NVidia is in a tough position right now, it isn't just Mac sales that are drying up, they are about to loose a major portion of their income stream. AMD has had good enough integrated GPUs for over a year now and Haswell is now to that point in many variants. The need really isn't there anymore for a decent discrete GPU. By this time next year, the only chips NVidia will be selling will be for high end gaming or workstation machines. Given that I would suspect that they will try hard to get designed into the Mac Pro, especially if the machine takes off sales wise.
Nvidia still outsells ATI in the discrete graphics card market, low, mid and high end, that probably won't change for a long while. I don't think the Mac Pro is a big enough market to really matter to Nvidia anyway and I can only imagine the large price reductions ATI had to make to be used by Apple.
Well I haven't seen the physical hardware yet but GPU upgrades seem to be very possible in the new Mac Pros. The problem is; does it make sense to do so anymore? Honestly I see us coming to a time where it doesn't make any sense at all to upgrade GPUs in these sorts of machines. 2-4 years from now the Mac Pro could be entirely built around a 14 nm process vastly changing its characteristics. At 14 nm the CPUs and GPUs could easily double in capacity over today's hardware so it really makes piece meal upgrades look ill advised.
I just wouldn't count on it. First it's possible that these gpus may have to be installed in pairs. Even if they're in a replaceable card form, we don't know if Apple will actually sell them as after market parts through their site as they did with the 5870 and prior models. We don't know whether connectors will change between one generation and the next. I was saying not to count on a company like Sapphire to do it this time, as they appear to be custom boards rather than the same form factor as PC equivalents.
Quote:
I've never understood how people latched on to this external GPU baloney. I still see the major problem being one of economics followed very closely by the huge performance compromises such arrangements produce.
I found it a bit silly, but I find many gpu discussions to be silly, as they often center around discrete vs integrated like the people involved are somehow unaware that at 650m is not remotely comparable in performance to a 680. There's that, and few people will shell out several hundred for a notebook dock if it only brings a 25% performance improvement. Even if they can get a solution together that works acceptably under a variety of conditions, the price barrier would be quite polarizing. Even adding a couple hundred to the price of a card will dissuade a lot of people who believe themselves to be interested.
Well that's because they are just so expensive not just for the enclosure which borders on the absurd but the Mac specific card aren't cheap either.
The mac specific cards are typically $100 more in the US a year after the original cards hit the market. They aren't exactly a high priority for these companies, but what I mentioned below can work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
Nvidia still outsells ATI in the discrete graphics card market, low, mid and high end, that probably won't change for a long while. I don't think the Mac Pro is a big enough market to really matter to Nvidia anyway and I can only imagine the large price reductions ATI had to make to be used by Apple.
That is very true, although I haven't kept up with where they're used in embedded areas such as consoles at the moment. Some of NVidia's cards did unofficially work with Mountain Lion if you were okay with no boot screens.
There's that, and few people will shell out several hundred for a notebook dock if it only brings a 25% performance improvement. Even if they can get a solution together that works acceptably under a variety of conditions, the price barrier would be quite polarizing. Even adding a couple hundred to the price of a card will dissuade a lot of people who believe themselves to be interested.
Oh gosh me too, I have never understood that. That amount of overclocked GPU options on the market has to make you wonder what idiots think that a 10% performance gain is worth such a heft pricetag, especially when you can overclock the GPU yourself.
The mini is typically last, but I never suggested they wouldn't update it this year.
It was pointed out to me that iris graphics are slower than iris pro. If they could get quad + iris pro into the $800 model at that price, it would be a solid little machine, especially if you max the ram.
Yep a very solid machine. The only problem I have is that a more robust thermal budget for the Intel chip could lead to even better performance. Iris Pro is a pretty demanding chip power wise.
I'm waiting to see what Apple does here. The Mini has always frustrated me with its less than stellar GPU performance, Haswell could change that dramatically. That will only happen though if Apple sees the need and goes for it.
