From my perspective they had no choice no matter what the ultimate design of the new Mac Pro was or is. Flash on PCI Express would do more for a Pro workstation these days than extra cores. I could however see professionals literally wearing out the flash storage much faster than the average consumer. Thankfully the flash is on a plug in module. Apple should have offered two slots though as it looks like the machine can easily handle it.
As far as flash on PCI Express goes, what I wasn't expecting is this technology in the Mac Book Airs. That is a bold move on Apples part and makes for a very impressive Air upgrade.
Weight wise it might surprise you large extruded aluminum heat sinks can be surprisingly heavy. There is a lot of metal in this machine, it is a wonder of engineering.
I'm not sure why you continue to believe this. Apps take a big hit from the bandwidth limitations of PCI Express in many cases so going TB is a huge step backwards. In many cases the bandwidth issues of PCI Express coupled with data movement overhead leads to the realization that sometimes it is faster just to use the CPU.
Of course the exact nature of the computations impact this, in some cases you could trickle the data over to the GPU with no problem. Given that I think it is very informative that Apple built this machine to support two GPUs and one CPU. It says a lot about what they think is Important and where it is important to keep that hardware.
In other words it is no accident that Apple put two high performance GPUs inside this tube.
I'm hoping that before we get to the "up to" model we will have a more modest processor option. Also the 12 core model I believe is a dual chip in package implementation. That will likely cost big time.
OpenCL has had very strong industry acceptance. Of course some people seem to think that means instant software. It is interesting that more and more pro apps are coming to the Mac. I can actually see this new Mac Pro as encouraging even more software developers to the platform. It will be a well known performance computing platform.
I think many of the detractors just don't get this. If you look towards the past then sure this Mac Pro has limitations. If you look forward though this is a platform with staying power. Consider what this platform will be capable of with the next Process shrink, faster RAM and more internal storage.
Currently though I'm just hoping that the low end option is affordable. This is a big unknown. If Apple can't deliver a machine with this architecture, at a reasonable price, they should seriously think about a Haswell desktop variant. Maybe one of those Haswell 85 watt chips paired with one of AMDs Southern Islands GPUs. I just have this fear that this machine will be priced high and effectively out of reach.
I posted this in reply to you before, in the 'throws out the rulebook' thread…
This image shows the two GPU boards; on the right hand one we see the SDD blade; on the left hand one we can see the pads where a second SSD blade could be added in…
And again from the same thread, but only to get your thoughts & also to rile up Tallest Skil…
Over on CGTalk, someone mentioned that the CPU & GPU cards seemed to be just that, cards… As in, connected to a backplane and from there the main logic board. Wondering about BTO configurations if this is true…
Single CPU, dual GPUs…
Dual CPUs, single GPU…
Single CPU, single GPU, dual 2.5" SSDs…
No matter the configuration, the boot flash is still in its socket on the GPU card, and if you look at some of the pics out there, you can see the pads where a second SSD Flash could be installed on the second GPU card…
And if Apple will do such a BTO, then they could also have consumer grade CPU cards, and consumer grade GPU cards…
Maybe a quad-core Haswell i7 CPU card (with 16GB RAM), nVidia Geforce GFX 700 series GPU card & dual SSD card with only a single SSD populated (and NO SSD Flash boot drive on the GPU card); giving us the mythical xMac…!!! Shipping by Christmas time, US$1,500.00…!!!
So, speculate…!
I cannot wait for these bad boys, I can see one of these, all pimped out with max CPU, max RAM, max SSD, max GPUs; hooked to two 31" 4K ThunderBolt 2 Cinema Displays & a Cintiq 24HD touch, with a huge honking HDTV off of the HDMI, a TB2 A/V I/O box & a TB2 RAID; the ultimate DCC workstation…!
1. Other GPU Card builders MAY have new GPU cards designed to fit inside of MacPro in the future that can be replaced from original GPU cards.
2. Thunderbolt2 GPU Card Express Port box peripheral.
At nearly 12.8 times less bandwidth than direct PCI-E 3.0 you won't be seeing stacks of GPGPU cards running via Thunderbolt 2. The PCI-E 3.0 bus is 32 Gigabytes/s bandwith. The Thunderbolt 2 is 20 Gigabits/s bandwith.
The other part might be incumbent software that might not run on a Mac without adjustment?
