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

[antonis]

so say Apple makes a dedicated gaming machine following all the definitions here.. how good of a move is that?
at best, it's mediocre and i bet barely anyone would switch to macs for gaming.. i mean, why would they? they're currently doing just fine on PCs it seems.

i think most people (here) would love for apple to make a gaming machine but there's an underlying reasoning of swappable off-the-shelf GPUs in a mac instead of any desire for a gMac type of thing,.

Yup, that's fair, triple-A game makers will not just run back just because a mac "wears" a high-end gpu (hence, even more since macs don't have high-end gpus). The ancient (frozen) opengl version and the feature-lacking metal (for desktop demands) didn't help either towards this. All in all, macs are definitely a very unattractive platform for high-end gaming, and game devs would be the last to blame for this.

However, a mac that could wear a top consumer gpu would open the door for - at least - windows gaming. I know I'd look at such a mac very differently (as a potential buyer/upgrader of my current mac) if it could combine the best of both worlds.

It's just what I'm saying in every chance; apple should not reduce mac functionality with the excuse of 'looking forward' to a possible future. They should add on the existing one and transition smoothly. They call it 'courage' but most of the times it's just pure arrogance.

i don't think i'm being very clear.
iOS is the future of Apple gaming.. and gaming in general.. desktop gaming is going to be a thing of the past relatively soon. (desktop gaming being sitting in a chair looking at fixed 2D panels)

that's what all/most of my posts on this page have been about.

Hmm...not any time soon, IMHO. The difference/gap is huge right now. I mean, I really can't see top, high-end desktop titles make it on a mobile platform intact for the near future at least. Market has invested too much on high-end graphics and as a matter of fact I recall seeing somewhere an article stating that the high-end gpus/machines are the only ones that remain resilient to the generic desktop sales decline. Of course, that's anyone's guess.
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On a not so serious side note: It's funny how we are discussing why a gaming GPU and a Pro GPU are two different things on a Mac.
However on the iPad Pro, even Apple did not get the idea to distinguish between a gaming GPU and a Pro GPU. Following some reasoning on this forum to it's "logical" end, if Apple would put a "Pro" label on the iPad GPU this would make it a real Pro device, wouldn't it?

Indeed, labels don't say much lately in apple camp (or maybe any camp). That's my point also. There's no such thing as a 'gaming machine' as well. It's all about having/not having capable h/w.

 

[flat five]

On a not so serious side note: It's funny how we are discussing why a gaming GPU and a Pro GPU are two different things on a Mac.

i think many/most people here care more about the ability to easily swap GPUs rather than distinctions between individual GPUs.. just that talking about gaming machines gives another opportunity to express that feeling.
(could be wrong.. maybe there are people here that want exactly a mac gaming machine?)

that said.. how good was mac gaming when cMP was current?
tbh, i'm pretty sure swappable GPUs doesn't have very much to do with it at all..
and would you rather be a gamer on mac today? or in 2007?

However on the iPad Pro, even Apple did not get the idea to distinguish between a gaming GPU and a Pro GPU. Following some reasoning on this forum to it's "logical" end, if Apple would put a "Pro" label on the iPad GPU this would make it a real Pro device, wouldn't it?

heh, i don't really care what these things are called or how it's being done exactly.. i just want this:

me: design/model/maybe some texturing (not render)
me: text/email/cloud .??? file to client
them: open the file and put the object in the location (object is being rendered local on their device.. presented in their location.. in their lighting.. and they can look at it from any angle they want and as many angles as the want.. and in different lighting.. and change position etc..)

i mean, what this does isn't --> experience marginal enhancements in rendering speed.. drawn out over many years.. (that's what it's been like as a renderer for the past 15yrs at least)

rather - it eliminates rendering from my work entirely (in some circumstances).. and, it offers a better communication to the client.. it wows them more.. etc.

