That's a real beast. These guys who have become Macintarded are already trying to upgrade everything about their Mac Pro from day one, buying CPUs from somewhere else, better memory from somewhere else, boot drive and adapter from somewhere else, graphics card from somewhere else, and drive sleds, and dongles,. They basically paid minimum $6000 for a case and motherboard.
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Hands-On With Apple's New 2019 Mac Pro
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That's a real beast. These guys who have become Macintarded are already trying to upgrade everything about their Mac Pro from day one, buying CPUs from somewhere else, better memory from somewhere else, boot drive and adapter from somewhere else, graphics card from somewhere else, and drive sleds, and dongles,. They basically paid minimum $6000 for a case and motherboard.
You just explained why Windows is superior to MacOS. It supports AMD, Intel and even ARM processors. That's a much better ecosystem.
Great.
How does MacOS run on it?
;-)
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Did you come on an Apple forum just to say this or are you actually using any of their products?
That is a great machine for 3D work hands down. My personal preference is that I do not like Windows, period end of story. I tried Windows but only lasted a couple weeks before re-doing the hackintosh.
The only thing I would add is that GPU based rendering is becoming more the norm, and there is no telling yet how the VegaII Duo is going to compete against the RTX based nVidia cards.
I think if all I was in the market for was a rendering machine I would buy the same thing you did sans the RTX, since currently Lightwave's built in rendering only supports CPUs at the moment (and I do not do enough to warrant a 3rd party rendering solution). I would not care about rendering in Windows or even Linux; pretty much open project and hit go.
We live in interesting times. Many people have waited for Apple to sell a machine like this, although I bet a big handful of them were not expecting the price. Still think they should make some Core-X based ones.
This is kind of a uninformed statement. No one is going to try and buy a CPU from a third party and try to swap it in right now. The street price for Xeon W 3xxx series is just too high; it would be interesting perhaps to look at other models, but keep it mind if it does not have 64 PCI lanes from the CPU, it is very doubtful that it will work. Boot drive is also kind of a illogical statement, even a 256GB one is enough for OS X and tons of Apps (maybe not games). Dongles? For what? I think I already proved that the Vega II GPUs are actually priced right comparing them to other workstation class cards. You could always say **** it and get a Radeon VII, but it will not integrate into the system like the MPX cards, you will only be able to use the built in outputs from the card itself. Memory is kind of a no brainer (everyone knows Apple gouges on memory.)
Look I wished they would have used Core-X parts as well to keep the price down; but according to Apple, they worked hand and hand with many heavy weights in the creative fields on this thing, so apparently "they" wanted the heavy iron Xeon stuff, probably so they can compete on a level playing field against HP, Dell and Lenovo workstations using the same CPUs, that also cost the same amount of money if not more.
Next year will be interesting. AMD's long term strategy is starting to pay off on the CPU and GPU front. I wholeheartedly agree that Intel has been sucking wind; but you can never count them out; for all we know they have 5nm ready for next quarter. And we can't count out the possibility of Apple creating a monster A-series chip destined for macOS based devices in the next couple of years.
Perhaps the biggest gamble is whether or not Apple is going to actually release future CPU upgrades for this thing and/or CPU + Motherboard upgrades. It would be kind of a major blunder if they didn't.
I do feel that having the best of all worlds sometimes means having to contend with having the worst of all worlds as well.
Just today, I was watching a Linus video where one of their editors, Taran, was editing a video alongside iJustine. Taran was using a windows laptop, together with an external keyboard, mouse and some stream deck peripheral. And the comments were full of how he would have won if he had his 4 keyboards and his full array of macros at his disposal. Oh, and Premeire would crash along the way. Conversely, Justine was basically doing her editing on a MBP using FCP, and I find there is such a beautiful simplicity in using just the bare essentials and it working all so well. In a sense, she seems to embody the values and principles of Apple so very well.
Which brings me to my main point.
Apple is the kind of company that would ditch something so users have less choice, but possibly (in their opinion) a better experience. That is what makes Apple so polarizing. They aim for product experience often times at the sacrifice of user choice. And if their idea of what you want in a product matches yours, then it is full of secret magic and delight. And if not, it can be frustration, like jogging through quicksand.
This doesn’t make Apple any better or worse than Windows. Just different.
Conversely, windows doesn’t seem optimised for anything. It just is. I don’t hate windows, but I don’t feel anything for it either.
That’s why I like the Apple ecosystem so much, flaws and all. For the moment at least, the direction in which Apple is taking its products just so happens to be line with what I want out of them. And that just as the Mac users are now griping about how Apple has abandoned them, I believe that there too will come a time when I eventually do get left behind as Apple decides that iPads are no longer worth their time and energy.
