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Boil

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2018
3,238
2,863
Stargate Command
An Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 CPU with 24/48 costs $4,702.00 alone, so I am pretty sure that you have gone off into the realm of fantasy at this point.

Apple is not moving to AMD TR or EPYC, nor is Apple moving to ARM...potential customers should be realistic about the fact that Intel is what Apple is going to use for this Mac Pro.

More realistic would be $3999 for 8c/16t Xeon-W/24GB RAM-6 slots/512GB SSD/AMD Vega 56/4 PCIe 3.0 slots, 2 x16, 2 x4/802.11AC/BT 5.0/4 TB3/4 USB Type-A/2-10GbE standard, shipping in the Fall.

Adjust your expectations accordingly...
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Again, for better OR worse, Apple is not competing with PC OEMs or DIY builds with its computers and so I envision 8/10 cores at that price point, not 14 or 18.

While AMD May have shifted the paradigm for price and cores versus Intel, Apple is going to stick with Intel for this Mac Pro...no AMD CPU, no ARM CPU.

So, for many, it will be DOA...and I am sure that the threads here will light up with both pro and cons commenters. But this is Apple, we should all be familiar engineers it’s computers and how it prices them. For better OR Worse, depending on your point of view.

No...!

AMD, AMD, AMD...!!!
 

macguru9999

macrumors 6502a
Aug 9, 2006
773
359
Been waiting seven+ years, and not bought a desktop machine in all that tine. Even if it's $10,000, doesn't bother me one bit. I nearly spent £6K on an iMac Pro, but decided to wait.
I have not bought a new mac pro since 2006. My current is a 2012 model with a lot of upgrades but the base 2012 was about $500 US inc delivery. I dont think the company selling it recognised it was not a 2010 model and priced it the same, and of course thats true from a practical perspective.
 

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
5,047
1,384
Denmark
I always follow this for my computers:

$1500 over 3 years ($1.36 a day)
or
$3000 over 6 years ($1.36 a day)

So if the new Mac Pro has decent specs under $3000, I'll jump.. But at $6,000, yikes I'm out.

I feel like we all can save $1.36 a day... Its a small bagel etc. So if you have an ok job- you should be able to save while you have your current computer- in 3-6 years you've saved enough for the next computer.
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Ew AMD- just no... It's not that great-- Rome is like what 5% faster? So what?
I want compatibility maintained- and progress- I want Nvidia back..
I don't want Apple getting closer to AMD.

This is a weird argument. By your own metric AMD is faster but at the same time worse? Compatibility? They both are x86.

What Rome has going for it (besides being fiercely competitively priced and offering equal performance) is 128 PCIe lanes.

If anything we need I/O and Xeon is neither offering anywhere near that amount nor the same number of cores.
 

ssgbryan

macrumors 65816
Jul 18, 2002
1,488
1,420
This is a weird argument. By your own metric AMD is faster but at the same time worse? Compatibility? They both are x86.

What Rome has going for it (besides being fiercely competitively priced and offering equal performance) is 128 PCIe lanes.

If anything we need I/O and Xeon is neither offering anywhere near that amount nor the same number of cores.

Going with Rome means a spread between 8 cores & 64 cores on 1 motherboard. And those lovely PCIe lanes. And all of those ram slots.

AMD is a better deal in the CPU department, and Navi is looking up. Throw in AMD's ProRender Engine & I am in computing Nirvana.
 
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ssgbryan

macrumors 65816
Jul 18, 2002
1,488
1,420
Yeah but we don't really need those PCI lanes-- The new Mac Pro isn't going to run 4+ GPUs and 4 M.2 and a capture card.. So its unnecessary. Idk if Apple compact design could handle the new Rome chip... Also Rome is not Xeon- Rome is purely for data center.... So I dont even think its an option for us really.

I guess you never needed more than 640K either. Some of us have workflows that are core and ram based, not to mention that what we need today may not be enough 24 months from now. When I started dabbling in 3d Art, I was upgrading on an 18 - 24 month basis until I got my 1st 4,1.

There are Eypc boards fit in box standard ATX cases. If you step outside into PC land, you will see a number of folks that make Eypc workstations. I have been pricing out a Naples based system from Velocity Micro - $4,500 gets you a LOT of computer. I suspect that Rome will be priced at a similar price point.

Best of all - no RGB.
 

