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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

Zarniwoop said:
So in other words, you'd want to have a Vega GPU with Core i7, right?
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No. Not necessarily.

I highly doubt the regular iMac will come with the Vega GPU - not that you couldn't do it. There are i7 users who use the 1080Ti in their systems, even in their Hackintosh. Even though I'm not a gamer, I do wonder how much benefit some of my GPU accelerated apps would even get from such a beast.

The middle machine doesn't need to have the Vega or 1080ti equivalent - the RX 580 would be well enough as it is. If Apple did offer the Vega with an i7, sure, I'd consider it if came as a 6 or 8 core. If that i7 is a 4 core, then no.


Adding 32GB Ram, 1TB SSD and Core i7 makes the iMac 2017 pretty expensive middle ground machine.

Apple's closed system and inflated pricing makes this unbearable. Apple charges $600 24GB of RAM - to upgrade from 8 to 32GB - when you can get 32GB (2 x 16GB) of good DDR4 2400MHz sticks for $235.

It's a $140 difference between the i7700k and the i6850k. I'm sure Apple would charge $500 - yes, they'd have to swap motherboards in the BTO configuration. But it's "build to order"...

Apple essentially charges $600 for a 1TB SSD. Not terrible, since Apple uses Samsung chips, and the Samsung 960 EVO 1TB M.2 is $480.


Apple set iMac Pro's price so high, that regular iMac buyers wouldn't post pone their buying decision to next December to see if they'd buy that instead. Now they just lol at home who's gonna be so crazy simple minded Apple freak to buy a $4999 aio machine.

I've never said the iMac Pro isn't worthy of the $5,000 price tag. I'm not even one of those who is lolling at home thinking "who is going to buy this thing?". There are creative departments that salivating over this thing.

It's just frustrating that after waiting 8 years for a workstation from Apple, that they still haven't acknowledged the middle pro users. Or probably put a better way, the small creative/multimedia business users. Which is me - a self employed photographer that still crunches thousands of photos a year in Capture One Pro.

The iMac I have spec'd in the BTO configuration on Apple's website is $2,700. That's with 512GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, the 8GB Radeon RX 580, and the 4.2Ghz i7 for $2,700. All but the processor is perfect.

Add 32GB of OWC memory for $300 (half the price of Apple's 32GB of RAM upgrade), and I'd have 40GB of RAM in total, or I could upgrade to 64GB for $580 (a far cry from Apple's $1,400 64GB memory upgrade), and I'd be at $3,300 with 64GB Ram.

...or $3,000 if I only wanted 40GB of RAM.

Just add that damn 6-core i7 upgrade for $500, and I (and so many others) would be all over this.

Apple just assumes the 5K quad core is good enough for the small business users, which isn't true, 6-cores hits a sweet spot for a LOT of us, or you're going to pony up an additional $2,000 for an 8-core entirely closed system iMac Pro. Which also isn't true.

And really, the 100% closed system of the iMac Pro is the worst part of that whole deal. Buy a system with 32GB of RAM, then 2 years later you need 64GB of RAM, and now you have to buy a whole a new system, which will likely be another $6,500.
 
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The issue with going 6 or 8 cores now is that it would have to be Broadwell-E because Skylake-X is not yet shipping, which as already noted means a different motherboard (Socket 1150 vs Socket 1151 on Skylake) and different RAM which is going to increase Apple's stocking costs. So yes, you're probably looking at a minimum $500 upgrade for a 6-core and $750 for an 8-core.

And of course the second Skylake-X does ship, this forum will start moaning about Apple using "old technology" and charging an arm and a leg for it. :p
 
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AidenShaw said:
There's really little point in making a headless iMac Xeon.

Dual socket, 1 TiB RAM, dual 10 GbE, support for quad x16 PCIe graphics - or just give up. Admit that the Z-series is the future.
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I live a few kilometers from the new Apple Doughnut campus. $5K/month is reasonable rent.
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I haven't been keeping up. Assuming single and dual configs and the classic 4/8 DIMMs, what's the max RAM you could theoretically put in a tower these days? I highly doubt, again, that they're going to produce a machine that you're interested in at this point. Because you're the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of use cases.

And people crying about the Osborne effect are missing the point that Apple well knows—the vast majority of people are going to be fine with the iMac. They've been fine with it all this time, and now there's an even more powerful option to capture a few more use cases. The people waiting and hoping for a more expandable machine have been waiting and are still going to be waiting.

EDIT: Just checked... adding 1TB of RAM via HP's BTO setup is a cool $39K. And I thought Apple's customization prices got insane.
 
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fuchsdh said:
I haven't been keeping up. Assuming single and dual configs and the classic 4/8 DIMMs, what's the max RAM you could theoretically put in a tower these days? I highly doubt, again, that they're going to produce a machine that you're interested in at this point. Because you're the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of use cases.

And people crying about the Osborne effect are missing the point that Apple well knows—the vast majority of people are going to be fine with the iMac. They've been fine with it all this time, and now there's an even more powerful option to capture a few more use cases. The people waiting and hoping for a more expandable machine have been waiting and are still going to be waiting.

EDIT: Just checked... adding 1TB of RAM via HP's BTO setup is a cool $39K. And I thought Apple's customization prices got insane.
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I think MP 7,1 comparable to HP Z840 series would indeed be powerful enough for Mr. Shaw's personal workstation - that's the comparison he keeps pointing out. Keep up with the state of the art; that's all we're asking.

