When will the new Mac Pro be next updated?

Q3 in 2014 is the scheduled release date for the Haswell Xeon E5 CPUs, thus an upgrade could arrive in late 2014 or early 2015.

Mums said:

Yes it's a bit early to ask, but my circumstances may warrant waiting until early next year to buy a new Mac Pro. So I'm wondering if anyone can give me an educated guess as to when the next Mac Pro update might be released - even if only a speed bump. Thanks.

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As the above said, Haswell-EP isn't out until Q3 this year. That means there could be a refresh Q4 2014-Q1 2015, there may not be though as nobody knows how often they're going to refresh the nMP.

Mums said:

Thanks. In your opinion, is it worth waiting for or should I just get it now? I'm not obsessed with specs so long as it is powerful, works, and will remain relevant for 3 years.

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If you need it, get it.

Mums said:

Thanks. In your opinion, is it worth waiting for or should I just get it now? I'm not obsessed with specs so long as it is powerful, works, and will remain relevant for 3 years.

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If you need it now, buy it now, the 2014/2015 Mac Pro will only be 25% to 50% faster maybe. The current Mac Pro is already quite powerful.

simsaladimbamba said:

If you need it now, buy it now, the 2014/2015 Mac Pro will only be 25% to 50% faster maybe. The current Mac Pro is already quite powerful.

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Are you sure it's supposed to be faster by 25-50%? That's a lot. Usually with generation updates, it's maybe 10-15% faster but I certainly could be wrong.

sickntired said:

Are you sure it's supposed to be faster by 25-50%? That's a lot. Usually with generation updates, it's maybe 10-15% faster but I certainly could be wrong.

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I could also be wrong.

Mums said:

Thanks - that's what I figured. The Mac Pro seems to be different in one respect to iPhones, iPads, etc: It's so powerful that it takes longer to go out of date.

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CPU wise it's already out of date compared to some of the consumer models.

sickntired said:

Are you sure it's supposed to be faster by 25-50%? That's a lot. Usually with generation updates, it's maybe 10-15% faster but I certainly could be wrong.

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If you base it on the CPU rumours and known information then the line-up could be a 3.3GHz 6-core model for $2,999 and a cheaper 3GHz 8-core model, with options for 14 cores. It'll be a decent bump, but in actual workflows it isn't going to be game changing.

Mums said:

Thanks - that's what I figured. The Mac Pro seems to be different in one respect to iPhones, iPads, etc: It's so powerful that it takes longer to go out of date.

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It depends. The current Mac Pros tend to last a while, but consumers who bought the Power Mac G5 or the 2006-2007 Mac Pros got about 2-4 years before they were outdated, which is pretty average.

The pro Macs have stabilized, no huge architecture changes coming so far, and 64 bit EFI. But the Mac Pro can go out of date pretty fast sometimes. They're powerful, but if the underlying technology moves ahead (like when the PowerPC to Intel change happened), you've still got a problem. After the Intel switch, the Power Mac G5 only got one more OS update and then they were done.

reco2011 said:

CPU wise it's already out of date compared to some of the consumer models.

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The Mac Pro is a workstation and not a consumer computer so it is pointless comparing it to a consumer anything. How does that consumer CPU stack up against the Xeon in the Mac Pro for heavy and extended usage or when ECC comes into play, it doesn't.

brand said:

The Mac Pro is a workstation and not a consumer computer so it is pointless comparing it to a consumer anything. How does that consumer CPU stack up against the Xeon in the Mac Pro for heavy and extended usage or when ECC comes into play, it doesn't.

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The Xeon is the consumer CPU with ECC. For the former, it's the same (but faster). For the latter it's the same until you get a memory error. (Hint - any Core i7 on the 2011 socket is a Xeon with ECC disabled.)

It's not "pointless" to compare the two - as long as you consider other factors.

And as far as the importance of ECC - no MacBook or Imac has ECC memory, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.... (And the MP6,1 disables ECC memory in the GPUs.)

I like ECC - but if Apple disables it for the ATI GPUs it must not be that critical.

I've been wondering about this too.

Look at the mac mini - that's not had an update for ages. The 'reason thread' in their forum could equally apply to the Mac Pro. Haswell is not bringing enough relevant stuff to the warrant the upgrade, or being able to keep it at the same price point. DDR4 will be more expensive than DDR3 for starters.

I'd like to see an upgrade in October, sure. I just don't think it's likely. At best a change in the base model to the 6c version whilst keeping the same prices.

Now, I hope Apple prove me wrong, before I go buy a cylinder

Nox

brand said:

The Mac Pro is a workstation and not a consumer computer so it is pointless comparing it to a consumer anything. How does that consumer CPU stack up against the Xeon in the Mac Pro for heavy and extended usage or when ECC comes into play, it doesn't.

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The CPU technology used in the Mac Pro is already out of date. The fact they're intended for different markets doesn't alter that. And Xeons are basically the same CPU as non-Xeons. There's nothing special about them compared to the non-Xeon parts. Intel has merely decided to offer different feature sets.

AidenShaw said:

The Xeon is the consumer CPU with ECC. For the former, it's the same (but faster). For the latter it's the same until you get a memory error. (Hint - any Core i7 on the 2011 socket is a Xeon with ECC disabled.)

It's not "pointless" to compare the two - as long as you consider other factors.

And as far as the importance of ECC - no MacBook or Imac has ECC memory, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.... (And the MP6,1 disables ECC memory in the GPUs.)

I like ECC - but if Apple disables it for the ATI GPUs it must not be that critical.

