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Apple Allowed Developers to Test a Prerelease Mac Pro Hidden Inside a Metal Box

mslide said:
Not when all they did was run some software on it in a test lab. Big difference between simple tests like that and how something really works when it's in the field... especially when a couple/few years have passed. Plus, they didn't see what it actually looked like when they were in the lab. According to the article, they thought it was the same form factor as the old Mac Pro.
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Say what? You just want to argue you don't like the new MacPro, I get it, but that was a pretty stupid comment.

"Run software in a test lab"... yeah, DOING REAL WORLD 3D artistry for Pixar testing against things they do ALL THE TIME. They didn't run a damn benchmark application.

Seriously, you have trouble understanding that? Or do you just want to make excuses for why you continue to hate on it?

Why would it matter what the users "thought" the machine would look like? It did what they needed it to do, better than the out-of-the-box hardware they currently use at Pixar.
 
ThisIsNotMe said:
Huh? The MacMini is the Mac you are looking for.
The Mac Mini is the Mac.
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Actually, it's not. The Mac Mini is non-upgradable (possibly a non-issue now, though) and, more importantly, uses an integrated graphics chip, not a discreet graphics card, making it non-suitable for gaming.
 
akdj said:
the old days of drawing each and every frame has changed drastically with digital animation and 'drawing'. I'm looking forward to tests with Smoke, Premier and Avid. I'm sure it'll be 'optimized' for full on incredible efficiency in FCPx. We'll see how it works with After Effects and other company's offerings for motion production. But seeing as how this machine is going to shoot straight for Hollywood...all the way down to the independent producer/director/editor/sound guy/gal....with PCI-e Storage and 6 Thunderbolt outputs...this computer could change the way rendering farms are set up...as well as the one man operation knocking out weddings and documentaries.
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I'm also interested to see software benchmarks once this gets released. But I don't see this really invading Hollywood in the way you claim. I see it more like the direction they went with FCPX. I see this doing better with the single user/small shop.

I'm not sure how you think this could change render farms.

akdj said:
It's size, allowing for several....if not dozens of machines in the same footprint as a pair or 3 traditional MacPros.
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Dozens? :rolleyes:
 
mozumder said:
Doesn't make sense.

There really is no middle ground between Mac Mini & Mac Pro. (an iMac is a Mac Mini with a display.) You're either doing compute intensive work, or lightweight UI work. There is no such thing as "medium" work.

What you want is a Mac Mini (or iMac). Get it. It's plenty fast, and does everything you need, and is cheap.
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The Mac Mini uses a laptop processor.

The iMac uses a desktop processor.

The iMac is NOT a Mac Mini with a display.
 
mozumder said:
Again, if the GPU is important, get a Mac Pro. It has the 2 fastest GPUs they can possibly get.

You either need a fast GPU, or you don't need a GPU. There really is no application for a mid-level GPU.

Can you name a use-model for a mid-range GPU? (and macs aren't used for games.. if you wanted games, you would have gotten a PC)
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This is utterly simplistic and just plain wrong. A mid-level GPU (ie. something in between an integrated chip and a workstation chip) is what anyone who uses their computer for gaming needs, and yes there are many of us who do. Don't presume to tell someone else what they do or do not need just because you don't happen to see a use for something.
 
After mulling it over for a while I am starting to really warm to the idea of this machine; the Thunderbolt price point clearly isn't there for cheaply adding expansion, but there are a lot of good USB 3.0 enclosures with and without RAID for inexpensively adding storage; it might not be as fast as Thunderbolt for capacity storage HDDs don't really exceed 150 Mb/sec so USB 3.0 is fast enough for 4-drive RAID-0 (or 8 in RAID-10) so things aren't as bad as I first feared upon reading about the move to external only. Plus if you combine such a USB 3.0 drive into a Fusion Drive with the Mac Pro's internal storage then it should perform pretty damned well with zero management.

Plus the new Mac Pro kind of fits into a professional setup in a similar way to the Mac Mini; in that you should just be able to upgrade later on, but keep all your existing storage and peripherals as they are (and upgrade them separately). The only problem with that is that Fusion Drive kind of breaks that; it's why I'd really like Apple to also add a proper read/write cache mechanism as well, e.g - by expanding Fusion Drive, so that way you can just shut down to ensure data is written out, swap in the new machine, add its internal drive as a new cache disk and continue right where you left off.


