We can afford it and make money from it in one project alone. When the new ARM comes out, we will invest in that next and replace these ones.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Now Offering Radeon Pro W5500X for Mac Pro
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
We can afford it and make money from it in one project alone. When the new ARM comes out, we will invest in that next and replace these ones.
Here's the thing; When Apple started the design and development work on the new Mac Pro, they obviously knew about the shift towards Apple Silicon Macs. So logical conclusion is that this Mac Pro is designed with Apple Silicon in mind.
This is not a discussion thread for CPUs. This is a discussion thread regarding the Radeon Pro W5500X GPU.
I just bought the 16-Core Mac Pro and put 160 Gb of RAM in it.I’m not worried about ARM Macs at all. There’s no way ARM will beat this machine in the 5 years I expect to keep mine. (Save this post in case I have to eat my words).
But seriously, the 160 GB of RAM is killer. I’m constantly at around 100 Gb used. (I’m running a few VMs, [Linux, and macOS at all times, and a Windows VM occasionally).
Apple doesn’t want to sell any more of these than they are already selling. The whole point of the price is to dissuade people from buying it because they know it’s going away. They didn’t want to release it in the first place, but the iMac Pro did not quiet people down enough and they had no choice, so they made it as expensive enough only the Pros that need it would actually buy it.
I agree on both points. W5700X and 1TB should be base. They aren't giving justice to the Workstation and are just giving a wrong impression on this machine across both PC and Apple users.
With all due respect, why would you think that? It doesn't make sense to invest two to three years of time and resources coming up with a machine that's going to be going away soon.
I expect the Mac Pro to get the developer transition kit’s Mac mini treatment, i.e. a brain transplant... the Intel Mac Pro replaced with Apple ARM versions.
But I’m pretty sure the current Intel Mac Pro will be in demand even 5-7 years out.
Yes, it does seem counterintuitive for Apple to do that, but this is the same company that gave us the quad-core G5 right before the Mac Pro which also incorporated the first ever use of PCIe in a Mac, which could have easily waited until Apple released the Mac Pro in 2006 considering every previous G5 had PCI-X. Why would Apple do that knowing that this G5 would be a one-off and unlikely to sell very many units, but yet Apple did it.
I suspect Apple is going to make an AS version of the Mac Pro that is essentially this very same Mac Pro, but with PCIe 4.0 (or 5.0) and USB 4, but knew the market for this Intel model was going to be short lived and they priced it high enough to keep it from becoming too widespread a seller. And/Or to recoup their investment as quickly as possible.
Given the pent up demand for a $3000 Mac Pro slot box from the crowd still modding the older 2009-2012 models, Apple wanted to avoid a riot by that crowd announcing 6 months after the Mac Pro went on sale that it was going away in 24 months. Those value buyers would lose their collective minds versus a much smaller group of Pros who will recoup the actual cost of their investment with a few client projects. Hence the very video focused bent of this system. If you have a better theory, I’m all ears!
Exactly and I encourage Apple to refresh more often that the last 6 year wait we had to endure. We make money off our MacPros. Happy to invest into Apple every few years in return for a more future proof model. Maybe the next one could last the ten years as this was intended too. Kudos to them for MP19. Its a fine piece of engineering.
Makes more sense. That's what I was expecting as well. The way I read your previous post was that Apple was going to ditch the current Mac Pro form factor in favor of a brand new one with Apple Silicon.
[automerge]1593645383[/automerge]
Same here.
I don’t think it’s that complicated 🙂 From at least sometime in 2016 or early 2017 at the latest for Mac Pro, Apple knew they were doing iMac Pro and Mac Pro (maybe 2015 for the iMac Pro).
They knew they could crank out the iMac Pro faster; it was nearly ready to go by the time they had the journalist round table about the Mac Pro in April 2017. By that point they also had a decent idea of the transition timetable for in-house CPUs.
The Mac Pro at $6k is priced pretty much right where it should be. $5k would be better and sure, $4k awesome. But Apple has a reasonably high cost structure and it’s going to be tough to get below $5k I think, even with Apple silicon.
