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Mac Pro CPU Upgradeability Confirmed With Processor Swap

This also opens of a good opportunity for AMD to have their multi-core CPUs drop into the Mac Pro. I expect an summer season AMD promo for "Mac Pro upgrading" in the near future.

FYI, to the freshly minted MBA from Stanford working at AMD reading this, I'll find you at St. John's and we'll have a beer over it. ;)
 
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MagnusVonMagnum said:
Too bad you can't order the new Mac Pro without any CPUs in it. The problem with ordering a lower model and then upgrading to a higher CPU model is that you're still stuck with the original CPU. I suppose you can try to sell it, but you're not going to get what you paid for it (relative to the cost of the machine) back. Unfortunately, Apple won't sell bare-bones machines and let users upgrade it themselves because they make all their BILLIONS by bending the customer over and shoving the parts in themselves at 200-600% markup. :eek:
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Actually makes all their BILLIONS by selling phones and tablets, not Mac parts...

By the way, every single manufacturer out there does what you're accusing Apple of.
 
CFreymarc said:
This also opens of a good opportunity for AMD to have their multi-core CPUs drop into the Mac Pro. I expect an summer season AMD promo for "Mac Pro upgrading" in the near future.

FYI, to the freshly minted MBA from Stanford working at AMD reading this, I'll find you at St. John's and we'll have a beer over it. ;)
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Uh, AMD chips don't exactly fit into Intel sockets.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
There's nothing wrong with a fair charge for a service, but they milk the living hell out of this stuff.
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We are talking OEMs in general, not do it yourselfers. All OEM's charge extra on parts for BTO systems.

Personally, to me hardware is hardware and most of Apple's Mac line is just standard PC hardware in a pretty case and the fact you can quite easily make a Hackintosh with standard off-the-shelf parts pretty much proves it.
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Ahem..Selected off the shelf PC parts. You just can throw any parts together to make a hackentosh, some won't support it. Some are not compatible with Mac OS X.

I like OSX better than Windows, but I'd rather pay for the OS and get the hardware I want in a competitive market than just give Apple free license to charge whatever they want for the hardware because they know you can't get it from anyone else.
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Apple tried selling their operating system to OEMS that made computers that under sold their own. They don't want a race to the bottom. They make premium products that compete very well with simular systems.

Look at Microsoft, they have the marketshare of their operating system on PC's, but make the majority of their money in enterprise, not consumer desktops that is a shrinking market.


OSX is what is unique, not the hardware running it.
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I don't believe that. Apple has shown that selling complete systems ( Hardware / Software ) as a total package is what they believe is more stable, reliable and easier to use.

Since they write their own software drivers for selected hardware, you don't have any compatibility issues. its guaranteed to work. Microsoft you have to support thousands of different hardware configurations and still maintain backward compatibility once it becomes obsolete.

Same problems with Android. Android has to run in a virtual machine rather then native code just to run on the thousands of different models it has to support. Then you still have fragmentation, models that rarely get software updates maybe only once during its life cycle. Apple instead has its three different models at any one time, that can have new versions of iOS often 4 generations behind.

They do what works for them and works for the majority of their users.
 
The upgrade path stops at ivy bridge-e. Haswell-E is an entirely new socket, new chipset, new RAM, etc. If you can wait until 4th qtr Haswell-E will be out by then and it will have a 2 year upgrade path. Intel only changes it's server architecture every 2 years. Unless you can somehow change the socket on the mac book pro?

MacRumors said:
[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


Following the release of the Mac Pro, a quick teardown by Other World Computing (OWC) revealed that the tower's Intel Xeon E5 processor was socketed and removable, theoretically allowing for future upgrades. All CPUs in the Mac Pro were found to use the same LGA 2011 socket standardized on the Mac Pro's motherboard.

Today OWC confirmed that the Mac Pro's processor is indeed upgradeable, successfully replacing the default Intel E5-1650 V2 6-core 3.50Ghz processor with an Intel E5-2667 V2 8-core 3.30GHz processor with 25MB of L3 cache, an option not offered by Apple. The upgraded processor gave OWC's machine a 30 percent multi-processor performance boost, outperforming Apple's standard 8-core option with a Geekbench score of 27004 vs. 24429.

With a replaceable CPU, customers can purchase more affordable lower-configuration Mac Pros that can be updated in the future as processor prices drop. Prices for multi-core processors today remain high, with the CPU OWC used from Intel priced at $2000. Apple's own CPU upgrade options range in price from $500 to $3500. Based on the 3.7Ghz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 with 10MB of L3 cache, pricing from Apple is as follows:

- 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 with 12MB of L3 cache: +$500
- 3.0GHz 8-core Intel Xeon E5 with 25MB of L3 cache: +$2000
- 2.7GHz 12-core Intel Xeon E5 with 30MB of L3 cache: +$3500

The upgradeable CPU in the Mac Pro is a deviation from standard practice for Apple, with most consumer-oriented Macs featuring soldered processors. Along with a removable CPU, Mac Pro buyers are also able to upgrade memory and other components. In a recent teardown, iFixit gave the Mac Pro a repairability score of 8 out of 10, highlighting the easily accessible internal components and the non-proprietary screws.

