New Mac Pro thread (merged)
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50voltphantom
macrumors regular
I'm just stoked there's a new Mac Pro and NO ONE could've predicted that it would be this machine. I love it that this machine is polarizing.
If you have Tb accessories that most likely means that you are in video/vfx environment which is ruled by CUDA which this doesn't offer.
derbothaus
macrumors 601
There are other ways to get CUDA cores than the primary GPU in your workstation.
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
I think this is primarily why they are pre-announcing the new one Mac Pro. For a significant subset the product was pragmatically canceled. Because it has not technically been officially announced the "old" Mac Pro is still for sale for at least a couple (if not several months). It is still in the online Apple store. Just as if the product was killed off it gives folks time to buy one if they need one.
Re-using the same name on these two products is bit whacked. A complete change in direction (as opposed to revised/rebuilt-from-ground-up implementation) should drive a new product name.
snapdragonx
macrumors regular
I don't think so. It's basically the same computer, just built in a different way... It's still "the most powerful Mac", aimed at the same market.
Forgetting what it looks like for a second, the only difference I can see is lack of internal expandability.
Yeah, but its a hell of a lot more efficient than paying for two excess FirePros plus external TB enclosures.
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This is my big problem with it - the lack of internal expansion as translated to the GPUs.
The iTube? It is interesting. I wasn't chomping at the bit for a new MacPro anyway, so I can step back and just view it for what it is.
One thing I just don't get: are human beings getting smaller or something?
Seriously, I totally understand miniaturizing and slimming down mobile devices and other things, but... was there **really** a need to slim down a professional workstation computer?
Why is that in and of itself a 'feature'?
Will it mean a production company/lab/photo studio/whatever can pack more workers using a workstation into a smaller space just because now rather than a practical tower, each station is using an iTube and external devices?
Just because its smaller, does it use less energy? (As if you couldn't place the same components/energy draw in a larger, more efficient package.)
Because its smaller and presumably uses less materials, is it less expensive to manufacture? (Or moreso because it requires a more complicated process?)
Or is it just that the human race is physically shrinking, and our new tinier little hands and lowered stature can't deal with larger sized products anymore -even when a larger size makes more sense- and so everything being smaller is always a selling point?
I get it's a cool/unique product in many ways... but was the professional world that's most in need of it really clamoring for a teeny-weensie workstation vs. an upgraded 'normal' sized one?
Anyway... I can't wait to build my first Haswell Hackintosh! Thankfully, I don't have to settle for whatever 'systems for leprechauns' kick Apple is on for hardware choices. I haven't shrank yet, and oddly enough, I still have the same amount of space for computer towers and such that I always had.
One thing I just don't get: are human beings getting smaller or something?
Seriously, I totally understand miniaturizing and slimming down mobile devices and other things, but... was there **really** a need to slim down a professional workstation computer?
Why is that in and of itself a 'feature'?
Will it mean a production company/lab/photo studio/whatever can pack more workers using a workstation into a smaller space just because now rather than a practical tower, each station is using an iTube and external devices?
Just because its smaller, does it use less energy? (As if you couldn't place the same components/energy draw in a larger, more efficient package.)
Because its smaller and presumably uses less materials, is it less expensive to manufacture? (Or moreso because it requires a more complicated process?)
Or is it just that the human race is physically shrinking, and our new tinier little hands and lowered stature can't deal with larger sized products anymore -even when a larger size makes more sense- and so everything being smaller is always a selling point?
I get it's a cool/unique product in many ways... but was the professional world that's most in need of it really clamoring for a teeny-weensie workstation vs. an upgraded 'normal' sized one?
Anyway... I can't wait to build my first Haswell Hackintosh! Thankfully, I don't have to settle for whatever 'systems for leprechauns' kick Apple is on for hardware choices. I haven't shrank yet, and oddly enough, I still have the same amount of space for computer towers and such that I always had.
Tesselator
macrumors 601
Yup! They should definately change the name. It's NOT a MacPro any longer. How about MacCan, iCan, or MacFast?
LOL, Only you Wild Bill, could pull that off.
Hehe....
It's not a good fit for this IMHO, due to the necessitation of using TB to xx network adapter (10G Ethernet, FC, or IB), to get a faster network connection. And if it's attached to it's own DAS storage pool, the TB connections will be slowed even further, as they're ultimately sharing the same PCIe connection (switched in the TB chip if attached to the same one, or via a PCIe switch if each device is attached to a different TB chip; either way, you can easily run into a bottleneck in such a configuration).
