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Apple Switching Back to NVIDIA Graphics for Upcoming Mac Pro Update?

zorinlynx

zorinlynx

macrumors G3
May 31, 2007
8,160
17,601
Florida, USA
This disappoints me. Historically my Macs with Radeon GPUs have greatly outperformed the ones with Nvidia.

Radeon just seems more solid on OS X. I think it's better drivers, because on Windows it's pretty much a wash when you compare them.
 
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rmwebs

macrumors 68040
Apr 6, 2007
3,140
0
Peace said:
I bet we don't see a new Mac Pro until WWDC2012.
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Doubt it. The mac pro's seem to be silently updated these days. Dreading the day when some idiot decides to pull them completely.

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JHankwitz said:
Or wait 10 - 20 years for something even better...

It's been 1.5 years since the last upgrade, and 3 years since the one before that. My 3-year old box is really getting old and slow at running the newer apps and equipment. Offer the power and speed I need along with Thunderbolt, and I'm ready to buy.
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You're having issues with a 3yr old pro? Which model you on? I'm on the 09 model and it's been fine. The only thing I am considering is a RAM boost now that the prices have dropped.

Theres a lot of updates you can do to the pro. From upgrading the CPU and RAM to changing out the graphics card with non-apple ones.
 
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spda242

macrumors member
Sep 1, 2010
70
7
No, I don't buy this rumor! Sure I would love a Ivy Bridge Mac Pro which most likely would be cheaper than a 2-Way Xeon Mac Pro but this and "Kepler", no no....

Didn't Nvidia say (last week) that they only would release "Kepler" mobile-graphics at the same time as Ivy Bridge. I am assuming that Ivy Bridge and the new Xeon generation would be released more or less at the same time which I am not sure about.
 
K

Keymaster

macrumors regular
Dec 15, 2003
139
559
bilbo--baggins said:
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Why go for ivy bridge when they could wait 5 years and go for something far more advanced.

It's not as if people are in a hurry to upgrade their mac pros...
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There is a reason for that. At least some of us have probably done what I have done and upgraded our systems. I got my Mac Pro in Jan, 2008 (quad core, 2.8GHz), and have upgraded the disks, memory and video card over time. Last time I ran a speed test and compared it to other Macs (sometime last year), it was only slower than newer Mac Pros and a couple of top of the line iMacs. I just don't have a need to upgrade, my Mac Pro is the best machine I've ever had and still more than fast enough for my needs.

With that in mind, I may consider upgrading when the Mac Pro is refreshed, if it is as substantial as it seems it is going to be. I'll have to wait and see, but if I can carry my disks and video card over, and if memory isn't too expensive, I just may make the jump...and then expect to keep that one for five years, when the iPad will be as fast as Mac Pros are now. :)
 
A

Archiform 3D

macrumors newbie
Feb 14, 2012
1
0
Just bring it on at last!!

Apple was never going to ditch the Mac Pro. But I have been waiting waaaayyy too long for this update. Bring it on!
 
M

milo

macrumors 604
Sep 23, 2003
6,891
522
I wonder if we'll see apps like Logic Pro get updated for CUDA support. That would be killer, using a video card to offload plugin DSP. I've heard that it's a good fit for many plugin algorithms.
 
3

314631

macrumors 6502a
May 12, 2009
909
0
iDeaded myself
I don't think consumers need Mac Pros anymore. The Mac Mini Server is more than adequate for consumers of high-end products in the Apple echosystem. And the Mac Mini Server I don't think it needs as much space as a Mac Pro.
 
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Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
aurichie said:
I don't think consumers need Mac Pros anymore. The Mac Mini Server is more than adequate for consumers of high-end products in the Apple echosystem. And the Mac Mini Server I don't think it needs as much space as a Mac Pro.
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I read this comment as i was just starting an export of an edit i've just done in Final Cut on my Mac Pro. I look at my 12 cores working away at 100% and getting the compression done really quickly, and think 'Why would Apple get rid of this model Mac, and only sell macs with a maximum of 4 cores and lower powered processors?' It would be a massive backward step for them, and for us. If they could make an iMac or a Mac Mini that had 12 cores, and allowed some kind of expandability, then great! With companies bringing out high end Thunderbolt devices which happily replace their PCIe counterparts, a proper 12 core iMac or Mac Mini would probably be a good replacement. But at the moment the Mac Pro is indispensable for me, and others where time literally is money.
 
laurim

laurim

macrumors 68000
Sep 19, 2003
1,985
970
Minnesota USA
aurichie said:
I don't think consumers need Mac Pros anymore. The Mac Mini Server is more than adequate for consumers of high-end products in the Apple echosystem. And the Mac Mini Server I don't think it needs as much space as a Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

When you've tried to create a complex 1920x1080 motion graphic with several particle emitters on a mini, let me know how I don't need a Mac Pro. I have a 2008 octo core and I can barely start building a good animation before I lose the ability to view it realtime as I work. Don't get me started on the rendering time I have to wait in order to see what I've done. And yes, I've done what I can to create the rendering settings that spread the work across all the cores and I have the latest best graphics card and 24 gigs of ram. Can I do all those upgrades on a mini?
 
thekev

thekev

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2010
7,005
3,343
aurichie said:
I don't think consumers need Mac Pros anymore. The Mac Mini Server is more than adequate for consumers of high-end products in the Apple echosystem. And the Mac Mini Server I don't think it needs as much space as a Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

The mac pro was never really much of a consumer machine. If you look at Apple touting OpenCL and applications that rely on OpenGL and OpenCL (totally different things) you need a quality gpu. The need for ram and a reasonable amount of fast storage is there too. The server works for some stuff, but it's really not a very good machine for anything truly demanding. Yes I'll get a bunch of people saying what they do on X machine, but you can push any modern machine to its limits, and most of the people making these silly claims are hobbyists. Anyway my point being that one thing doesn't replace the other. If you're talking about a typical home user, the mac pro was a poor fit even in its first generation.

