Have all the "external-only expansion is better" crowd thought about what they are going to do with all the extra enclosures, cables, power bricks, cooling fans, and noise that they are going to start collecting?
And by the way, does each of those Thunderbolt connectors get its own dedicated 20 Gbps bandwidth, or is it all shared?
The other thing to think about is that the 12 core is a new step, because Apple maybe saying lets get rid of two PROCs and only do 1 and not worry about messing with two processors anymore. Because really what is a 12 core chip? Two 6 core Chips. Here is the real upside, if they use the weird ones (chips) that have 2 extras virtual threads or something like that, we're talking 36 Threads!!
Whatcha been smoking?
The new design is still dual processor (6 cores each), just like the old design. HyperThreads will double the max. number of active threads to 24 total per complete system.
Dual-processor capable Sandy Bridge Xeons with 8 cores have been available for months already, to get 32 threads per system. 8 and 16 DIMM slot motherboards for these chips are commonplace, compared to just 4 slots in the new Mac Pro.
For all those upset about the lack of optical drive, I question - why do you need one? I personally am in the market of content creation, I am a filmmaker. Do I need DVD/Blu-Ray replication services? You bet. Most replication services who are "with it" will accept thumb drives. They are getting cheap enough that you can buy them in bulk and need not worry about getting them returned. Remember the days of zip disks or am I aging myself?
This is a good question. We can only hope that Apple has some really good deal lined up and lower end configurations in store. I can easily see $3500 if Apple goes after the high end only. I could however see a $1500 variant.
It is fairly easy to get a grip on the price of the Intel chip, if we knew what it was, but the GPUs will be very interesting indeed. They might cost Apple anywhere from $250 to $1200 per board. It is interesting but on line the spec "up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM" which obviously implies options. Further there are a number of FirePro chips that could potential be going into the GPU boards.
in a nut shell it is hard to tell and likely will vary greatly in price based on the actual configuration. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see one come in at under $1500. Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times in the online marketing piece. People could be surprised in a very positive way with the pricing.
I guess I wasn't too clear as this is the second post that mistook my intentions. It isn't the *footprint* that I'm concerned about (the new Mac Pro is far smaller than the previous generation). The problem is that it won't fit well in corners, up against other equipment (like the expansion boxes you'll need), etc.
I'm sure someone will make a square pedestal base so it'll fit next to your equipment snugly.
On a more positive thought, do you suppose an updated mini could be built around the same basic concept. Smaller, to be sure, but using the same airflow and basic internal layout. Give it the same SSD as the Air. Would be pretty slick, actually.
It could be but probably won't happen. I would expect the Mini to retain its current size. However a good PCI-Express based SSD would go very nicely into a Mini.
I'll throw my hat into the ring as one of Pro folks who is extremely disappointed in the new Mac Pro. No internal expansion slots for additional NICs or RAM alone is a reason to dump Apple for Pro hardware.
Secondly, only gig ethernet??? What the hell? Where's the 10 gig ethernet???
Because there is only gig ethernet that means all storage expansion will have to be Thunderbolt... BLAH, YUCK! Centralized storage is where it's at! NAS and SAN dominate for on premise storage. No Fiber Channel at all, and only a 1 gig iSCSI connection???
B.S. if you ask me. Terrible. Might as well just buy an iMac... I don't see the value add of a Mac Pro over an iMac anymore. This sucks
I can't think of a reason why a cylinder would even be an advantageous shape.
One of the earlier Cray supercomputers has a cylindrical shape to shorten the length that signal has to travel to increase the speed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2).
Anybody that doesn't understand how powerful this machine is, needs to take a computer technology class or something. This is an extremely powerful machine. So much so in fact that I worry about the entry level price.
Apple LED Cinema Display is finally going to be dropped from the (online) Apple Store, as all Macs have Thunderbolt ports now. I wonder if Apple is going to introduce an Apple 4K Display in the fall. There could be a “pro” event, where they could release the Mac Pro and also introduce new Retina MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt 2. That would be a perfect moment to introduce Apple 4K Display (since 4K cannot work over Thunderbolt 1).