Yeah, with all the new I/O tech and up-versioning I was a little surprised not to see dual 10G Ethernet. Still the same dual 1G... bummeristic!
Huh? no, what's this about? Trucks?
I was thinking the same thing.
At the same time, I may sell my $2499 (amazon) 12 core later and get a new Mac Pro later in the year. I'm really curious to see more physical specifics.Overall, I'm thrilled they continued the line.
thedarkhorse
macrumors 6502a
Who will be the first to offer an R2D2 sticker wrap for this? Throw it on top of a roomba and you're good to go.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
My thoughts:
It looks AlienWare/Dell-ish. Does not remind me of anything Apple-like, and I was a big fan of the Cube.
I don't see the garbage can comparison. More like a humidifier you'd find in the Sharper Image.
As far as the utility of the product, we don't know whether it has an external power brick like the Cube or earlier Mac minis, which would make the smaller size somewhat irrelevant.
As far as the market for it, I can only speak to myself. I am not a "professional." However, I have always bought nice Macs. I don't like the iMacs because they are sealed off. I at the least like to be able to swap out a hard drive without voiding the warranty. This is only possible on the classic MacBook Pro (and even then Apple's staff is largely unaware that it does not void the warranty).
So, I would like a desktop where I could swap out a standard hard drive. I think Apple just killed the last Mac desktop computer you could do that with (the current Mac Pro).
It seems to me that you should make something the size it needs to be to accommodate necessary parts. No one was asking for a dramatically smaller Mac Pro. There were professionals who wanted an updated Mac Pro and presumably expandability. And there were people like me who wanted a less expensive desktop Mac with exchangeable parts. Based on those two markets, I'm not sure whom Apple is pleasing with this model.
All this conjecture is presupposed on the idea that you can't swap out the Mac Pro's drive, but even if you could, I imagine those little sticks are much more expensive than buying a 2.5" drive off the shelf.
The benefit of a desktop is not having to miniaturize and make sacrifices. You make sacrifices when designing an airplane lavatory because you have to. But people don't start off building a house with the intention to fit a toilet, shower, and sink into a 2x2 room. Just because you can do it doesn't explain the desire to do it.
So, ultimately for me, it was never about expandability in terms of adding parts. It was about replaceability of parts.
Plus, it's just kind of ugly. The aesthetic reminds me of the iPhone 3G/S. It has that overly slick look, almost slimy. Not at all like the sharp, austere aluminum Macs.
It looks AlienWare/Dell-ish. Does not remind me of anything Apple-like, and I was a big fan of the Cube.
I don't see the garbage can comparison. More like a humidifier you'd find in the Sharper Image.
As far as the utility of the product, we don't know whether it has an external power brick like the Cube or earlier Mac minis, which would make the smaller size somewhat irrelevant.
As far as the market for it, I can only speak to myself. I am not a "professional." However, I have always bought nice Macs. I don't like the iMacs because they are sealed off. I at the least like to be able to swap out a hard drive without voiding the warranty. This is only possible on the classic MacBook Pro (and even then Apple's staff is largely unaware that it does not void the warranty).
So, I would like a desktop where I could swap out a standard hard drive. I think Apple just killed the last Mac desktop computer you could do that with (the current Mac Pro).
It seems to me that you should make something the size it needs to be to accommodate necessary parts. No one was asking for a dramatically smaller Mac Pro. There were professionals who wanted an updated Mac Pro and presumably expandability. And there were people like me who wanted a less expensive desktop Mac with exchangeable parts. Based on those two markets, I'm not sure whom Apple is pleasing with this model.
All this conjecture is presupposed on the idea that you can't swap out the Mac Pro's drive, but even if you could, I imagine those little sticks are much more expensive than buying a 2.5" drive off the shelf.
The benefit of a desktop is not having to miniaturize and make sacrifices. You make sacrifices when designing an airplane lavatory because you have to. But people don't start off building a house with the intention to fit a toilet, shower, and sink into a 2x2 room. Just because you can do it doesn't explain the desire to do it.
So, ultimately for me, it was never about expandability in terms of adding parts. It was about replaceability of parts.
Plus, it's just kind of ugly. The aesthetic reminds me of the iPhone 3G/S. It has that overly slick look, almost slimy. Not at all like the sharp, austere aluminum Macs.
Dust sucker
Anybody puts the new mac pro on the floor is really going have trouble with all the dirt sucked in. How much will depend on how much air they are pulling through for cooling. It will not take very much dust to seriously degrade thermal performance. I didn't see any filters, but they would need to be changed/cleaned frequently.
