New Mac Pro Confirmed to Have Removable CPU

[flat five]

They even say in their manual replacing the GPUs would void the warranty.

they don't say that in the manual.. they say:

"If you open your Mac Pro or install items other than memory and SSDs, you risk damaging your equipment. Such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your Mac Pro."


http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1668/en_US/mac_pro_late-2013_ipig.pdf



----------


for reference. here's what the mp1 manual says:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1639/en_US/mac_pro_mid2012_ug.pdf

 

[Gudi]

Thunderbolt is worse than PCIe. Nobody cares how cool it is or how old PCIe is because TB is weaker. Remember too that PCIe is not updated infrequently and is backwards-compatible. And PCIe works perfectly fine for sound cards. TB works fine for sound cards, but it just costs more and provides no performance benefit. There's no reason to get rid of it except to make it sleeker.

Unless I am totally misunderstanding you.
You are telling me that this ...

... is just as good (or even better) than this ...

Except for how it looks?
​

Try to learn about the benefits of Firewire: Peer-to-Peer Networking, PC Independence, Target Disk Mode, 45W Powering, Plug-and-Play, Daisy Chaining, Full-Duplex, Data Prioritization, Real-Time Video Streaming, Data Rate and Latency.

Than try to learn about DisplayPort: Packetized Data Transmission, Simultaneous Audio and Video Transmission, Multi-Stream Transport (MST), 4K and 8K UHD Support, Ability to Carry other Data Streams like USB and Webcam.

This all was the heritage Apple brought into Intel's Light Peak development to create Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt is not just a repackaged PCIe interface.

PCIe stuff is cheap and works just as well.

Yeah, what ever.

 

[LightningIceFox]

Unless I am totally misunderstanding you.
You are telling me that this ...

Image

... is just as good (or even better) than this ...

Image

Except for how it looks?
​

Try to learn about the benefits of Firewire: Peer-to-Peer Networking, PC Independence, Target Disk Mode, 45W Powering, Plug-and-Play, Daisy Chaining, Full-Duplex, Data Prioritization, Real-Time Video Streaming, Data Rate and Latency.

Than try to learn about DisplayPort: Packetized Data Transmission, Simultaneous Audio and Video Transmission, Multi-Stream Transport (MST), 4K and 8K UHD Support, Ability to Carry other Data Streams like USB and Webcam.

This all was the heritage Apple brought into Intel's Light Peak development to create Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt is not just a repackaged PCIe interface.


Yeah, what ever.

Thunderbolt is not even a bus so I do not understand why people compare the two together.

As others have stated, PCIe that the Mac Pro uses is version 3.0 which has a stated 15.75GB/s for a 16 lane bus = 126Gb/s.

The Thunderbolt 2 interface uses 2560MB/s (2.5GB/s or 20Gb/s) per cable.

I.E. for the purposes of graphics processing, when only utilizing one thunderbolt cable, it is 6.3 times faster to use the PCIe bus vs using the one cable.

 

[techwhiz]

As I recall, the concern was the CPU would be soldered into the socket, making potential upgrades all but impossible. That concern has now been laid to rest. Simple as that.

Apple has never soldered the Xeon CPU of any Intel Mac Pro computer.
As far as I can tell, there aren't many companies that solder Xeon class CPUs to motherboards.

This was never a worry except for people that didn't know the above.

----------

Thunderbolt is not even a bus so I do not understand why people compare the two together.

As others have stated, PCIe that the Mac Pro uses is version 3.0 which has a stated 985 MB/s (7880Mb/s or 7.69Gb/s) per lane. There are slots that graphics cards use that are of 16 lanes. 16 x 7880MB/s = 15.75GB/s = 126Gb/s.

The Thunderbolt 2 interface uses 2560MB/s (2.5GB/s or 20Gb/s) per cable.

I.E. for the purposes of graphics processing, when only utilizing one thunderbolt cable, it is 6.3 times faster to use the PCIe bus vs using the one cable.