Funny enough, in a previous post I (and along with some others) predicted this kind of "mini pro" design with the multiple TB ports, and I also mentioned how this doesn't solve the GPU upgrade problem.
But to be fair, GPU's haven't improved in the last 3 generations. A Radeon 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx part is barely any faster then the previous part it replaced. In fact going from a 5750 to a 7770 resulted in a slight downgrade. So it may be fair to say that the energy use has gone down, allowing for the kind of design Apple has put out there.
The internal storage really is a non-issue. I pretty much nailed it where the OS drive (on a SSD) will be in the system, and a ratsnest of cables will be required. It solves one upgrade problem (by putting the drives in a separate enclosure, and thereby not having to migrate every time you change the core system.)
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability. So this will likely be sufficient for most professionals who need a Photo/Video/CAD machine but will be woefully inadequate where OS X is being used as a server for the same reasons the Mac Mini doesn't make a good server.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it", when really the people who needed a "Mac Pro" for the last 3 years hung onto the previous generation model were those who an iMac/Mac Mini were never viable upgrades to begin with. Optimistically I hope someone figures out how to connect 3 TB 2 ports to an external GPU to get the full 16 lanes.
I think GPU upgrade days are over right? I mean do you know how hard it's going to be to couple THUNDERBOLT with GPUs from here on out? That was probably one the major problems. I wouldn't doubt, if this thing could drive 6 1080p displays, with thunderbolt and hdmi, this is serious junction in computing. I just can't figure out which one is the Ferrari and which one is the CAT Truck. The GPUs are the Ferrari and the Truck is the CPU? or the other way around. Cause to me a CPU halls ass down the street really fast, and GPUs move earth and rock in the form of 3D objects... but it's the best of both worlds either way, being able to Tow 16 Tons, and then being able to go 200 mph!!
This was not the Mac Pro I was hoping for. I like upgradability and tinkering and the Mac Pro was the very last Mac that allowed you to do that. This new one looks like they have closed the loophole. It seems Apple just doesn't want us to get inside or change anything on a Mac Pro or any Apple device for that matter.
Correct. The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer. It will be very powerful when you first buy it, but 2-3 years down the line it will need to be replaced. Consumer-level Apple users seemed to have accepted this idea, the question is will professionals be just as gullible? We will see.
I'm not knocking the GPGPUs installed. I like them. I don't expect most folks want to pay for $3k worth of CAD/CAM intensive GPGPUs when the AMD 8000s coming out would have done just as well. I would have preferred an expansion for a daughter card configuration that I can plug n' play GPGPUs as add-ons or swap them out when not using this for Engineering Applications.
How this base system is < $6k is anyone's guess.
Actually I'm concerned about what the price might be also. However we really don't know what sort of deal has been worked out here. In the online documents Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times so I'm not sure what we can expect as to the cost of the GPU's. I could see this machine being priced very aggressively using an older rev FirePro chip with the high end machine using the state of the art solution.
As for engineering applications that is more a case of the drivers than the chip. I fully expect the GPU's to work just as well as any other GPU with Apple software. Further I'm hoping that this is a sign that the OpenGL 4 release in Maverick is a very high quality implementation.
In any event I'm very positive about this years WWDC. Lots of great news.
Funny how some people don't get it. What do you upgrade in your "pro" machine? The storage right? You don't need a massive box in order to have a lot of slots for storage.
Someone was actually complaining about "no optical drive". Yeah, one isn't built in forcing those of us who stopped using them 5 years ago to pay for one in space and money.
The thermal core is a massive step forward in machine design. People who aren't technical don't seem to understand this, but this really is a design for the next 10 years.
You can have as much storage as you want-- you can add 36 hard drives to it. Hell, you if you put one hard drive on each USB 3 port you could have 40 drives. Or 40 RAID arrays.
This is the CPU & GPU unit. You want specialized stuff, the 6!! Thunderbolt ports have you covered.
You want to add expansion cards, no problem, add a chassis and connect it up with thunderbolt.
