I really wish somebody would explain how this can be a downgrade.
It's a downgrade because a spec bump Mac Pro is either equal or superior.
CPU would be the same. Updated to the same Xeon CPUs.
PCIe would be the same. The spec bump would include the extra lanes and all three slots could be configured as x16 slots and had lanes left over for 4 TB2 slots.
GPU would be as good or better. Why? Because you can choose which GPUs you wanted including the ones provided here. More importantly there are some jobs that will require nVidia instead of ATI. Better CUDA support vs OpenGL on the apps you use. Or the drivers are broken for certain apps.
Memory would have been better. 8 slots vs 4. It means memory is cheaper if you don't max or you can max higher. Same memory bandwidth speeds.
Storage would have been better. Remove the optical and replace with 2 PCIe SSD blade slots that are just as fast. Still have 4 bays for HDDs and SSDs.
Expansion would have been better. 3 slots + 4 TB2. Each slot is worth 2 TB2 ports. And if you don't need dual GPUs but do want a Rocket and some other high speed card (say a Xeon Phi) then you can have that running twice as fast as with TB2.
Longevity would have been much better. What are the two common things you can do to make a computer last longer? Add RAM and replace the GPU. You can only add half the RAM and can't update the GPUs at all. 64GB or even 128GB sounds like a lot today but 3 years from now it won't. Being capped at 4 slots will suck. My 3 year old MBP CPU and GPU wise is okay, especially since I stuck a SSD in. Being capped at 8GB is what makes the machine obsolete for me. I NNED 16GB so I have to refresh this year. For a user that is memory starved 64GB is merely okay today and 128GB optimal. Three years from now being stuck at 4 slots and 128GB is likely going to suck.
Does anyone know if the outer case is in metal? I hope they aren't using any plastic for the outer shell.
Everything I've seen says metal.
It seems to be quite shiny on the upper case but matte on the inner case. This is it with the lid down:
[VIDEO]
The plastic display case is adding its own reflections but you can see at 0:43, it's very reflective like chrome - easier to keep clean I suppose. This is it with the lid up:
[VIDEO]
I personally like the matte metal style of the interior.
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?
People will buy what they need. The Mac Pro only had 3 expansion slots and if they used adaptor cards, they can be low powered converters e.g extra Gigabit Ethernet ports are small Thunderbolt adaptors.
And by the way, does each of those Thunderbolt connectors get its own dedicated 20 Gbps bandwidth, or is it all shared?
They used 3 separate controllers so yes they should have 20Gbps per port. The iMac's two ports share a single controller and manage to get full bandwidth each.
The current Mac Pro PCI is x16, x16, x4, x4 with the first x16 used by the GPU.
This one is essentially six x4. Although displays use some of it (can use HDMI to avoid this for some setups), the total available bandwidth should be comparable and will increase further in future.
It looks like a single socket motherboard so they'll save money by having a single model and single CPU options are actually cheaper than dual ones. Apple's current high end uses dual $1440 but a single 10-core is something like $1800.
The 6GB FirePro that supports Crossfire is over $3k:
It looks like the top config has two so 12GB of video memory but potentially expensive. AMD is having some financial problems just now though and they have lowered prices for the consoles so they might have given Apple some good prices on these. Say they have a $2k 12-core CPU + $2.5k per top GPU, that's at least $7k for the top model and there will have to be an SSD + RAM + profit margin. The low-end can easily start at quad-core, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, dual entry FirePro e.g:
They may have an in-store service to allow you to upgrade GPUs later on. I'm not sure they'll be able to hit the $2500 entry price given the design. $3k-10k seems more likely but it comes down to the GPU options. They may allow you to use a single low-end GPU.
For OpenCL apps, it will be well worth the price though. Remember Final Cut Pro encoding is OpenCL based. The Adobe CS Suite is too. Blackmagic said their software is fast on it. I think Pixar and The Foundry will have some neat OpenCL demos tomorrow.
It is pretty awesome looking and frankly if you weren't in the market for a Mac Pro but a Mac Pro Mini you'll be ticked pink. It's everything I'd hope the Mac Pro Mini to be except for the ATI GPUs.
I just wish they didn't kill the Mac Pro to make it happen.
We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of.
We will have more details once the guys get back from WWDC and we get some more info from Apple on what we can talk about etc.
Overall we could not be happier!
Regards,
Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design
Not bad. Obviously some people in the pro industry are not concerned.
It is 6 thunderbolt, however in this market there is about a 98% to 2% ratio on accessories for the ports so 8 USB and 4 thunderbolt would may have been better.
No slots?
No optical drive?
No support for RAID (hard drives)?
More of a Mac maxi rather than a Mac Pro.
Granted, SSDs are amazing fast. But if you need bulk storage (and you want it inside the box), this will be disappointing.
I can understand lack of optical drive on "non-Pro" machines, but for those who produce video having to attach an external drive is just a bit of fugliness that is not needed here. Given that people who typically use Mac Pros tend to work with large data files (and may need to mail them to clients in some form other than electronic), the lack of a built-in optical drive should raise some eyebrows.
No slots? Gee, one thing that has kept Mac Pro units working as long as they have in the past has been the ability to swap in new graphic cards. TB2 may help a little, but it's not quite the same as a 16x PCIe slot. Further, there are other devices people might want to add to a new Mac Pro (or, more likely, pull out of an existing Mac Pro and stick in the new one) that the lack of slots will be problematic.
Cylindrical? Crap! A device that could have been easily rack-mounted would have been much more practical. Even if that wasn't in the cards, cylindrical is going to create space problems on desktops and other rectangular areas where Mac Pros currently set. Someone in Apple's industrial design department should have made this a little more "industrial". Granted, the Mac Pro user is *far* from Apple's demographic (which seems to like "thin is in") but you think they would have done a better job of designing something for the Pro users. Heck, I'd much rather they stuck with the old case. Pro users don't need something that would look good in a museum -- they need something practical. Cylindrical fails that. If this is an example of "can't innovate my ass", I'd prefer less innovation, thank you.
OTOH, the performance does look pretty damn good. Mac Pro users will be forced to upgrade on that point alone.
It seems to be quite shiny on the upper case but matte on the inner case. This is it with the lid down:
The plastic display case is adding its own reflections but you can see at 0:43, it's very reflective like chrome - easier to keep clean I suppose. This is it with the lid up:
I personally like the matte metal style of the interior.
People will buy what they need. The Mac Pro only had 3 expansion slots and if they used adaptor cards, they can be low powered converters e.g extra Gigabit Ethernet ports are small Thunderbolt adaptors.
They used 3 separate controllers so yes they should have 20Gbps per port. The iMac's two ports share a single controller and manage to get full bandwidth each.
The current Mac Pro PCI is x16, x16, x4, x4 with the first x16 used by the GPU.
This one is essentially six x4. Although displays use some of it (can use HDMI to avoid this for some setups), the total available bandwidth should be comparable and will increase further in future.
It looks like a single socket motherboard so they'll save money by having a single model and single CPU options are actually cheaper than dual ones. Apple's current high end uses dual $1440 but a single 10-core is something like $1800.
The 6GB FirePro that supports Crossfire is over $3k:
It looks like the top config has two so 12GB of video memory but potentially expensive. AMD is having some financial problems just now though and they have lowered prices for the consoles so they might have given Apple some good prices on these. Say they have a $2k 12-core CPU + $2.5k per top GPU, that's at least $7k for the top model and there will have to be an SSD + RAM + profit margin. The low-end can easily start at quad-core, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, dual entry FirePro e.g:
They may have an in-store service to allow you to upgrade GPUs later on. I'm not sure they'll be able to hit the $2500 entry price given the design. $3k-10k seems more likely but it comes down to the GPU options. They may allow you to use a single low-end GPU.
For OpenCL apps, it will be well worth the price though. Remember Final Cut Pro encoding is OpenCL based. The Adobe CS Suite is too. Blackmagic said their software is fast on it. I think Pixar and The Foundry will have some neat OpenCL demos tomorrow.
Where do you get 12GB Marvin? These aren't twin W9000 GPGPUs on-board. It's a combined 6GB DDR5 with 4096 stream processor cores. With the impending next generation GCN 2.0 architecture stamping out this next couple of months this might be the Volcanic Cores completely skipping the W9000/S10000 series all together.
Phil specifically mentioned 6GB DDR5 and 4096 streams processor cores. Essentially dual 2048 stream processor cores sharing a unified 6GB DDR5 similar in kind to perhaps the new PS4 sharing 8GB DDR5 on their GPGPUs. All speculation, but those GPGPUs are definitely a designed for Apple Mac Pro only solution.
These are definitely Apple original designs with AMD:
It is pretty awesome looking and frankly if you weren't in the market for a Mac Pro but a Mac Pro Mini you'll be ticked pink. It's everything I'd hope the Mac Pro Mini to be except for the ATI GPUs.
I just wish they didn't kill the Mac Pro to make it happen.
The major differences in this design are two things:
1. PCI slots are replaced with Thunderbolt ports with PCIe2 x4 equivalent bandwidth each.
2. GPUs probably aren't user-replaceable.
Some people believe that those things make this a dumbed down Mac Pro but there's not really a large distinction. It already ships with fast GPUs so there shouldn't be an immediate need for GPU changes - they might even have BTO NVidia options. It's highly unlikely people would upgrade GPUs every year because the performance doesn't change that much. Maybe after 2 years but again not if they spent a few thousand on the original ones. After 3 years, sell the machine second hand and get a new model. I don't get the fascination some people have with holding onto hardware forever. You get a new warranty with a new machine. There are a few stories around about people with older Mac Pros and failing capacitors or power supplies and they get upset that Apple isn't jumping at the chance to fix their 4-6 year old machines they spent $4k+ on. It still runs out of warranty no matter how much it costs.
If you really need PCI cards, there are options for a box:
[VIDEO]
but that's just a backup option when the computer can't handle certain kinds of processing natively (the performance of this machine should handle a lot of things natively) and when there isn't a Thunderbolt equivalent for what's needed. The benefit of Thunderbolt peripherals is they are plug and play and they can be shared with another machine.
I think the core problem is that people still refuse to accept a Thunderbolt port as a viable replacement for a PCI slot and that perception needs to change. There are enough demos that show it is a suitable replacement. As soon as an example comes up where it's not suitable, a solution will be found - worst case a driver is needed - but there's nothing really been found lacking with Thunderbolt options.
Where do you get 12GB Marvin? These aren't twin W9000 GPGPUs on-board. It's a combined 6GB DDR5 with 4096 stream processor cores.
That's what it sounded like from the marketing:
"Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them"
Maybe just worded confusingly but on what interface would the memory sit for it to be shared fast enough by both? Anandtech says:
"The cylindrical computer will also come standard with two workstation-class ATI FirePro GPUs, each with 384-bit memory busses and 528Gbps of memory bandwidth."
Phil specifically mentioned 6GB DDR5 and 4096 streams processor cores. Essentially dual 2048 stream processor cores sharing a unified 6GB DDR5 similar in kind to perhaps the new PS4 sharing 8GB DDR5 on their GPGPUs.
They definitely added the stream processors together. Maybe AMD built a shared memory system for them, that probably would be the best setup for computation and 6GB is plenty of memory anyway. They also haven't said you can get just one GPU - it's dual-GPU as standard.
You are simply full of yourself. Once video professionals grasp what is in this machine they will be falling all over themselves to buy one. In the end upgrading video cards is becoming a thing of the past because the payoff isn't there anymore.
GPUs really don't change that fast at the extreme end, and you wouldn't be able to upgrade the cpu very far anyway. Ivy EP cpus should work, but anything after that will be a different chipset again. I won't be too excited until I have all the details. This includes support from software developers and stable well supported storage options. It's not easy for me to see how the synergy will work out so far given that this is a pretty drastic change. They mentioned the Foundry and Pixar. I know how to use Nuke. I don't regularly use it, and I don't personally have it on my own machines. I am more interested in support from Adobe and Autodesk. It's just one of those things where the announcement is cool. The potential performance is obvious. I just want to see how things work out. I don't have to buy a machine on day 1. I think the update cycles will still be somewhat long as it still uses the Xeon EP schedule which isn't a strict 12 month refresh.
Quote:
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.
2. GPUs probably aren't user-replaceable.
I think you really called it on this one. A couple of your predictions were true. One was the use of single parts only in a 12 core configuration, although you suggested it would be only one configuration (not sure that part was terribly serious in conviction though). The other portion was the thunderbolt ports. As I previously mentioned, they're not trying to export gpus over thunderbolt connections. That is still a silly concept when comparing the cost of initial engineering (including thunderbolt certification requirements) and manufacturing to potential performance levels. I have no idea what the overall motivation was here, as I don't know what the cost and performance of a single 12 core looks like relative to the cost of implementing a dual solution. It's important to note that they migrated to the use of workstation gpus. Those can be slower in some apps, faster in others. On Windows they're much more stable for certain things and allow for large amounts of ram if you wish to handle computation.
I'm actually quite interested in this if they get real GPGPU support from software developers and get their OpenGL implementation to where it should be. Thunderbolt was still designed for notebooks more than anything. It's just being leveraged back, which I did acknowledge as a possibility. It allows for one set of peripherals to be marketed to a larger audience, but I'm skeptical that the new mac pro would be the thing to push that. I think many of those ports are designed for 4k displays which might saturate an entire port. I think much like other big changes, it will be interesting to see what this looks like a few months into its release. The early unveiling does allow developers some amount of lead, as Apple's ecosystem would now be completely thunderbolt driven. In terms of upgrading gpus, workstation gpus don't change very fast. They are not upclocked and rebranded each year, although sometimes you'll have high end performance options show up later at some of the extreme price points. If we get strong gpus and really well tuned drivers for once, I don't think it will be a big deal. In the end it will still come down to how much it costs to configure a computer setup to spec and how much money you can make with it. If they are able to take certain features and make them more mainstream eg HPC GPGPU calculations leveraged into a desktop box, that in itself should motivate long term purchases. I would not expect huge day 1 orders if the pricing model is aimed predominantly at the budget range of multiple user environments.
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.
"Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them"
That is what it sounds like to me "up to" 6GB for each GPU. This is one of the reasons I don't understand the negativity over this machine, if our interpretations are correct this is one extremely powerful machine in its "up to" configuration.
Maybe just worded confusingly but on what interface would the memory sit for it to be shared fast enough by both? Anandtech says:
"The cylindrical computer will also come standard with two workstation-class ATI FirePro GPUs, each with 384-bit memory busses and 528Gbps of memory bandwidth."
I don't think it is shared memory, that would crimp GPU performance significantly. On the other hand AMD is pushing hard on GCN and heterogeneous computing so who know we may see something different.
It's a downgrade because a spec bump Mac Pro is either equal or superior.
That spec bump Mac Pro doesn't exist though.
CPU would be the same. Updated to the same Xeon CPUs.
Actually the old Mac Pro might be better. After all this machine is a single socket machine.
[*] PCIe would be the same. The spec bump would include the extra lanes and all three slots could be configured as x16 slots and had lanes left over for 4 TB2 slots.
Actually I'm not sure about that. This is only important though if you believe internal expansion is important. Frankly I would have preferred at least one PCI Express slot. However Apple doesn't see it that way.
[*] GPU would be as good or better. Why? Because you can choose which GPUs you wanted including the ones provided here. More importantly there are some jobs that will require nVidia instead of ATI. Better CUDA support vs OpenGL on the apps you use. Or the drivers are broken for certain apps.
That really doesn't matter because the vast majority of Mac users go with what Apple supplies and don't reconfigure their machines.
[*] Memory would have been better. 8 slots vs 4. It means memory is cheaper if you don't max or you can max higher. Same memory bandwidth speeds.
That may be the case this year but eventually RAM will be soldered on the motherboard.
[*] Storage would have been better. Remove the optical and replace with 2 PCIe SSD blade slots that are just as fast. Still have 4 bays for HDDs and SSDs.
Storage wouldn't be significantly different if you as a user are already using external arrays.
[*] Expansion would have been better. 3 slots + 4 TB2. Each slot is worth 2 TB2 ports. And if you don't need dual GPUs but do want a Rocket and some other high speed card (say a Xeon Phi) then you can have that running twice as fast as with TB2.
While this may be true I suspect Apple is taking a different focus. In a nut shell I think Apple is stressing computational ability first and foremost.
[*] Longevity would have been much better. What are the two common things you can do to make a computer last longer? Add RAM and replace the GPU. You can only add half the RAM and can't update the GPUs at all.
I will give you RAM upgradability for this go around but that is a feature that is going away in the future. As for the GPU I really don't see the value in GPU upgrades anymore. This especially the case in a machine like this where most of the cost will be in the GPUs.
64GB or even 128GB sounds like a lot today but 3 years from now it won't.
Three years from now we may have Mac Pros running on completely different memory architectures.
Being capped at 4 slots will suck. My 3 year old MBP CPU and GPU wise is okay, especially since I stuck a SSD in. Being capped at 8GB is what makes the machine obsolete for me. I NNED 16GB so I have to refresh this year. For a user that is memory starved 64GB is merely okay today and 128GB optimal. Three years from now being stuck at 4 slots and 128GB is likely going to suck.
We don't even know if or when Mac OS will address their architectural memory limits.
In what ways are the new Mac Pro superior?
Size.
Cool Thermal strategy.
Looks.
You need to look at this machine again thinking more about the future than the past.
Disappointed. Scaled down for all the wrong reasons.
Mmm... I don't agree. I'm starting to think the old box was big for all the wrong reasons.
This is the core of the computing machine: welded to a single thermal management solution. Clever, elegant, and functional.
Why internalize everything from hard drives to optical drives into a big box when many users just need lots of speed and raw computational power? I think this is the future of the Pro desktop, a design for the next 5 years. You won't miss slow HDDs or optical media in 5 years. That'll be a distant memory.
I guess my current Mac Pro will have to do a little longer service than I had hoped and when it it time to upgrade I will likely build my own Mac which apparently is easier than ever now or look to buy an iMac for the very first time ever. It would be very tempting to build my own since I love my monitors now and could reuse my Geforce 670 and all 4 of my current hard drives in my Mac Pro which would save a lot of money. I had never before considered building my own Mac but maybe it i time. I don't blame Apple nor am I angry. I am a little disappointed but it was expected and I saw the writing on the wall. I am curious to see the prices and configurations though. In a way maybe they did me a favor since I miss my old tinkering days and being able to upgrade my own computer to my heart's content.
Building your own Mac Pro is a very simple thing to do, just make sure to buy OSX compatible components. I'm going to wait to see the price of this thing before I make any decision but if I can build a machine with comparable performance for 800 or less I'll skip it as well. The Intel Xeon is a very expensive chip, with AMD's new 12 & 16 core CPU's having decent performance at a fraction of the cost building a machine for 800 or even 1,000 less isn't so far fetched. The Intel Xeon's still reign supreme but these new AMD's come pretty close. The new Mac Pro is a beautiful machine but if it's outrageously price I just won't be able to justify the purchase especially when it will be just a hobby machine myself.
As some suggest I am curious on the price. I also think Apple is headed in the right direction with the use of Thunderbolt for expandability. This makes expansion EZ. I am not convinced on the arguments for Video Cards/CPU/RAM...The software has improved to the point where these are not as important as they once were. Please not I did not say they weren't important, just are not big issues with today's technology at least on the Apple side. Yes, even for Pro users. Based on the size of this unit I am betting the price will let you buy 2 for close to the price of the old one. Yes I may be dreaming on this part but the thing is small.
Based on some of the posts Apple has made people uncomfortable with this design. Sometimes that is good as it means innovation is happening right in front of us.
As some suggest I am curious on the price. I also think Apple is headed in the right direction with the use of Thunderbolt for expandability. This makes expansion EZ. I am not convinced on the arguments for Video Cards/CPU/RAM...The software has improved to the point where these are not as important as they once were. Please not I did not say they weren't important, just are not big issues with today's technology at least on the Apple side. Yes, even for Pro users. Based on the size of this unit I am betting the price will let you buy 2 for close to the price of the old one. Yes I may be dreaming on this part but the thing is small.
Based on some of the posts Apple has made people uncomfortable with this design. Sometimes that is good as it means innovation is happening right in front of us.
No way that two of the new Mac Pro models are going to be equal in cost to one of the outgoing Mac Pro models. A fully loaded new Mac Pro could actually be pushing around 10k, what with the expensive 12-core CPU & equally expensive ATI workstation FirePro GPUs. I would figure an entry level model; say a quad-core E5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD & lower-end ATI workstation FirePro GPUs; call it around 2k…
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarenDino
It's a BUTT PLUG !!!!
Your girlfriend must have a REALLY big butt!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I really wish somebody would explain how this can be a downgrade.
It's a downgrade because a spec bump Mac Pro is either equal or superior.
CPU would be the same. Updated to the same Xeon CPUs.
PCIe would be the same. The spec bump would include the extra lanes and all three slots could be configured as x16 slots and had lanes left over for 4 TB2 slots.
GPU would be as good or better. Why? Because you can choose which GPUs you wanted including the ones provided here. More importantly there are some jobs that will require nVidia instead of ATI. Better CUDA support vs OpenGL on the apps you use. Or the drivers are broken for certain apps.
Memory would have been better. 8 slots vs 4. It means memory is cheaper if you don't max or you can max higher. Same memory bandwidth speeds.
Storage would have been better. Remove the optical and replace with 2 PCIe SSD blade slots that are just as fast. Still have 4 bays for HDDs and SSDs.
Expansion would have been better. 3 slots + 4 TB2. Each slot is worth 2 TB2 ports. And if you don't need dual GPUs but do want a Rocket and some other high speed card (say a Xeon Phi) then you can have that running twice as fast as with TB2.
Longevity would have been much better. What are the two common things you can do to make a computer last longer? Add RAM and replace the GPU. You can only add half the RAM and can't update the GPUs at all. 64GB or even 128GB sounds like a lot today but 3 years from now it won't. Being capped at 4 slots will suck. My 3 year old MBP CPU and GPU wise is okay, especially since I stuck a SSD in. Being capped at 8GB is what makes the machine obsolete for me. I NNED 16GB so I have to refresh this year. For a user that is memory starved 64GB is merely okay today and 128GB optimal. Three years from now being stuck at 4 slots and 128GB is likely going to suck.
In what ways are the new Mac Pro superior?
Size.
Cool Thermal strategy.
Looks.
It seems to be quite shiny on the upper case but matte on the inner case. This is it with the lid down:
[VIDEO]
The plastic display case is adding its own reflections but you can see at 0:43, it's very reflective like chrome - easier to keep clean I suppose. This is it with the lid up:
[VIDEO]
I personally like the matte metal style of the interior.
People will buy what they need. The Mac Pro only had 3 expansion slots and if they used adaptor cards, they can be low powered converters e.g extra Gigabit Ethernet ports are small Thunderbolt adaptors.
They used 3 separate controllers so yes they should have 20Gbps per port. The iMac's two ports share a single controller and manage to get full bandwidth each.
The current Mac Pro PCI is x16, x16, x4, x4 with the first x16 used by the GPU.
This one is essentially six x4. Although displays use some of it (can use HDMI to avoid this for some setups), the total available bandwidth should be comparable and will increase further in future.
It looks like a single socket motherboard so they'll save money by having a single model and single CPU options are actually cheaper than dual ones. Apple's current high end uses dual $1440 but a single 10-core is something like $1800.
The 6GB FirePro that supports Crossfire is over $3k:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195116
It looks like the top config has two so 12GB of video memory but potentially expensive. AMD is having some financial problems just now though and they have lowered prices for the consoles so they might have given Apple some good prices on these. Say they have a $2k 12-core CPU + $2.5k per top GPU, that's at least $7k for the top model and there will have to be an SSD + RAM + profit margin. The low-end can easily start at quad-core, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, dual entry FirePro e.g:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195106
They may have an in-store service to allow you to upgrade GPUs later on. I'm not sure they'll be able to hit the $2500 entry price given the design. $3k-10k seems more likely but it comes down to the GPU options. They may allow you to use a single low-end GPU.
For OpenCL apps, it will be well worth the price though. Remember Final Cut Pro encoding is OpenCL based. The Adobe CS Suite is too. Blackmagic said their software is fast on it. I think Pixar and The Foundry will have some neat OpenCL demos tomorrow.
It is pretty awesome looking and frankly if you weren't in the market for a Mac Pro but a Mac Pro Mini you'll be ticked pink. It's everything I'd hope the Mac Pro Mini to be except for the ATI GPUs.
I just wish they didn't kill the Mac Pro to make it happen.
Couple of comments I found today regarding the power of this computer:
First from Adobe on CreativeCow.net:
Quote:
We support OpenCL on AMD cards with CC. We also support Dual GPU for rendering. Premiere will max out these systems when the ship.
Cheers
Dave
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David McGavran, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Senior Engineering Manager Adobe Premiere Pro
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then from Black Magic:
Quote:
We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of.
We will have more details once the guys get back from WWDC and we get some more info from Apple on what we can talk about etc.
Overall we could not be happier!
Regards,
Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design
Not bad. Obviously some people in the pro industry are not concerned.
It is 6 thunderbolt, however in this market there is about a 98% to 2% ratio on accessories for the ports so 8 USB and 4 thunderbolt would may have been better.
There are always disadvantages...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It seems to be quite shiny on the upper case but matte on the inner case. This is it with the lid down:
The plastic display case is adding its own reflections but you can see at 0:43, it's very reflective like chrome - easier to keep clean I suppose. This is it with the lid up:
I personally like the matte metal style of the interior.
People will buy what they need. The Mac Pro only had 3 expansion slots and if they used adaptor cards, they can be low powered converters e.g extra Gigabit Ethernet ports are small Thunderbolt adaptors.
They used 3 separate controllers so yes they should have 20Gbps per port. The iMac's two ports share a single controller and manage to get full bandwidth each.
The current Mac Pro PCI is x16, x16, x4, x4 with the first x16 used by the GPU.
This one is essentially six x4. Although displays use some of it (can use HDMI to avoid this for some setups), the total available bandwidth should be comparable and will increase further in future.
It looks like a single socket motherboard so they'll save money by having a single model and single CPU options are actually cheaper than dual ones. Apple's current high end uses dual $1440 but a single 10-core is something like $1800.
The 6GB FirePro that supports Crossfire is over $3k:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195116
It looks like the top config has two so 12GB of video memory but potentially expensive. AMD is having some financial problems just now though and they have lowered prices for the consoles so they might have given Apple some good prices on these. Say they have a $2k 12-core CPU + $2.5k per top GPU, that's at least $7k for the top model and there will have to be an SSD + RAM + profit margin. The low-end can easily start at quad-core, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, dual entry FirePro e.g:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195106
They may have an in-store service to allow you to upgrade GPUs later on. I'm not sure they'll be able to hit the $2500 entry price given the design. $3k-10k seems more likely but it comes down to the GPU options. They may allow you to use a single low-end GPU.
For OpenCL apps, it will be well worth the price though. Remember Final Cut Pro encoding is OpenCL based. The Adobe CS Suite is too. Blackmagic said their software is fast on it. I think Pixar and The Foundry will have some neat OpenCL demos tomorrow.
Where do you get 12GB Marvin? These aren't twin W9000 GPGPUs on-board. It's a combined 6GB DDR5 with 4096 stream processor cores. With the impending next generation GCN 2.0 architecture stamping out this next couple of months this might be the Volcanic Cores completely skipping the W9000/S10000 series all together.
Phil specifically mentioned 6GB DDR5 and 4096 streams processor cores. Essentially dual 2048 stream processor cores sharing a unified 6GB DDR5 similar in kind to perhaps the new PS4 sharing 8GB DDR5 on their GPGPUs. All speculation, but those GPGPUs are definitely a designed for Apple Mac Pro only solution.
These are definitely Apple original designs with AMD:
http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/IMG_8197.jpg
http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/IMG_8203.jpg
Unless a 3rd party vendor works with Apple these are it for the new Mac Pro.
Definitely haven't seen designed GPGPUs like this ever.
The major differences in this design are two things:
1. PCI slots are replaced with Thunderbolt ports with PCIe2 x4 equivalent bandwidth each.
2. GPUs probably aren't user-replaceable.
Some people believe that those things make this a dumbed down Mac Pro but there's not really a large distinction. It already ships with fast GPUs so there shouldn't be an immediate need for GPU changes - they might even have BTO NVidia options. It's highly unlikely people would upgrade GPUs every year because the performance doesn't change that much. Maybe after 2 years but again not if they spent a few thousand on the original ones. After 3 years, sell the machine second hand and get a new model. I don't get the fascination some people have with holding onto hardware forever. You get a new warranty with a new machine. There are a few stories around about people with older Mac Pros and failing capacitors or power supplies and they get upset that Apple isn't jumping at the chance to fix their 4-6 year old machines they spent $4k+ on. It still runs out of warranty no matter how much it costs.
If you really need PCI cards, there are options for a box:
[VIDEO]
but that's just a backup option when the computer can't handle certain kinds of processing natively (the performance of this machine should handle a lot of things natively) and when there isn't a Thunderbolt equivalent for what's needed. The benefit of Thunderbolt peripherals is they are plug and play and they can be shared with another machine.
I think the core problem is that people still refuse to accept a Thunderbolt port as a viable replacement for a PCI slot and that perception needs to change. There are enough demos that show it is a suitable replacement. As soon as an example comes up where it's not suitable, a solution will be found - worst case a driver is needed - but there's nothing really been found lacking with Thunderbolt options.
That's what it sounded like from the marketing:
"Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them"
Maybe just worded confusingly but on what interface would the memory sit for it to be shared fast enough by both? Anandtech says:
"The cylindrical computer will also come standard with two workstation-class ATI FirePro GPUs, each with 384-bit memory busses and 528Gbps of memory bandwidth."
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/at-long-last-apple-announces-new-mac-pro-with-cylindrical-design/
They definitely added the stream processors together. Maybe AMD built a shared memory system for them, that probably would be the best setup for computation and 6GB is plenty of memory anyway. They also haven't said you can get just one GPU - it's dual-GPU as standard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
You are simply full of yourself. Once video professionals grasp what is in this machine they will be falling all over themselves to buy one. In the end upgrading video cards is becoming a thing of the past because the payoff isn't there anymore.
GPUs really don't change that fast at the extreme end, and you wouldn't be able to upgrade the cpu very far anyway. Ivy EP cpus should work, but anything after that will be a different chipset again. I won't be too excited until I have all the details. This includes support from software developers and stable well supported storage options. It's not easy for me to see how the synergy will work out so far given that this is a pretty drastic change. They mentioned the Foundry and Pixar. I know how to use Nuke. I don't regularly use it, and I don't personally have it on my own machines. I am more interested in support from Adobe and Autodesk. It's just one of those things where the announcement is cool. The potential performance is obvious. I just want to see how things work out. I don't have to buy a machine on day 1. I think the update cycles will still be somewhat long as it still uses the Xeon EP schedule which isn't a strict 12 month refresh.
Quote:
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.
2. GPUs probably aren't user-replaceable.
I think you really called it on this one. A couple of your predictions were true. One was the use of single parts only in a 12 core configuration, although you suggested it would be only one configuration (not sure that part was terribly serious in conviction though). The other portion was the thunderbolt ports. As I previously mentioned, they're not trying to export gpus over thunderbolt connections. That is still a silly concept when comparing the cost of initial engineering (including thunderbolt certification requirements) and manufacturing to potential performance levels. I have no idea what the overall motivation was here, as I don't know what the cost and performance of a single 12 core looks like relative to the cost of implementing a dual solution. It's important to note that they migrated to the use of workstation gpus. Those can be slower in some apps, faster in others. On Windows they're much more stable for certain things and allow for large amounts of ram if you wish to handle computation.
I'm actually quite interested in this if they get real GPGPU support from software developers and get their OpenGL implementation to where it should be. Thunderbolt was still designed for notebooks more than anything. It's just being leveraged back, which I did acknowledge as a possibility. It allows for one set of peripherals to be marketed to a larger audience, but I'm skeptical that the new mac pro would be the thing to push that. I think many of those ports are designed for 4k displays which might saturate an entire port. I think much like other big changes, it will be interesting to see what this looks like a few months into its release. The early unveiling does allow developers some amount of lead, as Apple's ecosystem would now be completely thunderbolt driven. In terms of upgrading gpus, workstation gpus don't change very fast. They are not upclocked and rebranded each year, although sometimes you'll have high end performance options show up later at some of the extreme price points. If we get strong gpus and really well tuned drivers for once, I don't think it will be a big deal. In the end it will still come down to how much it costs to configure a computer setup to spec and how much money you can make with it. If they are able to take certain features and make them more mainstream eg HPC GPGPU calculations leveraged into a desktop box, that in itself should motivate long term purchases. I would not expect huge day 1 orders if the pricing model is aimed predominantly at the budget range of multiple user environments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rezwits
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...
Awww, geez, you're absolutely right. It's clear from the overview on apple.com that it's just one CPU. This sucks.
I don't think it is shared memory, that would crimp GPU performance significantly. On the other hand AMD is pushing hard on GCN and heterogeneous computing so who know we may see something different.
You need to look at this machine again thinking more about the future than the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
Disappointed. Scaled down for all the wrong reasons.
Mmm... I don't agree. I'm starting to think the old box was big for all the wrong reasons.
This is the core of the computing machine: welded to a single thermal management solution. Clever, elegant, and functional.
Why internalize everything from hard drives to optical drives into a big box when many users just need lots of speed and raw computational power? I think this is the future of the Pro desktop, a design for the next 5 years. You won't miss slow HDDs or optical media in 5 years. That'll be a distant memory.
True. Currently capped at 96GB.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwmac
I guess my current Mac Pro will have to do a little longer service than I had hoped and when it it time to upgrade I will likely build my own Mac which apparently is easier than ever now or look to buy an iMac for the very first time ever. It would be very tempting to build my own since I love my monitors now and could reuse my Geforce 670 and all 4 of my current hard drives in my Mac Pro which would save a lot of money. I had never before considered building my own Mac but maybe it i time. I don't blame Apple nor am I angry. I am a little disappointed but it was expected and I saw the writing on the wall. I am curious to see the prices and configurations though. In a way maybe they did me a favor since I miss my old tinkering days and being able to upgrade my own computer to my heart's content.
Building your own Mac Pro is a very simple thing to do, just make sure to buy OSX compatible components. I'm going to wait to see the price of this thing before I make any decision but if I can build a machine with comparable performance for 800 or less I'll skip it as well. The Intel Xeon is a very expensive chip, with AMD's new 12 & 16 core CPU's having decent performance at a fraction of the cost building a machine for 800 or even 1,000 less isn't so far fetched. The Intel Xeon's still reign supreme but these new AMD's come pretty close. The new Mac Pro is a beautiful machine but if it's outrageously price I just won't be able to justify the purchase especially when it will be just a hobby machine myself.
AMD 12 Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113304
AMD 16 core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113306
When are you getting yours?
As some suggest I am curious on the price. I also think Apple is headed in the right direction with the use of Thunderbolt for expandability. This makes expansion EZ. I am not convinced on the arguments for Video Cards/CPU/RAM...The software has improved to the point where these are not as important as they once were. Please not I did not say they weren't important, just are not big issues with today's technology at least on the Apple side. Yes, even for Pro users. Based on the size of this unit I am betting the price will let you buy 2 for close to the price of the old one. Yes I may be dreaming on this part but the thing is small.
Based on some of the posts Apple has made people uncomfortable with this design. Sometimes that is good as it means innovation is happening right in front of us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TechProd1gy
As some suggest I am curious on the price. I also think Apple is headed in the right direction with the use of Thunderbolt for expandability. This makes expansion EZ. I am not convinced on the arguments for Video Cards/CPU/RAM...The software has improved to the point where these are not as important as they once were. Please not I did not say they weren't important, just are not big issues with today's technology at least on the Apple side. Yes, even for Pro users. Based on the size of this unit I am betting the price will let you buy 2 for close to the price of the old one. Yes I may be dreaming on this part but the thing is small.
Based on some of the posts Apple has made people uncomfortable with this design. Sometimes that is good as it means innovation is happening right in front of us.
No way that two of the new Mac Pro models are going to be equal in cost to one of the outgoing Mac Pro models. A fully loaded new Mac Pro could actually be pushing around 10k, what with the expensive 12-core CPU & equally expensive ATI workstation FirePro GPUs. I would figure an entry level model; say a quad-core E5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD & lower-end ATI workstation FirePro GPUs; call it around 2k…