New Mac Pro thread (merged)

Apple has slowly but surely locked down everything Mac related, even RAM, hard drives, etc. Whether it's the iMacs, Macbooks, etc.

The writing has been on the wall, and here's the epitome of it in the new Mac Pro.

They've turned a computer that's geared to professionals and enthusiast who don't need the frills and "WOW FACTOR" of the casual consumer market into the ultimate dog and pony show.

Sure, it's an engineering marvel, it's beautiful, etc but that doesn't really change the fact that internal expansion, upgradability, and probably repariability is over.

Enjoy that beautiful little thing as it's surrounded by huge, expensive, and loud thunderbolt RAID drives and a lot of other external **** that should be hidden neatly in the Mac Pro.

It wouldn't be so bad if they continued to offer a traditional desktop, just as they did with the Cube, but they know nobody would pick the lesser powered, less expandable version for the sake of "Oh it looks nice".

I think they'll use this as the reasoning to axe the Pro. The sales will probably be sort of weak and they'll say "We think the market is no longer there for high powered desktop PCs, people want all in ones, buy the iMac"

Do yourself a favor and build a hackintosh, it's easier then ever.

KurtangleTN said:

Do yourself a favor and build a hackintosh, it's easier then ever.

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Until you run out of kernel extensions for newer cards.

BJonson said:

Might as well get the existing 12 core mac and move it all over. Not seeing the benefit of the Darth Mac. How much faster can it really be if they are both 12 core? Even the old mac pro can use the excelsior OWC card and achieve same or close SSD speeds. Hmm, I have a 3,1 2008 mac pro. Might just give in and get the latest (old) mac pro they have before they are gone or buy a used one. Hopefully the prices will drop when the Darth Mac is for sale, if there are any left. Got a feeling they are going to get snatched up rather quickly.

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Hate to say it, but i was wishing for it to be a little lighter. When i put the current one in a flight case, almost need a forklift to move it

I'm not technically competent to discuss this intelligently .... but ...

What if ........

What if ....... the new Mac Pro is the basis for cluster or parallel computing

i.e. .... we could connect another Mac Pro 'module' and have a dual 12 core computer ....

krye said:

Is that just redundant overkill or do you really have that much "active" data? I burn stuff to blu rays for archival/backup. There's some stuff I'd like to keep, but it doesn't need to live fulltime on my hard drive. Like legacy software, old installers, and ISOs, etc. I must have a good 50 Gigs worth of old "nice to haves". I might need something one day, but it doesn't need to sit on my hdd.

If I make an iMovie project that has 10 Gigs worth of assets, I burn it to a blu ray once I've exported the finished movie. I might never need to go back and tweak it, but it's nice to know that I have it archived on a blu ray. Why have the source material sitting on a hard drive year after year if you're never ever going to go back and do anything with it?

OH, PS: Do you think we're getting a new keyboard and mouse to match the new black aluminum?

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Not to mention if you are doing pro work you probably don't want to keep another clients assets lying around on your disk. You backup to an external medium and delete those elements from teh drive. DVDr is grat for this, but we use the insanely expensive XDcam drives. I Sony would make them consumer! It's 25gb on a double sided disc in a cartridge. Super robust, works on USB, and pretty damn foolproof compared to DVDr or DLT/LT05/LT06.

And yes I hope we do get matching shiny black keyboards and mice. Or at least give us black keys like a MBP!

calaverasgrande said:

Not to mention if you are doing pro work you probably don't want to keep another clients assets lying around on your disk. You backup to an external medium and delete those elements from teh drive. DVDr is grat for this, but we use the insanely expensive XDcam drives. I Sony would make them consumer! It's 25gb on a double sided disc in a cartridge. Super robust, works on USB, and pretty damn foolproof compared to DVDr or DLT/LT05/LT06.

And yes I hope we do get matching shiny black keyboards and mice. Or at least give us black keys like a MBP!

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i like bd-r. just keep them in a cool dark place. 95% of my cd's and dvd's are still good dating back to 1998

Black would be good, hard to keep the white keyboard clean with out frying it

I would be more than happy if the new MP would sell for 2499$, but I'm thinking 3000$ or maybe $3499..

Yay a new Mac Pro!

At least the people that needed more power etc will be able to get it somewhere later this year.

Sadly for me, it misses everything I love in my current Mac Pro.
I'm a big fan of the drive bays, it is/was a fantastic system if you have lots of active and semi active data. Like a client quickly wants something from last year because he/she lost it and I don't have to dive into my pile of external HDD's. I used to keep the external HDD's running but then they died and crashed to quickly, lots of dead Lacie Quadros etc, so I started storing them instead. The internal drives for some reasen don't die that fast and they are constantly powered on ...