currently, for me to make real life rendering of objects (generally speaking custom indoor type fabrications).. i need pictures of the space, hopefully the lighting is ok, hopefully the pictures are acceptable for rendering with, hopefully i have 50 to choose angles from.. etcetc. then getting it all lined up and lit up is just a pain in the arse with little to no benefit towards the project other than actually securing the contract for the project.. important? sure.. but it's just sales work pretty much.. i.e. boring.

anyway.. if what i'm seeing from Apple-> particularly ARkit & rumored 3D camera.. can be used for AR gaming in the way i'm imagining it could then it will most definitely be able to do what i'm hoping it will do which is render my models on other's phones in their environment.. that's why i'm even talking about iOS gaming capabilities.. i don't even have any games on my phone right now (or computers).. i just want the leftover scraps from that capability to get what i'm excited about.

i think we'll see some pretty good hints at this stuff come fall.. and potentially by 1 or 2 years time, have the ability working decent to good and in the hands of pretty much everyone i deal with.

 

[ventricle]

Actually, if you do game, you’d find very little high-end games for Mac because gamers go for PCs that deliver a high FPS count that Macs can’t come close to, so why port your game to an inferior gaming platform that your market avoids? One that doesn’t even come with a DVD drive for those multi-gigabyte games? PC gamers are the type that upgrade GPUs and drives once or twice during the life of their computer, maybe even CPUs and/or screens. That certainly rules out iMacs from consideration.

I just want to stick two fast SSDs and a couple of heavy drives in the unit since I’m not about to upload data to any cloud or use TimeMachine for backup. And I want the FPS when I develop games, which means running the game along with three to six other apps required for the development process. My 5,1 does pretty good with its upgraded systems, but nowhere remotely close to what PC users I know get — quite a few of them ex Apple customers, by the way, and happy to have made the switch. A Pro machine is about power and flexibility, not just about a specific app.

If you can’t deliver the flexibility then you should at least keep updating the product for those who need the power and are happy to throw money at the latest, fastest unit. With all the bells and whistles that anyone might want for whatever reason.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

This will silence all debate and arguments. All this hair pulling when we should just have dedicated category of machines (but you can use them how you wish).

Mac Pro Gaming Edition - 2 PCIE slots mini tower, gaming GPU options, 2 x m2 slots
Mac Pro Creative Edition - 2 PCIE slots midi tower, semi-pro GPU options, 2 x m2 slots, 2 SATA SSD bays
Mac Pro Render Edition - 4 PCIE slots - pro GPU options, 2 x m2 slots, 4 SATA SSD bays
Mac Pro Server Edition - 2 PCIE slots - integrated GPU, 2 x server grade PCIE SSDs, 4 SATA SSD bays

Server Edition should have full 2.5 or 3.5 SAS/SATA bays + on board M2 or at the very least on sata port for a DOM with PCI-E slots that can do networking / fiber channel / pci-e storage / GPU's (yes there some server use) / etc AND IPMI (it's own nic) as well as being able to rack mounted.

Maybe have an 1U lower end server desktop socket xeon class. at least 2-3 HDD bays + maybe dual pci-e based (hot swap / raid 1) Just to get an rack mount apple system for places to have a local update mirror / mgt server for there laptops / desktops. Or give out the right for OSX server to run in a VM on non apple hardware.

Combine Creative Edition / Render Edition / Extreme gamer into one pro workstation with room for dual GPU / dual M2 / + sata / sas bays (not all work loads really need multi TB's of high cost PCI-E ssd and some may want some level of raid backup).

Gaming Edition Desktop min tower at min desktop class cpu + 1 GPU with at least 1 M2 slot + 1 Sata bay (games are big and you get more for your $ with an better video card or cpu over an high cost 1TB pci-e SSD.

 

[AidenShaw]

Server Edition should have full 2.5 or 3.5 SAS/SATA bays + on board M2 or at the very least on sata port for a DOM with PCI-E slots that can do networking / fiber channel / pci-e storage / GPU's (yes there some server use) / etc AND IPMI (it's own nic) as well as being able to rack mounted.

