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 Reveals All-New Mac Pro With Up to 28-Core Processor and 1.5TB of RAM, Starting at $5,999
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Just saw the power plugs for 3rd party graphics cards. Sweet. The have those hidden behind their giant video card enclosures.
[doublepost=1559681813][/doublepost]
Sorry. That was sarcasm.
If you read in my signature, I posted my 2017 workstation build. If you check the specs, it's virtually the same specs as the 2019 base Mac Pro. Only, I spent 1/3 of the price on my workstation. ...and I could build that same machine now for $1,490. If I used the 9900K instead of the 7820x, it would only be $1,375. So less than 25% of the cost of the 2019 base Mac Pro. ...with better performance.
Seeing this 2019 Mac Pro release doesn't make me regret migrating to a Windows workstation for 2018 - it's a photo editing monster. ...and there's nothing the new Mac Pro could do for me that my current 8-current workstation can't do.
Last edited:
I was messaging a friend who runs a production studio about this same problem today. The iMac Pro, with external GPU / Storage solutions (internal storage just isn't a thing anymore, either large RAID enclosures on TB3 or server closets with 10gbps networking) was his fallback, and fit all of his needs, and will not be going with a Mac Pro. I think everyone's opinion of "entry level" is going to be different. If you have a $500k annual book of business and a few employees, are you entry level? Or is entry level a guy in his home office with a decent camera?
I know there are edge cases, but I'm stretching to see the real need of a entry level Mac Pro. Mac Mini + a smoking eGPU setup can be had for $2500, or they can grab a higher end iMac. Just trade in the machine when you need a better processor, instead of mucking around upgrading the internals. Next level up is an iMac Pro, which takes the 5k-10k range. Get a little more capacity and some expansion abilities. Now the Mac Pro is here, taking the 10K+ segment. Think about pro level camera + lens setups for a second, and realize smaller production houses have 50k in capture equipment at least. So spending a fraction on that for post processing doesn't seem that crazy.
Another thing to keep in mind, there has never been an "affordable" entry level Mac Pro. I think the G4 tower was the last time Apple put out an "affordable" tower, even the G5 after that began to be cost prohibitive for a entry level pro, unless amortized over a few years.
FYI, Windows 10 Pro/Home now lets you control auto-updates a lot. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsex...rience-with-control-quality-and-transparency/
Sure no NVIDIA support, but they would never build a custom card with the new PCI adapter to support thunderbolt (though just adding thunderbolt ports to the pc would have solved that, as will you just be able to replace the I/O card to add thunderbolt 4, since that would likely take cpu and motherboard support?)
Honestly as a video editor and Graphics artist the Afterburner card is the most interesting thing to me. Sure I would love if it would also accelerated BlackMagic RAW (yes a dual video card and quicktime/blackmagic accelerator would make a mint), but this sounds like a game changer. And I would love to know if I could run one via an external housing and thunderbolt 3 on my iMac pro even at half speed!
And the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo would also be amazing, though I am sure pretty expensive.
The display would be great, but is way too much for me ever. And high dpi displays eat too much ram I could be using for fx anyway.
Honestly as a video editor and Graphics artist the Afterburner card is the most interesting thing to me. Sure I would love if it would also accelerated BlackMagic RAW (yes a dual video card and quicktime/blackmagic accelerator would make a mint), but this sounds like a game changer. And I would love to know if I could run one via an external housing and thunderbolt 3 on my iMac pro even at half speed!
And the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo would also be amazing, though I am sure pretty expensive.
The display would be great, but is way too much for me ever. And high dpi displays eat too much ram I could be using for fx anyway.
BRAW is so fast as it is, I don't think it needs an acceleration card (right now, anyways).
I visited the demo area today, spoke to a few guys and they seemed to indicate that it’s not user swappable but obviously couldn’t confirm either way
[doublepost=1559691701][/doublepost]
I guess you’ve not tried to use a Mac Mini for entry level Pro work.. you’ll know how the CPU throttles under that.
I had to get some ML training done a few weeks back. The mini was throttling and eventually shut itself down. Was not impressed.
Often when I’m compiling things, I can tell it’s struggling.
One thing about these new Mac Pros is they are all W-class single processor configurations. That means that Intel is holding back the best Gold-class Xeon scalable from Apple. In theory a $200 Xeon Bronze could benchmark higher than a W-class. A sign of some pretty bad blood between Intel and Apple.
Well, their understanding of 'expandable' is very narrow: Expandable with proprietary components (again
-no way to put in 3rd party SSDs or any HDDs at all
-no way to swap the boot drive (and there seems to be no Mac now where you can do that?!)