CWallace

macrumors G5
Aug 17, 2007
12,027
10,731
Seattle, WA
It's going to be Intel Xeon-based for sure. So the price point will be heavily influenced by what Xeon CPUs Apple chooses.

My guess is 3000 Series Xeon Ws (Cascade Lake-W), which are the single-processor LGA3647 socket models ranging from 8 to 28 cores. These are the "step-up" model from the 2000 Series Xeon Ws used in the iMac Pro. My guess is they will offer the 12/16/24/28 core models and pricing should be between $1500 (12 core) and $3000 (28 core) at retail, so add in the Apple markup.

So I think $4999 for the base model is not out of line with probably 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a Vega 20/GCN5 model GPU.
 

Zdigital2015

macrumors 601
Jul 14, 2015
4,018
5,363
East Coast, United States
It's going to be Intel Xeon-based for sure. So the price point will be heavily influenced by what Xeon CPUs Apple chooses.

My guess is 3000 Series Xeon Ws (Cascade Lake-W), which are the single-processor LGA3647 socket models ranging from 8 to 28 cores. These are the "step-up" model from the 2000 Series Xeon Ws used in the iMac Pro. My guess is they will offer the 12/16/24/28 core models and pricing should be between $1500 (12 core) and $3000 (28 core) at retail, so add in the Apple markup.

So I think $4999 for the base model is not out of line with probably 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a Vega 20/GCN5 model GPU.

These ones right? The third gen that Intel is saying are coming in the Fall - https://wccftech.com/intel-core-x-next-gen-cascade-lake-x-hedt-cpu-fall-2019-launch/
 

thomasthegps

macrumors regular
Sep 23, 2015
220
145
France
Won't be AMD cpus inside the Mac Pro. Just cause AMD gets the upper hand every 10 years, doesn't mean they will remain a viable option. Apple will probably side with intel until they decide to use their own chips.
 

tommy chen

macrumors 6502a
Oct 1, 2018
907
387
how do you get the idea that there will be a macpro for under 4000 or 5000?

in a few hours we will see it or not +g*
 

orph

macrumors 68000
Dec 12, 2005
1,884
393
UK
i have mixed feelings on what they will use, relay depends who they target.

the intel IGPU is used by a lot of apple apps and the OS, kind of shows when the xeon imac had to use the VEGA gpu to do video acceleration and saw some mixed benchmarks last i looked compared to the i7 imac (for video work).

apple has used intel for so long i assume all there software is just super optimized for intel (compare do AMD) so relay don't think they will jump. (if they did they won't be cheaper
NEPtS_BE-e8WsS2e26oyphMZVh0OwRmD_I51GbsYi4ToP103XdycVy4WFOv0ENQm76vmJ7go-9zKiUdudUEQO02BRsIQ82zBHEMGDYoN7m2vhLwmBd8kl-YK-Z7jfTesy6vNfE0l
love $$)

also don't think apple will relay want to go 'high end' with dual cpu options.

so we may see a i9 9900 (or that new all core 5GHZ one) and won't that be funny as the macpro 5,1 where running the xeon versions of the i7 980x (well i am :p), i can see that as a nice inside joke.

or maybe they will use the 8-18 core xeon like the imac pro

I assume cost will match the imacpro or a tad less but not by much.

and from apple's point of view if you don't have the ££££ (or $$$$$) then it's not for you, still the option of a macmin with eGPU or a nice imac laptop for the low budget user.

and to be fair iv seen linustech tips do a video comparing the imacpro cost to pc and (at the time) it was same or cheaper than buying all the PC parts ($200 less at the time than buying the parts)
skipp to 3mins in to see price comparison

o maybe a lower end VEGA 7 option as default ? maybe the ones that did not get all 60 CU in production (well less than 60 as the vega 7 is a card that did not hit all 64 for the datacenter version i assume?) so vega 7 with 50CU? enabled as a base model

saw some of the CES videos that mentioned intel/nvidia where proactively competing with apple so i gess there is a chance apple has done something to make them both mad like using AMD CPU/GPU but i still dont think it will happen.
 

shaunp

Cancelled
Nov 5, 2010
1,811
1,395
I think that's true in part. They realize an expandable headless Mac Pro greatly reduces the need to update every few years. Then again, they also don't want to leave money on the table. Or cede the video/editing market to Windows PCs.

Another reason they'll price this with high enough margins to offset those potential lost sales. And why a rumoured 31" 6K display will likely be launched aside it.