I'm still a bit concerned about internal upgrades; it looks like it wouldn't be impossible for Apple to offer the boards as upgradeable modules; it could be even more interesting if this (or a future) generation could swap a GPU for a second CPU board with another four RAM slots (if they'd fit) to make the machine more customisable via build to order. The four slots are my other issue, as 8 gives you a lot more freedom in how you add RAM to your machine, meanwhile this one will presumably come with two slots filled as standard, which means you've only got one upgrade before you're replacing existing sticks of RAM. I hope in future they can find a way to squeeze eight slots in, even if they stick with the single processor.


I do love the thermal core idea though; it's like being able to individually cool components, but with only a single fan. Very awesome.

But yeah, the storage issue may not be too bad, if the new Mac Pro is even a couple of hundred pounds less in cost then it won't be more expensive in practice to get one and throw a heap of drives at it. If it is cheaper that is, since one less CPU ought to cut costs a bit, much smaller case, the extra GPU is a worry for the cost though, as even with a great deal they won't be that cheap. Only one piece of storage might cut costs a tiny bit (though it's Apple so… eh…).
 
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ThunderSkunk said:
The engineering firm I just came from across town has a room full of 2002-2003 era Dell machines with 2GB of ram in them each, running a 6 year old version of solidworks. The architecture firms we compete with are using Autocad 14 and Acad 2000 on computers from that era as well.

By comparison, real-time rendering complex assemblies with thousands of 3D parts on current, fully loaded 27" iMacs, even with resources cut in half by the VM, is still utterly freaking science fiction to anyone who visits our office or is fortunate enough to work in it. ...laptop-spec or not.

Some of you are spoiled as hell.
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That part about the Dell's made me shoot coffee all over my desk; do those guys work in a computer museum?:rolleyes:

I've seen some of that too. Moronic is the best way to describe it.

I felt bad about running Solidworks 2013 on a Lenovo D20 (Dual E5649's which are hex core Xeon's) that I picked up last winter as a refurb. Pretty much the same configuration as the current Mac pro.

I felt bad because I get nothing but grief from friends for still running a PC, but it was way cheaper than the current Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro is going to be exactly what us SolidWorks users need, as long as Parallels runs well with the AMD graphics, which it will at some point.
 
Clocknova said:
This is utterly simplistic and just plain wrong. A mid-level GPU (ie. something in between an integrated chip and a workstation chip) is what anyone who uses their computer for gaming needs, and yes there are many of us who do. Don't presume to tell someone else what they do or do not need just because you don't happen to see a use for something.
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There is no application for a mid-level GPU. You either need a GPU, or you don't.

And, for anyone trying to game on a Mac, lolz, good luck with that. Nobody uses the Mac for gaming, so that's a non-issue. And if they do, they're happy with the built-in GPU of an iMac.

But, if you do want to game, the new Mac Pro will probably be the greatest gaming machine ever...

Boot it up in Windows mode, and you're good to go. The GPUs are top-of-the line, and the Xeon server CPUs are generally faster than anything consumer-grade.

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TMay said:
That part about the Dell's made me shoot coffee all over my desk; do those guys work in a computer museum?:rolleyes:

I've seen some of that too. Moronic is the best way to describe it.

I felt bad about running Solidworks 2013 on a Lenovo D20 (Dual E5649's which are hex core Xeon's) that I picked up last winter as a refurb. Pretty much the same configuration as the current Mac pro.

I felt bad because I get nothing but grief from friends for still running a PC, but it was way cheaper than the current Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro is going to be exactly what us SolidWorks users need, as long as Parallels runs well with the AMD graphics, which it will at some point.
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I still use a 10-year old PowerMac G5 for photography. Never needed to upgrade it. Connect a medium format camera for capture in it and it works just the same as it did 10 years ago!
 
bennibeef said:
If you are a "pro" in sense you are an professional programmer, any of the macs can do the job just fine. Which iphone developer need a mac pro? none.
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Don't presume to know what professional programmers need. Most of us are not developing iPhone apps. Many of us work in enterprises that have large development environments needing multiple virtual machines running at the same time. Not just some text editor or IDE and a web browser. A retina MacBook Pro with 16GB strains under the load.