Can anyone name a popular professional peripheral that needs more speed than Thunderbolt can provide?
The most demanding you'd likely need is a GPU, and you're a lot less likely to need one with this machine given it comes with two massive GPUs.
Apple nailed it.
Those who say Apple doesn't respect professionals, seem to never be professionals themselves.
Correct. The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer. It will be very powerful when you first buy it, but 2-3 years down the line it will need to be replaced. Consumer-level Apple users seemed to have accepted this idea, the question is will professionals be just as gullible? We will see.
-kpluck
Yeah but the way this is going you're probably going to be starting at a 256 GB RAM DISK PCIe 3.0, which you will upgrade later, to 512 or even 1024 GB, easily pop out chip put in another. If it's supports 64 GB of RAM, you are looking at 16GB chip for starters and popping in another 16GB chip and another and another. I hear the processor is upgradeable too. The GPUs no. That's pretty cool upgrading... but you want what? umm... Fibre Card? TBolt2... umm? what else? Hard drives? I'd rather just get an external 8 TB TBolt array...
Funny enough, in a previous post I (and along with some others) predicted this kind of "mini pro" design with the multiple TB ports, and I also mentioned how this doesn't solve the GPU upgrade problem.
GPU upgrades are a thing of the past. People really should be thinking differently here. Either buy the right amount of GPU power in the beginning or don't complain.
But to be fair, GPU's haven't improved in the last 3 generations. A Radeon 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx part is barely any faster then the previous part it replaced. In fact going from a 5750 to a 7770 resulted in a slight downgrade. So it may be fair to say that the energy use has gone down, allowing for the kind of design Apple has put out there.
Exactly. With todays hardware by the time you have significant GPU upgrade available as much as 5 years could have passed. In that time everything else will have changed around the GPU. You will benefit far more by doing complete system upgrades over longer periods of time.
The internal storage really is a non-issue. I pretty much nailed it where the OS drive (on a SSD) will be in the system, and a ratsnest of cables will be required. It solves one upgrade problem (by putting the drives in a separate enclosure, and thereby not having to migrate every time you change the core system.)
It also puts the technology outside the box (tube) so that other people are responsible for it.
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability. So this will likely be sufficient for most professionals who need a Photo/Video/CAD machine but will be woefully inadequate where OS X is being used as a server for the same reasons the Mac Mini doesn't make a good server.
Well it is only rational to decide on what the final shipping product looks like. However this puts the G4 cube to shame and frankly isn't remotely comparable. Apple could screw this up just like they screwed up the G4 Cube by trying to ship if at an excessively high price. Pricing will make or break this machine.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it", when really the people who needed a "Mac Pro" for the last 3 years hung onto the previous generation model were those who an iMac/Mac Mini were never viable upgrades to begin with. Optimistically I hope someone figures out how to connect 3 TB 2 ports to an external GPU to get the full 16 lanes.
Baloney. You don''t spend as much time and effort, not to mention cash, to not expect success on something like this. This is a major design effort and probably cost Apple a bundle to develop. I don't have a crystal ball but even so I expect this computer to be a hot seller if it is priced right.
Have all the "external-only expansion is better" crowd thought about what they are going to do with all the extra enclosures, cables, power bricks, cooling fans, and noise that they are going to start collecting?
And by the way, does each of those Thunderbolt connectors get its own dedicated 20 Gbps bandwidth, or is it all shared?
You make assumptions here about how different professionals operate. Many have a network for bulk storage and in some places are required to use that network. Even is local bulk storage is needed this isn't any different than hooking an array up to any other machine.
As to the TB ports they covered that in the video.
Actually I'm concerned about what the price might be also. However we really don't know what sort of deal has been worked out here. In the online documents Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times so I'm not sure what we can expect as to the cost of the GPU's.
I suspect there will be four configurations, ranging from what they showed, down to a quad core, dual-low-end-GPU machine. I think the base entry price will be "affordable" -- something like $1,500-$1,700. There's a lot of engineering that went into this design which I think will lead to economies of scale down the road after it's been out for awhile, but means upfront capital costs to recoup.