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my rule of thumb- if you're not sure whether ECC memory is critical or not, you don't need it.
Some people do, but not everyone.

sickntired said:

Are you sure it's supposed to be faster by 25-50%? That's a lot. Usually with generation updates, it's maybe 10-15% faster but I certainly could be wrong.

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As someone already pointed out, it could be a significant increase simply based on core count alone. If the base model gets bumped to a 6-core, then that's 2 more cores you'd be getting by default. But that really only matters if the user can take advantage of them, because clock speed isn't changing much.

The real problem lies with using the term "faster" so ambiguously. What's faster? What's that exactly mean?

AidenShaw said:

It's not "pointless" to compare the two - as long as you consider other factors.

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It is pointless if we're just talking about workstations, or more specifically the mac pro. It doesn't matter where the consumer chips are at if Xeons are the only ones being used in the machines. So if it's using the most current batch of Xeons, then they're not outdated.

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reco2011 said:

The CPU technology used in the Mac Pro is already out of date. The fact they're intended for different markets doesn't alter that. And Xeons are basically the same CPU as non-Xeons. There's nothing special about them compared to the non-Xeon parts. Intel has merely decided to offer different feature sets.

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They're not out of date if there is no newer version to be put in there. Doesn't matter where non-Xeon parts are. Apple is not using consumer chips in the mac pro. So it's not out of date.

handsome pete said:

It is pointless if we're just talking about workstations, or more specifically the mac pro. It doesn't matter where the consumer chips are at if Xeons are the only ones being used in the machines. So if it's using the most current batch of Xeons, then they're not outdated.

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They're not out of date if there is no newer version to be put in there. Doesn't matter where non-Xeon parts are. Apple is not using consumer chips in the mac pro. So it's not out of date.

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Thanks for making the point better than I was able to.

handsome pete said:

They're not out of date if there is no newer version to be put in there. Doesn't matter where non-Xeon parts are. Apple is not using consumer chips in the mac pro. So it's not out of date.

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I specifically said:

"The CPU technology used in the Mac Pro is already out of date"

There exists improved technology in use today. That doesn't mean the Xeons are bad but they're not using the latest technology.

reco2011 said:

"The CPU technology used in the Mac Pro is already out of date"

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And we said that's irrelevant since this thread is asking about the Mac Pro.

goMac said:

It depends. The current Mac Pros tend to last a while, but consumers who bought the Power Mac G5 or the 2006-2007 Mac Pros got about 2-4 years before they were outdated, which is pretty average.

The pro Macs have stabilized, no huge architecture changes coming so far, and 64 bit EFI. But the Mac Pro can go out of date pretty fast sometimes. They're powerful, but if the underlying technology moves ahead (like when the PowerPC to Intel change happened), you've still got a problem. After the Intel switch, the Power Mac G5 only got one more OS update and then they were done.

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There's still billable work being done at my office on two 2007 2,1 Mac Pros. They're certainly showing their age when it comes to video editing, but they'd still be fairly good if we'd done more upgrades (they're all running 16GB of RAM, spinning hard drives, and 512MB graphics.)

Macs and professional computers are definitely advancing slower than consumer portable tech. Getting 7 years of professional work out of a computer is a greater ROI. You should still be able to get something good out of the 2012 or 2013 Macs.

My bet is a late 2014/early 2015 release of the Haswell Mac Pros.

reco2011 said:

I specifically said:

"The CPU technology used in the Mac Pro is already out of date"

There exists improved technology in use today. That doesn't mean the Xeons are bad but they're not using the latest technology.

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Haswell is only about 5-10% faster than Ivy Bridge (for CPU) on CONSUMER processors. Thus, even if there was a Haswell Xeon (which there is not), saying that it is "out of date" is hardly true. It might not be the newest architecture, but it holds its own against the newest. At 5-10%, most users would never even notice and even in renderings you are looking at maybe shaving a couple minutes off an hour long encoding.

Truthfully, even Sandy Bridge holds its own against Haswell. Heck as we have seen comparing the 2010/2012 Westmere based Mac Pros, even they hold their own against the new Ivy Bridge based Mac Pros.

Sadly we have only seen minor 5% increases from generation to generation since the i-series processors were introduced. Most of the increases have come from the iGPU's which are not used in Xeon processors anyway. Yes we have seen an increase in CPU cores jammed into one die, but not an increase as it pertains to a single core processing power.

paulrbeers said:

Haswell is only about 5-10% faster than Ivy Bridge (for CPU) on CONSUMER processors. Thus, even if there was a Haswell Xeon (which there is not), saying that it is "out of date" is hardly true. It might not be the newest architecture, but it holds its own against the newest. At 5-10%, most users would never even notice and even in renderings you are looking at maybe shaving a couple minutes off an hour long encoding.

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That comparison isn't really accurate, because on Haswell the core counts will all jump again. Sure, each core may only be 5-10% faster, but if the base model moves to six cores, that's going to be about 60% faster than the previous model, not 5-10% faster.

I don't think the current Mac Pro is a bad machine at all, or slow, but let's be realistic here. Haswell-E is getting a core count boost from all the info we've heard so far.

Something else to consider is the motherboard in this thing. It was a pretty radical change from a design standpoint. Usually they like to recoup costs associated with development before they have to re-tool things. --Someone else mentioned mac mini being long in the tooth...could be the reason.

Another thing to consider is while the new socket may be faster, a new 6c version will still lose to a 12c old version in practical computing.

In technology everything is outdated by the time you pick it up off the shelf. That's how it works. But from a pure design aspect, this thing is light years ahead of it's competition. Nothing at all outdated about this CAN.