I was also shocked I can not buy another Mac Pro where I live,
I just figured that out now.

If the thunderbolt thing really hits off, I might buy a mini or something,
but for now I have a feeling usb 3.0 is the safer system if you don't like to buy the same stuff over and over again.

I really love the apple operating system. I loved working on all the Apples until everything turned glossy which sucks for photo retouch.

New Mac Pro won't be for me, no drive bays, I could buy any other mac to hook up an Eizo color edge and a ton of hard drives to fill my desk.
But maybe I go for an HP workstation when I'm forced to upgrade my curent Mac Pro. But windows is so distracting, there is always so much stuff going on there. But I will have a cleaner desk than with curent Apple offerings.

BJonson said:

LOL. So add a lan, by an expensive RAID NAS, find a spot for it all in my little office and I'm good? Let me call the bank to re-mortgage.

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Do you want a quiet environment or not, buy the way ?

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GermanyChris said:

Or could ya know buy a computer that lets you put silly things like hard drives in it I know it seems old school and all..

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Yes, very old school. Lots to be said for a quiet SSD BootOS drive with noisy mechanicals in another locale unless you need Big Data near at hand (or just put a TB cable through the wall to a control room next door)

SockRolid said:

Agree. The old Mac Pro was always more or less an under-desk machine.
The new one, if it's quiet enough, could be a desktop machine.

Alas, even the old Mac Pro is drastic overkill for my modest Xcode projects.
40K lines, for example. Compiles in seconds even on an old Core 2 Duo iMac.

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1) My 2009 MP is the desk! It's the workhorse for live shows & so far I've just put it on the floor with monitor + keyboard on top, as a compact mobile work-area. Hope to soon graduate to venues with dedicated fx booth space!

2) Yeah the XCode compile time is ridiculous. Also, when I do shutdown on my 2010 i7 MBP, it cranks and cooks and grumbles for a looong time before doing so. Tell the MP to shut down? It's like "oooookay -- boompf!" in about 750 milliseconds.

deconstruct60 said:

... that are suppose to hit 8 TFLOPs we'll see if it can keep up if tasked with a 10-18 hour computational run....

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I thought it said 7 TF, but either way, wow! --

This may make it perfect for my purposes. I'm currently using an AMD 5870, at 2.7 TF, and that's just adequate. Was planning on trying an nV 500-series; I get more of the max out of nV architecture so far. But, 7 TF out of the box? Plus, if the architecture is GCN my opencl task will probably get a much higher percentage of the theoretical maximum throughput.

That could be beautiful. I do live shows, and soon my project needs to become a product that a sound guy can run, anywhere in the world, instead of me having to be at every single show running the thing. With the old MP, I'd have to specify system requirements with one of a few specific add-on GPUs. With this new one, I can probably say "system requirements: one MBP, 2013 or later", and be able to run much higher resolution right out of the box. Extra cool!

What I have now (2009 + 5870) is adequate to my task, but I'm afraid I'm going to have no choice but to buy one of these things ... of course first I'll rent one for a week to see, but I expect to be blown away by the out-of-the-box performance, and, not being made out of money, to have no choice but to sell retirement shares and buy one.

Plus, it'll be a lot easier to carry around to different venues....

Photovore said:

I thought it said 7 TF, but either way, wow! --

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7 is only with GPUs. If try to through the CPUs at the problem too all three will go full blast. Probably won't hit exactly 8 but may round up to 8.

With this new one, I can probably say "system requirements: one MBP, 2013 or later", and be able to run much higher resolution right out of the box.

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Maybe. The more graphics work throw at the GPU(s) the lower number of math function units available to the OpenCL work. Not going to crank gaphics to maximum and get more non graphics work done. However, can isolate if one GPU is primarily OpenCL and other graphics. Then there is an slide 3.5 max theoretical available with pretty high real time availability.

Plus, it'll be a lot easier to carry around to different venues....

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Weight wise. If part of a rack-on-wheels getting it installed and secured will be an issue that is not much easier.

Nice article from Macworld. http://www.macworld.com/article/204...nted-what-were-actually-getting.html#tk.fb_mw

Cant wait to pick this badboy up byebye iMac!