While they showed the top of the line in the demo, naturally, I am happy to see this is a very scalable design that could easily support lower end machines. (the 6 TB ports, etc, comes with all so I don't think there will be a $999 option.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpluck
The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer.
You mean like the current mac pro? You can't upgrade the CPU in the current machine, but you can upgrade storage and memory. The new machine you can upgrade storage and memory. The only real difference is in the old machine the GPU was upgradable, but you can still do that with the new machine, you just use an external GPU. Calling it "disposable" seems pretty silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Anybody that doesn't understand how powerful this machine is, needs to take a computer technology class or something. This is an extremely powerful machine. So much so in fact that I worry about the entry level price.
I've noticed that the people who complain about Apple not supporting the "professionals" seem to be extremely focused on upgrading their GPUs. I've never upgraded the GPU in the Mac Pros I've had, and never really needed to. Video editors, creative types, they don't need to upgrade GPUs every year.
Who does need to upgrade GPUs, or at least wants to? Kids who play a lot of video games. I think they are the ones complaining that it doesn't support "professionals" because it doesn't support their having-the-latest-gpu bragging habit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bbwi
I'll throw my hat into the ring as one of Pro folks who is extremely disappointed in the new Mac Pro. No internal expansion slots for additional NICs or RAM alone is a reason to dump Apple for Pro hardware.
Because there is only gig ethernet that means all storage expansion will have to be Thunderbolt... BLAH, YUCK! Centralized storage is where it's at! NAS and SAN dominate for on premise storage. No Fiber Channel at all, and only a 1 gig iSCSI connection???
B.S. if you ask me. Terrible. Might as well just buy an iMac... I don't see the value add of a Mac Pro over an iMac anymore. This sucks
You don't get it. Thunderbolt has made internal expansion slots obsolete. You're really worried about not being able to use a card slot for an additional NIC? A NIC that gives you, what, 10GB ethernet? You could hang 3-4 of those off of a single thunderbolt port without losing performance. (10GB Ethernet does at best 5GB of data x 4 = 20GB.)
I think it's hilarious that you'd rather have storage reachable over pokey ethernet than thunderbolt. I guess you haven't heaed but thunderbolt is a whole lot faster than ethernet, and is pretty ideal for talking to mass storage... which if it's really massive is pretty damns slow. If you're spinning rust, it's the drive where you lose performance, not the way oversized thunderbolt pipes going to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggar
Have all the "external-only expansion is better" crowd thought about what they are going to do with all the extra enclosures, cables, power bricks, cooling fans, and noise that they are going to start collecting?
Yes. I have lived with quite a varied and shifting collection of external drives to deal with my video. First off, going from firewire to thunderbolt is a huge improvement. Secondly, as capacities increase you can replace the drive and keep the same enclosure... and I put the drives out of the way so there's not really much noise. While it's true the past MacPro had 4 internal drive slots... I've got a lot more than 4 external drives, so it's a wash at the worst.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Misa
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it",
Not many people bought XServes so they discontinued them. Apple recognizes who their market is. They tried to serve people who really wanted it to be "rackable", and there just weren't enough buyers.
I think it's unfair to call this an art piece, though. It is lovely, yes, but it's form is a direct result of its function. There are two things a case does: hold components and manage heat and airflow. Any box can hold the components, that's trivial.
This is a radical solution to the heat management problem... and a huge leap forward in that regard. They did it for functionality, not for the form, the form is just secondary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Probably the same idiots that panned the FCP update. Which by the way might sell a lot of these machines once they optimize FCP for the new Mac Pro.
As someone who edits a lot of video, FCPX is a huge leap forward. But it works differently. I learn new things quickly and loved it... I think a lot of people have to be trained before they can really do anything.... you change the software and suddenly they can't do anything because their training is obsolete.
These "professionals" are the ones who complained about FCPX. Anyone who actually edits loves it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 65C816
How do you rackmount these?!
The XServe has been discontinued. There's no money in competing in the cheap server market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Can't wait for iFixit to review it and give it a ?27 on their "Repairability Scale".