I'd think that the MP has plenty of display IO for that job.
Oh, no doubt but what a waste of money that would be. You don't need all that power to run what is essentially a dumb terminals job, it would be a monumental over kill.
They should have liquid cooled that bullet instead of using a fan... it would have been quieter and more futuristic...
It would also feel a lot cooler if they had made it transparent or let the inner components stand out a bit with a circular light on the top/ laser etched white lighted apple logo... to have a dual use. an apple lamp that puts the apple logo on your ceiling.
A few members here and I had the idea that it would be a successor to the g4 cube and we were right... besides the cube being a cylinder instead
I actually thought this was worth waiting for... and it is. But I'll stick to making my own PC's.. knowing you've built your own computer is more rewarding than just paying someone to give it to you.
At nearly 12.8 times less bandwidth than direct PCI-E 3.0 you won't be seeing stacks of GPGPU cards running via Thunderbolt 2. The PCI-E 3.0 bus is 32 Gigabytes/s bandwith. The Thunderbolt 2 is 20 Gigabits/s bandwith.
There's no need for people to put GPUs outside when they have fast enough ones internally but comparing the theoretical maximums of both interfaces doesn't really mean much in practise. When this is tested in the real world, the difference is almost zero for both compute and real-time graphics:
This has been tested a number of times. They test the achievable bandwidth first and then start testing real apps. In every practical test, the difference all across the speeds is pretty much zero. If you wanted to run dual Radeon 7970s (the fastest desktop cards) for 3D OpenCL compute, you'd get the same score over PCI 1 x16 as you would PCI 3 x16.
Here's another company testing a Thunderbolt GPU box this week:
450W PSU, aiming for $200-250 without the GPU. Taking these to market is a different matter because of drivers, mass production etc but if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Thunderbolt isn't the ideal place for a GPU but in cases where it's the only option such as having internal AMD GPUs but needing to use CUDA for a couple of things, it will work perfectly well. The bandwidth is a complete non-issue because people keep assuming that massive amounts of data is being shuffled back and forth over the interface. There's a reason that GPUs have GDDR5 memory and that has a bandwidth of over 260GB/s on the Radeon 7970, 480GB/s on the FirePro - even x16 PCIe 3 isn't close to that. The interface just needs to buffer data into the memory and that's it and you can fill 6GB of GPU memory in under 3 seconds over Thunderbolt 2.
I didn't expect the PCIe storage, which Wizard69 was quite keen on. I figured they might have issues with disk management tools but they must have it working ok, presumably under Bootcamp too. They even beat the 8" cube in size, which is amazing considering what's inside it. 8" ^ 3 = 512 cubic inches. The Mac Pro cylinder is ? x 3.3 ^2 x 9.9 = 339 cubic inches - just 2/3 the volume of the cube and a smaller footprint than the Mini. I bet it's relatively light too with no heavy 3.5" drives inside.
I didn't see Apple necessarily pushing PCIe storage, although I could see its potential. I really didn't see them ditching SATA entirely, simply because the connections are there. It's a more radical form factor change than I expected, as I didn't expect them to push out all the drives when even the recent year mini and imac designs didn't go that route. Perhaps it's due to how long they maintain a constant "mac pro" case design? They redid the internals many times, but externally it was the same chassis. It changed very little in the past decade.
Quote:
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
I'm curious if these are Xeon 1600 parts or Xeon 2400. Both are considered Xeon EP. 1600 parts tend to be clocked more aggressively, although I'm not sure they would chase high core counts. 2400 parts tend to mean more expensive logic board and cpu. It's not that cost effective if you're using just one. It also doesn't increase bandwidth if you only use one. Also to put this to rest, according to intel they use PCIe 3. PCIe 3 is obviously backwards compatible with PCIe 2.
Quote:
I still think Thunderbolt GPUs are a perfectly viable option but not for computer manufacturers. Nvidia might get no sales from Apple this year but could make up for it a little by allowing their GPUs to work over TB for CUDA apps. The performance is fine - there's very little performance hit for a GPU on x4 vs x16.