Michaelgtrusa said:

Nice article from Macworld. http://www.macworld.com/article/204...nted-what-were-actually-getting.html#tk.fb_mw

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From article

"... The new Mac Pro will be available with up to 12 cores, providing CPU performance that’s up to twice as fast as the current model, according to Apple. .. . "

The article is lame for not calling out Apple on this. That 2x is probably relative to the current single CPU package model. Not the current top end 12 core Model. No way, no how is the upcoming 12 core from Intel twice as fast as 12 of there previous generation cores on most code. In fact, it is probably slower on a few select applications that have longer, scalar (single threaded) critical sections.

On some corner case fused math 256 math ops that have been highly optimzed for the new system maybe. But on stuff that most folks are currently running not going to see anywhere near that from 12 Westmere to 12 Ivy-Bridge. A 40-50% jump perhaps, but nothing like 200% on a wide range of applications and usages.



".. Apple boasts that the new Mac Pro will provide over 2.5 the graphics performance of the current models, ... "

The current models are using 2009 era video cards... that isn't a shocker. Remember, Apple did nothing to upgrade the video cards last year.

" ... It appears the new Mac Pro will support up to 128GB of RAM, which is twice as much as the current top-of-the-line Mac Pro, ... "

Again not if include the dual package models. For single CPU package model yes. The current version of OS X is a bigger impediment to getting to 128GB RAM than the hardware is. ( it caps at 96GB. OS X 10.9 is reportedly going to bump that up a bit to 128GB ).

deconstruct60 said:

7 is only with GPUs. If try to through the CPUs at the problem too all three will go full blast. Probably won't hit exactly 8 but may round up to 8.

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Ah, I see. Yes, I did try splitting the job on the current MP between the GPU and 4 CPU cores, and that did of course calculate faster than GPU only -- but that advantage was wiped away when I got OpenCL/OpenGL interop working. That lets the results stay on the card and display from there. We lost a whole frame copying data off the card, merging the results, and putting it back up there. [I could try copying just the CPU's results to the card and merge them there; but with uncertain benefit from the effort, and the interop is so clean.]

However, performance with CPU alone (4 cores) is not too far behind GPU only!* I want to try it on 12-core CPU only + the transfer time; may not need fancy GPU at all. But best with, I think. [*This may be more indicative of the low % potential flops I'm getting from 5870 architecture rather than CPU speed, though the Xeons' float4 efficiency counts for a lot. That's why I want to try GCN; get over twice efficiency on nV arch vs 5870; GCN may help.]

deconstruct60 said:

Maybe. The more graphics work throw at the GPU(s) the lower number of math function units available to the OpenCL work. Not going to crank gaphics to maximum and get more non graphics work done. However, can isolate if one GPU is primarily OpenCL and other graphics. Then there is an slide 3.5 max theoretical available with pretty high real time availability.

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This task is all compute + a bitblt. I'm hoping Apple are finally supporting SLI so that the two can be treated as a single GPU; unless they're crippled for OCL vs graphics like the nV 680....

deconstruct60 said:

Weight wise. If part of a rack-on-wheels getting it installed and secured will be an issue that is not much easier.

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Yes, right; I'll probably move to a rolling case before this comes out....

Photovore said:

but that advantage was wiped away when I got OpenCL/OpenGL interop working. That lets the results stay on the card and display from there. We lost a whole frame copying data off the card, merging the results, and putting it back up there. [I could try copying just the CPU's results to the card and merge them there; but with uncertain benefit from the effort, and the interop is so clean.]

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Transport with what? PCI-e v2.0 ? Probably so.

One of the problems is older GPUs that presume that the bandwidth to the host is throttled ( a single x16 lane bundle switched/diluted down to x8's and x4's) so that did not spend much effort on host-to-card bandwidth transfer infrastructure. PCI-e v3.0 changes that. ( well it is still diluted on mainstream PCs but workstation systems the pressure for switches is way down. ). Which means if insert a high bandwidth host-copy infrastructure it isn't being blocked.

This task is all compute + a bitblt. I'm hoping Apple are finally supporting SLI so that the two can be treated as a single GPU;

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Doubtful apple is going to support any vendor proprietary work any more than really wanted to support CUDA ( another non industry standard).

Frankly, there is more than alot of work that has not been done in just optimizing the basic graphics drivers for OS X by both AMD and Nvidia. Diverting resources into proprietary hook-ins does not really present alot of long term upside. There are customers that run themselves into proprietary tarpits but that isn't Apple's problem. They never recommended folks go in that direction in the first place. So definitely not their responsibility to get folks out.

Yes, right; I'll probably move to a rolling case before this comes out....