They probably will and it will be hilarious because looking at the internals it's pretty repairable. (seems everything is held in with screws and the top just rotates off.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Muir
The new Mac Pro design seems to take full advantage of the chimney effect. It should move a fair amount of air all by itself, before the fan gets involved. (and I love that Apple even designed the fan here)
It really is a marvelous design. One big fan can move a volume of air with slower RPMs, meaning less nose, and all the processing units sharing one massive heat sink is just lovely.
The new design is still dual processor (6 cores each), just like the old design. HyperThreads will double the max. number of active threads to 24 total per complete system.
Dual-processor capable Sandy Bridge Xeons with 8 cores have been available for months already, to get 32 threads per system. 8 and 16 DIMM slot motherboards for these chips are commonplace, compared to just 4 slots in the new Mac Pro.
I don't know I have been trying to get info on Xeons, I got it twisted with the chips that allows 4 Processors on board I think I don't know, been up all night, misread maybe. So it's DUAL PROC? wow I didn't see that, I could have swore I read about 12-core haswell or something, whatever maybe not, I don't know, but I didn't see how you could put two in the Cylinder? on the Apple site breakdown... we will see I suppose... I could have swore in the conference he said has Haswell, but I don't know
According to Fudzilla, the Haswell-E will have from 12 to 16 cores, a TDP of 130 W, and support for DDR4 memory that promises to deliver exponentially more bandwidth than previous generations of processors.
Comments
Have all the "external-only expansion is better" crowd thought about what they are going to do with all the extra enclosures, cables, power bricks, cooling fans, and noise that they are going to start collecting?
And by the way, does each of those Thunderbolt connectors get its own dedicated 20 Gbps bandwidth, or is it all shared?
Originally Posted by wizard69
…once they optimize FCP for the new Mac Pro.
Dual-cam 4K in realtime, anyone?
Quote:
Originally Posted by rezwits
The other thing to think about is that the 12 core is a new step, because Apple maybe saying lets get rid of two PROCs and only do 1 and not worry about messing with two processors anymore. Because really what is a 12 core chip? Two 6 core Chips. Here is the real upside, if they use the weird ones (chips) that have 2 extras virtual threads or something like that, we're talking 36 Threads!!
Whatcha been smoking?
The new design is still dual processor (6 cores each), just like the old design. HyperThreads will double the max. number of active threads to 24 total per complete system.
Dual-processor capable Sandy Bridge Xeons with 8 cores have been available for months already, to get 32 threads per system. 8 and 16 DIMM slot motherboards for these chips are commonplace, compared to just 4 slots in the new Mac Pro.
For all those upset about the lack of optical drive, I question - why do you need one? I personally am in the market of content creation, I am a filmmaker. Do I need DVD/Blu-Ray replication services? You bet. Most replication services who are "with it" will accept thumb drives. They are getting cheap enough that you can buy them in bulk and need not worry about getting them returned. Remember the days of zip disks or am I aging myself?
This is a good question. We can only hope that Apple has some really good deal lined up and lower end configurations in store. I can easily see $3500 if Apple goes after the high end only. I could however see a $1500 variant.
It is fairly easy to get a grip on the price of the Intel chip, if we knew what it was, but the GPUs will be very interesting indeed. They might cost Apple anywhere from $250 to $1200 per board. It is interesting but on line the spec "up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM" which obviously implies options. Further there are a number of FirePro chips that could potential be going into the GPU boards.
in a nut shell it is hard to tell and likely will vary greatly in price based on the actual configuration. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see one come in at under $1500. Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times in the online marketing piece. People could be surprised in a very positive way with the pricing.
I'm sure someone will make a square pedestal base so it'll fit next to your equipment snugly.
It could be but probably won't happen. I would expect the Mini to retain its current size. However a good PCI-Express based SSD would go very nicely into a Mini.
I'll throw my hat into the ring as one of Pro folks who is extremely disappointed in the new Mac Pro. No internal expansion slots for additional NICs or RAM alone is a reason to dump Apple for Pro hardware.
Secondly, only gig ethernet??? What the hell? Where's the 10 gig ethernet???
