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The 2009 (Gainestown) Mac Pro: Everything We Know
- Thread starter Tallest Skil
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Remember we are not talking about running 256 GB ram in a Mac Pro the first three quarters maybe not even til 2010. But we are talking about technology catching up with apple. So we do see that companies are going to manufacture the large sticks. Here is info on large GB memory. The Link is
http://www.simmtester.com/page/news/shownews.asp?num=9531
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/576/1018576/elpida-preps-16gb-fb-dimm
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39006/135/
32 GB DIMM
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605401/samsung-paves-way-for-32gb-dimms.html
Ok. Have two 8800 Gt's and they are SLI in the machine. System Profiler shows them connected and display shows only two displays capable. Now Games in OS 10.5.6 run in sli mode. So we know it works for us. Snow Leopard will support SLI. Nvidia has a deal working with apple to give that support built in. ATI also. They are eager to sell Graphics cards with Apple being that Apple is such a graphics monger. There are very little computer companies that love to sell huge graphics cards for big time graphics usage. Most Dell and Hp are sold for low end personal use. Also they do sell gaming systems and they do support dual SLI and Crossfire. But Mac Pro's are power house machines made to crunch big numbers to achieve great hurdles and tp produce great results. And by the way Winders Vister Ultermate 64 on the same machine with Nvidia drivers show SLI. We are even running Winders 7 Ultermate 64 Bater and it is SLI. No the spelling was intentional.
http://mac.zicos.com/news.php/n/10053112/NVidia-SLI-Hybrid-Fully-Functional-with-Mac-OS-X-10.5.6
Ok. Now there has been a patent filed for a 3D desktop in the future. It is no secret. It is even in this companies web site server. Here is a link to tell the facts.
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/11/apple-exploring-3d-desktop-and-application-interfaces/
http://www.appletell.com/apple/comm...ts-for-3d-desktop-and-application-interfaces/
Now Mycrosloft is coming out with a similar desktop ( http://vista.blorge.com/2007/04/27/vista-and-xp-get-virtual-3d-desktop-cube/ ) ( seems to be a cheap copy of OS X user switching and milti desktop ) but it is limited unlike Apples desire to revolutionize things like Steve wants it to be. All ways anticipate and stay ahead of the competitor.
So, if the new Mac Pro would have SLI technology. The Mac Pro will be released with Snow Leopard because of the SLI support, right? So anyways, when is the WWDC ? thanks.
Your quoting is broken; thought you ought to know.
I can't read your sentence fragments; are you saying that SLI works now? It doesn't. How do you know that Snow Leopard will support SLI? I don't believe it will. Neither ATI nor nVidia are eager to sell graphics cards to Apple, because giving Apple more options means more work for them making EFI firmware for each card. Google may do wonders, but if I had any idea what you were even alluding to, I would use it to show you that Apple isn't going to support two gaming technologies in a workstation computer.
OS XI won't be around before 2020. They will NOT move to a fully multitouch OS in TWO YEARS.
The new Mac Pro will NOT have SLI, even with Snow Leopard.
WWDC is in June.
Perhaps it is really that SLI won't be that relevant for anything other than gaming when OpenCL is present. It will use all resources available, so having multiple GPU's will boost performance in Apps that are written for OpenCL... at least that is my understanding of this tech.
Ok thanks tallest skil. I think I can trust in your thread with the Mac Pro 09 Infos. But June is soooo late. I personally don't think that we have to wait for so long.
it's sooo late to us... but we're not sitting on $27 billion in cash, we're not arware of production schedules and concerns, and we're not developing everything else (PR/ad campaign, compatibility checks) that goes into a successful product launch
i want the new MP as badly as anybody, but i don't particularly think that apple gives a rip about us (the mac pro market... we're either single-unit buyers or firms with yearly tech budgets) ... certainly not enough to rush. we'll see it in june.
that being said, i'd be elated to cut a check for the new MP in March or sooner.
That is just about the craziest thing I have ever seen written in this thread.
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Please explain to me, then, why only seven of the dozens of video cards on the market work in a Mac Pro.
I don't know why Nvidia and AMD don't produce more cards for the Mac platform. I'd be that the market doesn't work the same way. If you own a mac you're not particularly budget conscious, so filling this gap with a card at the bottom of the high end makes the most sense. Why have tons of cards that all fit into the same bracket? The ecosystem probably isn't big enough to support them.
Please explain to me, then, why only 1 percent of the millions of software titles on the market work natively on the Mac?
There's only one system that can use them and it starts at $2300. It's not like the G-Series days where anyone could afford a PowerMac with a graphics card slot. The only way you would see more retail options is if the retail card makers start shipping with dual firmware like the ATI 3780 mac & PC edition.
Because the card makers don't follow the reference design (in Nvidias case) in hope of saving some money.
