc. but I feel better about it anyway. Thanks for the info on the slots. I could not find mention of the switch / share anywhere after an hour of google searching, but I believe you anyway.

[Ryan P]

It was essentially forced by 2x decisions:
[LIST]
Slots 1 & 2 = 16x lane for graphics cards.


This isn't a criticism just a question. What possible uses are there for two 16x graphics card slots without SLI support?

[Hellhammer]

This isn't a criticism just a question. What possible uses are there for two 16x graphics card slots without SLI support?

You can still use dual GPUs, their computing power just won't be combined. The real benefit of SLI and CF seems to be for gamers though some high-end apps would benefit off the extra computing power. It's mainly for multiple displays and you can use CrossFire and apparently SLI too in Windows

[wonderspark]

It was essentially forced by 2x decisions:

Slots 1 & 2 = 16x lane for graphics cards.
Apple RAID Pro; as there were only 4x lanes remaining, they had to either only have 3x slots, or use the PCIe switch.


They most likely figured not many users would be using Slots 3 & 4 simultaneously, so the performance hit wouldn't affect many users. So the 4th slot would be beneficial for more users than would be affected by the compromise.

It would have been nice of them to document this info somewhere. again, much appreciated that you shared this!

[nanofrog]

Well, I had the choice of putting this NewerTech 6G eSATA card into slot 2 or 3, and I chose #3 thinking it would leave me the x16 for something else in the future, while making good use of the x4 slot. Now that I know that slot isn't dedicated, and might be an issue with my RAID card in #4, I moved the eSATA card to #2. It all looks the same in the profiler... 5GT/s link speed, etc. but I feel better about it anyway. Thanks for the info on the slots. I could not find mention of the switch / share anywhere after an hour of google searching, but I believe you anyway.
The information came from pulling a P/N off of the chips on the backplane board. Searched Intel's site, and it came up as a PCIe Switch.

So long as Slots 3 & 4 aren't used simultaneously, it's not a problem. And it may not be that big a deal if they are (depends on the bandwidth consumption of each card and freqency it has to switch the lanes).

But it all comes down to the specifics.

This isn't a criticism just a question. What possible uses are there for two 16x graphics card slots without SLI support?
Separate cards can increase the monitor count for a user (past that of whatever one card is capable of, such as the model that shipped with the system). Some find this very handy.

And there's still the possibility a second card can be used for GPGPU processing, even without Crossfire or SLI under OS X (assuming the software used supports it).

[jav6454]

This isn't a criticism just a question. What possible uses are there for two 16x graphics card slots without SLI support?

There is more to a GPU than just gaming, SLI & Crossfire. However, that still doesn't mean, Apple couldn't just routed those x4 lanes to thenSlot 3 (hence making it true x4 speed) and have Slot 4 be fed by the ICH10R directly at a x4 speeds, albeit under PCIe 1.x speeds. Sure it might be prior generation PCIe specs, but that is still 1GB/s of raw bandwidth. Enough to support a RAID card, and seeing as Apple doesn't even allow SSDs on the Mac Pro RAID card anything beyond 1GB/s is wasted bandwidth.

[alphaod]

Look on the bright side: The Mac Pro is quiet and air-cooled, and yet every component remains cool; let's see that out of any other system.

Sure we have to make do with 4 PCIe slots, but at least they are all full-length! You don't have to decided which cards go where because you were stuck with a x1 sized slot and 2 cards that both needed longer slots.

GPU options are limited anyways and you learn to buy combination cards. Maybe mixed FW and USB? You need eSATA, consider one with both internal and external ports. You need to a battery backup for RAID? Consider placing it in a more creative place.

[jav6454]

I don't usually get into this type of long arguments, but I have to point out somethings here:

Look on the bright side: The Mac Pro is quiet and air-cooled, and yet every component remains cool; let's see that out of any other system.

There are many systems out there that match a Quad or Octo Core Mac Pro in performance and are still even more so quiet than a Mac Pro. In case you are wondering which manufacturer, those are custom built PCs.


Sure we have to make do with 4 PCIe slots, but at least they are all full-length! You don't have to decided which cards go where because you were stuck with a x1 sized slot and 2 cards that both needed longer slots.

x16 physical lanes matter little if the speed is cramped down to x4. Might as well have an x4 physical slot in there and let the user know, that's as fast as it's going.


GPU options are limited anyways and you learn to buy combination cards. Maybe mixed FW and USB? You need eSATA, consider one with both internal and external ports. You need to a battery backup for RAID? Consider placing it in a more creative place.