Because there is only gig ethernet that means all storage expansion will have to be Thunderbolt... BLAH, YUCK! Centralized storage is where it's at! NAS and SAN dominate for on premise storage. No Fiber Channel at all, and only a 1 gig iSCSI connection???
B.S. if you ask me. Terrible. Might as well just buy an iMac... I don't see the value add of a Mac Pro over an iMac anymore. This sucks
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlandd
I can't think of a reason why a cylinder would even be an advantageous shape.
One of the earlier Cray supercomputers has a cylindrical shape to shorten the length that signal has to travel to increase the speed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2).
Apple LED Cinema Display is finally going to be dropped from the (online) Apple Store, as all Macs have Thunderbolt ports now. I wonder if Apple is going to introduce an Apple 4K Display in the fall. There could be a “pro” event, where they could release the Mac Pro and also introduce new Retina MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt 2. That would be a perfect moment to introduce Apple 4K Display (since 4K cannot work over Thunderbolt 1).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Misa
Funny enough, in a previous post I (and along with some others) predicted this kind of "mini pro" design with the multiple TB ports, and I also mentioned how this doesn't solve the GPU upgrade problem.
But to be fair, GPU's haven't improved in the last 3 generations. A Radeon 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx part is barely any faster then the previous part it replaced. In fact going from a 5750 to a 7770 resulted in a slight downgrade. So it may be fair to say that the energy use has gone down, allowing for the kind of design Apple has put out there.
The internal storage really is a non-issue. I pretty much nailed it where the OS drive (on a SSD) will be in the system, and a ratsnest of cables will be required. It solves one upgrade problem (by putting the drives in a separate enclosure, and thereby not having to migrate every time you change the core system.)
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability. So this will likely be sufficient for most professionals who need a Photo/Video/CAD machine but will be woefully inadequate where OS X is being used as a server for the same reasons the Mac Mini doesn't make a good server.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it", when really the people who needed a "Mac Pro" for the last 3 years hung onto the previous generation model were those who an iMac/Mac Mini were never viable upgrades to begin with. Optimistically I hope someone figures out how to connect 3 TB 2 ports to an external GPU to get the full 16 lanes.
I think GPU upgrade days are over right? I mean do you know how hard it's going to be to couple THUNDERBOLT with GPUs from here on out? That was probably one the major problems. I wouldn't doubt, if this thing could drive 6 1080p displays, with thunderbolt and hdmi, this is serious junction in computing. I just can't figure out which one is the Ferrari and which one is the CAT Truck. The GPUs are the Ferrari and the Truck is the CPU? or the other way around. Cause to me a CPU halls ass down the street really fast, and GPUs move earth and rock in the form of 3D objects... but it's the best of both worlds either way, being able to Tow 16 Tons, and then being able to go 200 mph!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwmac
This was not the Mac Pro I was hoping for. I like upgradability and tinkering and the Mac Pro was the very last Mac that allowed you to do that. This new one looks like they have closed the loophole. It seems Apple just doesn't want us to get inside or change anything on a Mac Pro or any Apple device for that matter.
Correct. The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer. It will be very powerful when you first buy it, but 2-3 years down the line it will need to be replaced. Consumer-level Apple users seemed to have accepted this idea, the question is will professionals be just as gullible? We will see.
-kpluck
Actually I'm concerned about what the price might be also. However we really don't know what sort of deal has been worked out here. In the online documents Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times so I'm not sure what we can expect as to the cost of the GPU's. I could see this machine being priced very aggressively using an older rev FirePro chip with the high end machine using the state of the art solution.
As for engineering applications that is more a case of the drivers than the chip. I fully expect the GPU's to work just as well as any other GPU with Apple software. Further I'm hoping that this is a sign that the OpenGL 4 release in Maverick is a very high quality implementation.
In any event I'm very positive about this years WWDC. Lots of great news.
Funny how some people don't get it. What do you upgrade in your "pro" machine? The storage right? You don't need a massive box in order to have a lot of slots for storage.