AMD makes its own cards (and allows others to do so) Nvidia doesn't make cards. Since Apple bakes the GPU drivers in OS updates why should the GPU makers spend time/$ to make cards for OS X that may not even work(other than the already working units)? For what is probably seen as a minute market.
wow.. this thread is still going strong?? and now we're talking about technology that wont be found in mac for a few years. 
Let's look at what you wrote again:
"Neither ATI nor nVidia are eager to sell graphics cards to Apple, because giving Apple more options means more work for them making EFI firmware for each card."
Of course they are eager to sell cards to Apple. They may not be interested in selling cards to consumers that have Apple products because of the limited market.
But those are two very different things.
S-
beginning to wonder...
it's been at the back of my mind, but what if actually Apple are holding out with the iMac and mini for a combined announcement with the Mac Pro in mid March? I thought it was unlikely because it seemed like the mini and the imac would be updated a few weeks ago but haven't been. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to update all the desktops all at once and 6 months (ish) apart from the laptops. Perhaps they'll combine the desktop event with a demo of Snow Leopard particularly with the mac pro having so many logical cores.
it's been at the back of my mind, but what if actually Apple are holding out with the iMac and mini for a combined announcement with the Mac Pro in mid March? I thought it was unlikely because it seemed like the mini and the imac would be updated a few weeks ago but haven't been. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to update all the desktops all at once and 6 months (ish) apart from the laptops. Perhaps they'll combine the desktop event with a demo of Snow Leopard particularly with the mac pro having so many logical cores.
There is no need for a combined event, Apple can do what they want with releases and marketing and come out on top. They certainly wouldn't hold the consumer desktops back for the Mac Pros.
I understand the idea that SLI is for gamers and not the typical Mac Pro customer - but considering that graphics cards are in short supply for the MP, would SLI be a possible solution to this problem? I don't know squat about how SLI works - but is it really just for games or would high end workstation apps such as from Autodesk, or FCP - Motion, After Effects, etc... benefit from SLI? If Apple is unable to supply their MP customers with the GPU power they need - at reasonable cost - would SLI be one solution to that problem?
Welcome to SemanticLand, where I couldn't care less because my statement still holds true.
I wish.
Although the consumer desktops are very separate from the Mac Pro in placement and technologies, more so than the three notebooks.
Welcome to SemanticLand, where I couldn't care less because my statement still holds true.
SemanticLand? Selling to "Apple" versus selling to "Apple customers" is not a semantic difference. If you meant selling to Apple customers, then I would tend to agree with you. But you didn't provide the context so I was unable to figure that out.
Selling video cards to Apple for inclusion in systems they sell is big business. Selling to Mac Pro customers aftermarket is insignificant.
Both ATI and NVIDIA want desperately to sell to Apple. To Apple customers? Not so much...
S-
So the big benefit of SLI is that it allows multiple GPUs to have a workload spread across them seamlessly by the graphics driver. This matters most to games.
Applications that use the GPU as a processing unit, not as a display unit, actually work *BETTER* with SLI disabled. (For example, when using nVidia's "CUDA" general-purpose GPU architecture.) I would imagine (but have no evidence,) that the Apple-sponsored OpenCL (general purpose computing on GPUs,) would be similar, that non-SLI mode is preferred, because the workload can be spread around by the OpenCL layer itself. So things like FCP, Motion, etc, would be better served by OpenCL multi-GPU than by SLI.
One of the big detriments of SLI (and ATI's equivalent, CrossFire,) is that it causes all information in one GPU's memory to be duplicated to the other. The two GPUs are essentially working on the exact same data. Not even very cooperatively, in fact. The two major ways that they work are to either have one GPU render 'even numbered' frames, and the other GPU 'odd numbered' frames. (Of course, the numbering is completely arbitrary,) or to split the screen in half, and have one GPU render one half, and the other GPU render the other half. (Some implementations have it purely a 50/50 arrangement, some dynamically split the screen to balance workload at a given moment. I know that early SLI or CrossFire (I don't recall which,) drivers would let you have it draw a red line on the screen at the 'break' point.) Separate GPU loads, though, can treat them as two separate computing units, with separate memory caches. That is one of nVidia's options with their PhysX protocol. You can designate one GPU to be the PhysX processor, and the other for actual graphical work. (Indeed, you can have an 'extra' video card that is just doing PhysX, even if you are at a 'max load' of video cards SLIed for graphics work.)
Thanks, EHURTLY, for a great explanation. I'd have to agree that Apple has no reason to supply SLI/Crossfire support for the MP then.
First of all, the presence of drivers in Snow Leopard likely means that the Mac Pro (or at least those GPU options) would come with Snow Leopard.
And isn't the 4800 a high-end card?
There's already an NVIDIA GPU suited for the Mac Prothe Quadro FX 5800. But regarding "regular" GPUs, I would say a GTX 2xx may be the card above the 4800.
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