Just to be clear, PCIe isn't really a bus either. Multiple devices connected requires a switch. It's a point to point interface that serializes the PCI protocol. Thunderbolt uses a bastardized PCIe protocol with additional information for video pass through. Thunderbolt can loosely be thought of as PCIe over fiber.

 

[Renzatic]

Unless I am totally misunderstanding you.
You are telling me that this ...

... is just as good (or even better) than this ...

It is if you have a piece of hardware that needs a crapton of bandwidth.

You can go on and on about how that sleek little car you love so much looks has a 450 HP 4.0 V8 engine, air conditioning, heated seats, satellite radio, and a TV in the back, and claim it's the best for everything around. But when I need to move a mountain, a fast little car with heated seats isn't gonna do me a bit of good. No. I'm gonna want to use a big ass ugly 3500 HP dumptruck.

 

[Macist]

As I recall, the concern was the CPU would be soldered into the socket, making potential upgrades all but impossible. That concern has now been laid to rest. Simple as that.

And to be fair, I think apple solder CPUs down simply to reduce height by a fraction and their incredibly small and slim products rather than to be meanies.

In the MacPro there'd be no advantage to shaving a mm or two off the the height of the CPU so it's socketed. Also makes BTOs simple.

 

[Mike777]

You wrote ... "Last I checked there's [sic] more game developers than there are musicians or video editors"

Can you supply a link to this information please?

http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/

For iOS alone, it's 210 apps a day. Per day.
Then you can look up android.
Then you can look up steam.
Then you can look up wii, xbox one, xbox 360, gamestick, ouya, ps3, ps4, vita, ds, 3ds and the list goes on.

And that's just game releases. Smallest team size 1 (very beneficial to have an all-round workhorse that crunches in every category) up to 800-1000 (GTA 5) - all of which use computers, or need fast computers, in every category.

There are now millions of people in game development who will directly benefit from being able to run the game on the same machine they author with. We're talking about 3D artists, musicians, programmers and more. Running the game on the same machine you author with is a huge benefit to tweaking the end result. If anything, game developers use more of the hardware than any other professional field. We're not talking about hobbyists here. Making games taxes all the existing fields: video, music, 3d, number crunching. That's why graphics performance itself in gaming is also relevant and important. All the professionals of different fields are combined with this field.

While the majority of musicians do not in fact use computers, but musical instruments. My comment was directed at music producers, people who require and use software to author or arrange, and these are significantly less in number than performers. But not less important. Just, there are more game developers, which can include musicians, so it's a no brainer.

The game industry also earns more money by FAR than the movie industry. Times have changed, if people are wondering.

I didn't even bother counting hobbyists, but I know Unity has a million registered users, most of which are probably hobbyists.

Is that a good start for getting it clear?

Note for casual readers: This post is a continuation of why game developers stand to take great interest in mac pros, and why they'd benefit. Currently we're still having a toss up between kitted out iMac and the mac pro.

 

[techwhiz]

Unless I am totally misunderstanding you.
You are telling me that this ...

Image

... is just as good (or even better) than this ...

Image

Except for how it looks?
​

Thunderbolt is not just a repackaged PCIe interface.


Yeah, what ever.

You do realize that Thunderbolt is based on PCIe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
"Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into one serial signal alongside a DC connection for electric power, transmitted over one cable. Up to six peripherals may be supported by one connector through various topologies."

So Thunderbolt *IS* a bastardized implementation of PCIe and a multiplexed DisplayPort signal.

If you need heavy lifting, then PCIe is better. 16 lanes of Gen3 PCIe will give you 16x8Gb/s = 128Gb/s. Thunderbolt isn't even close. For connecting RAID arrays and such it's better but professional audio people will find themselves immediately needing an expansion chassis for those PCIe cards that Avid makes.

Just because Apple dumped multilane PCIe edge connectors for expandability doesn't make it the correct thing to do. They still use PCIe inside the box to connect the graphic processors in the system.