More CPUs, more cores, faster storage, and more RAM is always welcome.
 
mozumder said:
And, for anyone trying to game on a Mac, lolz, good luck with that. Nobody uses the Mac for gaming, so that's a non-issue. And if they do, they're happy with the built-in GPU of an iMac.
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You are uninformed about the current state of gaming on the Mac.
 
mozumder said:
There is no application for a mid-level GPU. You either need a GPU, or you don't.

And, for anyone trying to game on a Mac, lolz, good luck with that. Nobody uses the Mac for gaming, so that's a non-issue. And if they do, they're happy with the built-in GPU of an iMac.

But, if you do want to game, the new Mac Pro will probably be the greatest gaming machine ever...

Boot it up in Windows mode, and you're good to go. The GPUs are top-of-the line, and the Xeon server CPUs are generally faster than anything consumer-grade.

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I still use a 10-year old PowerMac G5 for photography. Never needed to upgrade it. Connect a medium format camera for capture in it and it works just the same as it did 10 years ago!
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I literally don't know what to say to you. You've just told me that I don't exist. Cogito, ergo. . . ?
 
bennibeef said:
Dropping PCI cards shifts everything to Thunderbolt. And like we all know Thunderbolt support right now isnt the best. Now the Hardware manufacturers have to deal with Thunderbolt, because no OSX user can now use their PCI cards.

This helps everyone, especially everyone who doesnt need a mac pro. Just take Pro Tools. For big system you always needed the the cards. Now you take your cards in some 3rd party case or Avid is going to make more Thunderbolt devices which can be used with a Mac Pro, a Mac Mini Macbook.. you call it. Isnt that what everyone wanted with Thunderbolt?
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From what I understand, Thunderbolt doesn't have the bandwidth requirement for some higher end graphics stuff, so expansion chassis won't cut it in those situations.
 
mozumder said:
And, for anyone trying to game on a Mac, lolz, good luck with that. Nobody uses the Mac for gaming, so that's a non-issue. And if they do, they're happy with the built-in GPU of an iMac.
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So I just imagined playing Civ 5 a few minutes ago?
 
Clocknova said:
I literally don't know what to say to you. You've just told me that I don't exist. Cogito, ergo. . . ?
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It was just an outright lazy and silly statement. It's also absurd to believe that all PC gaming today takes place on custom built desktops and expensive graphics cards. Most gaming takes place on fairly low end laptops, therefore PC gamers are already making do with low end GPUs.

The issue with Mac gaming was never the hardware. It was the software support, and the last few years have seen tremendous growth on that front.
 
I watched the Painting the Future video last night on my iPad through the WWDC app. It was definitely more of a "Here's Mari running on OS X" type of keynote. And it seemed to me to be really all about the software. The hardware was kind of secondary in the keynote.

And really, when the guy from Pixar said he had never seen Mari run as fast as it did on the Mac Pro, that doesn't really say too much. Early on the guy from Mari said that studios typically don't put dual GPUs in their artists' machines. Which makes sense, especially since dual Quadros or FirePros are a lot less common than their gaming counterparts. But right off the bat, because the Mac Pro has dual FirePros, of course it is going to be faster. This is just a testament to dual GPUs being faster than one.... And considering you can put dual GPUs in most workstations, that's not really saying much about the new Mac Pro.

So of course the Mac Pro was faster than his workstation at Pixar. Mainly because it was already said that most won't have dual GPUs, and that one did have dual GPUs. So if you were to build a computer with dual FirePro W9000s, the same Xeon CPU, all running on a PCIe SSD, it will run just as smooth.

All this keynote did is say that Mari runs faster on faster components. And the thing they obviously didn't say is that these same components can be used to build your own computer. So basically, this speed they kept talking about is in no way exclusive to the Mac Pro. It is exclusive to dual high-end FirePros, an insane Intel Xeon CPU, and a PCIe SSD, all of which are available to anybody who knows how to use Newegg or Amazon.
 
mabhatter said:
My guess is $1995 and/or $2495. Apple really likes that price point for the flagship Mac product.
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$2000 would be a revelation, but I don't think so. $2500 would be nice, but my wild guess is that we'll see the entry level it creep up to $2799.

I want to be wrong.
 

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G4DP said:
So basically they are saying the software is running faster?

Really, who would have thought it. A brand new computer running faster than an old one.
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They said it ran faster than they have ever seen. Obviously they have new computers at Pixar too.
 
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