Apple's Mac Pro is currently available exclusively through the online Apple Store. Due to low supply and high demand, new orders are not expected to ship until February or later, but customers who placed orders*shortly after the computer went on sale have begun receiving units.

Article Link: Mac Pro CPU Upgradeability Confirmed With Processor Swap
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So you're saying Apple will offer a motherboard socket upgrade replacement part for your nMP? Even then it wouldn't matter because it's new RAM. It's DDR4.

DrManhattan said:
Of course you can. It's not superglued to a battery or welded to the case.
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uh huh...

Its socket-ed ... Anything in a socket, can be upgraded..

Enough said....

This is old news already.
 
I'm confused. The article says they replaced a 6-core with an 8-core, yet the Intel XEON E5-2667 is a SIX CORE also!

Compare the two here. The E5-2667 is actually a slower chip with more cache.

Is there a mistake somewhere?
 
dmylrea said:
I'm confused. The article says they replaced a 6-core with an 8-core, yet the Intel XEON E5-2667 is a SIX CORE also!

Compare the two here. The E5-2667 is actually a slower chip with more cache.

Is there a mistake somewhere?
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It's the newer version 2 of the 2667.
 
Confirmed

Actually this news just makes me even more sure I need a Mac Pro (.. and later swap the CPU when I feel like) Just like the RAM, and PCIe SSD too. :)

Great news

----------
Iconoclysm said:
Actually makes all their BILLIONS by selling phones and tablets, not Mac parts...

By the way, every single manufacturer out there does what you're accusing Apple of.
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I have to agree. Apple makes the big sum of its money on the iPhone, iPad, iPd lineups...Maybe Macbook Pros and iMacs too.

But only a ,,few" compared to the many who can afford and/or willing to pay for the Mac Pro.
( When in the end of the day even if You build Yourself cant save that much then some people think ..actually there was a Macrumors article showing the comparison to other ,,builds" money-wise)

I will try to save and get the entry level one and later see if I can swap the CPU to a 6 or 8 Core one :)
 
jasonvp said:
Slight correction: the 8-core is also a 1600 series - the E5-1680 V2.
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Bleh this didn't pop up on my notifications, but I just looked at the thread again. I thought the 1600 series only went to 6 cores. Thank you.
 
dmax35 said:
All arm chair quarterback apple haters... go stand in the corner in shame. All your left with is your stupid, it looks like a trash can comments.
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And the lack of internal expansion, and the lack of 4k monitor support, and the lack of thunderbolt peripherals, and the inability to rack mount.

These are actual functional issues that impact the day-to-day use of the machine.

I don't think anyone that purchases mac pros really cared about the CPU being upgradable.

Also, people complaining about functional issues aren't haters, they either have purchased a machine or want/need to purchase a machine but there are limitations to what they can do with it.
 
wikiverse said:
And the lack of internal expansion, and the lack of 4k monitor support, and the lack of thunderbolt peripherals, and the inability to rack mount.
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Renzatic said:
It's got 4k monitor support. There have been pictures floating around with 3 or 4 of them slapped onto the thing.
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And it's a brand-new design direction, so of course the new trend of peripherals hasn't caught up yet. So hang onto your old hardware until things catch up, if that suits you. And several rack-mount scenarios have shown up on the net in recent days. It won't be the same, no, but that by itself is not a negative. Just time to adapt and move on.

No, it won't be for everyone, but so what? Nothing can ever fit everyone's needs.
 
terraphantm said:
Would the consumer LGA2011 CPUs work since Apple isn't using dual sockets anyway?
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I'd say it might be possible, but why would you want to? You're still limited to 6 cores, they cost roughly the same, and the difference in clock speed is negligible. Unless you were thinking of over clocking it, but that brings up an entirely new set of questions.
 
terraphantm said:
Would the consumer LGA2011 CPUs work since Apple isn't using dual sockets anyway?
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Yeah, but none of them make sense to purchase.

i7-4820K? Well you already get the E5-1620 V2 which is the same.

i7-4930K? The E5-1650 is 100MHz faster and is only $500 from Apple. It doesn't make sense to sell the E5-1620 V2 and buy the i7-4930K to save a few hundred because then you will have problems returning it to Apple if there are any issues, regardless of the legality of warranties and upgrades.

i7-4960K? No point getting this unless you are actually going to get productivity gains from L3 cache, but you may find it $100 cheaper than the E5-1660 V2 if you really wanted those specifications.

The i7s also limit you to 32GB RAM and you aren't going to be overclocking.
 
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