NVidia hasn't released anything directly. PNY did the Quadro 4000 Mac. EVGA did the 680. Consider that the 680 came in at $600. Thunderbolt drivers may take extra development time to pass certification. Add in the cost of the receiving chip and a case. The after market cases in that size cost at least $600-800 currently. Tom's hardware tested one a while ago. It required auxiliary power, and they had to work with the top off. That isn't really an ideal solution. As I've stated before if they went that route, it would make more sense to to sell a plug and play card, not various parts of an assembly kit. I also think it would end up cheaper. I don't think you would be looking at $1400 for something that must run lidless, but you would likely be at $700-900, quite possibly below native performance levels. Your market is basically notebooks. People can claim the imac represents a market, because they're tech illiterate. Imac owners would just upgrade more frequently and skip the weird extension. As for notebook owners, depending on where things go, they might do the same. Both integrated graphics and discrete notebook graphics don't have to be just as good to kill market potential there. They just have to be good enough that most users will not see the value in such a solution.
I don't like pushing things outside of the box in general. It's incidental in notebooks. In desktops it's a matter of solving a problem they just created. The Xeon chipset has something like 6 SATA connections, so you could feasibly dedicate 1 PCIe ssd to boot and application duty with an internal 18TB array left over. That's extreme, but if you don't have bleeding edge online storage requirements, you can pick drive sizes by cost effectiveness per GB. Needing to add DAS for primary storage is annoying unless they see this thing primarily selling into multi - user environments that rely primarily on centralized storage.
Quote:
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
I'm aware of that. They usually skip some of the extreme price points. Pricing in general remains to be seen. Their strategy likely depends on how much they think entry pricing affected sales previously. I don't think they would do a complete redesign if they didn't expect it to sell.
Quote:
These are just high res screenshots done in-game. Apple isn't just designing the Mac Pro for today but for where things are going in a few years.
I suspect they expect an increase in GPGPU programming.
450W PSU, aiming for $200-250 without the GPU. Taking these to market is a different matter because of drivers, mass production etc but if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Thunderbolt isn't the ideal place for a GPU but in cases where it's the only option such as having internal AMD GPUs but needing to use CUDA for a couple of things, it will work perfectly well. The bandwidth is a complete non-issue because people keep assuming that massive amounts of data is being shuffled back and forth over the interface. There's a reason that GPUs have GDDR5 memory and that has a bandwidth of over 260GB/s on the Radeon 7970, 480GB/s on the FirePro - even x16 PCIe 3 isn't close to that. The interface just needs to buffer data into the memory and that's it and you can fill 6GB of GPU memory in under 3 seconds over Thunderbolt 2.
That would fit into my predicted price point. I said $700-900. I was initially thinking at least $600, but EVGA charges that for a 680 Mac edition in standard card form. In this case it would be $850 with the case. It's a lot less than $1400, but this isn't what I would consider an ideal solution. It's again a response to the popularity of notebooks. I wanted to say mobile form factors, but I don't know of any tablets that could leverage it. The form factor is popular, which creates the problem solved by an external unit, but it's really more of a stop gap solution to me if even that.
I had a dream, where Apple would manufacture an extension chassis for the new MacPro, resembling the base of the Cray one. The cylindrical main unit would just be centered on top of this base and provide for the cooling. Room enough for loads of hard drives, PCI cards, etc.
They should have liquid cooled that bullet instead of using a fan... it would have been quieter and more futuristic...
It would also feel a lot cooler if they had made it transparent or let the inner components stand out a bit with a circular light on the top/ laser etched white lighted apple logo... to have a dual use. an apple lamp that puts the apple logo on your ceiling.
A few members here and I had the idea that it would be a successor to the g4 cube and we were right... besides the cube being a cylinder instead
I actually thought this was worth waiting for... and it is. But I'll stick to making my own PC's.. knowing you've built your own computer is more rewarding than just paying someone to give it to you.
I want mine to shoot lasers out of its hole when it gets excited...(CPU load increases)
That and a touch sensitive power button from the Cube please...
If you look at the Pre-WWDC threads I've been hoping for a Mac Mini Pro with a Haswell Xeon and GPU and 2x SSD blades. The new Mac Pro isn't THAT much larger than the mini pro could have been given the internal PSU and more heat requirements.
So I got what I want, although it will likely be much more expensive than the Mac Mini Pro I was hoping for with an entry level Xeon and mid-grade GPU. If they have and entry model at $2500 (which I'm thinking is no better than a 50-50 bet) then I'll get one. If not, I'll get a Haswel Mini and bootcamp when I need a GPU unless Apple adds support for GPU over TB or TB2.