Good to know. I just remembered the speculation back when TB was announced. I know little about the tech itself.
Wizard is right, if it isn't on the motherboard close to the CPU it just isn't worth the enormous costs to go external, even with Thunderbolt 2. Your better off buying a new machine that fits your needs better.
Well that's because they are just so expensive not just for the enclosure which borders on the absurd but the Mac specific card aren't cheap either.
The mass market isn't there so you end up paying higher prices for everything associated with an external GPU. Even if somebody went with a design in a purpose built box, with a tailored power supply the costs would never be reasonable.
Nvidia still outsells ATI in the discrete graphics card market, low, mid and high end, that probably won't change for a long while.
Ah but it is foolish to look at the GPU market and only consider the discrete units. AMD has effectively displaced many of NVidias low and mid market GPUs with its APUs. You will see a rapid collapse of income at NVidia over the next year or so if they can't come up with new products the market wants.
I don't think the Mac Pro is a big enough market to really matter to Nvidia anyway and I can only imagine the large price reductions ATI had to make to be used by Apple.
The Mac Pro could bring some additional respectability to AMDs professional chips. This should worry NVidia because they have staked a good portion of their future on GPU compute. NVidia can't afford to loose professional computing but they are under extreme pressure from the OpenCL crowd. The next few years will be very tough on NVidia.
Ah but it is foolish to look at the GPU market and only consider the discrete units. AMD has effectively displaced many of NVidias low and mid market GPUs with its APUs. You will see a rapid collapse of income at NVidia over the next year or so if they can't come up with new products the market wants.
Yes but those APU's are only found in laptops and low end machines with AMD CPU's, I haven't looked recently but how well are those selling?
Apple has a very small portion of the high end workstation market HP is the leader for that market, especially 3D and HP uses Nvidia. We are assuming the Mac Pro will be successful, you yourself have doubts on the entry price as do I and let's face it Apple has let their Pro market lax over the last two years. I hate to say it but I believe this is Apples last throws in that market. In two to three years time the Mac Pro might be a thing of the past, I wouldn't be surprised if sooner.
I wouldn't either its just that I don't see a technical reason for it to be impossible. That based on what I've seen in the pictures.
First it's possible that these gpus may have to be installed in pairs. Even if they're in a replaceable card form, we don't know if Apple will actually sell them as after market parts through their site as they did with the 5870 and prior models. We don't know whether connectors will change between one generation and the next. I was saying not to count on a company like Sapphire to do it this time, as they appear to be custom boards rather than the same form factor as PC equivalents.
I guess the point I was trying to get to, is it really doesn't make sense anymore to get wrapped up in a GPU upgrades because there is no compelling justification anymore for putting new GPU cards in old chassis.
You are talking to a guy that use to do 486, Pentium and other upgrades almost compulsively. Those days are gone for the CPU and I think we are seeing the same trend with GPUs. By the time one out grows a machine GPU wise tech has moved so far forward that you might as well update the whole machine.
In other words I don't care anymore about GPU or CPU upgrades.
I found it a bit silly, but I find many gpu discussions to be silly, as they often center around discrete vs integrated like the people involved are somehow unaware that at 650m is not remotely comparable in performance to a 680. There's that, and few people will shell out several hundred for a notebook dock if it only brings a 25% performance improvement. Even if they can get a solution together that works acceptably under a variety of conditions, the price barrier would be quite polarizing. Even adding a couple hundred to the price of a card will dissuade a lot of people who believe themselves to be interested.
That is all true. What is more perplexing is why people just don't buy the machine they need up front. Apple should be shipping laptops with discrete GPUs for at least another two years so there is little excuse. Three years from now I'd expect that it would be hard to justify discrete GPUs for most users in laptops. As it is now Iris pro is a bit of a beast considering its low power usage.
Wizard is right, if it isn't on the motherboard close to the CPU it just isn't worth the enormous costs to go external, even with Thunderbolt 2. Your better off buying a new machine that fits your needs better.