In a Mac Pro setup the only recommendation is, if you need heavy graphics work, then buy the most powerful single GPU on PBC card on the market. A combination of cards would just slow you down, and seeing as how the Mac Pro doesn't even have enough space for 2 dual slot GPUs, it would be a waste; unless the smaller GPU is solely for external display support.

RAID cards, extra USB & FW cards are about it, but lacking. eSATA? Even better considering the current limitations of USB & FW.

[Macinposh]

Stuff.


Other stuff.




Dudes. Too confusing,either of you have step down, you cant use the same avatars.

Try something like theese :

http://www.highposition.net/article/wp-content/uploads/gm-robot-marvin.jpg

or

http://cache.wists.com/thumbnails/d/9a/d9aad78dee1cac7338556e7c70d24c5d-orig

[deconstruct60]

Trying to accommodate folks putting in 2 16x graphics cards kills off the wires for the remaining slots. For everybody, not just Apple.



Honestly, for a Pro system and the price Apple charges, you'd think they do a better job with the PCIe lanes than this screw up they have with x4 lane switches.


Since both the X58 and the 5520 chipsets are capped at x36 PCI-e lanes, what magical thing are the other vendors doing when they offer more than 4 slots that Apple does ? There are doing it without switches/multipliers ?

HP Z800 (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12454-12454-296719-307907-4050865-3718645.html) ....

Doesn't have two 16 electrical PCI-e slots. They avoid the switch by just putting a physical 16x card in there, but not wiring it up. With those 8x extra you can do more slots. But only have one 16x socket.

Dell T7500 (http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/desktops/workstation-precision-t7500/pd.aspx?refid=workstation-precision-t7500&s=biz&cs=555)


One PCI-e x16 Gen 2 wired as x4
Two PCI-e x16 Gen 2 slots wired as x8 (one is half length)
Two PCI-e x16 Gen 2 graphics slots
One PCI-X 64bit/100MHz slot with support for 3.3v or universal cards
One PCI 32bit/33Mhz 5V slot

Hmm, 4 + (2 * 8 ) + ( 2 * 16 ) = 52 and haven't even tapped 1x or 2x to hook the PCI-X / PCI legacy adapter to although may be doing that off the southbridges links. ). There is no switch/multiplier in there somewhere ?



If anything, Apple should offer one of those 2.0 x4 slots are x8 and make slot 3 PCIe 1.0 at x4 (directly from the ICH10R). That would make having a peripheral card in there much more worthy and allocate precious bandwidth resources elsewhere needed.

There is other stuff to hook to the ICH10R beside composing more empty slots. Firewire consumes one link. Seriously don't see how it is "progress" to be offering up PCIe v1.0 as external expansion.

[Concorde Rules]

The Mac Pro has a 1200W PSU.

I think that is more than enough for anything you could possibly want to fit in it.

Personally all the Mac Pro requires is 2x SSD slots and 7 HDD slots (Second row below the current allowing for this) along with a chipset that can do more than 660Mb/sec

PCI-E lanes are dictated by the chipset Intel provide, not Apple.

[hakuryuu]

4. Extreme users (like I said) go with a custom built and variety of options. They do not pick Apple.

Yes, extreme users (mostly spec nerds). Not your average professional. The very high end professional is likely doing work not suitable to just a single workstation enclosure anyways and will either have a box outside of the tower or is sending it to a cluster of servers. Either way Apple really doesn't have a reason to offer a machine that even I would not buy. Go buy a Dell T7500, HP Z800, or custom build if you need that much stuff in one enclosure. If you need Apple hardware then live with it and/or look for solutions outside of the enclosure.

[nanofrog]

The Mac Pro has a 1200W PSU.
Where did this value come from?

[VirtualRain]

Where did this value come from?

A quick search on eBay reveals that the PSU in current MP's is 980W... (not 1200W, but still plenty for the peripherals you can put in a Mac Pro chassis)

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/7/0/3/9/6/4/webimg/386308786_o.jpg

[jav6454]

Trying to accommodate folks putting in 2 16x graphics cards kills off the wires for the remaining slots. For everybody, not just Apple.

Many motherboard manufacturers have better wiring for PCIe lanes, Apple is just being sloppy. I am not talking about Dell or HP or the likes. They are even worse than Apple. Take Asus for example. They do a nice job on motherboards, so does Gigabyte. No need for switches.


There is other stuff to hook to the ICH10R beside composing more empty slots. Firewire consumes one link. Seriously don't see how it is "progress" to be offering up PCIe v1.0 as external expansion.