It's just not a replacement for the old Mac Pro which was the last mac with versatility and internal expansion.
You need to look at this machine again thinking more about the future than the past.
/shrug
You keep saying that but repeated assertion doesn't make something true. It's a nice machine but as fast as it may be it's probably only somewhere in the top third when it comes to raw horsepower.
Fully specing out a Dell Precision you can have dual CPU, 512GB RAM (16 RAM slots), and dual high end GPU + compute card. It's your usual ugly oversized workstation tower and probably noisy as hell when fully spec'd but when updated to the same Ivy Bridge Xeons it'll have 24 cores (vs 16 Sand Bridge today) and if you want the same ATI FirePros in the Mac Pro over the current dual 6GB Quadro 6000s that will be available too. You can pick between a Xeon Phi over the current Tesla K20C by then too.
Yeah, that machine will run you 20K (less if you only want 128GB RAM) but it's going to be much faster...eh.
And every single effing specification of the machine.
Are you just pretending to be this blind?
No you just can't read. A spec bumped classic Mac Pro has up to double the CPU cores (24 vs 12), double the RAM slots (8 vs 4), higher GPU Compute capability (2 high end GPUs + Tesla/Xeon Phi/whatever), and more storage (even the ePCI SSD kind if you're willing to drop the number of TB2 ports to get some lanes back in addition to SATA/SAS storage).
No you just can't read. A spec bumped classic Mac Pro has up to double the CPU cores (24 vs 12), double the RAM slots (8 vs 4), higher GPU Compute capability (2 high end GPUs + Tesla/Xeon Phi/whatever), and more storage (even the ePCI SSD kind if you're willing to drop the number of TB2 ports to get some lanes back in addition to SATA/SAS storage).
I just don't buy that. Can't really say that until we see the benches on the upper models.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
From my perspective they had no choice no matter what the ultimate design of the new Mac Pro was or is. Flash on PCI Express would do more for a Pro workstation these days than extra cores. I could however see professionals literally wearing out the flash storage much faster than the average consumer. Thankfully the flash is on a plug in module. Apple should have offered two slots though as it looks like the machine can easily handle it.
As far as flash on PCI Express goes, what I wasn't expecting is this technology in the Mac Book Airs. That is a bold move on Apples part and makes for a very impressive Air upgrade.
Weight wise it might surprise you large extruded aluminum heat sinks can be surprisingly heavy. There is a lot of metal in this machine, it is a wonder of engineering.
I'm not sure why you continue to believe this. Apps take a big hit from the bandwidth limitations of PCI Express in many cases so going TB is a huge step backwards. In many cases the bandwidth issues of PCI Express coupled with data movement overhead leads to the realization that sometimes it is faster just to use the CPU.
Of course the exact nature of the computations impact this, in some cases you could trickle the data over to the GPU with no problem. Given that I think it is very informative that Apple built this machine to support two GPUs and one CPU. It says a lot about what they think is Important and where it is important to keep that hardware.
In other words it is no accident that Apple put two high performance GPUs inside this tube.
I'm hoping that before we get to the "up to" model we will have a more modest processor option. Also the 12 core model I believe is a dual chip in package implementation. That will likely cost big time.
OpenCL has had very strong industry acceptance. Of course some people seem to think that means instant software. It is interesting that more and more pro apps are coming to the Mac. I can actually see this new Mac Pro as encouraging even more software developers to the platform. It will be a well known performance computing platform.
I think many of the detractors just don't get this. If you look towards the past then sure this Mac Pro has limitations. If you look forward though this is a platform with staying power. Consider what this platform will be capable of with the next Process shrink, faster RAM and more internal storage.
Currently though I'm just hoping that the low end option is affordable. This is a big unknown. If Apple can't deliver a machine with this architecture, at a reasonable price, they should seriously think about a Haswell desktop variant. Maybe one of those Haswell 85 watt chips paired with one of AMDs Southern Islands GPUs. I just have this fear that this machine will be priced high and effectively out of reach.