Someone was actually complaining about "no optical drive". Yeah, one isn't built in forcing those of us who stopped using them 5 years ago to pay for one in space and money.
The thermal core is a massive step forward in machine design. People who aren't technical don't seem to understand this, but this really is a design for the next 10 years.
You can have as much storage as you want-- you can add 36 hard drives to it. Hell, you if you put one hard drive on each USB 3 port you could have 40 drives. Or 40 RAID arrays.
This is the CPU & GPU unit. You want specialized stuff, the 6!! Thunderbolt ports have you covered.
You want to add expansion cards, no problem, add a chassis and connect it up with thunderbolt.
Can anyone name a popular professional peripheral that needs more speed than Thunderbolt can provide?
The most demanding you'd likely need is a GPU, and you're a lot less likely to need one with this machine given it comes with two massive GPUs.
Apple nailed it.
Those who say Apple doesn't respect professionals, seem to never be professionals themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpluck
Correct. The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer. It will be very powerful when you first buy it, but 2-3 years down the line it will need to be replaced. Consumer-level Apple users seemed to have accepted this idea, the question is will professionals be just as gullible? We will see.
-kpluck
Yeah but the way this is going you're probably going to be starting at a 256 GB RAM DISK PCIe 3.0, which you will upgrade later, to 512 or even 1024 GB, easily pop out chip put in another. If it's supports 64 GB of RAM, you are looking at 16GB chip for starters and popping in another 16GB chip and another and another. I hear the processor is upgradeable too. The GPUs no.
Baloney. You don''t spend as much time and effort, not to mention cash, to not expect success on something like this. This is a major design effort and probably cost Apple a bundle to develop. I don't have a crystal ball but even so I expect this computer to be a hot seller if it is priced right.
You make assumptions here about how different professionals operate. Many have a network for bulk storage and in some places are required to use that network. Even is local bulk storage is needed this isn't any different than hooking an array up to any other machine.
As to the TB ports they covered that in the video.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Actually I'm concerned about what the price might be also. However we really don't know what sort of deal has been worked out here. In the online documents Apple uses the phrase "up to" many times so I'm not sure what we can expect as to the cost of the GPU's.
I suspect there will be four configurations, ranging from what they showed, down to a quad core, dual-low-end-GPU machine. I think the base entry price will be "affordable" -- something like $1,500-$1,700. There's a lot of engineering that went into this design which I think will lead to economies of scale down the road after it's been out for awhile, but means upfront capital costs to recoup.
While they showed the top of the line in the demo, naturally, I am happy to see this is a very scalable design that could easily support lower end machines. (the 6 TB ports, etc, comes with all so I don't think there will be a $999 option.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpluck
The purpose of this design was to make a cool looking disposable computer.
You mean like the current mac pro? You can't upgrade the CPU in the current machine, but you can upgrade storage and memory. The new machine you can upgrade storage and memory. The only real difference is in the old machine the GPU was upgradable, but you can still do that with the new machine, you just use an external GPU. Calling it "disposable" seems pretty silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Anybody that doesn't understand how powerful this machine is, needs to take a computer technology class or something. This is an extremely powerful machine. So much so in fact that I worry about the entry level price.
I've noticed that the people who complain about Apple not supporting the "professionals" seem to be extremely focused on upgrading their GPUs. I've never upgraded the GPU in the Mac Pros I've had, and never really needed to. Video editors, creative types, they don't need to upgrade GPUs every year.
Who does need to upgrade GPUs, or at least wants to? Kids who play a lot of video games. I think they are the ones complaining that it doesn't support "professionals" because it doesn't support their having-the-latest-gpu bragging habit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bbwi
I'll throw my hat into the ring as one of Pro folks who is extremely disappointed in the new Mac Pro. No internal expansion slots for additional NICs or RAM alone is a reason to dump Apple for Pro hardware.
Because there is only gig ethernet that means all storage expansion will have to be Thunderbolt... BLAH, YUCK! Centralized storage is where it's at! NAS and SAN dominate for on premise storage. No Fiber Channel at all, and only a 1 gig iSCSI connection???