This will only get more interesting in the future! AMD and Intel (reluctantly maybe) are in a race to deliver optimized heterogeneous computing solutions, so the performance of these solutions will only get better in the future. I would expect to see heavy emphasis on the GPU part of those advanced "APU" chips to the point that focus on the CPU is suppressed.
One only has to look at Intels latest Haswell chips to see how much die area gets devoted to the GPU. I would expect that trend to remain for the next couple of developmental cycles. I86 cores have been developed to the point that engineering new gains in performance is a struggle, so we likely will see more i86 cores on these chips but I don't expect radical improvements. In the end though having every thing on one IDE is such a huge gain that the days of discrete GPUs is already numbered.
Yes but those APU's are only found in laptops and low end machines with AMD CPU's, I haven't looked recently but how well are those selling?
Well before Haswell they where selling rather well into the laptop market, especially to people interested in good GPU performance at low cost. Honestly I haven't check lately, but I think you miss the point, every AMD or Intel APU that gets sold is a potential loss of sales for NVidia. It started to impact NVidia a year or so ago, it just see it getting much worst with this new generation of APUs.
Let's face it there was good reason in the past for even a modest computer user to need something better than integrated Intel GPUs. Those days are effectively gone. The remaining discrete GPU market will rapidly shift to the high end.
Apple has a very small portion of the high end workstation market HP is the leader for that market, especially 3D and HP uses Nvidia. We are assuming the Mac Pro will be successful, you yourself have doubts on the entry price as do I and let's face it Apple has let their Pro market lax over the last two years.
For the life of me I can't understand why Apple can't break out of this marketing nightmare that is their desktop line up. It isn't that the price on the "entry level" Mac Pro is that bad, it is the fact that they don't fill in the line up with a true desktop machine. Not a workstation with XEON and dual GPUs, but rather a machine with a top end desktop chip. If built on a Mac Pro chassis the potential is to drive volume that would assure the Mac Pros survival.
I hate to say it but I believe this is Apples last throws in that market. In two to three years time the Mac Pro might be a thing of the past, I wouldn't be surprised if sooner.
I'm not too sure about that. In many ways I'm impressed with the machine. The problem is Apple has this extremely wide gap in performance between the Mini and Mac Pro that isn't filled with a proper desktop machine. Maybe the mini can morph into something better! I'm actually hoping that is the case! but Apples history here has been pathetic to say the least.
In many ways Apple reminds me of some of the drivers around here that get stuck in the snow and spin their wheels madly trying to get out of the snow bank. It is extremely sad that the company that once advertised "Think Different" can't seem to change its direction with the desktop hardware. Instead the have the lead foot all the way down on the accelerator going nowhere. Let's face it, we have seen over a decade of this desktop line up, they need to make changes.
Oh gosh me too, I have never understood that. That amount of overclocked GPU options on the market has to make you wonder what idiots think that a 10% performance gain is worth such a heft pricetag, especially when you can overclock the GPU yourself.
Yeah gamers puzzle me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
Good to know. I just remembered the speculation back when TB was announced. I know little about the tech itself.
These things get hyped often. As I recall Sonnet did test out the Quadro 4000 and a couple others. You can find a number of demos on youtube. Some of them seem to do okay, but may not be hot pluggable, and as I mentioned you will face a stiff barrier to entry. I don't think they'll take off to the point of seeing a significant market of gpus sold in breakout boxes by sapphire or evga or whatever. I can't see it becoming a good value, and non standard hacked projects aren't the kind of thing that will interest most people if the upfront costs are high. I know Marvin has linked a few good demos from youtube, but read comments by the uploaders regarding the gotchas and what it took to get some of them to work. I think the fascination really stems from the division in what Apple does and doesn't offer compared to the broader oem market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Let's face it there was good reason in the past for even a modest computer user to need something better than integrated Intel GPUs. Those days are effectively gone. The remaining discrete GPU market will rapidly shift to the high end.