The ICH10R has more than x1 PCIe lanes available, in fact it has 6 x1 lanes, of which you can configure them into x4 and x1 x1 configurations. Also, allowing 1GB/s of data thru the x4 is better than having to share it thru some latency ridden switch.

The Mac Pro has a 1200W PSU.

I think that is more than enough for anything you could possibly want to fit in it.

Personally all the Mac Pro requires is 2x SSD slots and 7 HDD slots (Second row below the current allowing for this) along with a chipset that can do more than 660Mb/sec

PCI-E lanes are dictated by the chipset Intel provide, not Apple.

1.2kW? Are you certain or making that number up? Also, Intel provides the links, it's up to the manufacturer how to use them.

Yes, extreme users (mostly spec nerds). Not your average professional. The very high end professional is likely doing work not suitable to just a single workstation enclosure anyways and will either have a box outside of the tower or is sending it to a cluster of servers. Either way Apple really doesn't have a reason to offer a machine that even I would not buy. Go buy a Dell T7500, HP Z800, or custom build if you need that much stuff in one enclosure. If you need Apple hardware then live with it and/or look for solutions outside of the enclosure.

I am not advocating buying a PC, I am saying Extreme users have no need for a Mac Pro, but a pro user is fine.

[nanofrog]

A quick search on eBay reveals that the PSU in current MP's is 980W... (not 1200W, but still plenty for the peripherals you can put in a Mac Pro chassis)
980W is what I expected, as that's what was used in previous systems. But I thought it a good idea to be sure. ;)

BTW, thanks for the photo; can't get any clearer answer than that. :D :p

[PurrBall]

The Mac Pro has an extremely durable chassis, you have to give it that.

The unit in the studio has fallen off a rolling desk and the only resulting damage is that it sits a bit crooked. I wouldn't expect any system to survive that fall at all.

[alphaod]

There are many systems out there that match a Quad or Octo Core Mac Pro in performance and are still even more so quiet than a Mac Pro. In case you are wondering which manufacturer, those are custom built PCs.

You're correct to say there are systems like this, but the ones I've seen are either bigger, use alternative cooling, or are really expensive (if not more than the Mac Pro).

I've already tried to build a Mac Pro -like machine; it turned out to be more expensive. I'm just saying for the size and efficiency of the Mac Pro, it's not so bad. We could argue about this all day as there are always exceptions, but I'm just pointing out what I've observed.



x16 physical lanes matter little if the speed is cramped down to x4. Might as well have an x4 physical slot in there and let the user know, that's as fast as it's going.

You're right to say consumers when presented with the full length slot should expect full length capable speeds, but I said, "You don't have to decided which cards go where because you were stuck with a x1 sized slot and 2 cards that both needed longer slots."

Why do I say this? I have a RAID card for my Mac Pro; it's runs the RAID 5 in my system and according to the documentation, it needs a x8 slot; as it turns out, it only needs the x8 length of the slot because even if were to use 4 striped SSDs, I cannot exceed the bandwidth on a PCIe x4 lane. But I have a full length card and if I did not have all full length slots on my machine I would have need to remove the second video card I need to drive a third monitor. Here I am able to fit a second video card that really needs the full x16 slot and then fit the RAID card in the x4 slot that is full length.

[deconstruct60]

Many motherboard manufacturers have better wiring for PCIe lanes, Apple is just being sloppy. I am not talking about Dell or HP or the likes. They are even worse than Apple. Take Asus for example. They do a nice job on motherboards, so does Gigabyte. No need for switches.


Chuckle.....

ASUS Z8PE-D12X board
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=gGozRAk0YWQCQtSA

"...
Total PCI/PCI-X/PCI-E Slots: 6
Slot Location 1: 1 * PCI-X 100/133 MHz
Slot Location 2: 1 * PCI-X 100/133 MHz
Slot Location 3: 1 * PCI-E x16 (Gen2 x8 Link)
Slot Location 4: 1 * PCI-E x16 (Gen2 x8 Link)
Slot Location 5: 1 * PCI-E x16 (Gen2 x8 Link)
Slot Location 6: 1 * PCI-E x16 (Gen2 x16 Link) (Auto switch to x8 Link if slot 5 is occupied)
Slot Location 7: 1 * MIO Slot for Audio card (PCI-E x1 is not supported)
..."

Ooooooo looky-looky ..... a switch.


Toss in the standard Apple design constraint not to add "old legacy" tech to newest models ( so loose PCI-X slots ..... only going to have old legacy cards with old legacy drivers anyway) and you have exactly 4 PCI-e slots. As I said, all the other vendors are operating with the same 36x lane constraint. It is a simple matter of doing some straightforward arithmetic to also see that they are also using switches if their PCI-e slot count is substantially higher and/or superficial bandwidth numbers are higher. Apple is just not perpetrating more bandwidth than is actually in the box.