I posted this in reply to you before, in the 'throws out the rulebook' thread…
http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/IMG_8197.jpg
This image shows the two GPU boards; on the right hand one we see the SDD blade; on the left hand one we can see the pads where a second SSD blade could be added in…
And again from the same thread, but only to get your thoughts & also to rile up Tallest Skil…
Over on CGTalk, someone mentioned that the CPU & GPU cards seemed to be just that, cards… As in, connected to a backplane and from there the main logic board. Wondering about BTO configurations if this is true…
Single CPU, dual GPUs…
Dual CPUs, single GPU…
Single CPU, single GPU, dual 2.5" SSDs…
No matter the configuration, the boot flash is still in its socket on the GPU card, and if you look at some of the pics out there, you can see the pads where a second SSD Flash could be installed on the second GPU card…
And if Apple will do such a BTO, then they could also have consumer grade CPU cards, and consumer grade GPU cards…
Maybe a quad-core Haswell i7 CPU card (with 16GB RAM), nVidia Geforce GFX 700 series GPU card & dual SSD card with only a single SSD populated (and NO SSD Flash boot drive on the GPU card); giving us the mythical xMac…!!! Shipping by Christmas time, US$1,500.00…!!!
So, speculate…!
I cannot wait for these bad boys, I can see one of these, all pimped out with max CPU, max RAM, max SSD, max GPUs; hooked to two 31" 4K ThunderBolt 2 Cinema Displays & a Cintiq 24HD touch, with a huge honking HDTV off of the HDMI, a TB2 A/V I/O box & a TB2 RAID; the ultimate DCC workstation…!
You're a butt, plug your pie hole.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andysol
Have you paid attention to Apple in the past few years?
Seriously though- I'd wait for a tear down before complaining or worrying.
1. Other GPU Card builders MAY have new GPU cards designed to fit inside of MacPro in the future that can be replaced from original GPU cards.
2. Thunderbolt2 GPU Card Express Port box peripheral.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LLIBSETAG
You're a butt, plug your pie hole.
Wow, what an informative post…!
I just LOVE when new & different Apple hardware comes out and the Apple forums get invaded by trolls…
Quote:
Originally Posted by LLIBSETAG
1. Other GPU Card builders MAY have new GPU cards designed to fit inside of MacPro in the future that can be replaced from original GPU cards.
2. Thunderbolt2 GPU Card Express Port box peripheral.
At nearly 12.8 times less bandwidth than direct PCI-E 3.0 you won't be seeing stacks of GPGPU cards running via Thunderbolt 2. The PCI-E 3.0 bus is 32 Gigabytes/s bandwith. The Thunderbolt 2 is 20 Gigabits/s bandwith.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
The other part might be incumbent software that might not run on a Mac without adjustment?
I'd think that the MP has plenty of display IO for that job.
Oh, no doubt but what a waste of money that would be. You don't need all that power to run what is essentially a dumb terminals job, it would be a monumental over kill.
They should have liquid cooled that bullet instead of using a fan... it would have been quieter and more futuristic...
It would also feel a lot cooler if they had made it transparent or let the inner components stand out a bit with a circular light on the top/ laser etched white lighted apple logo... to have a dual use. an apple lamp that puts the apple logo on your ceiling.
A few members here and I had the idea that it would be a successor to the g4 cube and we were right... besides the cube being a cylinder instead
I actually thought this was worth waiting for... and it is. But I'll stick to making my own PC's.. knowing you've built your own computer is more rewarding than just paying someone to give it to you.
There's no need for people to put GPUs outside when they have fast enough ones internally but comparing the theoretical maximums of both interfaces doesn't really mean much in practise. When this is tested in the real world, the difference is almost zero for both compute and real-time graphics:
http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/850/
This has been tested a number of times. They test the achievable bandwidth first and then start testing real apps. In every practical test, the difference all across the speeds is pretty much zero. If you wanted to run dual Radeon 7970s (the fastest desktop cards) for 3D OpenCL compute, you'd get the same score over PCI 1 x16 as you would PCI 3 x16.