What about their own internal use? IBM, Dell and HP all use their own products internally. Apple given their size must do this also to a certain degree. They can't use their own servers as they don't make them any more, but they make desktops and laptops, and a number of these won't be able to use an iMac they have bigger requirements. Or are these users running off PC's? If a company doesn't 'eat its own dog food' then how does it test product quality or better understand user requirements?
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,298
3,893
apple makes servers or at least owns a lot of them https://www.datacenterknowledge.com...b-us-data-center-construction-over-five-years
they used to use (and still do i asume) microsoft azure for cloud use too.

Servers that run Linux ( probably a relatively small number of Solaris mixed in there too) . Apple is running mild variants of what Amazon , Google, Facebook, etc. are running. For example, they can just copy some of the Open Compute Project design ( many havebeen donated by some of the large players. )

https://www.opencompute.org/

Google, Facebook, and Amazon have thousands of severs that they have built. They don't sell (as retail physical product) any of those to other folks. Apple doing a few data center builds for themselves doesn't translate at all to a retail Mac Pro any more than the other folks.

intenral use well im sure they can use any mac they need from macbook to imacpro, macmins are used a lot in offices now (from what i have seen).

File serving to a group of 3-100 and what goes on in major ( $100M) cloud data center is way past substantially different.
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What about their own internal use? IBM, Dell and HP all use their own products internally.

IBM uses Macs , iPhones , and iPads in substantial numbers now. They are one of Apple's partners in "Apple products in Enterprise" consulting now. Maybe talking about Lenovo (which bought IBM's PC business).


Apple given their size must do this also to a certain degree.

Yes, but what is that degree. Apple only makes a limited number of products. They are not out to make everything for everybody. So for the stuff that the do make those can be used.


They can't use their own servers as they don't make them any more,

They don't make servers for external consumption. That doesn't mean they don't make cloud data center servers for their own consumption. Apple doesn't "have to" only make Macs for their major data centers. That could make what usually goes in major data centers. They can buy the same stuff that other folks do.

You don't really think they are tracking their whole $100B operation on some Excel (or Numbers ) spreadsheets? Even back when Apple had XServe the overall corporate Financials app , the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system , etc. those were extremely likely not on macOS and Macs ( not only now but just about always not on Macs).

Right tool for the right job. The Fortune 1,000 companies all have operational business software needs. Companies like SAP, Oracle, SalesForce , all

Similarly Apple ( like many other companies) sends gobs of money to Amazon , Microsoft (Azure) , etc. to supplement their server capacity ( and outsource the maintenance work on all of that. )

but they make desktops and laptops, and a number of these won't be able to use an iMac they have bigger requirements.

The "a number of these" depends upon really what are counting. How many "Finance" departments do you think apple has. That's one department which can have one big (and fault tolerant) server to serve up their needs

That is versus counting things like individual employees and what they need.

Or are these users running off PC's?

Why would "personal computers" be used to run large backroom server jobs at any large company; let alone Apple?

If a company doesn't 'eat its own dog food' then how does it test product quality or better understand user requirements?

Company's only have to "eat its own dog food" for what they actually make. Ford doesn't have to make computers to use computers. Apple doesn't make all computers for every possible computer user. So outside their range they don't have to "eat".


P.S. There have been notions in previous threads that Apple can't fill their development needs with iMac Pro , MBP , and perhaps some mini's thrown in as personal/group clusters. A revised Mac Pro would be nice to have for some of their work but it is not absolutely critical. Several companies are probably going to win WWDC app awards and the prmarily development system they use are MBPs.
 

H2SO4

macrumors 603
Nov 4, 2008
5,652
6,938
Apple never had a Mac Pro for less than $2499,00, why do you think that a new one will be cheaper since everything Apple is costlier today?

Mac Pro is a niche product with low sales volume, it won’t be cheaper.
Are you sure?
Maybe things are getting lost in the dollars to pounds conversion with me but I remember buying Dual G5 and MacPro 1,1 for about £1700. I think the dollar number was the same at the time.
 

shaunp

Cancelled
Nov 5, 2010
1,811
1,395
Servers that run Linux ( probably a relatively small number of Solaris mixed in there too) . Apple is running mild variants of what Amazon , Google, Facebook, etc. are running. For example, they can just copy some of the Open Compute Project design ( many havebeen donated by some of the large players. )

https://www.opencompute.org/

Google, Facebook, and Amazon have thousands of severs that they have built. They don't sell (as retail physical product) any of those to other folks. Apple doing a few data center builds for themselves doesn't translate at all to a retail Mac Pro any more than the other folks.