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I can be bracketed into place but just as awkward if not more so that current Mac Pro.

deconstruct60 said:

Transport with what? PCI-e v2.0 ? Probably so.

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Yes indeed, 2.0 in a 16x slot.

deconstruct60 said:

One of the problems is older GPUs that presume that the bandwidth to the host is throttled ( a single x16 lane bundle switched/diluted down to x8's and x4's) so that did not spend much effort on host-to-card bandwidth transfer infrastructure. PCI-e v3.0 changes that. ( well it is still diluted on mainstream PCs but workstation systems the pressure for switches is way down. ). Which means if insert a high bandwidth host-copy infrastructure it isn't being blocked.

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Then I can still have some hope on that front! Yes, the delay struck me as strange; the amount of data I was copying down & back up is tiny compared to the bandwidth supposedly available, and when I say we lost a whole frame -- I mean that it was exactly one additional frame timechunk, i.e. 16.7ms when running at 60fps -- as if it were a default whole-frame penalty accrued regardless of actual transfer time.
So, you give me some quantity of hope....

deconstruct60 said:

Doubtful apple is going to support any vendor proprietary work any more than really wanted to support CUDA ( another non industry standard).

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Understood! However I do hope that they bow to the pressure; all others support SLI / CrossFire, which greatly expands one's capabilities. This looks like it might be it. I cling to the keyword / mantra above: Hope! ;^]

[Also: when it came time, 2y ago, to move my art from still prints into realtime, the choice was CUDA or oCL. No brain cycles at all were wasted on the decision to be vendor-independent!]

deconstruct60 said:

Frankly, there is more than alot of work that has not been done in just optimizing the basic graphics drivers for OS X by both AMD and Nvidia. Diverting resources into proprietary hook-ins does not really present alot of long term upside. There are customers that run themselves into proprietary tarpits but that isn't Apple's problem. They never recommended folks go in that direction in the first place. So definitely not their responsibility to get folks out.

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I believe that; other than as described above, I perceive other seemingly unnecessary inefficiencies, though I lack specific low-level knowledge to be confident in detail. Just give me access to a fab and I can learn to design my own, task-specific! °v°
[N.B.: some day, we can all do task-specific designs, probably aided by an AI to do the actual trace routing, so desu?]

deconstruct60 said:

I can be bracketed into place but just as awkward if not more so that current Mac Pro.

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Give it 20 years and any 12-year-old will have enough processing power woven into her tee-shirt to make these tasks trivial....

james1758 said:

Cant wait to pick this badboy up byebye iMac!

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Folks who consider fast computers to be "badboys" are probably exactly who the new Mac Pro is designed for.

BTW now at Newegg new Mac Pro aficionados can get an (almost) matching router, the D-Link Cloud Router 2000 (DIR-826L). No need to have that silly looking, non-matching, white, square tube Airport Extreme. Totally styling.

deconstruct60 said:

From article

"... The new Mac Pro will be available with up to 12 cores, providing CPU performance that’s up to twice as fast as the current model, according to Apple. .. . "

The article is lame for not calling out Apple on this. That 2x is probably relative to the current single CPU package model. Not the current top end 12 core Model. No way, no how is the upcoming 12 core from Intel twice as fast as 12 of there previous generation cores on most code. In fact, it is probably slower on a few select applications that have longer, scalar (single threaded) critical sections.

On some corner case fused math 256 math ops that have been highly optimzed for the new system maybe. But on stuff that most folks are currently running not going to see anywhere near that from 12 Westmere to 12 Ivy-Bridge. A 40-50% jump perhaps, but nothing like 200% on a wide range of applications and usages.

Click to expand...

Ivy Bridge is 10-20% better in real world application usage, especially with content creation software. So 2.7GHz 12-cores (assuming they won't turbo up a lot with this cooling) is going to be pretty much equal to Westmere 3.06GHz for the applications the majority use.

To me it is incredibly telling that Apple are only talking about FP performance on all the material.

Photovore said:

1) My 2009 MP is the desk! It's the workhorse for live shows & so far I've just put it on the floor with monitor + keyboard on top, as a compact mobile work-area. Hope to soon graduate to venues with dedicated fx booth space!

2) Yeah the XCode compile time is ridiculous. Also, when I do shutdown on my 2010 i7 MBP, it cranks and cooks and grumbles for a looong time before doing so. Tell the MP to shut down? It's like "oooookay -- boompf!" in about 750 milliseconds.

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LOL. Yup, the old Mac Pro was big and very fast.
The new one will be small and even faster.
(You'll need to get an actual desk for it, and please don't put anything on top of it!)