Maybe have an 1U lower end server desktop socket xeon class. at least 2-3 HDD bays + maybe dual pci-e based (hot swap / raid 1) Just to get an rack mount apple system for places to have a local update mirror / mgt server for there laptops / desktops. Or give out the right for OSX server to run in a VM on non apple hardware.

Combine Creative Edition / Render Edition / Extreme gamer into one pro workstation with room for dual GPU / dual M2 / + sata / sas bays (not all work loads really need multi TB's of high cost PCI-E ssd and some may want some level of raid backup).

Gaming Edition Desktop min tower at min desktop class cpu + 1 GPU with at least 1 M2 slot + 1 Sata bay (games are big and you get more for your $ with an better video card or cpu over an high cost 1TB pci-e SSD.

I mostly agree, although it's unlikely that any of that will come to market.

I don't completely agree with the highlighted piece.

First, if "give out" means "give away" - then I disagree. Apple should sell OSX server for non-Apple hardware, and for a hefty price. $1000 per socket would be reasonable.

And it shouldn't be restricted to VMs - since that adds another layer of complexity (and another place to point fingers) and cost.

Apple could enter into a partnership to "bless" certain servers with certain options as "OSX Server Ready".

 

[antonis]

I mostly agree, although it's unlikely that any of that will come to market.

I don't completely agree with the highlighted piece.

First, if "give out" means "give away" - then I disagree. Apple should sell OSX server for non-Apple hardware, and for a hefty price. $1000 per socket would be reasonable.

And it shouldn't be restricted to VMs - since that adds another layer of complexity (and another place to point fingers) and cost.

Apple could enter into a partnership to "bless" certain servers with certain options as "OSX Server Ready".

Actually, the vm part is not such a bad idea. Apple has no virtualization solution, so it could not compete in a linux-dominated market as a bare metal OS (where ESXi and OVM are the standards). Unless we're talking about very specific cases like an organization that is end-to-end on apple h/w and needs macOS 'servers' (with or without quotes).

 

[ctrlzone]

i like the idea to have the same options like the iMac lineup
a cheap consumer mac pro i7/gtx, ryzen/rx <- maybe call this one the "mac", hehe
and a high end workstation xeon/quadro, threadripper/firepro

i bet the i7/ryzen edition would sell outrageously well

 

[Joe The Dragon]

I mostly agree, although it's unlikely that any of that will come to market.

I don't completely agree with the highlighted piece.

First, if "give out" means "give away" - then I disagree. Apple should sell OSX server for non-Apple hardware, and for a hefty price. $1000 per socket would be reasonable.

And it shouldn't be restricted to VMs - since that adds another layer of complexity (and another place to point fingers) and cost.

Apple could enter into a partnership to "bless" certain servers with certain options as "OSX Server Ready".

VM's are alot easier to do drivers for and per socket is dead. And in A VM I can set the VM to say it has 1 socket with say 32 cores if I want.

 

[ibgb]

Actually, the vm part is not such a bad idea. Apple has no virtualization solution, so it could not compete in a linux-dominated market as a bare metal OS (where ESXi and OVM are the standards). Unless we're talking about very specific cases like an organization that is end-to-end on apple h/w and needs macOS 'servers' (with or without quotes).

I don't understand this. What or why would somebody need a server beyond what linux or freebsd etc. can provide in services? Email? File sharing? What is the service? What do you think iCloud runs on? They could run it on macos if they wanted to, couldn't they? Why don't they?

It seems those server markets are already handled by others, quite successfully. Would they really want to compete in those markets? I don't see that as Apple's strength. That would be like bringing the xserves back, or Apple raid. In my opinion they will make more money in the consumer market.