If you want a workstation with a 16x graphics card and a 8x 10GB SAN card that you want to run full blast then the Mac Pro is a better design tradeoff than that Asus board. If you want to add 3 8x cards to your box to hook to gobs of very fast direct attached storage (DAS) quickly then the Asus board is better. One isn't necessarily better than the other. Depends upon what doing. In the Mac Pro market I suspect there are going to be far more folks using two 16x cards and 1 16x and 1 8x cards than those that need 3 8x's .
It is a reasonable design tradeoff.




The ICH10R has more than x1 PCIe lanes available, in fact it has 6 x1 lanes, of which you can configure them into x4 and x1 x1 configurations. Also, allowing 1GB/s of data thru the x4 is better than having to share it thru some latency ridden switch.

I just didn't explicitly quote a long list of consumers because I apparently suffered from delusions that folks would go take hard look at the specs.

Typically the PCI-X and PCI slots are consumers of that 6. Firewire is. USB 3.0 is. An extra onboard SATA/RAID controller often is (or increases the switch usage in the "upper" x36 lanes *** ) , etc. If you look for any "value added" feature on the motherboard that is not part of the core chipset, then a large percentage of the time it is a consumer of some number of that 6.


Sure, Apple probably has 2-3 lanes not hooked up. However, there is also no clear quantitative evidence that there isn't a bottleneck in the overall PCI-e switch. The chipsets are not generally designed to run everything on all possible channels at full blast.

The Mac Pro design doesn't lend itself to carrying forward "old" cards. It lacks in backwards flexibility. However, unless you using a single Mac Pro to drive a multimillion visual simultor or some large DBMS workload (with high DAS bandwidth requirements ), it fits a broad spectrum of workstation users.

*** "upper" relative to this diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:X58_Block_Diagram.png

[plasticphyte]

The problem with the Mac Pro case is that it is poorly designed from the outset. There is something to be said of full/medium full sized ATX tower designs.

If Apple re-designed the case to be AT/ATX compliant there would be more space available for expansion cards and HDD bays. They could still keep the beautiful design and elegance the Mac Pro case has, in particular the backplane, but appeal to the market that needs further expansion.
There's (in my opinion) absolutely no need to have the CPU's & RAM on a breakout board. I also believe the design would work better for airflow.

[Concorde Rules]

Where did this value come from?

Power specs on Apple's website says:

Current: Maximum of 12A (low-voltage range) or 6A (high-voltage range)

Line voltage: 100-120V AC or 200-240V AC (wide-range power supply input voltage)

200V x 6A = 1.2kW

That's where I got my value from :p

So I was correct in one way!

At 80% efficiency thats 960W max draw.

Either way, that's more than enough. You can run multiple GPUs and god knows what with that, I know, I did with a PSU half that size :)

The PSU of the Mac Pro isn't a limiting factor ;)

Two CPUs of 130W: 260W
Two GPUS of 220W: 440W
Motherboard: 100W
Memory (sticks): 50W
Hard-disks (4): 40W
Everything else: 50W

= 940W and you will NEVER, EVER load EVERYTHING to their utter max, so again, the PSU of the Mac Pro is MORE than sufficient :)

I encountered people over-provisioning the PSU in my overclocking days, the 1.2kW PSUs out now are simply for tri-GPUs.

Problem is people who think they know best when actually they know absolutely nothing on the subject :D Edit: Not you nano-frog :)

[nanofrog]

Power specs on Apple's website says:

Current: Maximum of 12A (low-voltage range) or 6A (high-voltage range)

Line voltage: 100-120V AC or 200-240V AC (wide-range power supply input voltage)

200V x 6A = 1.2kW
This where I thought it may have come from. ;)

But no real PSU on the planet is 100% efficient. :eek: :p

[jav6454]

I encountered people over-provisioning the PSU in my overclocking days, the 1.2kW PSUs out now are simply for tri-GPUs.

Problem is people who think they know best when actually they know absolutely nothing on the subject :D Edit: Not you nano-frog :)

Only if you consider a Fermi GPu will 1.2kW of power be just enough for a dual GPU setup.

Chuckle.....

ASUS Z8PE-D12X board


Of course, choosing that one, but we know Apple doesn't go with that type of motherboard. Come now. That has way too many features and memory slots for a fair Mac Pro motherboard comparison.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131389

That one is more like it.