Anybody puts the new mac pro on the floor is really going have trouble with all the dirt sucked in. How much will depend on how much air they are pulling through for cooling. It will not take very much dust to seriously degrade thermal performance. I didn't see any filters, but they would need to be changed/cleaned frequently.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
Yup! They should definately change the name. It's NOT a MacPro any longer. How about MacCan, iCan, or MacFast?
LOL, Only you Wild Bill, could pull that off.
Hehe....
Yeah, with all the new I/O tech and up-versioning I was a little surprised not to see dual 10G Ethernet. Still the same dual 1G... bummeristic!
Huh? no, what's this about? Trucks?
Steve Jobs said that the PC (meaning Macs and PCs) would become like trucks for "heavy lifting" work, whereas most people would use post-PC devices the way that most people use cars instead of trucks.
The main flaw with his analogy, and it's a big one, is that most people never drove trucks. Before the popularization of the automobile, most people were not driving trucks and switching to cars.
It's the same with PCs. Apple thinks that the traditional PC has been too overwhelming to consumers. But their big mistake is that people have been comfortably using PCs for decades and if anything are more confused by the lack of file systems (iCloud's document storage is confounding IMO) on current devices, unless their only goal is to attract old people who want to play Boggle and have never used a computer before. But people are pretty smart. And they got the metaphor that computers had been using for decades.
Anyhow, that's the truck/cars metaphor. It's just a bad one, IMO.
Anybody puts the new mac pro on the floor is really going have trouble with all the dirt sucked in. How much will depend on how much air they are pulling through for cooling. It will not take very much dust to seriously degrade thermal performance. I didn't see any filters, but they would need to be changed/cleaned frequently.
Um...Datavac
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deconstruct60
macrumors G5
It isn't dual CPU package it is just single package. Three major impacts.
1. Half the number of DIMM slots. This is a bet on higher density RAM. Given the next E5 iteration (v3 ) is going to DDR4 that is probably a good bet. There is also some additional head room with E5 v2 that this will likely use.
2. Most likely a clock rate hit (and decent chance this is a price hit also, but we'll see). Intel's target for the E5 v2 before was just 10. To squeeze 12 in there it very unlikely that will have the TDP headroom to clock at the upper end of the range. More than likely this is a core count for GHz trade-off, but perhaps there is a "clocked high and high core count" for even higher price that Apple will use.
Kind of depends if the system is being set up to nominally use E5 1600's (at ~130W TDP ) or 2600's ( at ~95-115W TDP) . If the latter then seems doubtful.
[ Intel is likely going to charge an arm-and-a-leg for the 12 core models. They'll extremely likely be priced higher than the 10 core models. The 10 cores are probably priced where the old E5 "v1" 8 cores were. So > $1770 and then have to throw in two custom FirePro GPU cards.
]
3. Kiss the 16-24 x86 configs goodbye. Jumping to an new Xeon E5 processor that is entire tick-tock after the previous Mac pro and there is zero move in max x86 core count config. The competition has been at max 16 cores for a year and will be moving to 24. (although at higher base prices).
[Not all that bad a bet is switching to a different horse in the core count feature wars... the GPGPU cores.
For software that is stuck on x86 cores that will be present problems. ]
Minor impact is that the E5 2600 aren't really priced for single usage. Intel value prices them at higher costs because has the capability to be used in pair. This design flushes that down the toilet. Not unprecedented because you also required to buy a 10 ports worth of SATA controllers with the chipset which is also going completely unused.
I think Apple is picking this 12 core part just to spin-doctor that they aren't backsliding..... they are. Just like spin on their pages that says that this is "more expandable" than the old Mac Pro.
yoink
macrumors member
As someone who works in a small pro-video environment the new Mac Pro is close enough, but a few concerns (already voiced by many, GPU, RAM slots, etc.) remain.
One thing I can't, for the life of me, understand, is why Apple isn't spec'ing 10GBaseT. GbE is over and done with for pros very shortly, and if they're going to short-change us on the PCIe slots, and thus remove our ability to extract the most out of 8-port SAS 6Gb cards (or the upcoming 12Gb-per-port cards), the least they can do is make sure we don't need to waste a few TB ports on external 10GbE boxes (like ATTO's units) such that we can use non-apple hardware for pooled storage.
That's the most short-sighted bit - they could bolster both TB 2 and 10GBaseT in one fell swoop.