I haven't examined their strategy there. So far their high margin items such as Tesla cards have been better amortized by higher volume cards. There are still graphics markets where users will take advantage of all available power in the form of updated workflows. Animation comes to mind, considering the amount of instancing required to make certain things play back at 24fps without mashing playblast all the time.
Quote:
For the life of me I can't understand why Apple can't break out of this marketing nightmare that is their desktop line up. It isn't that the price on the "entry level" Mac Pro is that bad, it is the fact that they don't fill in the line up with a true desktop machine. Not a workstation with XEON and dual GPUs, but rather a machine with a top end desktop chip. If built on a Mac Pro chassis the potential is to drive volume that would assure the Mac Pros survival.
I would call the entry pricing kind of bad. It's always a matter of total cost to get to a working solution. In this case the costs are quite high even for a fairly modest configuration.
They need bragging rights so they buy those rights.
At least that is what I think as I never really got into gaming.
These things get hyped often. As I recall Sonnet did test out the Quadro 4000 and a couple others. You can find a number of demos on youtube. Some of them seem to do okay, but may not be hot pluggable, and as I mentioned you will face a stiff barrier to entry. I don't think they'll take off to the point of seeing a significant market of gpus sold in breakout boxes by sapphire or evga or whatever. I can't see it becoming a good value, and non standard hacked projects aren't the kind of thing that will interest most people if the upfront costs are high. I know Marvin has linked a few good demos from youtube, but read comments by the uploaders regarding the gotchas and what it took to get some of them to work. I think the fascination really stems from the division in what Apple does and doesn't offer compared to the broader oem market.
The only way I can see external GPUs working is if they are built into a video monitor that also functions as a dock.
I haven't examined their strategy there. So far their high margin items such as Tesla cards have been better amortized by higher volume cards. There are still graphics markets where users will take advantage of all available power in the form of updated workflows.
This is certainly true but I see these high performance cards getting very expensive. As revenue shrinks the only way to sustain Nvidia will be to raise prices, lay off staff or deliver new products. The will likely do all three.
Animation comes to mind, considering the amount of instancing required to make certain things play back at 24fps without mashing playblast all the time.
I would call the entry pricing kind of bad. It's always a matter of total cost to get to a working solution. In this case the costs are quite high even for a fairly modest configuration.
It isn't extremely bad for that configuration, it is extremely bad for Mac Pro though. Having a $3000 entry point into the desktop world is crazy.
They need bragging rights so they buy those rights.
At least that is what I think as I never really got into gaming.
I never got much into it. At one point I considered making custom items for some of the ones that provide construction kits, but that's just because designing stuff is fun. The games themselves aren't that appealing to me.
Quote:
The only way I can see external GPUs working is if they are built into a video monitor that also functions as a dock.
I've seen that kind of speculation too. Right now I do not think it's likely, because the gains aren't significant enough. In terms of Apple, I doubt they want to push the price of that thunderbolt display up to maintain its margins. I say that because a gpu is an expensive component. It's hard to imagine it wouldn't have any influence. You might notice that its design still parallels the older imac style. I suspect the newer process is more expensive, and they didn't like the choice between (lower) margins and a price hike.
Quote:
This is certainly true but I see these high performance cards getting very expensive. As revenue shrinks the only way to sustain Nvidia will be to raise prices, lay off staff or deliver new products. The will likely do all three.
It isn't extremely bad for that configuration, it is extremely bad for Mac Pro though.
I've read that they were already doing some of this stuff, in terms of cutting out some of the third party companies who sell and support working cards based on NVidia's chips.
Quote:
Having a $3000 entry point into the desktop world is crazy. It isn't extremely bad for that configuration, it is extremely bad for Mac Pro though
I would point out that it was still a price hike when comparing to comparable hardware. Apple tends to round to even numbers most of the time on the mac pro line. They won't typically migrate price points more than $200 or so at a time, but I'm pretty sure $2900 would get rounded to $3000.
It also seems really high to me considering the other necessary items to end with a working solution. As has been mentioned they may have a lot of repurchasing to make up for the lack of direct PCIe, which does add to the cost. If a working solution ends up at $5k, it really needs performance that justifies that. I suspect this won't be the case for a lot of guys with beefed up 2009-2010 models, as performance per dollar may not scale well here in all applications.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
Iris Pro is better obviously, though Iris would be perfectly fine for me as a nice upgrade over the Intel HD 3000.
Yeah well that does equate to 2 years of significant gpu gains. I didn't realize you owned a 2011 model.
Yeah well that does equate to 2 years of significant gpu gains. I didn't realize you owned a 2011 model.
That was my first Mac ever. I had wanted one since the (now classic) MacBook Pro was released in 2008. I am pretty motivated now to buy a mini and I don't know if I would be as motivated to buy one when Broadwell comes out. By that point, I would rather wait for DDR4.
Comments
NVidia is in a tough position right now, it isn't just Mac sales that are drying up, they are about to loose a major portion of their income stream. AMD has had good enough integrated GPUs for over a year now and Haswell is now to that point in many variants. The need really isn't there anymore for a decent discrete GPU. By this time next year, the only chips NVidia will be selling will be for high end gaming or workstation machines. Given that I would suspect that they will try hard to get designed into the Mac Pro, especially if the machine takes off sales wise.
Nvidia still outsells ATI in the discrete graphics card market, low, mid and high end, that probably won't change for a long while. I don't think the Mac Pro is a big enough market to really matter to Nvidia anyway and I can only imagine the large price reductions ATI had to make to be used by Apple.
Well I haven't seen the physical hardware yet but GPU upgrades seem to be very possible in the new Mac Pros. The problem is; does it make sense to do so anymore? Honestly I see us coming to a time where it doesn't make any sense at all to upgrade GPUs in these sorts of machines. 2-4 years from now the Mac Pro could be entirely built around a 14 nm process vastly changing its characteristics. At 14 nm the CPUs and GPUs could easily double in capacity over today's hardware so it really makes piece meal upgrades look ill advised.
I just wouldn't count on it. First it's possible that these gpus may have to be installed in pairs. Even if they're in a replaceable card form, we don't know if Apple will actually sell them as after market parts through their site as they did with the 5870 and prior models. We don't know whether connectors will change between one generation and the next. I was saying not to count on a company like Sapphire to do it this time, as they appear to be custom boards rather than the same form factor as PC equivalents.
I've never understood how people latched on to this external GPU baloney. I still see the major problem being one of economics followed very closely by the huge performance compromises such arrangements produce.
I found it a bit silly, but I find many gpu discussions to be silly, as they often center around discrete vs integrated like the people involved are somehow unaware that at 650m is not remotely comparable in performance to a 680. There's that, and few people will shell out several hundred for a notebook dock if it only brings a 25% performance improvement. Even if they can get a solution together that works acceptably under a variety of conditions, the price barrier would be quite polarizing. Even adding a couple hundred to the price of a card will dissuade a lot of people who believe themselves to be interested.
Well that's because they are just so expensive not just for the enclosure which borders on the absurd but the Mac specific card aren't cheap either.
The mac specific cards are typically $100 more in the US a year after the original cards hit the market. They aren't exactly a high priority for these companies, but what I mentioned below can work.
Nvidia still outsells ATI in the discrete graphics card market, low, mid and high end, that probably won't change for a long while. I don't think the Mac Pro is a big enough market to really matter to Nvidia anyway and I can only imagine the large price reductions ATI had to make to be used by Apple.
That is very true, although I haven't kept up with where they're used in embedded areas such as consoles at the moment. Some of NVidia's cards did unofficially work with Mountain Lion if you were okay with no boot screens.
There's that, and few people will shell out several hundred for a notebook dock if it only brings a 25% performance improvement. Even if they can get a solution together that works acceptably under a variety of conditions, the price barrier would be quite polarizing. Even adding a couple hundred to the price of a card will dissuade a lot of people who believe themselves to be interested.
Oh gosh me too, I have never understood that. That amount of overclocked GPU options on the market has to make you wonder what idiots think that a 10% performance gain is worth such a heft pricetag, especially when you can overclock the GPU yourself.
I guess my point is do not get too excited about any perceived potential here.
Good to know. I just remembered the speculation back when TB was announced. I know little about the tech itself.
Yep a very solid machine. The only problem I have is that a more robust thermal budget for the Intel chip could lead to even better performance. Iris Pro is a pretty demanding chip power wise.
I'm waiting to see what Apple does here. The Mini has always frustrated me with its less than stellar GPU performance, Haswell could change that dramatically. That will only happen though if Apple sees the need and goes for it.
Good to know. I just remembered the speculation back when TB was announced. I know little about the tech itself.
Wizard is right, if it isn't on the motherboard close to the CPU it just isn't worth the enormous costs to go external, even with Thunderbolt 2. Your better off buying a new machine that fits your needs better.
The mass market isn't there so you end up paying higher prices for everything associated with an external GPU. Even if somebody went with a design in a purpose built box, with a tailored power supply the costs would never be reasonable.
The Mac Pro could bring some additional respectability to AMDs professional chips. This should worry NVidia because they have staked a good portion of their future on GPU compute. NVidia can't afford to loose professional computing but they are under extreme pressure from the OpenCL crowd. The next few years will be very tough on NVidia.
Ah but it is foolish to look at the GPU market and only consider the discrete units. AMD has effectively displaced many of NVidias low and mid market GPUs with its APUs. You will see a rapid collapse of income at NVidia over the next year or so if they can't come up with new products the market wants.
Yes but those APU's are only found in laptops and low end machines with AMD CPU's, I haven't looked recently but how well are those selling?
Apple has a very small portion of the high end workstation market HP is the leader for that market, especially 3D and HP uses Nvidia. We are assuming the Mac Pro will be successful, you yourself have doubts on the entry price as do I and let's face it Apple has let their Pro market lax over the last two years. I hate to say it but I believe this is Apples last throws in that market. In two to three years time the Mac Pro might be a thing of the past, I wouldn't be surprised if sooner.
You are talking to a guy that use to do 486, Pentium and other upgrades almost compulsively. Those days are gone for the CPU and I think we are seeing the same trend with GPUs. By the time one out grows a machine GPU wise tech has moved so far forward that you might as well update the whole machine.
In other words I don't care anymore about GPU or CPU upgrades.
That is all true. What is more perplexing is why people just don't buy the machine they need up front. Apple should be shipping laptops with discrete GPUs for at least another two years so there is little excuse. Three years from now I'd expect that it would be hard to justify discrete GPUs for most users in laptops. As it is now Iris pro is a bit of a beast considering its low power usage.
This will only get more interesting in the future! AMD and Intel (reluctantly maybe) are in a race to deliver optimized heterogeneous computing solutions, so the performance of these solutions will only get better in the future. I would expect to see heavy emphasis on the GPU part of those advanced "APU" chips to the point that focus on the CPU is suppressed.
One only has to look at Intels latest Haswell chips to see how much die area gets devoted to the GPU. I would expect that trend to remain for the next couple of developmental cycles. I86 cores have been developed to the point that engineering new gains in performance is a struggle, so we likely will see more i86 cores on these chips but I don't expect radical improvements. In the end though having every thing on one IDE is such a huge gain that the days of discrete GPUs is already numbered.
Let's face it there was good reason in the past for even a modest computer user to need something better than integrated Intel GPUs. Those days are effectively gone. The remaining discrete GPU market will rapidly shift to the high end. For the life of me I can't understand why Apple can't break out of this marketing nightmare that is their desktop line up. It isn't that the price on the "entry level" Mac Pro is that bad, it is the fact that they don't fill in the line up with a true desktop machine. Not a workstation with XEON and dual GPUs, but rather a machine with a top end desktop chip. If built on a Mac Pro chassis the potential is to drive volume that would assure the Mac Pros survival. I'm not too sure about that. In many ways I'm impressed with the machine. The problem is Apple has this extremely wide gap in performance between the Mini and Mac Pro that isn't filled with a proper desktop machine. Maybe the mini can morph into something better! I'm actually hoping that is the case! but Apples history here has been pathetic to say the least.