....Typically the PCI-X and PCI slots are consumers of that 6. Firewire is. USB 3.0 is.

Now, now... not everyone uses those for Firewire of USB 3.0. Those x1 lanes are too slow for Firewire 400, not to mention USB 3.0 (recall each x1 lane from the ICH10R is a PCIe 1.x which means a bandwidth of 250MB/s per lane).

However, there are some manufacturers (like an article on Anandtech once said), that go the grouped PCIe route. In which they bundle x4 PCIe 1.x lanes into a single x1 PCIe thru a separate controller and then feed that new x1 lane into a USB 3.0 or SATA 3.0 controller to allocate the right amounts of bandwidth (in this case a x1 link with 1GB/s bandwidth). However, they [Anandtech] found this method to be worse than an add-in card, not necessarily because of bandwidth issues, but because of the horrible latency issues.


An extra onboard SATA/RAID controller often is (or increases the switch usage in the "upper" x36 lanes *** ) , etc. If you look for any "value added" feature on the motherboard that is not part of the core chipset, then a large percentage of the time it is a consumer of some number of that 6.

There is no need for an onboard RAID controller when there is one already built in the ICH10R; otherwise, it'd be the ICH10 chip. However, as we all well know, built-in rarely means performance, so we have the add-in RAID cards. So that still means those x6 lanes are still free on Apple's Mac Pro. Remember, Apple isn't known for these "value-added" features; more reason to sell an Apple branded RAID card.


Sure, Apple probably has 2-3 lanes not hooked up. However, there is also no clear quantitative evidence that there isn't a bottleneck in the overall PCI-e switch. The chipsets are not generally designed to run everything on all possible channels at full blast.

The Mac Pro design doesn't lend itself to carrying forward "old" cards. It lacks in backwards flexibility. However, unless you using a single Mac Pro to drive a multimillion visual simultor or some large DBMS workload (with high DAS bandwidth requirements ), it fits a broad spectrum of workstation users.

*** "upper" relative to this diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:X58_Block_Diagram.png

Apple has all x6 lanes on the ICH10R bridge open, they have to because of that switch using the same x4 from the X58 chip.

As per bottlenecking, I have no idea if the x4 lanes are bottlenecking. One thing is true however, it doesn't hurt Apple to use those x4 lanes from the Southbridge and make ends meet for one peripheral.

Agreed on the legacy and "old" cards & tech comment.

[nanofrog]

Apple has all x6 lanes on the ICH10R bridge open, they have to because of that switch using the same x4 from the X58 chip.
As they don't offer RAID 5 under Disk Utility, the ICH10 would be sufficient (it can still run 0/1/10 in AHCI mode).

Looking at the backplane board, one of the part numbersd I've been given from someone else confirmed it's the ICH10, not ICH10R (I am presuming the numbers were read off correctly, as I just got typed info; pics of the boards sent were useless). As it happens, it also allows them to save $5 per system (ICH10 = $14, ICH10R = $19 according to ark.intel), which can be put towards the cost of the PCIe Switch used for Slots 3 & 4. :eek: :p

[jav6454]

As they don't offer RAID 5 under Disk Utility, the ICH10 would be sufficient (it can still run 0/1/10 in AHCI mode).

Looking at the backplane board, one of the part numbersd I've been given from someone else confirmed it's the ICH10, not ICH10R (I am presuming the numbers were read off correctly, as I just got typed info; pics of the boards sent were useless). As it happens, it also allows them to save $5 per system (ICH10 = $14, ICH10R = $19 according to ark.intel), which can be put towards the cost of the PCIe Switch used for Slots 3 & 4. :eek: :p

I believe even the cheapest $14 ICH10 has Intel Matrix Storage Technology (the one responsible for RAID)...

See here:

[nanofrog]

I believe even the cheapest $14 ICH10 has Intel Matrix Storage Technology (the one responsible for RAID)...
They both do.

[jav6454]

They both do.

I wonder then, what is the difference.

[nanofrog]

I wonder then, what is the difference.
I started to clarify, but didn't. :o

The ICH10 = 0/1/10 support with AHCI enabled (has the hardware support in the chip, but it needs AHCI compliant disks and a driver before it will function). If these conditions are met, then 0/1/10 are implemented via software (which is what Disk Utility does).

The ICH10R however, actually has a hardware RAID controller in it as well (ARM based), so it can handle the RAID functions for 0/1/10/5 on its own. But as Apple doesn't offer users access to the firmware (users can setup an array directly this way; even before an OS is ever installed), or by an application (which is certainly possible with EFI), the ICH10R is actually useless for this additional feature.