Here's another company testing a Thunderbolt GPU box this week:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7040/computex-2013-thunderbolt-graphics-from-silverstone
450W PSU, aiming for $200-250 without the GPU. Taking these to market is a different matter because of drivers, mass production etc but if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Thunderbolt isn't the ideal place for a GPU but in cases where it's the only option such as having internal AMD GPUs but needing to use CUDA for a couple of things, it will work perfectly well. The bandwidth is a complete non-issue because people keep assuming that massive amounts of data is being shuffled back and forth over the interface. There's a reason that GPUs have GDDR5 memory and that has a bandwidth of over 260GB/s on the Radeon 7970, 480GB/s on the FirePro - even x16 PCIe 3 isn't close to that. The interface just needs to buffer data into the memory and that's it and you can fill 6GB of GPU memory in under 3 seconds over Thunderbolt 2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I didn't expect the PCIe storage, which Wizard69 was quite keen on. I figured they might have issues with disk management tools but they must have it working ok, presumably under Bootcamp too. They even beat the 8" cube in size, which is amazing considering what's inside it. 8" ^ 3 = 512 cubic inches. The Mac Pro cylinder is ? x 3.3 ^2 x 9.9 = 339 cubic inches - just 2/3 the volume of the cube and a smaller footprint than the Mini. I bet it's relatively light too with no heavy 3.5" drives inside.
I didn't see Apple necessarily pushing PCIe storage, although I could see its potential. I really didn't see them ditching SATA entirely, simply because the connections are there. It's a more radical form factor change than I expected, as I didn't expect them to push out all the drives when even the recent year mini and imac designs didn't go that route. Perhaps it's due to how long they maintain a constant "mac pro" case design? They redid the internals many times, but externally it was the same chassis. It changed very little in the past decade.
Quote:
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/articles/2013/06/10/536/mari-is-coming-to-the-mac/
I'm curious if these are Xeon 1600 parts or Xeon 2400. Both are considered Xeon EP. 1600 parts tend to be clocked more aggressively, although I'm not sure they would chase high core counts. 2400 parts tend to mean more expensive logic board and cpu. It's not that cost effective if you're using just one. It also doesn't increase bandwidth if you only use one. Also to put this to rest, according to intel they use PCIe 3. PCIe 3 is obviously backwards compatible with PCIe 2.
Quote:
I still think Thunderbolt GPUs are a perfectly viable option but not for computer manufacturers. Nvidia might get no sales from Apple this year but could make up for it a little by allowing their GPUs to work over TB for CUDA apps. The performance is fine - there's very little performance hit for a GPU on x4 vs x16.
NVidia hasn't released anything directly. PNY did the Quadro 4000 Mac. EVGA did the 680. Consider that the 680 came in at $600. Thunderbolt drivers may take extra development time to pass certification. Add in the cost of the receiving chip and a case. The after market cases in that size cost at least $600-800 currently. Tom's hardware tested one a while ago. It required auxiliary power, and they had to work with the top off. That isn't really an ideal solution. As I've stated before if they went that route, it would make more sense to to sell a plug and play card, not various parts of an assembly kit. I also think it would end up cheaper. I don't think you would be looking at $1400 for something that must run lidless, but you would likely be at $700-900, quite possibly below native performance levels. Your market is basically notebooks. People can claim the imac represents a market, because they're tech illiterate. Imac owners would just upgrade more frequently and skip the weird extension. As for notebook owners, depending on where things go, they might do the same. Both integrated graphics and discrete notebook graphics don't have to be just as good to kill market potential there. They just have to be good enough that most users will not see the value in such a solution.
I don't like pushing things outside of the box in general. It's incidental in notebooks. In desktops it's a matter of solving a problem they just created. The Xeon chipset has something like 6 SATA connections, so you could feasibly dedicate 1 PCIe ssd to boot and application duty with an internal 18TB array left over. That's extreme, but if you don't have bleeding edge online storage requirements, you can pick drive sizes by cost effectiveness per GB. Needing to add DAS for primary storage is annoying unless they see this thing primarily selling into multi - user environments that rely primarily on centralized storage.
Quote:
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/articles/2013/06/10/536/mari-is-coming-to-the-mac/
I'm aware of that. They usually skip some of the extreme price points. Pricing in general remains to be seen. Their strategy likely depends on how much they think entry pricing affected sales previously. I don't think they would do a complete redesign if they didn't expect it to sell.
Quote:
These are just high res screenshots done in-game. Apple isn't just designing the Mac Pro for today but for where things are going in a few years.