 

[LightningIceFox]

. . . [snip] . . .
Just to be clear, PCIe isn't really a bus either. Multiple devices connected requires a switch. It's a point to point interface that serializes the PCI protocol. Thunderbolt uses a bastardized PCIe protocol with additional information for video pass through. Thunderbolt can loosely be thought of as PCIe over fiber.

PCIe is a bus. It is an expansion bus which is connected between multiple devices to the chipset (or switch as you called it).

A bus is not required to have all devices sharing the same lanes.

 

[N64]

And to be fair, I think apple solder CPUs down simply to reduce height by a fraction and their incredibly small and slim products rather than to be meanies.

In the MacPro there'd be no advantage to shaving a mm or two off the the height of the CPU so it's socketed. Also makes BTOs simple.

Yep. The MacBook Air and RMBP are so thin that they have to do serious gluing and soldering to make the components fit. I'd still take a slightly thicker RMBP if it meant I could change the RAM.

 

[tdtran1025]

Daughter card

From the look of it, this daughter card only fits 1 CPU. The gain from lowest end, a quad-core upgrade to a hex-core is nice, but not as great as with a daughter card that houses 2 CPUs.

 

[blackcrayon]

From the look of it, this daughter card only fits 1 CPU. The gain from lowest end, a quad-core upgrade to a hex-core is nice, but not as great as with a daughter card that houses 2 CPUs.

But an upgrade from quad core to 12 core would be pretty significant, no? (Not as much as to 24, but still

It is if you have a piece of hardware that needs a crapton of bandwidth.

You can go on and on about how that sleek little car you love so much looks has a 450 HP 4.0 V8 engine, air conditioning, heated seats, satellite radio, and a TV in the back, and claim it's the best for everything around. But when I need to move a mountain, a fast little car with heated seats isn't gonna do me a bit of good. No. I'm gonna want to use a big ass ugly 3500 HP dumptruck.

Yeah, we all know that. But I think the percentage of cards that are not video cards that need higher bandwidth than Thunderbolt 2 is extremely tiny. And for some of those rare purposes, using multiple ports might also be an option.

 

[cbm]

And software manufacturers stuck in the stone age pushing antiquated sound cards instead of embracing OpenCL helps anybody except for stone age software developers?

Sound cards, at the pro level, are really more multichannel audio interfaces. They don't really generate sound the way you might be thinking. There are variety of professional interface standards such as MADI, which need to be accommodated.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

Sound cards, at the pro level, are really more multichannel audio interfaces. They don't really generate sound the way you might be thinking. There are variety of professional interface standards such as MADI, which need to be accommodated.

I understand that, but you are still going to have dongles up to wazoo regardless of if the adapter plugs into a Thunderbolt interface or into a sound card. The 'internal' card which does audio processing can easily be replaced with OpenCL.

 

[Gudi]

Thunderbolt is not even a bus so I do not understand why people compare the two together.

Because, people are unimaginative. They are used to sticking cards inside their computers and can't fathom a world without that fetish. Ports can't just replace slots.

In the era before USB you needed an expansion card for everything. To connect a Joystick you needed a gaming card providing nothing but a game port. You couldn't just dedicate any free DA-15 port to that purpose. In the beginning USB ports themselves came in form of PCI expansion cards. But since than a lot of hardware expansions were externalized as mere USB sticks. TV sticks, LTE sticks, BT sticks. It all works fine as long as you don't hit the limits of USB.

Because FW costs more money the industry opted for USB. Because USB is such a mediocre standard, it couldn't replace expansion cards where FW could have. Because every old standard lives on forever, there is no need to ever stop making expansion cards either. No progress in PC land, only eternal backward compatibility.

For the purposes of graphics processing, when only utilizing one thunderbolt cable, it is 6.3 times faster to use the PCIe bus vs using the one cable.

For the purpose of graphics processing the Mac Pro comes with dual GPU. A GPU belongs inside every computer with a GUI driven OS. The GPU is part of the computing core itself. It is not something that belongs on an expansion slot.

CPU and GPU belong together as Light(ning) and Thunder(bolt)

For the purpose of video transmission and networking you need DP and FW protocols, which are incorporated in TB but not in HDMI or USB. Eventually the graphics leave the computer in a constant stream and show up on some 4K display.