-no way to put in your own 3rd party GPU and certainly no nvidia support
-no option without those expensive GPUs (yes, there are Pros doing no video work)
I like the machine, love the case and how it opens, but it's too narrowly – though impressively – tailored towards a specific purpose.
What? It won’t accept standard NVMe’s and other Radeon Vega GPUs? nVidia wasn’t going to happen so that’s not news to me. This would make the tower completely useless. I think we have to wait for an iFixit teardown before condemning it.
[doublepost=1559693045][/doublepost]
Well Tim Apple did publicly berate Intel for not delivering on time and costing Apple money. Maybe Intel just doesn’t have enough for Apple. They have to take care of their server customers.
Not interested in either:
Mac mini throttles. Soldered SSD is a no go, as is the intentionally difficult to exchange RAM, which, by the way, is not particularly fast since its notebook RAM.
Most importantly: The mini is a computer with a small footprint, its intended to be that way. Adding cables, enclosures, power bricks etc for eGPUs, external SSDs and stuff kind of makes the whole tiny/cableless computer idea pointless. eGPUs also are not exactly plug and play and there is a noticeable performance degradation.
What's more is that both the Mini as well as eGPUs are way to expensive for what they are. And, last but not least: no Nvidia support.
The Mac mini + eGPU thing is nothing but an ugly, flawed workaround for Apple not offering a "Mac Semi-Pro" or whatever you want to call it.
As for the iMac: Not an option either. For one: not upgradeable. Throttles or is downclocked from the outset. Finally: not an option for those who got their own displays and need a headless rig.
Last edited:
Spot on.
There are lots of photographers, designers and small-time video producers that have been waiting for a new Mac Pro for years. Upgradeability - and not raw power alone - is the major factor for most of those. A two tier solution with a more 'normal' specced version starting somewhere below $3000 would have sold 100x more than the $6000 version will. Going for a very small workstation dominated market that surely isn't running Apple hardware currently (assuming that raw power is key - something that Apple hasn't had on the menu for way too long) seems very odd to me. People that need this performance are already on other platforms and have been for years. Will they switch back? I have my doubts - especially if the price/performance mix isn't in Apple's favour.
With this launch it seems like Apple has largely given up the design/photo crowd. Not that odd maybe, most of the tools of the trade (e.g. Adobe) has been as good as identical on Mac/Windows for more than 10 years now. There is very little to gain - if anything - to run Indesign/Photoshop/Premiere and more on a Mac instead of a Windows machine these days.
Last edited:
$200 for a PSU is enough to get an amazing 1kW power supply or a good 1.3kW. Neither of which will be even 50% utilized by a base model Mac Pro spec. Under full load, you would be using less than 500W with just a 580 and a W-3223. But sure, add another $50-100 and get a 2kW PSU if you want. You're still at around 1/3rd of the Mac Pro base price. $50 is enough to buy an aluminum E-ATX case. Even a poorly designed one has no issues with thermal flow. And it includes fans. Any cables required are included with the motherboard. The factory heatsink/fan combo is perfectly fine, and there's no need to replace it. And I hate to break it to you, but EVERY enclosure is "custom designed". Just because Apple built one around one specific motherboard whereas every other case is built around a standard, doesn't mean that there wasn't a design team involved.
The motherboard specs a 205W CPU because that's the biggest one Intel makes. Every component here has a warranty. You don't have the custom controllers, granted. Go ahead and add $50 to the price for a Thunderbolt card. You can still build 3 workstations for the cost of one Mac Pro.
If your workshop requires MacOS and FCPx, you buy a Mac Pro. Nobody's refuting that statement. You pay the extra $4000 because you're locked into an ecosystem. It's the only legal way to run the software. However, if you only care about the output and not the workflow, the value isn't there. When the next-gen Z-series or Precision workstation comes out in a few months for $3000 with the same specs as the Mac Pro, which would you buy? Honestly? As a business owner?
8cores.
for 6000. That is a complete joke in today's market. It is simply obsolete...
Intel/Apple fanboys cant accept the fact that you're literally buying an obsolete processor. They shouldve put threadripper in that computer at the MINIMUM.
Still not enough for me at least. Still prefer Apple's update policy. Basically, I want to be able to defer my updates up to 3 months if not more. I do not want to be forced to update at all if I am perfectly fine with whatever I am running. I am typically a wait and see user when it comes to updates. I don't need the latest and greatest, I want tried-tested-and-true for my main/production systems. I want to see updates run in the wild for a few months without any widespread report of issues before I am ready to apply them. I don't want to see regressions after an update. Heck, I hated being forced to apply the meltdown/spectre updates, wished it was optional. Now I have to live with a performance hit on a vulnerability that will be very likely to see. This is why I prefer Windows 10 in a VM, so I can quickly revert to a snapshot or backup if an update goes horribly wrong.
to have Windows as my host-OS and then be forced into a bad update... my O/S is pretty locked down and harden, so as long as it works as predicted, I don't need a forced update to change any parameters. MacOs currently gives me that... but for its next asking price, I'm not sure I can afford this "feature" anymore. Wish MS just give power-users the ability to shutoff [auto]updates altogether and let us manually do it.
I know I can always hack my Windows 10 to break updates altogether, but it also doesn't even let you update anymore. Which is also not what I want.
Not sure I understand. I have all features delayed 9 months post release date. It’s all configurable. Maybe it’s cause I have pro?
Here’s an old article describing where and how to defer updates (it’s more robust now )
https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-delay-or-defer-updates-up-to-365-days-in-windows-10/
Last edited:
No, that’s not quite it.
What was being asked for was a machine that could support a broad spectrum of ‘pro’ grade Customers. To that end, this product fails because the entry price is exclusionary.
If you simply want a desktop with ample data storage and integrated local backups without the rat pile of externals with cables, this is your only choice from Apple.
Good machine BUT, please Apple, if you're going to gouge us again on the RAM upgrades, AT LEAST give us the option to get a Mac Pro WITHOUT RAM so we can upgrade it ourselves or stop gouging us on the RAM!
Last edited:
When this is the ONLY machine that can handle the thermal load of running at full speed for any length of time (because it's the only one not designed to be pointlessly thin), nothing else is sufficient. I think what incensed me the most is that to get a machine from Apple that can consistently deliver the performance you paid for, you have to spend $6000.
[doublepost=1559710127][/doublepost]
This machine always existed at this price point, so it isn't like the iPhone where Apple raised prices... It was the Quadra 950, the Power Mac 9600, a dual processor G5, and finallly a high spec Mac Pro. The price, overall has stayed the same since the 90s for a top spec workstation class tower. The problem is that there isn't anything below it anymore.
This is a good price for a pro machine, it's Xeon, multi core, ECC RAM, etc, etc. If you want to compare it to a similar price pro PC then look at the Dell Precision 7920 entry level. The Dell is slightly better value, but it's not a Mac.
With the Dell, $6,229 gets you more cores (16 vs 8), and double the ECC memory (64 vs 32). SSD is the same. The Dell's (workstation) GPU P4000 is benchmark 54.40 compared to the Mac's WX 7100 at 37.58. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...on/xctopt7920us_4?selectionState=&cartItemId=
So, a bit in it but the end of the day similar money for professionals and most importantly this is a Mac, if you work on Mac at this level this is a good price.
As for the monitor, there are monitors at $15k to $30k that I'm going to wager are not much better than this one. Similar as to when the Apple/LG 5k came out.
TLDR; this machine is not expensive, if you think it is you don't know what it is and don't need one.
With the Dell, $6,229 gets you more cores (16 vs 8), and double the ECC memory (64 vs 32). SSD is the same. The Dell's (workstation) GPU P4000 is benchmark 54.40 compared to the Mac's WX 7100 at 37.58. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...on/xctopt7920us_4?selectionState=&cartItemId=
So, a bit in it but the end of the day similar money for professionals and most importantly this is a Mac, if you work on Mac at this level this is a good price.
As for the monitor, there are monitors at $15k to $30k that I'm going to wager are not much better than this one. Similar as to when the Apple/LG 5k came out.
TLDR; this machine is not expensive, if you think it is you don't know what it is and don't need one.
This gives expandability that no other (Apple) machine offers. Plenty of tasks will be fine on 8 or 12 cores, with the ability to add memory as demand increases, not to mention internal pci expansion.
Is the ram not user upgradeable? You are able to remove the entire casing, so it seems like the parts inside will be swappable.
Even the ram in the iMac pro is technically upgradable, though accessing it is another matter.
Though Apple uses their GPUs, Apple doesn’t seem at all interested in AMD CPUs. I assume they have their reasons, but they haven’t disclosed them (yet, at least). Of course Apple could use AMD CPUs in the future, but I personally don’t expect that.
It’s standard ram slots in arguably one of the most accessible case designs, and with enough slots that most people will simply add memory rather than needing to swap the old modules for new ones.