Plenty of our clients have design studios full of iMacs. No doubt everyone but reception will be outfitted with iMac Pros (and the handful who need Mac Pros) on the next refresh cycle. As long as they keep the acoustics in check, I bet the iMac Pro will sell in fairly robust numbers for what it is. No doubt Apple knows there is pent up demand for it.

All of which makes the failure of the MP 6,1 even more tragic. There was nothing - absolutely nothing - stopping Apple from making this week's announcement at the 6,1's debut.

If in 2013 Apple had done the following, wonder how different the landscape would be now?

- update the 5,1 - same form factor
- intro the nMP as the Mac
- Sonnet intros 2 eGPU boxes (single slot and quad slot)
- over the years bump CPU & GPU
- do the $1k price drop
- mMP should be debuting right about now

Yeah, bring on the 7,1.

[edit]

- Oculus wouldn't have left the platform
- SteamVR for Mac would already be a thing
- better support in other industries (CAD, password cracking)
- current CUDA options
- we'd have Overwatch and feature parity in Elite: Dangerous?? :D
 
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AidenShaw said:
"Beta" and "support" don't belong in the same sentence unless there is a "no" right before "support". ;)
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Aiden it's supported now. As a matter of fact Apple is selling the unit with the video card to Devs only.

What’s Included
Apps that use Metal, OpenCL, and OpenGL can now take advantage of the increased performance that external graphics processors can bring. The External Graphics Development Kit includes everything you need to start optimizing advanced VR and 3D apps on external graphics processors with macOS High Sierra.*

  • Sonnet external GPU chassis with Thunderbolt 3 and 350W power supply
  • AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics card
  • Belkin USB-C to 4-port USB-A hub
  • Promo code for $100 towards the purchase of HTC Vive VR headset**
$599




    • * The External Graphics Development Kit requires a Mac with Thunderbolt 3 running the latest beta version of macOS High Sierra.
    • ** Limited availability. Distribution is on a first-come, first-served basis.
 
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Peace said:
Aiden it's supported now. As a matter of fact Apple is selling the unit with the video card to Devs only.

What’s Included
Apps that use Metal, OpenCL, and OpenGL can now take advantage of the increased performance that external graphics processors can bring. The External Graphics Development Kit includes everything you need to start optimizing advanced VR and 3D apps on external graphics processors with macOS High Sierra.*

  • Sonnet external GPU chassis with Thunderbolt 3 and 350W power supply
  • AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics card
  • Belkin USB-C to 4-port USB-A hub
  • Promo code for $100 towards the purchase of HTC Vive VR headset**
$599



    • * The External Graphics Development Kit requires a Mac with Thunderbolt 3 running the latest beta version of macOS High Sierra.
    • ** Limited availability. Distribution is on a first-come, first-served basis.
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What happens if you take your MBP with High Sierra (which in fact is not publicly available) and eGPU to the Genius Bar for help with a problem?

"Not supported. Goodbye."
 
AidenShaw said:
What happens if you take your MBP with High Sierra (which in fact is not publicly available) and eGPU to the Genius Bar for help with a problem?

"Not supported. Goodbye."
Click to expand...

That statement is stupid Aiden and you know it.

It's a Dev release. You know darn good and well the Genius bar does not deal in Developer problems.
It's been that way for years.
 
If Apple will offer their OWN "Designed by Apple in California" External GPU enclosure, than you will take your eGPU enclosure to Genius Bar.
 
I still believe that Apple's solution is going to be an external display with eGPU, but they allow third parties to sell eGPU boxes.

Apple Pro display
- Thunderbolt, Usb type-c connector
- built in eGPU, internal DP 1.4
- Apple pencil compatible
- Same spec screen as iMac Pro. 10bit panel. Up to 120Hz, ProMotion.
- hub for USB 2/TB2/Usb type-c/SDXC ports
 
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fuchsdh said:
I doubt it. Apple likes to do its transitions whole-hog. I'm definitely going to hold off on upgrading the new hotness until 10.13.2 or whatever to make sure it's really stable before jumping over.
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AFPS doesn't work on MP 2012 models now. ( still not finished). They are currently skipping HDDs in general ( not fully baked). Can't do > 3TB Fusion drives. Can't deal with more complicated Boot Camp (Windows) partition layout ( specially if coupled to > 3TB Fusion Drives ) , etc. etc. There is a fairly long list of stuff still broken and not even in the broad testing phase.

Apple did 3 trial run conversions with APFS on iOS. It was hidden in 10.0 , 10.1 , and 10.2 updates (it would do the bulk of the conversion and check the sanity of the results and then do a roll-back) . I don't think Apple has even done one very broad trail run on macOS. I think Apple will have APFS as the default button that will get most of the users to press (who probably have one storage drive and one primary macOS partition), but they seriously haven't even finished yet let alone going to have time to run 2-3 large scale releases. I don't think even Apple is that arrogant.

APFS tries to push aside not just HFS+ but also CoreStorage , Fusion Drive , and Filevault. They are mucking with the boot process. The number of permutations of those four on macOS is way past the complexity of iOS devices. And they haven't even started broad testing yet. I don't see. Even for relatively arrogant Apple, it is definitely High (on something ) Sierra if they can't see they aren't going to finish all the edge cases and broad scale testing by Fall.
 
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