 

[deconstruct60]

Actually, the vm part is not such a bad idea. Apple has no virtualization solution,

None at all ? .... not really. They certainly are not hyping it, but they have had something for a while.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor

https://veertu.com/uncovering-os-x-hypervisor-framework/


[ not sure if this related to FreeBSD bhyve but it wouldn't be surprising given the other FreeBSD stuff pulled into macOS. Someone put a bhyve 'veneer' on top of this framework. https://github.com/mist64/xhyve ]

so it could not compete in a linux-dominated market as a bare metal OS (where ESXi and OVM are the standards).

OVM == Oracle VM ? Errr.... I strongly suspect there are more customer Hyper-V deployments than Oracle ones. Xen (of which OVM is a narrow subset) and including the Amazon Web services (and some of the other hyperscale cloud operators then closer to a 'standard'.


Apple's hypervisor isn't trying to compete as a bare-metal or as a major heterogenous OS "ESXi" competitor. Apple isn't going to back into the XServe business (or something even more broader multiple OS targeted 1U-2U rack 'pizza boxes' ). However, all Apple has to do is deploy Hypervisor to iOS and they'll have more deployments than any "server' market.

Unless we're talking about very specific cases like an organization that is end-to-end on apple h/w and needs macOS 'servers' (with or without quotes).

Apple being in the generic server hardware business makes about zero sense. The hyperscale players don't even buy a substantive number of their servers anymore from vendors like (HP, Dell, Lenovo , etc.) Apple may build some for their cloud services but they wouldn't need to sell those any more than Amazon, Google , Facebook, Microsoft do.

It is going to remain that their "desktop" products get pressed into server duties. There isn't enough volume for a server product to stand on its own. Apple may go back to a desk-side Mac Pro (as an edge case of their desktop line up) since the iMac Pro is a more literal desktop solution for the Pro space. Backtracking all the way back to XServe isn't warranted by anything Apple has said. Even backtracking back to the full size of the old Mac Pro ( with Optical drive bays ) isn't either.

 

[antonis]

I don't understand this. What or why would somebody need a server beyond what linux or freebsd etc. can provide in services? Email? File sharing? What is the service? What do you think iCloud runs on? They could run it on macos if they wanted to, couldn't they? Why don't they?

It seems those server markets are already handled by others, quite successfully. Would they really want to compete in those markets? I don't see that as Apple's strength. That would be like bringing the xserves back, or Apple raid. In my opinion they will make more money in the consumer market.

It's not like they have to choose one over the other. I was replying to a post of whether they should license macOS on specific bare metals or to VMs. If they did have to choose between these two options, I think they should go with the latter. But all in all, I don't think they would ever have the chance of even remotely compete with linux.

OVM == Oracle VM ? Errr.... I strongly suspect there are more customer Hyper-V deployments than Oracle ones. Xen (of which OVM is a narrow subset) and including the Amazon Web services (and some of the other hyperscale cloud operators then closer to a 'standard'.

Well, it's all theoretical so I would not disagree with anything said. I'm just quoting the above part regarding virtualization since in the market area I work in (and it is a big part of data center market), OVM is most commonly used by far. The reason is the different licensing policies Oracle offers regarding their s/w running in the VMs that - expectedly - favor their virtualization solution.

 

[Blair Paulsen]

With the announcement of the specced up iMacPro, I think we have about as much horsepower as one can expect to be able to put on an actual desktop without significant size/noise/heat issues. Therefore, I really hope the mMP 7,1 is designed for rack mounting in machine rooms, adjacent closets, special purpose enclosures, etc. This would provide the added benefit of making them easy to deploy as servers in those cases where it makes sense - without committing to a separate form factor just for server usage in a marketplace full of viable alternatives.

Sure, offer some "feet" for desk side vertical placement - but please don't make them problematic to rack mount like the 1,1 - 5,1 towers...

 

[William Payne]

With the announcement of the specced up iMacPro, I think we have about as much horsepower as one can expect to be able to put on an actual desktop without significant size/noise/heat issues. Therefore, I really hope the mMP 7,1 is designed for rack mounting in machine rooms, adjacent closets, special purpose enclosures, etc. This would provide the added benefit of making them easy to deploy as servers in those cases where it makes sense - without committing to a separate form factor just for server usage in a marketplace full of viable alternatives.