 

[DeepIn2U]

What about RAM, SSD and GPU?

Duh, RAM is removable and upgradable by the user - have you not seen the slots illustrated on Apple's page for the past 3mths?

SSD is also upgradable, it's resting on one of the GPU cards, and those also look to be removable, albeit will some serious tools.

 

[Tech198]

Apple did not make a choice here, the Xeon is only offered in socketed form from Intel.

ok, so why didn't Apple say its can be replaced in addition ?

 

[TMay]

The PCIe connection for internal drives would be great if there were more than one, and if it used a standard type of connector that enabled the use of common aftermarket drives.

----------



So far, TB doesn't offer enough bandwidth to make it practical for GPU use.

PCI Express, 16 lane:
v3.0: 15.75 GB/s
v4.0: 31.51 GB/s

Thunderbolt 2: 2.5 GB/s

My opinion as well; just don't understand why Intel would say no. Perhaps Intel is protecting it's brand from the bad experience of a GPU on TB2.

 

[keigo]

Duh, RAM is removable and upgradable by the user - have you not seen the slots illustrated on Apple's page for the past 3mths?

SSD is also upgradable, it's resting on one of the GPU cards, and those also look to be removable, albeit will some serious tools.

Yes the SSD is upgradable but if no 3rd party selling it then it is as good as nothing.

I'm still hoping OWC will offer the SSD but at the moment there is nothing...

 

[Wiesenlooser]

Duh, RAM is removable and upgradable by the user - have you not seen the slots illustrated on Apple's page for the past 3mths?

SSD is also upgradable, it's resting on one of the GPU cards, and those also look to be removable, albeit will some serious tools.

So I can just insert any GPU I want in this machine? It does have 3... will it also work with only 1 GPU?

 

[lilo777]

I guess the fact that people are so excited about such a basic feature as a "potentially" replaceable microprocessor in desktop computer tells us how screwed Apple priorities are. Yeah, it's small. Who cares? Every single computer out there with Xeon chip in it has this feature (and it does not even require any hacking).

I happened to visit an Apple store earlier today. I decided to take a look at nMP. There it was - a single unit standing on the table at the wall. Nobody was interested. As usual people were attacking iPad and iPhone tables. Ironically one lady decided to take a rest. She sat next to nMP and she put her purse on a table - purse leaning on the MP. I am pretty sure she had no idea that it was a computer. It looks like those trash can jokes actually are coming true

 

[AppleScruff1]

It is if you have a piece of hardware that needs a crapton of bandwidth.

You can go on and on about how that sleek little car you love so much looks has a 450 HP 4.0 V8 engine, air conditioning, heated seats, satellite radio, and a TV in the back, and claim it's the best for everything around. But when I need to move a mountain, a fast little car with heated seats isn't gonna do me a bit of good. No. I'm gonna want to use a big ass ugly 3500 HP dumptruck.

Something like this:

 

[keigo]

So I can just insert any GPU I want in this machine? It does have 3... will it also work with only 1 GPU?

the GPU is replaceable does not mean you can put any GPU in. Have you look at the picture of the New Mac Pro? And do you know how the New Mac Pro GPU look like?

Those New Mac Pro GPU are proprietary card. As of now, we are not seeing any 3rd party selling it.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Yes the SSD is upgradable but if no 3rd party selling it then it is as good as nothing.

I'm still hoping OWC will offer the SSD but at the moment there is nothing...

OWC still doesn't have an upgrade for the 2013 Macbook Air PCIe SSD

It will probably be the same situation for the Mac Pro.

 

[Nugget]

ok, so why didn't Apple say its can be replaced in addition ?

I'm sure for the exact same reasons Apple never said that the CPU could be replaced in the old Mac Pro, and warned against users trying to do so with those models. Even though the CPU is socketed, the replacement will still be beyond the skills or comfort level of most (nearly all) users, and it's unreasonable to expect Apple to treat or claim that the CPUs are user-servicable parts.