I suspect they expect an increase in GPGPU programming.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
450W PSU, aiming for $200-250 without the GPU. Taking these to market is a different matter because of drivers, mass production etc but if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Thunderbolt isn't the ideal place for a GPU but in cases where it's the only option such as having internal AMD GPUs but needing to use CUDA for a couple of things, it will work perfectly well. The bandwidth is a complete non-issue because people keep assuming that massive amounts of data is being shuffled back and forth over the interface. There's a reason that GPUs have GDDR5 memory and that has a bandwidth of over 260GB/s on the Radeon 7970, 480GB/s on the FirePro - even x16 PCIe 3 isn't close to that. The interface just needs to buffer data into the memory and that's it and you can fill 6GB of GPU memory in under 3 seconds over Thunderbolt 2.
That would fit into my predicted price point. I said $700-900. I was initially thinking at least $600, but EVGA charges that for a 680 Mac edition in standard card form. In this case it would be $850 with the case. It's a lot less than $1400, but this isn't what I would consider an ideal solution. It's again a response to the popularity of notebooks. I wanted to say mobile form factors, but I don't know of any tablets that could leverage it. The form factor is popular, which creates the problem solved by an external unit, but it's really more of a stop gap solution to me if even that.
You can decorate the case or maybe it will be different when it's released, they said it's an early sneek peak, so there's hope!
There better be hope for this Mac Pro.
Quote:
Originally Posted by darkdefender
They should have liquid cooled that bullet instead of using a fan... it would have been quieter and more futuristic...
It would also feel a lot cooler if they had made it transparent or let the inner components stand out a bit with a circular light on the top/ laser etched white lighted apple logo... to have a dual use. an apple lamp that puts the apple logo on your ceiling.
A few members here and I had the idea that it would be a successor to the g4 cube and we were right... besides the cube being a cylinder instead
I actually thought this was worth waiting for... and it is. But I'll stick to making my own PC's.. knowing you've built your own computer is more rewarding than just paying someone to give it to you.
I want mine to shoot lasers out of its hole when it gets excited...(CPU load increases)
That and a touch sensitive power button from the Cube please...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
It's simple. If you don't like it, don't buy one.
If you look at the Pre-WWDC threads I've been hoping for a Mac Mini Pro with a Haswell Xeon and GPU and 2x SSD blades. The new Mac Pro isn't THAT much larger than the mini pro could have been given the internal PSU and more heat requirements.
So I got what I want, although it will likely be much more expensive than the Mac Mini Pro I was hoping for with an entry level Xeon and mid-grade GPU. If they have and entry model at $2500 (which I'm thinking is no better than a 50-50 bet) then I'll get one. If not, I'll get a Haswel Mini and bootcamp when I need a GPU unless Apple adds support for GPU over TB or TB2.
It's just not a replacement for the old Mac Pro which was the last mac with versatility and internal expansion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
You need to look at this machine again thinking more about the future than the past.
/shrug
You keep saying that but repeated assertion doesn't make something true. It's a nice machine but as fast as it may be it's probably only somewhere in the top third when it comes to raw horsepower.
Fully specing out a Dell Precision you can have dual CPU, 512GB RAM (16 RAM slots), and dual high end GPU + compute card. It's your usual ugly oversized workstation tower and probably noisy as hell when fully spec'd but when updated to the same Ivy Bridge Xeons it'll have 24 cores (vs 16 Sand Bridge today) and if you want the same ATI FirePros in the Mac Pro over the current dual 6GB Quadro 6000s that will be available too. You can pick between a Xeon Phi over the current Tesla K20C by then too.
Yeah, that machine will run you 20K (less if you only want 128GB RAM) but it's going to be much faster...eh.
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Originally Posted by Marvin
The major differences in this design are two things:
1. PCI slots are replaced with Thunderbolt ports with PCIe2 x4 equivalent bandwidth each.
Which means one expansion card per port and only at PCIe2 x4 speeds.
If you can BTO nVidia Quadros that would be nice and solve some problems. Or even BTO two of the GPUs with the SSD slot so you can have 2 SSDs.
Man I hope those SSDs are big because if they start with a single 256GB SSD in the base model that's pretty tight if you max out the RAM.
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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
And every single effing specification of the machine.
Are you just pretending to be this blind?
No you just can't read. A spec bumped classic Mac Pro has up to double the CPU cores (24 vs 12), double the RAM slots (8 vs 4), higher GPU Compute capability (2 high end GPUs + Tesla/Xeon Phi/whatever), and more storage (even the ePCI SSD kind if you're willing to drop the number of TB2 ports to get some lanes back in addition to SATA/SAS storage).
I just don't buy that. Can't really say that until we see the benches on the upper models.