And when that fateful day does come, I will embrace it.
Yes, the new Mac Pro offers a ton of capability, but that's not why people are calling it a rip-off. That's also not why they're saying it's comparable to cheaper systems. The thing is, most people who are looking for a powerful machine - even content creators - don't need that many PCIe lanes or RAM slots. With the new Mac Pro, you're really paying for a level of upgradability that you either won't need or won't be able to fully utilize. The new Mac Pro is an insanely capable system with a gigantic amount of expandability. It's just that only studios and universities with very large budgets will be able to pay the premium and possibly even take full advantage of its expandability. Smaller studios, companies, universities, and independent creative professionals need something with less expandability for a more modest price. The problem here is that Apple is going from one extreme to the other, with most of its machines having absolutely no upgradability on one side, and then this insanely capable machine on the other side. When it comes to upgradability, the chasm between this new Mac Pro and the rest of Apple's current lineup is gigantic.
The other issue is that the specs aren't that great for the money. It kinda seems like a good chunk of the budget with this machine went towards upgradability. Well, that and the nice case, built-in Wi-Fi, dual 10-gigabit Ethernet, and Thunderbolt ports. But just looking at the specs, this is a huge waste of money. 8-core 2.5 GHz CPU, RX 580X, 32 GB RAM. Sure, you've got the FPGA encoder card, which is great, but is it really worth the premium? Not to mention, how are the results quality-wise compared to CPU rendering? Wouldn't it be better to just invest that money in a better CPU instead?
Not to mention, if Apple had just waited one more year, the new Mac Pro could have had PCIe 4.0 instead of the rather unusual x32 PCIe slots. Now, it's not on the same level as the PCIe slot situation with the 2013 Mac Pro. Don't get me wrong - this is a huge step forward because it uses a standard interface and makes it possible to upgrade the GPU with a standard card instead of having to hope that an upgrade card will be made or that Apple will make a new Mac Pro in the next X years. It's just that unless you can get a x32 PCIe 3.0 to x16 PCIe 4.0 adapter down the road and make it fit inside the case with the new GPU, you probably won't be able to utilize the full bandwidth of the x32 slot and you'll only be able to utilize half of the bandwidth.
If Apple had just made a $2,500 system with 8 RAM slots, 3 x16 PCIe slots, 1-2 x8 PCIe slots, 1-2 x4 PCIe slots, and maybe 1-3 x1 PCIe slots, they wouldn't have gotten any flak. Spec-wise, that machine should have an 8-core mainstream CPU (i.e. not Xeon), 32 GB RAM, RX 5700, and 512 GB NVME.
(a) This is ridiculous. Apple gets flak for literally everything it does, including donating money.
(b) It might have reduced the whinging from the vocal crowd that want a consumer level tower Mac; But that isn’t who the Mac Pro is targeted at. So your suggestion is to yet again ignore the professional market and instead cater to “Prosumers” who want to feel important because they have a tower Mac?
Also, your claim that only universities and high end studios can afford to take advantage of the Mac Pro’s expand ability is just flat out wrong.
@jblagden:
with the exception of the RAM that expandabilty talk is also a myth and only relative to the mac universe. most pc workstations are way more expandable.
@Stephen.R:
if you need a workstation the flat out truth is, that you pay a lot! more for mac pro than for a pc. and it is still slower, less upgradeable/expandable, you don't know how they support it (gpu upgrades?) or if that was the last mac pro of apple.
with the exception of the RAM that expandabilty talk is also a myth and only relative to the mac universe. most pc workstations are way more expandable.
@Stephen.R:
if you need a workstation the flat out truth is, that you pay a lot! more for mac pro than for a pc. and it is still slower, less upgradeable/expandable, you don't know how they support it (gpu upgrades?) or if that was the last mac pro of apple.
Sorry did I miss the memo where you can either have the Mac Pro with the base 32GB or the maximum 1.5TB and no amount in between? Or that RAM is the only thing that can be expanded after build?
This has been debunked more than flat earther theories.
A comparable PC workstation from the likes of Dell or HP or Lenovo is similarly priced to the Mac Pro.
Slower than what, at what task?
The workstation class PCs from the other major vendors are not even available with comparable CPUs, that I can find. They're either using Server class CPUs which have lower "boost" frequencies and fewer PCIe lanes (HP and Dell do this); or the W-2xxx series from 2 years ago, which is effectively what's in the iMac Pro (Lenovo does this)
So what exactly are you comparing to? The only known upgrade/expansion limit so far is the T2-managed built-in SSD, which is replaceable, but requires some involvement Apple/Authorised Service staff.