File serving to a group of 3-100 and what goes on in major ( $100M) cloud data center is way past substantially different.
[doublepost=1559570316][/doublepost]

IBM uses Macs , iPhones , and iPads in substantial numbers now. They are one of Apple's partners in "Apple products in Enterprise" consulting now. Maybe talking about Lenovo (which bought IBM's PC business).




Yes, but what is that degree. Apple only makes a limited number of products. They are not out to make everything for everybody. So for the stuff that the do make those can be used.




They don't make servers for external consumption. That doesn't mean they don't make cloud data center servers for their own consumption. Apple doesn't "have to" only make Macs for their major data centers. That could make what usually goes in major data centers. They can buy the same stuff that other folks do.

You don't really think they are tracking their whole $100B operation on some Excel (or Numbers ) spreadsheets? Even back when Apple had XServe the overall corporate Financials app , the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system , etc. those were extremely likely not on macOS and Macs ( not only now but just about always not on Macs).

Right tool for the right job. The Fortune 1,000 companies all have operational business software needs. Companies like SAP, Oracle, SalesForce , all

Similarly Apple ( like many other companies) sends gobs of money to Amazon , Microsoft (Azure) , etc. to supplement their server capacity ( and outsource the maintenance work on all of that. )



The "a number of these" depends upon really what are counting. How many "Finance" departments do you think apple has. That's one department which can have one big (and fault tolerant) server to serve up their needs

That is versus counting things like individual employees and what they need.



Why would "personal computers" be used to run large backroom server jobs at any large company; let alone Apple?



Company's only have to "eat its own dog food" for what they actually make. Ford doesn't have to make computers to use computers. Apple doesn't make all computers for every possible computer user. So outside their range they don't have to "eat".


P.S. There have been notions in previous threads that Apple can't fill their development needs with iMac Pro , MBP , and perhaps some mini's thrown in as personal/group clusters. A revised Mac Pro would be nice to have for some of their work but it is not absolutely critical. Several companies are probably going to win WWDC app awards and the prmarily development system they use are MBPs.


LMAO, talk about missing the point. I give up.
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,298
3,893
These ones right? The third gen that Intel is saying are coming in the Fall - https://wccftech.com/intel-core-x-next-gen-cascade-lake-x-hedt-cpu-fall-2019-launch/

3xxx is not the generation.

In Intel's Server Naming scheme the first digit is the "SKU Level" https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers-data-center.html

The second digit is the generation.

so everything in the Xeon W product group right now has a 21xx or 31xx prefix.

Only on the second generation now in the Xeon SP's. ( 42xx , 52xx , 62xxx , 82xxx, 92xx )

"Skylake-X refresh" never rolled out either SP's or Xeon W. Intel may do some "3rd generation" handwaving for the Core X products, but they have their own naming system that is different. That "refresh" wasn't really much of a "generation" change. ( For the most part Intel just flipped some features on/off and binning at a bit higher clocks
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13402/intel-basin-falls-refresh-core-i9-9980xe )
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Cranked even higher TDP than the Xeon 2000 series. ( W-2145 TDP 140W W-3225 160W same base clock 3.7GHz . 3275 climbs into the 200's ) I wouldn't bet on that. Even more so if Apple is trying to keep the enclosure on a size budget ( big as possible not the objective ).

This could be part of he hiccup though if Intel is pushing the evolution path of the 3000 series much harder than the 2000 series and Apple "had to" change 'horses'. It looks like they are going to need package size creep to try to tread water and keep up. ( won't be able to do a XCC die at 10nm. So will need to double up to raise core counts. ).

P.S. The 3000 series over the 2000 series also means "even more money". ( just like on the Platinum , Gold , Bronze in the Xeon SP). What the prices are that Intel is charging will be a factor. If they are slapping some turbo boost on most of those 3000 series to push the prices back up to roughly equal to SP pricing, then that is also an issue. ( Intel chasing more money on fewer sales ... really isn't going to help the Mac Pro much... at least if Apple isn't drinking the same kool-aid )
 
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CWallace

macrumors G5
Aug 17, 2007
12,027
10,731
Seattle, WA
So she be revealed and it is indeed the W 3000 series with a starting price of $5999 (so $1000 more than I thought up-thread).
 
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