Mac Pro Launching in December with Xeon Processors, Dual FirePro GPUs and PCIe Flash Storage

[NY Guitarist]

Of course not. The way your comment was worded, though, I got the impression you were suggesting the GPUs to be swappable for upgrades.

Actually I was hoping that at some point they would indeed be able to be swapped out.

A GPU upgrade is a great way to help keep a slightly older CPU relevant as a video or graphics workstation.

I guess I was wondering if the GPUs were hardwired to the mobo, or in a newer type of expansion slot.

 

[milo]

What about people who need a PCI expander box and 4x Nvidia GPUs to do work in Resolve/Adobe/Nuke/Cinema4D?

They get a PCI expander box that connects to TB2. It seems a little wacky to list an example of something that doesn't run without an expander box on the current mac pro.

 

[vladi]

For anyone saying that they could build a comparable machine for less consider:

You either have to run Hackintosh (eww) or even worse ANY flavor of Windows.

I've been doing this over 17 years now and I can't even begin to tell you the amount of time and money spent trying to fix, repair, or "just make it work!" I've spent on Windows machines. The time and aggravation savings alone make Apple hardware and Mac software more then worth the added investment.

And please, if all you're doing is checking email, surfing the internet or WASTING time in a virtual world (I'm looking at YOU 'World of Warcraft' and 'Minecraft') stick to a Mac Mini.

huh?

Win - OS X - Linux = same **** no matter what. All three behind times btw.

 

[tallscot]

Cuda

Does CUDA use OpenGL yet? What about Octane? DaVinci?

This Mac Pro is great if you are using Final Cut Pro X, I suppose, but not if you are using the above software, unless those apps have been updated.

$2,999 and I'd still need to buy video editing hard drives and some more RAM and keyboard/mouse and 2 new displays. Personally, I will need to see trustworthy benchmarks between that Mac Pro and a CUDA Windows PC before spending that much.

Can these Mac Pro video cards be upgraded in the future? Are they standard, or are they proprietary? My current Mac Pro has been upgraded in that regards three times over the years. It's fantastic to just pop in a new video card and see faster render times.

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They get a PCI expander box that connects to TB2. It seems a little wacky to list an example of something that doesn't run without an expander box on the current mac pro.

CUDA-compatible video cards go in the current Mac Pro and older Mac Pros.

 

[milo]

CUDA-compatible video cards go in the current Mac Pro and older Mac Pros.

Four of them at once? Why else would he talk about people who need a PCI expander box?

 

[handsome pete]

Actually I was hoping that at some point they would indeed be able to be swapped out.

A GPU upgrade is a great way to help keep a slightly older CPU relevant as a video or graphics workstation.

I guess I was wondering if the GPUs were hardwired to the mobo, or in a newer type of expansion slot.

That would be great, though I'm not hopeful given the new design. The fact they are a proprietary design doesn't bode well for card manufacturers to adopt a new format. Seems like your best bet was for Apple to offer replacement cards. And of course that's if they're user serviceable to begin with.

 

[tallscot]

Four of them at once? Why else would he talk about people who need a PCI expander box?

He said 4 GPUs - 2 dual GPU cards. My guess is a 2012 Mac Pro with CUDA is going to be faster than the new Mac Pro in a slew of apps that use CUDA.

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That would be great, though I'm not hopeful given the new design. The fact they are a proprietary design doesn't bode well for card manufacturers to adopt a new format. Seems like your best bet was for Apple to offer replacement cards. And of course that's if they're user serviceable to begin with.

Everything is GPU now and not being able to upgrade your GPU in a $3,000 system is a killer, IMHO. I can see spending $1,000 for an iMac that can't be upgraded, but not $3,000.

 

[milo]

He said 4 GPUs - 2 dual GPU cards.

He said "4x Nvidia GPUs". If he meant two dual GPU by that, he can clarify it himself.

 

[pjarvi]

It may just be that AMD has better support for 4K than nvidia at this time. Last time I checked, nvidia drivers with 4K support were still in beta whereas AMD has had a mature solution in place since at least February. The only laggard has been HDMI offering 60hz over a single cable.

 

[citi]

A few years ago, Apple proudly ridiculed PCs in their "I'm a Mac" ads by having the PC character say "Oh, the rest of me is in some other boxes..." Well, it seems that now half of the Mac Pro will be in some other boxes. External storage, external video I/O, and so on.

They were talking about the consumer driven Imac, not the professional mac pro. The mac pro has always been this way. Apple assumes you want to choose your own peripherals.

 

[NewbieCanada]

This is my first post here, but I've been entering the site everyday in the last 3.5 years, waiting for the next decent-worthy pro machine.

I am completely disappointed! 3,999$ for a machine with no space for expansion cards and extra hard drives? Are you nuts!?! And some people write here: "Duhh, you need an iPad! This is no gaming machine, this is the new pro!" Well "Duhh" yourself!

I got news for you: 3,999$ (and someone here wrote that the 12 core version might start at around 5,500$) for a workstation with one hard drive and with no space for your expansions is no pro - it's just bling!