B.S. if you ask me. Terrible. Might as well just buy an iMac... I don't see the value add of a Mac Pro over an iMac anymore. This sucks
You don't get it. Thunderbolt has made internal expansion slots obsolete. You're really worried about not being able to use a card slot for an additional NIC? A NIC that gives you, what, 10GB ethernet? You could hang 3-4 of those off of a single thunderbolt port without losing performance. (10GB Ethernet does at best 5GB of data x 4 = 20GB.)
I think it's hilarious that you'd rather have storage reachable over pokey ethernet than thunderbolt. I guess you haven't heaed but thunderbolt is a whole lot faster than ethernet, and is pretty ideal for talking to mass storage... which if it's really massive is pretty damns slow. If you're spinning rust, it's the drive where you lose performance, not the way oversized thunderbolt pipes going to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggar
Have all the "external-only expansion is better" crowd thought about what they are going to do with all the extra enclosures, cables, power bricks, cooling fans, and noise that they are going to start collecting?
Yes. I have lived with quite a varied and shifting collection of external drives to deal with my video. First off, going from firewire to thunderbolt is a huge improvement. Secondly, as capacities increase you can replace the drive and keep the same enclosure... and I put the drives out of the way so there's not really much noise. While it's true the past MacPro had 4 internal drive slots... I've got a lot more than 4 external drives, so it's a wash at the worst.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Misa
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it",
Not many people bought XServes so they discontinued them. Apple recognizes who their market is. They tried to serve people who really wanted it to be "rackable", and there just weren't enough buyers.
I think it's unfair to call this an art piece, though. It is lovely, yes, but it's form is a direct result of its function. There are two things a case does: hold components and manage heat and airflow. Any box can hold the components, that's trivial.
This is a radical solution to the heat management problem... and a huge leap forward in that regard. They did it for functionality, not for the form, the form is just secondary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Probably the same idiots that panned the FCP update. Which by the way might sell a lot of these machines once they optimize FCP for the new Mac Pro.
As someone who edits a lot of video, FCPX is a huge leap forward. But it works differently. I learn new things quickly and loved it... I think a lot of people have to be trained before they can really do anything.... you change the software and suddenly they can't do anything because their training is obsolete.
These "professionals" are the ones who complained about FCPX. Anyone who actually edits loves it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 65C816
How do you rackmount these?!
The XServe has been discontinued. There's no money in competing in the cheap server market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Can't wait for iFixit to review it and give it a ?27 on their "Repairability Scale".
They probably will and it will be hilarious because looking at the internals it's pretty repairable. (seems everything is held in with screws and the top just rotates off.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Muir
The new Mac Pro design seems to take full advantage of the chimney effect. It should move a fair amount of air all by itself, before the fan gets involved. (and I love that Apple even designed the fan here)
It really is a marvelous design. One big fan can move a volume of air with slower RPMs, meaning less nose, and all the processing units sharing one massive heat sink is just lovely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cpsro
Whatcha been smoking?
The new design is still dual processor (6 cores each), just like the old design. HyperThreads will double the max. number of active threads to 24 total per complete system.
Dual-processor capable Sandy Bridge Xeons with 8 cores have been available for months already, to get 32 threads per system. 8 and 16 DIMM slot motherboards for these chips are commonplace, compared to just 4 slots in the new Mac Pro.
I don't know I have been trying to get info on Xeons, I got it twisted with the chips that allows 4 Processors on board I think I don't know, been up all night, misread maybe. So it's DUAL PROC? wow I didn't see that, I could have swore I read about 12-core haswell or something, whatever maybe not, I don't know, but I didn't see how you could put two in the Cylinder? on the Apple site breakdown... we will see I suppose... I could have swore in the conference he said has Haswell, but I don't know
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/17/intel-roadmap-reveals-10-core-xeon-e5-2600-v2-cpu/
According to Fudzilla, the Haswell-E will have from 12 to 16 cores, a TDP of 130 W, and support for DDR4 memory that promises to deliver exponentially more bandwidth than previous generations of processors.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2314287
well I don't know
Laters...