Sure, offer some "feet" for desk side vertical placement - but please don't make them problematic to rack mount like the 1,1 - 5,1 towers...

I was thinking about this "rack mount" request some have desired. At first I was like, nah I want it at my desk. But then I had a similar thought to what you mention regarding removable feet.

 

[AidenShaw]

I was thinking about this "rack mount" request some have desired. At first I was like, nah I want it at my desk. But then I had a similar thought to what you mention regarding removable feet.

Removable handles.

Seriously. The cheese grater rectangular box would fit beautifully on horizontal shelves in a rack - except that the handles and feet made it wider than the rack opening.

All the amigos have to do is to keep the height (width) of the box at 45cm or less.

 

[William Payne]

Removable handles.

Seriously. The cheese grater rectangular box would fit beautifully on horizontal shelves in a rack - except that the handles and feet made it wider than the rack opening.

All the amigos have to do is to keep the height (width) of the box at 45cm or less.

That is exactly it. I love the handles on the cheese grater and looking at mine right now. They could be a removable item on a new mac pro.

 

[AidenShaw]

That is exactly it. I love the handles on the cheese grater and looking at mine right now. They could be a removable item on a new mac pro.

My Dell Precision Workstation has handles too - but they don't add to the height. The feet are low profile - and on both the bottom and one side for placing horizontally. The box is 42cm - easily rackable.

​

The handles are also nicely rounded and comfortable.

 

[William Payne]

My Dell Precision Workstation has handles too - but they don't add to the height. The feet are low profile - and on both the bottom and one side for placing horizontal. The box is 42cm - easily rackable.

View attachment 707773​

The handles are also nicely rounded and comfortable.

I think a rack mount/deskside solution could be made to please both

 

[AidenShaw]

I think a rack mount/deskside solution could be made to please both

No doubt.

I'd expect that most of the people who wanted to rackmount the MP7,1 would be happy if the case simply wasn't over 45cm tall so that it could be placed horizontally on a standard rack shelf. For the hard core, I'd expect that some of the third party vendors would come out with true rack-mount kits including rails.

For example:

​

 

[ixxx69]

No doubt.

I'd expect that most of the people who wanted to rackmount the MP7,1 would be happy if the case simply wasn't over 45cm tall so that it could be placed horizontally on a standard rack shelf. For the hard core, I'd expect that some of the third party vendors would come out with true rack-mount kits including rails.

For example:

View attachment 707774​

I really can't figure out why you post here day after day bashing Apple and praising everything that Apple products are not. You don't want a Mac. You want an HP Z series. And you already have one.

 

[William Payne]

I really can't figure out why you post here day after day bashing Apple and praising everything that Apple products are not.

A good majority of this forum is like that.

 

[AidenShaw]

I really can't figure out why you post here day after day bashing Apple and praising everything that Apple products are not. You don't want a Mac. You want an HP Z series. And you already have one.

I thought that I was making some positive posts about the advantages of keeping the MP7,1 case less than 45cm tall to simplify rack mounting. Where's the "bash".

 

[fusionid]

Hey folks, I am a bit confused. What CPU could we anticipate will ship with the imac pro at Dec 2017 if baseline if 8 cores. Mostly interested in base speed.

 

[jbarley]

View attachment 707773​

The handles are also nicely rounded and comfortable.

You mention "handles" (plural) but the photo shows only 1 handle.
Something I'm missing maybe?

 

[tuxon86]

You mention "handles" (plural) but the photo shows only 1 handle.
Something I'm missing maybe?

If it's like the HP, there is one in the top-back of the machine.

 

[AidenShaw]

You mention "handles" (plural) but the photo shows only 1 handle.
Something I'm missing maybe?

The case is symmetric with regards to the handles - the rear handle is the same as the front.