I don't need bling. I need power, storage and connectivity. Apple expects me to buy chassis for this and chassis for that, with 100$ cables to connect between them.

They have another thing coming. They just shot themselves in the foot!
Thank you Apple, it's been a nice ride.

This is my first post here, and probably the last.

1. $2,999

2. The details have been known for months. Why are you so shocked?

3. Nice knowing you.

 

[clamnectar]

Interesting. How is single core performance better with the lower clock speed? I was under the impression that it's pretty much the same chip other than number of cores. Do the bigger caches really make that much of a difference or is it something else?

Good question. An X factor here is that the 4 core is running windows and has much less RAM...

 

[R3k]

You can put all the storage in the machine room and run a Thunderbolt cable to it. 50m are already available and 100m coming soon.

Run it though a switching hub and many mac pros could share the same devices and any external cards etc.

Good idea, thanks.

 

[patent10021]

I can't see why anyone would buy this thing.

That's what they said about coconuts and now look. Everyone's eating coconuts.

 

[wildmac]

I will buy either one of these, or a RMBP, as my 6-year-old MacPro needs to be replaced (can't run 10.8, let alone 10.9, so app compatibility is going to be an issue soon, and the slow memory bus is really creating problems).

So, I can...

Buy a 2012 refurb - plus: don't have to buy any cables or stuff, con: stuck with 3-year old video card

Buy a new RMBP - plus: portable, slight cost savings - con: limited video capability with the dedicated GPU, will need to buy an external drive

Buy a new MacPro - plus: far better video horsepower, con: need to spend $500 for cables and another external drive

So I really wonder how well the RMBP would drive two external 24" monitors, and what the framerates would be...

 

[barkmonster]

I will buy either one of these, or a RMBP, as my 6-year-old MacPro needs to be replaced (can't run 10.8, let alone 10.9, so app compatibility is going to be an issue soon, and the slow memory bus is really creating problems).

So, I can...

Buy a 2012 refurb - plus: don't have to buy any cables or stuff, con: stuck with 3-year old video card

Buy a new RMBP - plus: portable, slight cost savings - con: limited video capability with the dedicated GPU, will need to buy an external drive

Buy a new MacPro - plus: far better video horsepower, con: need to spend $500 for cables and another external drive

So I really wonder how well the RMBP would drive two external 24" monitors, and what the framerates would be...

For the Macbook option, you can use multiple 24" displays from just one Thunderbolt/Displayport/DVI-D port using display systems from Matrox that allow custom resolutions spanned over several screens. You'd effectively have a desktop that was (1920 x 2 or 3) x 1080 spanned over 2 or 3 screens but it's an option.

In either case, for your existing drives you just need USB 3.0 enclosures, they're under £60 for dual drive JBOD ones so for all 4 bays in the Mac Pro tower, that £120 at most.

Either way, you get your mulitple screens, you get full use of your existing drives and the raw CPU of a 2.6Ghz i7 used in a Macbook Pro is around 84% of the raw CPU power of the Xeon used in the 4-core Mac Pro anyway so it's all about cost vs portability and how important Thunderbolt 2 is to you.

 

[wildmac]

For the Macbook option, you can use multiple 24" displays from just one Thunderbolt/Displayport/DVI-D port using display systems from Matrox that allow custom resolutions spanned over several screens. You'd effectively have a desktop that was (1920 x 2 or 3) x 1080 spanned over 2 or 3 screens but it's an option.

In either case, for your existing drives you just need USB 3.0 enclosures, they're under £60 for dual drive JBOD ones so for all 4 bays in the Mac Pro tower, that £120 at most.

Either way, you get your mulitple screens, you get full use of your existing drives and the raw CPU of a 2.6Ghz i7 used in a Macbook Pro is around 84% of the raw CPU power of the Xeon used in the 4-core Mac Pro anyway so it's all about cost vs portability and how important Thunderbolt 2 is to you.

Hmm... still with the 15" with the dedicated card, that's only $400 less than the base MacPro.

Probably would get one new drive instead of putting the older drives in cases, they've been used quite a bit.

But as others have mentioned, there are certainly overlaps in the price points of the models once you start adding things in.

 

[seek3r]

Why would you need internal expansion when external expansion will do?

Because right at least some of the stuff I use is internal (and upgradeable!) and out of the way and the mess of cables that does exist is happily tucked away under my desk. This adds cables while removing the ease of just tossing the workstation under my desk. If I get one of these to replace my '08 my desk is going to look like an octopus took it over. Also, things that I used to be able to just drop in (like PCI-e cards) now need an extra (expensive) expansion box (and the associated clutter).

Honestly not likely to pick one up, selling my '08 (or trying to) and my next workstation will likely be an HP. On laptops Apple still has me hooked, but this doesn't really work for me in a workstation (and it particularly sucks since Mavericks finally fixed a lot of the multi-monitor problems and such in ML).

