8TB SSD and Radeon Pro W5700X Upgrade Options Coming to Mac Pro

[MacRumors]

Apple today released the Mac Pro, its high-end modular desktop machine designed for professional users. While the base Mac Pro machine is priced starting at $5,999, there are many other upgrade options available.

Right now, the Mac Pro maxes out at 4TB of SSD storage space, but in the future, Apple plans to expand that to 8TB. On the specs page, Apple says that an 8TB SSD storage option is "coming soon."

Pricing is not available on the component, but given that the 4TB option costs an additional $1,400, it's likely to be expensive. Apple first introduced 8TB SSD storage options in the MacBook Pro, and in that machine, the upgrade costs $2,200 over the base 1TB storage option.

Apple also currently provides Radeon Pro 580X, Radeon Pro Vega II, and Radeon Pro Vega II Duo graphics cards, but in the near future, Apple will also offer both a single or double Radeon Pro W5700X GPU with 16GB GDDR6 memory.

There is no word yet on pricing, and no clear information on when we can expect the new upgrade options to be available. Those who want the specific GPU or the 8TB of storage should wait to order.

Mac Pro models ordered today will ship out between December 19 and December 27.

Article Link: 8TB SSD and Radeon Pro W5700X Upgrade Options Coming to Mac Pro

 

[puckhead193]

dam was going to order today.. the waiting games continue 🙄

 

[randyhudson]

Luckily a professional machine like this uses industry standard components, so you can just go source an SSD from anywhere.

 

[rpmurray]

Wheels for the stainless steel frame, $400. Not as pricey as I thought they'd be.

 

[JosephAW]

Too bad they didn't add multiple SSD card slots on the unit to allow multiple drive cards.

 

[Sedulous]

Great, now make a consumer version please. Some people do not need a $3000 CPU but would like upgradability. Pretty please?

 

[centauratlas]

It would be nice to be able to order the low end and then upgrade various items oneself. Or in 4 years, upgrade something. I presume the motherboard/CPU wouldn't be upgradable so I'd probably max it out, but hopefully the drive, not just RAM.

 

[tkukoc]

I was going to get it and then I realized it wasn't dipped in gold and draped in diamonds.. easy pass. But seriously.. this isn't for most people out there... cool none the less to see how far technology has come.

 

[bpeeps]

Cue the comments from the 90% of people here who were never gonna buy it anyway.

 

[gugy]

Well the BTO prices were not as outrageous as I expected it to be. Still expensive.
I think I am going the MPB 16" and XDR/nano/stand route. Still a cool $11.5k....

 

[Velin]

This thing is stacked. Nice machine. Can also admit I won't take advantage of what this box has to offer. Better off upgrading my 27" iMacs, RAM, and my SSD external drives versus buying this. Between the box, monitor and stand, that is a lot of future iMacs.

 

[audiomatt]

Crossposted:

Everyone seems to be forgetting the mantra of buying a mac tower: Upgrade it yourself.

The CPU, GPU, Storage and Ram are all upgradable. buying the machine is smart. Paying apple to install stuff is NOT. You're going to use this machine for the next 15 years.

 

[Z400Racer37]

How much you wanna bet this "Pro" "Upgradable" machine is going to have some stupid BS proprietary connector on their storage so you have to pay 3x as much to buy it from Apple? You know. Because #Security. ...Or something. 👍🏼

 

[Freida]

How much better/faster is the Radeon Pro W5700X versus the current offering? Anyone knows, please?

 

[ajfahey]

I would buy a version with half the performance at half the price. Really no reason Apple couldn't do it. In fact, much of the design could be used for both product lines and the economy of scale they would get would result in lower prices, higher sales and higher profits all around.

 

[audiomatt]

How much you wanna bet this "Pro" "Upgradable" machine is going to have some stupid BS proprietary connector on their storage so you have to pay 3x as much to buy it from Apple? You know. Because #Security. ...Or something. 👍🏼

on the contrary, you're paying high on the base price for the flexibility. Look, their process was simple. They went to pros and asked what they wanted. They wanted a bare bones machine with upgrade paths out the wazoo. Apple went back to their bean counters and asked a simple question: How much money do we have to charge for the base configuration to make up for the fact that no one is going to max it out from us.

The only people maxing this out are showy rich people who don't know what they're doing. That's why they CLEARLY asked the press to advertise how expensive it was.

They're going to make tons of money off of rich boomers who walk into the apple store and buy "the one that's good for making videos." Meanwhile other people are going to upgrade it themselves.

 

[neuropsychguy]

How much better/faster is the Radeon Pro W5700X versus the current offering? Anyone knows, please?

No one knows for sure yet (I mean with actual performance rather than just posted specs) but it's going to be quite a bit better than the 580X and not quite as good as the Vega II. That's the option I'd go with if I was in the market.

It was just announced: https://www.globenewswire.com/fr/ne...h-Graphics-Performance-for-Apple-Mac-Pro.html

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

How much better/faster is the Radeon Pro W5700X versus the current offering? Anyone knows, please?

Stats on the Mac Pro product page.

W5700X is just under 10 teraflops, so in terms of raw computing power it sits nicely between the 580X (just under 6 teraflops) and the Pro Vega II.

 

[Freida]

Stats on the Mac Pro product page.

W5700X is just under 10 teraflops, so in terms of raw computing power it sits nicely between the 580X (just under 6 teraflops) and the Pro Vega II.

Oh nice, it must have been added recently as I haven't seen that before. : )

 

[AMP12345]

Well the BTO prices were not as outrageous as I expected it to be. Still expensive.
I think I am going the MPB 16" and XDR/nano/stand route. Still a cool $11.5k....

I just got a MBP 16" and that XDR display would look SO good with it. Don't think I can justify spending twice what I did on the computer for just a monitor though.

 

[swingerofbirch]

Luckily a professional machine like this uses industry standard components, so you can just go source an SSD from anywhere.

All of Apple's SSD blades so far have had proprietary connectors. I doubt that has changed for the Mac Pro. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Q-Dog]

And they offer this machine in a rack mount version? Hmmmmm.

 

[AppleZilla]

Got a 4TB SSD for my 16-inch MBP. So it's basically the same as a $50k+ Mac Pro, with a free monitor.

Heh...

 

[AlexMaximus]

How much better/faster is the Radeon Pro W5700X versus the current offering? Anyone knows, please?

The 580 is a two-year-old junk card. I would wait for the W5700X, - about twice as fast (5,6 vs 9,6 TFlops)
or
Go for the standard 580 and get a AMD VEGA 7 card on top of it. Who will be the first one to test the Vega 7 card inside the MP 7.1 - That's what I would like to know for us Pixlas folks...

 

[gugy]

I just got a MBP 16" and that XDR display would look SO good with it. Don't think I can justify spending twice what I did on the computer for just a monitor though.

I know, it's tough but if the XDR is a reliable and amazing like the two 30" ACD's that I still have after more than 12 years. It's worth IMO.