Mr. Retrofire said:
Adobe uses OpenGL & OpenCL, so AMD would be better.
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Since when do either of those things have to do with the AMD vs NVidia issue? Both are used by NVidia cards under Windows.
 
T

tido2012

macrumors regular
Jul 20, 2010
144
0
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Just because you don't need one doesn't mean that others don't. Hell I don't need one and probably won't be getting one, however some of the people that have made such great software that have helped make apple products what they are today do use and benefit from a Mac pro, which is a good enough reason to me for why it should get updated.
 
Peace

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
thekev said:
Part of the problem is the drivers, and Apple could be more proactive about sorting that out.



It's also possible that they won't piggyback video over thunderbolt here.



They use OpenCL rather than CUDA. NVidia is generally preferred on the PC end. I'm not sure I believe that they're returning to Macs. In fact this whole article looks like macrumors is just trolling us.



That was more of an isolated thing. It doesn't apply to every NVidia card, but rather a limited portion of a previous generation. GPUs are always a problem with macs anyway.



All of the information I find on Haswell seems (somewhat understandably) centered around mobile devices. Did you find anything regarding desktop and xeon cpu predictions?
Click to expand...


Here's some info on Haswell :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)
 
Y

Yamcha

macrumors 68000
Mar 6, 2008
1,825
158
Article is a bit misleading.. I don't think it means Apple is switching exclusively to Nvidia.. It just means the new Mac Pro's will be equipped with Nvidia Graphics on the stock configuration..

I'm pretty sure we will still see support for AMD Graphics.. Also currently the fastest video card is in the world is AMD HD 7970 3GB.. So AMD is by no means lacking in the performance department when it comes to graphics..
 
I

Imhotep397

macrumors 6502
Jul 22, 2002
350
37
Mac Pro rumors are GREAT to see. It's about time Apple embraced Nvidia cards again CUDA is really critical for a large part of the professional creative space and users shouldn't have to pay extra or get a lower rate card when paying premium Mac prices.
 
M

Macintosh-HD

macrumors member
Feb 2, 2012
60
0
Knoxville, TN
rmwebs said:
Doubt it. The mac pro's seem to be silently updated these days. Dreading the day when some idiot decides to pull them completely.
Click to expand...

I dread it to when they'll stop making their only powerhouse.

They haven't invested a lot into the exterior design, it being the same basic design for 9 years now. Not that it looks bad, though. But with the way Apple is heading these days into the portable markets, it may well be around the corner when they pull the plug on it.
 
F

fredfnord

macrumors regular
Sep 9, 2007
127
19
Mr-Stabby said:
I read this comment as i was just starting an export of an edit i've just done in Final Cut on my Mac Pro. I look at my 12 cores working away at 100% and getting the compression done really quickly, and think 'Why would Apple get rid of this model Mac, and only sell macs with a maximum of 4 cores and lower powered processors?' It would be a massive backward step for them, and for us. If they could make an iMac or a Mac Mini that had 12 cores, and allowed some kind of expandability, then great! With companies bringing out high end Thunderbolt devices which happily replace their PCIe counterparts, a proper 12 core iMac or Mac Mini would probably be a good replacement. But at the moment the Mac Pro is indispensable for me, and others where time literally is money.
Click to expand...

You and the other 0.1% of computer users for whom computer time is money, in this day and age.

The quote you reference was about 'consumers'. You aren't one. Hell, I'm not either —*I am a computer professional, who does development in virtual machines, and a MBP works just fine for me.

I don't think that Apple's likely to discontinue the Mac Pro, at least not until they have a sixteen-core MBP. (Heh.) But the idea that somehow there's this huge untapped market for a computer with sixteen cores that costs half as much as a Mac Pro? I don't buy it. People who really need sixteen cores and 24 gigs of RAM can generally afford to pay for them. People who don't need them and are just buying one to feed their egos are not a terribly interesting market segment, and I'd have to say that I'm not surprised that Apple ignores them.
 
mrxak

mrxak

macrumors 68000
Apr 16, 2004
1,650
697
Drifting through space in a broken escape pod
I've had a lot of nvidia cards fail on me, over the years. ATI/AMD? Never once. All things being equal, I'll always prefer AMD.

That said, this whole article is a bit silly. Sure, nvidia might be the default choice in many or all of the standard configurations, but there will be AMD cards in the mix for custom orders. I would be surprised if the majority of Mac Pro orders were not custom built as it is, so who really cares? Hopefully whatever the top end upgrade is, it's a very, very nice card.

The suggestion that Apple will wait for workstation Ivy Bridge chips is also ridiculous. Of course they won't. The only reason Apple has waited so long to release a new Mac Pro is because Intel hasn't made a suitable chip yet. Soon, they will, Apple will use it to upgrade the line, and life will move on. Hopefully, Ivy Bridge workstation chips won't take years to come out, and Apple will be able to upgrade the line again sooner.
 
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