They literally had user-installable MPX-module graphics cards in the store the day it launched. You could buy a base model, then buy the top of the line GPU and self install it, if you wanted that. There is zero reason to think the same won't be true when e.g. the W5700X or other cards become available. Or just buy whatever other standard card you want, the MPX bays still work as regular PCIe slots if you want to use them that way. Apple docs specifically say the Mac Pro supports any GPU that macOS supports in an eGPU, and there are multiple, extensive lists of which models work in eGPUs.
Same goes for Linux. Just run kernel 5.x and you'll get all the benefits of Zen 2. Apple on the other hand, has had at least one spell where it went years between CPU generations. Nvidia GPUs though, are still a sore spot with Linux because Nvidia still only has proprietary drivers and stopped providing firmware for Nouveau developers.
And before anyone says something about Linux being a tiny amateurish platform or something like that, I should mention that some big companies it use it for creative work. Pixar, Disney, Industrial Light & Magic, Dreamworks, and the BBC all use Linux for their animation and video editing.
As far as I know the bbc doesn’t do anything itself so, that comment doesn’t seem quite right. BBC content is all outsourced, as is their post production.
Yeah, I know it starts out with 32 gigabytes of RAM. I just mean that there's a lot of potential for this machine which might not be used by the majority of people who might like to buy an upgradable Mac tower. A standard motherboard has four RAM slots and can be configured with up to 64 gigabytes of RAM, which is fine for video editing, CAD/CAM, 3D modeling and likely a lot of other creative tasks.
Just for a little background, I should mention that the 2012 Mac Pro had 8 RAM slots, 2 x16 PCIe slots, 2 x4 PCIe slots, and 6 SATA ports. Oh, and it started at $2,500, which would be $2,800 today. The old Mac Pro was more like a good middle-ground between the iMac and the new Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro provides way more expansion than the old 2012 Mac Pro. But it's also about twice as expensive. Call me a crackpot, but I seriously think Apple's plan here is to deliberately price this so as to financially penalize buyers for the upgradability and also to keep most Mac users from having upgradable Macs. Apple's goal is to maximize sales of new units and the price of this new one compensates for its upgradability. Really, the only really to buy this new Mac Pro is fear that it'll be another 5-6 before Apple makes another.
From an ecological standpoint, it's actually kind of hilariously ironic. I remember watching keynotes from 2010-2012 where Jobs and other Apple executives would brag about how environmentally-friendly Apple stuff was back then. "Arsenic-free, BFR-free... highly-recyclable glass enclosure". And yet, in a quest for insane profits, Apple has sealed up the majority of its products and is actually trying to discourage the purchase of ones which have parts that can be upgraded or at least replaced in the event of failure.
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Or... you know... they made a super expandable workstation for professionals who want and have been asking for such a thing?
Also, 64GB is a pretty low ceiling for a desktop with memory slots. My Mac mini has 64GB and it’s the size of a ham sandwich. Even a MBP16 can have 64GB of memory.
It’s bordering on negligent if a machine limited to 64GB is what you suggest as a “pro workstation”. The last time Apple sold a pro line Mac desktop with a 64GB memory ceiling was 12 years ago.
Perhaps normally, but 3rd gen Threadripper is extremely cost effective. The 3960X is faster than Intel’s 3000 dollar Xeons, while being less than half the price. 3rd gen Threadripper also beats 3rd gen Ryzen in single-threaded performance now too. It’s untouchable with essentially no weaknesses.
oh it’s a great chip. But if it’s a a gaming PC the funds are better so spent on a gpu upgrade sticking roto ryzen or even core.
I wasn't seriously suggesting that a pro workstation be limited to 64 GB of RAM. Really, I was saying two things:
1) Apple could have gone with 8 RAM slots instead of 12
2) Apple doesn't really make any Core-X desktops, much less towers. Sure, the RAM on the iMac Pro is upgradable as was the RAM on the somewhat older 27" iMac - but they make you pay a premium for that one bit of upgradability.
I realize they were going for expandable. I realize professionals have been clamoring for a new expandable Mac desktop for years. I'm just saying they went further than they needed to. I think they went somehwhere between 30 and 50 percent further than they needed to. The extra upgradability is nice, but I think it also jacks up the price more than necessary.
Ok, you work out how to make 6 channel memory work at peak efficiency with 8 slots and I’m sure Apple will jump on that plan.