I don’t think we’ll ever see the $3k slot box. Despite what those who want it think, the volume isn’t there imho. (iirc you don’t expect that product from Apple either?)
but the future of the Mac Pro probably influences some decisions on how much money someone puts into upgrades.
Gatekeepers not needed. If you think a post is improper, report it.
The Card is a custom design Pro card for Apple. All Pro cards with the X at the end are Apple ASIC only cards.
Sorry, that wasn’t my intent. The pure overbuilt, modular nature of the Mac Pro chassis would be completely wasted if Apple were to use it for only one iteration of hardware. They reused the G5 enclosure with the 2006-2012 Mac Pros with just reworking the internals, and I expect nothing less from Apple in the near future.
Given that the LGA-3467 socket is dead to Intel (thanks, jackasses), there is not likely to be a future CPU upgrade path for the 2019 Mac Pro, but I can see Apple creating a motherboard that Apple could offer Mac Pro users to swap from Intel to AS, although there is ZERO precedent for Apple doing so. However, I do see an AS successor to the Mac Pro with an insane core count CPU as soon as Apple is able to to do so. Johny Srouji had a very evil gleam in his eye that tells me he wants to stick it to Intel. But that’s just me. I am looking forward to seeing where this goes.
5 years is a long time to not have workstation....
[automerge]1593651620[/automerge]
Utter rubbish.
I don't pretend to be an engineer, but I can't see how this would be possible. The platform is based around an Intel socket and chipset, and even if it was technically possible (doubtful), pretty sure there would be countless licencing issues that would kill the whole idea.
If it is five years. Anyone else notice that Apple said "planning on" rather than "will".
Also, if someone needs a workstation, they will get one.
It's more of a question now on what to get and how much money to put into it.
They could do whole-motherboard swaps; not sure if it would be worth it though.
No, I don't think we’ll ever see a $3K slot box, Intel or AS. However, I actually think that once Intel and/or Apple embraces a higher speed interconnect using PCIe 4.0 (or 5.0), call it Thunderbolt 5, the need for anything other than the high end Mac Pro’s very small niche use cases becomes almost moot. Most users want a high powered MacBook Pro or iMac for their Pro needs, and may want and sometimes need a select few PCIe devices, mostly GPUs. There are some benefits for Apple moving to PCIe 4.0/5.0, especially storage, Afterburner and GPUs. The question is that outside of niche cases with multiple PCIe card needs, will the AS powered Macs (MBP, iMac and mini) obviate the need for external expansion options outside of storage for 4K/8K editing? All these things are so unknown right now, but the Mac Pro will live on.
I actually applaud Apple expanding the Mac Pro ecosystem and adding all the user installable parts and options, which I haven’t seen from Apple. My issue is that Apple’s gaze too often moves away and lets these things languish to the detriment of themselves. They are being really coy and I hope some candor comes when they unveil AS powered Macs and they give a bit more of a roadmap for Pros concerning the iMac Pro and Mac Pro future, just to help keep that Pro continent that Apple does really need, as acerbic and cantankerous as they can be.
I’m excited, but have a little trepidation over Apple’s past rough five or so years of non-committal commitment to the Mac. That being said, I can do 80% of what I need to do on an iPad Pro, but that last 20% is all Mac and a hard stop until iPadOS matures a bit more. Fun times lay ahead.
[automerge]1593654741[/automerge]
Tell me how it works...
Apple wanted to keep the numbers small to dissuade those who are too causal with $3K but then tend to complain bitterly that they dropped $3K when Apple announces the move to AS that they were cheated. They’re out there, on this very forum, and Apple made sure most wouldn’t bite, price structures notwithstanding. Hell, there was a fair number who thought $2,500 was the right price and they were apoplectic and/or moved to Windows, threatened to build a Hackintosh, etc.
That chassis isn’t done paying for itself, but it is done with any further Intel CPU updates.
Last edited: