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MP 7,1 7,1 Bros: We're headed into 2025. How are we feeling?

avro707 said:
I’ve seen worse 7,1 machines! 😉 They are effective at collecting dust.



It’s interesting to do it. But nowadays it’s just too expensive. Better just forget about gaming completely.

If I’m honest, the only “game” I regularly use is Zwift, but I avoid the gamified parts of it. I don’t touch anything else now.

We have to do our bit to conserve RAM, GPUs and storage for those all important AI operations…. (rolls eyes)
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If I put my old RAM (32GB) and GPU back (580X MPX) and sell my RAM and GPU on eBay I can probably get back over $2000 if I sell this Mac Pro. Apple is offering $1200 or so for trade in with my serial number when I was testing the Mac Studio trade-in. I can sell the RAM and GPU separately.

I don't think I can forget gaming, I'd like to have that option and I don't own any consoles I prefer PC gaming via Steam etc.
 
For PC to Mac screen sharing on your LAN, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, Moonlight (client) with Sunshine (server) is one of the best options and is open source and free. Fast enough for gaming although you might want a wired connection rather than WiFi for serious gaming. Commercial options are better if you’re trying to do remote sharing or you want a simple install but I’ve been using this approach since bootcamp went away.
 
edanuff said:
For PC to Mac screen sharing on your LAN,.... using this approach since bootcamp went away.
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Sigh...
The Intel Mac Pro 7,1 is quite capable of running games on Windows 10/11. Can even fit the nvidia RTX 4090 FE version, and AMD's own RX 6900 XTX. Cards from other vendors tend to be to long.
 
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avro707 said:
It’s interesting to do it. But nowadays it’s just too expensive. Better just forget about gaming completely.
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Indeed, everything on the PC side is going up in price, even the CPUs.

Intel is reportedly preparing yet another CPU price hike, adding to the previous increases implemented in February and March.

...
edited to limit the text, as it relates to new PC hardware
 
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Intel's going to find a whole bunch of people saying that used or current systems are fast enough. Can't wait to see these executives start jumping out of windows when stock prices crash. Greedy SOBs.
 
edanuff said:
For PC to Mac screen sharing on your LAN, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, Moonlight (client) with Sunshine (server) is one of the best options and is open source and free. Fast enough for gaming although you might want a wired connection rather than WiFi for serious gaming. Commercial options are better if you’re trying to do remote sharing or you want a simple install but I’ve been using this approach since bootcamp went away.
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Try Parsec the free version is pretty good and you should see low lag on LAN. Just tested it on my M1 Max + Mac Pro (Windows) it's not bad.

 
Flint Ironstag said:
Intel's going to find a whole bunch of people saying that used or current systems are fast enough. Can't wait to see these executives start jumping out of windows when stock prices crash. Greedy SOBs.
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Intel is doing well in the laptop market and servers, both of which have always been their bread and butter.
 
Speaking of cases, I was very impressed by the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra.
The version with the Ultra 9 285HX processor comes with a 25GbE SFP+ card that also includes two additional M.2 slots. The case is very small, but it also has a PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot where I installed a 16GB Blackwell RTX 2000 Pro, which runs on 75W without needing an additional power cable, even though there is one in the case.
There are four SO-DIMM RAM slots (which can be ECC with the 285HX) and two M.2 slots directly on the motherboard. The reason I'm mentioning it is because it's exactly what I was looking for in a Mac Pro or Mac Studio: something upgradeable with PCIe slots and available M2 storages.
 
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Mac3Duser said:
Speaking of cases, I was very impressed by the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra.
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That's pretty squarely within the "x-mac" space - a really good amount of room for upgrades of all major systems. Maybe going a bit larger in the case to have a less crowded design would be an advantage, but definitely in a sweet spot in terms of slots, memory, storage etc.
 
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Mac3Duser said:
Speaking of cases, I was very impressed by the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra.
The version with the Ultra 9 285HX processor comes with a 25GbE SFP+ card that also includes two additional M.2 slots. The case is very small, but it also has a PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot where I installed a 16GB Blackwell RTX 2000 Pro, which runs on 75W without needing an additional power cable, even though there is one in the case.
There are four SO-DIMM RAM slots (which can be ECC with the 285HX) and two M.2 slots directly on the motherboard. The reason I'm mentioning it is because it's exactly what I was looking for in a Mac Pro or Mac Studio: something upgradeable with PCIe slots and available M2 storages.
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Damn that is a sweet kit. Can you tell me the physical dimensions? Can't seem to find them on the web site.
 
Flint Ironstag said:
xMac getting a lot of mentions lately. 🤣
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An xMac, with a slot for a SoC daughtercard (that also has secondary RAM slots and a minimum of two M.2 SSD slots), and three or four PCIe slots for assorted cards, with the ability to slot in Apple GPU/NPU daughtercards; now that would be pretty cool... ;^p
 
Flint Ironstag said:
xMac getting a lot of mentions lately. 🤣
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The xMac was classically a headless 27" iMac. Apple already did that using a different name.

Gurman floated a "half sized Mac Pro" rumor for a long while. ( LoL; until the full sized Mac Pro appeared. )
The folks hoping that 1/2 the size would mean 1/2 the price probably would get disappointed. Doubtful Apple is going to crank up fratricide of the Studio ( or 'Mini Pro' ) any higher than they did for the 27" iMac.

There are 'xMac' products already on the market.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmac-mini-2024/overview.html

xMac Studio - SONNETTECH

3U rackmount enclosure for securely installing one Mac Studio, with optional PCIe expansion modules, in a standard 19-inch rack.
www.sonnettech.com www.sonnettech.com

At this point the 'xMac' name is gone from other vendors.
 
deconstruct60 said:
The xMac was classically a headless 27" iMac. Apple already did that using a different name.
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The xMac was the community name for a wished-for, but never realised, compact Mac tower with a reasonable level of expandability (in particular, the GPU). Essentially, an mATX PC that runs macOS.

The 27" iMac was an xMac only in price. The Studio is closer, since it's designed to work with the user's choice of monitor(s). But AS's lack of PCIe GPU support makes it moot in this role. A point only underlined by refusing to give it internal M.2 storage slots, for which there's plenty of space (if perhaps not PCIe lanes).
 
mode11 said:
The xMac was the community name for a wished-for, but never realised, compact Mac tower with a reasonable level of expandability (in particular, the GPU). Essentially, an mATX PC that runs macOS.
Click to expand...

I would say the xMac was the wish for a return to the pre-Mac Pro era Power Mac style chassis, with modern (for the time) components, and coming in at a lower price point than the Mac Pros...
 
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deconstruct60 said:
The xMac was classically a headless 27" iMac. Apple already did that using a different name.

Gurman floated a "half sized Mac Pro" rumor for a long while. ( LoL; until the full sized Mac Pro appeared. )
The folks hoping that 1/2 the size would mean 1/2 the price probably would get disappointed. Doubtful Apple is going to crank up fratricide of the Studio ( or 'Mini Pro' ) any higher than they did for the 27" iMac.

There are 'xMac' products already on the market.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmac-mini-2024/overview.html

xMac Studio - SONNETTECH

3U rackmount enclosure for securely installing one Mac Studio, with optional PCIe expansion modules, in a standard 19-inch rack.
www.sonnettech.com www.sonnettech.com

At this point the 'xMac' name is gone from other vendors.
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The xMac concept absolutely was not a headless 27? iMac. How do you arrive at that conclusion? Go back and read every xMac mention in this forum - overwhelmingly it's a slightly reduced Mac Pro tower. It must have a couple of PCIe slots and easily upgradeable internal storage.

Headless iMac??? That's a mini or studio.

Also I'm glad that Sonnet solution exists, because options are good. But let's be real here, it's a kludge that had to exist and is no xMac.
 
Boil said:
I would say the xMac was the wish for a return to the pre-Mac Pro era Power Mac style chassis, with modern (for the time) components, and coming in at a lower price point than the Mac Pros...
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100%. The old G3/4 tower design was essentially mATX, just without the airflow.
 
Flint Ironstag said:
The xMac concept absolutely was not a headless 27? iMac. How do you arrive at that conclusion?
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The only way that definition makes sense, is from the perspective of a machine with the sorts of component ranges the iMac used - consumer i series processors rather than Xeons, non ECC ram etc. But equating that with the iMac itself, with soldered / mobile components is completely missing the point.

The concept has always been a consumer-grade slotbox, like the Powermac 6400/6500 as compared to the
"professional" 8500/8600 and 9500/9600. Memory, graphics, processor all on user-serviceable, standard slots.

Pretending the concept was anything other than that (eg a soldered CPU, or proprietary / mobile / soldered GPU), is just a way to set it up for a strawman about how it's not much better than what Apple already made.
 
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Flint Ironstag said:
Makes me wonder what xMac 2019 could've been:

1 MPX slot
1 double wide slot
1 single wide slot
1 i/o card

starts at $2.7k. Think they could have shifted a few units?
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Tbh, I’m glad they didn’t. I might have gone for something like that at one time (perhaps second hand). It would have just staved off the inevitable, though, which was to move to PC. Even this mythical, best-case Mac still wouldn’t support Nvidia cards, would almost certainly be overpriced and they’d find a way to gimp it. It therefore wouldn’t move the needle on Mac 3D apps and games, and the world would just carry on with Windows.


Its only advantage would be macOS. But in a field of mature OS’s, that’s not the differentiator it used to be.
 
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