The current 27” is user upgradable, and the iMac Pro and 21” iMac are upgradable via more intrusive access (aka Apple service Center upgrade)
One problem is a LOT of apps insist on having their files on the system drive otherwise they won't work.. It's a pain to have to be constantly shifting files, off the system drive. a stock machine with 256gb is insane
I absolutely believe that we will see a version of this Mac Pro with a set of Apple-designed CPUs well before I have to replace the Mac Pro my boy friend just bought. That said, I bet we will see lots of people complaining about that transition when it happens. I also expect that Apple’s own GPUs will out perform nVidia and AMD for Metal in the near future (from not making a GPU at all to a very competitive one in the current A-series SoC’s give an idea of what Apple can do with focused engineering). It will not run CUDA, so there will be many tasks that will not easily be ported because people chose to lock themselves to nVidia’s ecosystem (CUDA was a great developer architecture at the time, but vendor lock in has its down sides).
Respectfully, and I appreciate the reasons you gave for your choices, you don’t see it because you’re over-generalizing. Much the same as someone categorizing you as a “video guy”, then telling you this killer FCP machine is perfect for you.
I’m a developer, I considered the iMac Pro and had a lot of motivation to move up from my old Mac Pro, but the iMac Pro is just a bad a fit (to start, the very nice monitor is a ‘tweener—too big to set another display of that size next to it among my row of computers, too small to get by as a single display. And it has fans—don’t tell me how they will mostly not be spinning, or how quiet they are or will stay over time, I need to record with a mic near it, it’s a bad place for fans). And $5k starting price for something that’s not a good fit yet is difficult to upgrade even the RAM after it ships…$6k base plus a monitor starts to looks less bad, even if I’m overpaying for infrastructure I don’t have much need for. But nothing else fits.
That said, I’m open to a few suggestions from the gallery. I’ll get the base RAM, because it’s always cheaper to buy RAM after.
CPU: The base CPU is probably adequate, perhaps I’d go with it and consider upgrading down the road after a couple of years. But it might be worth it to start with the 12-core. Of course I want speed for everything, but the most important to me (for realtime considerations) would be running lots of audio plugins. Comments on spending an extra $k there? Seems like the 12-core is a good tradeoff to start.
SSD: I’d probably spring for the 2 TB option. I’m not totally sure, with Catalina and its volume groups, whether this is as important as with previous Macs, but this will keep me comfortable as a system drive for a while, augmented with more storage (maybe NVMe via PCI) for video and audio samples, various big data.
Video card: I do light FCP (youtube videos), open to suggestions, but I suppose the base is OK at least for now.
Monitor: Apple’s is overkill, I’ll research something cheaper. I work for a company that makes some (um, a very large corp starting with “D”), employee discount will help.
[yeah, commenting late to the thread, was away...]
I tested a 12 core new Mac Pro and 16 core Threadripper and the Threadripper just edged out the 12. So no, it's not that much faster.
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I ran 8 Avid systems on the old 12 core towers. Have the new 12 core and it is twice as fast. I'm waiting for Avid to say they support it. And I do run Final Cut X.
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Is 6-channel memory that big a deal?
Okay, but still, it's a major PITA to do the upgrade on the 21" iMac. And the Mac Mini's RAM has been soldered to the logic board since 2014.
The only reason I care about the Mac Pro is because it's always been the most upgradable and most easily upgraded Mac. Apple's other machines have always been more difficult to upgrade. MacBooks were pretty easily, Mac Minis were always a bit of a chore, and iMacs have always been a PITA to upgrade. In the past, it was possible to get a Mac Mini with decent specs. But the Mac Pro was always the penultimate in terms of upgradable Macs. Six HDD (or SSD) bays, two ODD bays, two x16 PCIe slots for GPUs, at least a couple other PCIe slots, six easily-accessible RAM slots, and two actual CPU sockets. If you wanted to run macOS and have a machine that was as upgradable as a regular IBM Clone, this was the Mac for you. The Mac Pro may have even made converts of Windows PC users by catering to their desire for upgradability and repairability.
If Apple made a Mac which was somewhere between the Mac Mini and the new Mac Pro, but used Core-X CPUs, I'd be ecstatic. Admittedly, I might not buy one since I've already switched over to Linux, but I'd probably think about it. I mean, the reason I switched over to Linux was because I couldn't stand Apple's new hardware direction. When Apple released the 2016 MacBook Pros, I completely gave up on Apple - it was the final "kick in the teeth" which showed me that Apple will likely never return to making upgradable or repairable Macs. Well, in the near future anyway.