 

[chirpie]

up, selling my '08 (or trying to) and my next workstation will likely be an HP. On laptops Apple still has me hooked, but this doesn't really work for me in a workstation (and it particularly sucks since Mavericks finally fixed a lot of the multi-monitor problems and such in ML).

I don't know man, even if you buy the enclosures to put under your desk, pricing the high end HP or DELL is still pretty close.

Here's $2,800 bucks at Dell...

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...ision-t5610-workstation&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

That gets you no SSD drive, no thunderbolt 2, and worse graphics cards.

Over at HP...

http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTE...63_us/en/pc_comm/workstations/wsfamily/buynow

Again, for $2,800 bucks you actually start with a 6 core but wait for it... no graphics cards included in the price and only 8gb of RAM. If you want a graphics card that has even 3GB of memory vs the Mac Pro's baseline of 4GB, that'll cost you another $1,100.

All of this to say, it's fairly well priced system, even when you add in the external enclosure costs. Maybe wait to see the real world tests and just do some good old math on the cost of switching. Good luck regardless.

 

[seek3r]

I don't know man, even if you buy the enclosures to put under your desk, pricing the high end HP or DELL is still pretty close.

Here's $2,800 bucks...

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...ision-t5610-workstation&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

And that gets you no SSD drive, no thunderbolt 2, and worse graphics cards.

Maybe wait to see the real world tests and just do some good old math on the cost of switching. Good luck regardless.

To be fair that is why I said "not likely", I'm planning on selling the MP and relying on my basically same gen Dell workstation (though the Tesla helps on keeping it more current) for a while before I replace the Mac. We'll see what the bench's look like, and all the upgrade costs.

 

[chirpie]

To be fair that is why I said "not likely", I'm planning on selling the MP and relying on my basically same gen Dell workstation (though the Tesla helps on keeping it more current) for a while before I replace the Mac. We'll see what the bench's look like, and all the upgrade costs.

Groovy. Peace.

 

[Catalyx]

I guarantee someone's friend will throw their empty can of soda down the top of this thinking it's trash.

Especially if they have a Tubelor; maybe getting a colored one would help avoid confusion:

 

[CodeJingle]

"The other GPU is dedicated for non-graphics processing." That can't be correct. I'm sure that both GPUs can be involved in graphics if needed, such as driving all those 4K displays.

It is possible that both can be dedicated for graphics. It may even be possible that vice-versa, that resources of both GPUs can be used by an OpenCL application, like if I had no display hooked up to the Mac Pro just a terminal for serial port output then I could use both GPUs as 100% dedicated to OpenCL processing. I'm just not sure how the OpenCL application will contend if it is fighting with the graphics driver over processing resources.

Neither of us know if either of us is correct, but I do know that the under-lying operating system code would be much cleaner if each GPU had a clean break as to its purpose, rather than advanced code needed to virtualize both GPUs as arbitrary resources to either or both graphics and arbitrary processing.

It is clear from what I've read about the Mac Pro that built-in apps running on it are using the GPU for processing, so the underlying code of the OS would have to be constantly checking what resources are available on each GPU to processing instructions faster than using the main CPU, whether it needs to use both GPUs for processing or just one, or if both GPUs are busy then just use the main cpu. It can get pretty complicated. The memory of each GPU cannot be shared with the other, data on the memory of one GPU would have to be copied manually to the other. If OS X Mavericks has virtualized the two GPUs to appear as one entity then that would make it easier but that would be quite an amazing feat. Again a clean break of one GPU just for graphics and one GPU just for non-graphical processing would be much easier to implement under the hood and would be the exact same setup as an Intel Xeon Server with one high-end graphics card and one Xeon Phi card.

 

[NY Guitarist]

The fact they are a proprietary design doesn't bode well for card manufacturers to adopt a new format. Seems like your best bet was for Apple to offer replacement cards. And of course that's if they're user serviceable to begin with.

Everything is GPU now and not being able to upgrade your GPU in a $3,000 system is a killer, IMHO. I can see spending $1,000 for an iMac that can't be upgraded, but not $3,000.

Non-upgradeable GPUs in a Mac Pro is a major liability in my opinion. It sort of makes the new Mac Pro more like an iMac Pro.

 

[iPhil]

Thought they said it was shipping with HDMI2.0? Meaning capable of 60hz...... or is 30hz a limitation of the GPU?

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I swear the fat guy mentioned "latest version of HDMI" in the keynote, surely it won't ship with 1.4??

Yes the MP will ship with HDMI 1.4 spec.. meaning that hdmi will push a 4K panel and any other TB port will push 4K panels equaling to 3 total - 4K panels

The 12 core will be around $6,000. It looks like you will pay about a grand for every 4 cores you add. Obviously this is my guess. If I'm wrong don't quote me.

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Opinion opinion opinion.

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Yes, it's sad if Logic can't use Open CL. What a waste of processing power. How do you know Logic can't use Open CL?

12 core / $6,000 = $500 per core ... okay gotta do markup $800 * 12 = $9600... I'd say closer $ 7995 - ish