At the moment, it's a quiet-ish "interesting."
One thing I can't, for the life of me, understand, is why Apple isn't spec'ing 10GBaseT. GbE is over and done with for pros very shortly, and if they're going to short-change us on the PCIe slots, and thus remove our ability to extract the most out of 8-port SAS 6Gb cards (or the upcoming 12Gb-per-port cards), the least they can do is make sure we don't need to waste a few TB ports on external 10GbE boxes (like ATTO's units) such that we can use non-apple hardware for pooled storage.
That's the most short-sighted bit - they could bolster both TB 2 and 10GBaseT in one fell swoop.
At the moment, it's a quiet-ish "interesting."
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
1/8 the size isn't basically the same. The other product offered internal expansion (increase in number, not upgrade of devices ) . This one is purely external. That isn't basically the same.
The first is primarily designed to sit on the floor. This one is not designed to sit on the floor at all.
If narrow the view that only the CPU and GPU packages matter then sure "basically the same", but that pretty much ignores the vast majority of the box.
How about the substantive lack of using the resources provided by the chipset. current Mac Pro uses all of its. This one makes zero use of what you buy in terns of SATA and USB.
The 12 core model will be dual capable. Again functionality you buy that the design flushes. The old one leveraged it.
derbothaus
macrumors 601
I got the single socket misshap sorted out. Did not know Ivy-EP was getting to 12 cores. Wasn't watching. I am now.
And yes they still have physics to contend with so the more cores the lower the advertised clocks. I bet the bins are fairly high enough for 2-12 threads though. At least in the 3+GHz range. I hope some flexibility in the Clock vs. Core area and not one big ol' 1.6GHz 12-core Xeon as only choice.
I agree, more expandable is a laugh. It is the same expandability as any Macbook Pro now. Big freakin deal. Loss of perfectly good SATA pisses me off as well. Can we get a mail in rebate for those? That may pay for 1-2 TB cables. Who the heck needs PCI based boot SSD's when random 4K's are still not even hitting 200MB/s. It looks good on a spec sheet is why. This thing IS pretty but it will be dubbed "The Desk Octopus" relatively soon after all the "Pro" peripherals get hitched up to a working state.
softwareguy256
macrumors regular
you're gonna have to get one of those ATX power supplies to run anything serious, just imagine daisy changed crap all over the place. What a mess. Oh yeah, if you accidentally trip a cord and disconnect one of those tunderbolt cables during a critical job... or the ssd goes out, you are screwed.
Tesselator
macrumors 601
Yes, they did it save money and maximize profits. Everything about this machine costs less.
- Materials: 1/10th as much as previous
- Manufacturing: Probably less than half as much.
- Assembly line and tooling: 1/3rd ~ 1/2 size and less power used. (because fewer parts, simpler parts, smaller size, and lighter weight)
- Warehousing: about 6 times more product can be stored in the same space comparatively.
- Shipping: most likely less than half the cost per unit to ship.
- Fewer parts: Single fan, no card edge connectors, no SATA connectors, Single heat-sink instead of 4 (min.), Apple internal proprietary GPU design & manufacture (I think), only 4 RAM connectors as opposed to 6 or 8, almost no internal cables at all, and so on...
- Heck even the power and time (both costly) to truck them around in the warehouse or load trucks will be severely reduced.
It's not.
Probably not but it could mean less office space.
We could have fit 4 or 5 times the number of machines in the same space or optionally used a much smaller space for the same number of render nodes. And none of the machines you're looking at above needed to have PCI type expansion slots nor internal storage.
Yes, actually it does. You can research this and find out the various reasons why. So assuming Apple didn't completely blow chunks on either the previous systems nor this new one just by looking at it you can say with some certainty that it uses a lot less power. I'm guessing between 3/2rds and 1/2 as much as the previous MP5,1 with similar specs.
Well first we can clearly see that it's a MUCH less complicated process and also yes, less materials means less expense. Again, unless Apple is blowing some major chunks somewhere. But they have enough experience in manufacturing that we can safely disregard this.
I didn't see anyone asking for smaller, no. But Apple didn't want to lose ALL of their MP customer base so they cheapened up and settled for just losing some of their MP customer base. In the process they may even have created a new sub-segment and if that grows much may indeed find the justification to continue manufacturing Xeon based systems of some kind or another.
Ya, except now you can fit 6 of them in that same space.
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It really belongs on a desk.
The ports sort of make that the "front" side in my mind. I guess you could also hide them by turning it.