In many ways Apple reminds me of some of the drivers around here that get stuck in the snow and spin their wheels madly trying to get out of the snow bank. It is extremely sad that the company that once advertised "Think Different" can't seem to change its direction with the desktop hardware. Instead the have the lead foot all the way down on the accelerator going nowhere. Let's face it, we have seen over a decade of this desktop line up, they need to make changes.
Oh gosh me too, I have never understood that. That amount of overclocked GPU options on the market has to make you wonder what idiots think that a 10% performance gain is worth such a heft pricetag, especially when you can overclock the GPU yourself.
Yeah gamers puzzle me.
Good to know. I just remembered the speculation back when TB was announced. I know little about the tech itself.
These things get hyped often. As I recall Sonnet did test out the Quadro 4000 and a couple others. You can find a number of demos on youtube. Some of them seem to do okay, but may not be hot pluggable, and as I mentioned you will face a stiff barrier to entry. I don't think they'll take off to the point of seeing a significant market of gpus sold in breakout boxes by sapphire or evga or whatever. I can't see it becoming a good value, and non standard hacked projects aren't the kind of thing that will interest most people if the upfront costs are high. I know Marvin has linked a few good demos from youtube, but read comments by the uploaders regarding the gotchas and what it took to get some of them to work. I think the fascination really stems from the division in what Apple does and doesn't offer compared to the broader oem market.
Let's face it there was good reason in the past for even a modest computer user to need something better than integrated Intel GPUs. Those days are effectively gone. The remaining discrete GPU market will rapidly shift to the high end.
I haven't examined their strategy there. So far their high margin items such as Tesla cards have been better amortized by higher volume cards. There are still graphics markets where users will take advantage of all available power in the form of updated workflows. Animation comes to mind, considering the amount of instancing required to make certain things play back at 24fps without mashing playblast all the time.
I would call the entry pricing kind of bad. It's always a matter of total cost to get to a working solution. In this case the costs are quite high even for a fairly modest configuration.
At least that is what I think as I never really got into gaming. The only way I can see external GPUs working is if they are built into a video monitor that also functions as a dock. This is certainly true but I see these high performance cards getting very expensive. As revenue shrinks the only way to sustain Nvidia will be to raise prices, lay off staff or deliver new products. The will likely do all three.
It isn't extremely bad for that configuration, it is extremely bad for Mac Pro though. Having a $3000 entry point into the desktop world is crazy.
Apple should be finding ways to reduce the cost of the mini. A $499 mini isn't going to cannibalize
the iMacs. In the future 64-bit ARM in a mini chassis connected to SSD would be an ideal platform
for business and hi-tech consumer alike.
No. Not enough power in comparison to the i7 and not enough productivity software.
A $499 Core i5 mini would cannibalize the iMacs. That's a $800 delta between the mini and the base iMac.
The $799 mini is dangerous…quad core i7 vs quad core i5. I'm guessing that Apple does not put Iris Pro in the mini just for this reason.
My 2013 Mac mini Wishlist:
They need bragging rights so they buy those rights.
At least that is what I think as I never really got into gaming.
I never got much into it. At one point I considered making custom items for some of the ones that provide construction kits, but that's just because designing stuff is fun. The games themselves aren't that appealing to me.
Quote:
The only way I can see external GPUs working is if they are built into a video monitor that also functions as a dock.
I've seen that kind of speculation too. Right now I do not think it's likely, because the gains aren't significant enough. In terms of Apple, I doubt they want to push the price of that thunderbolt display up to maintain its margins. I say that because a gpu is an expensive component. It's hard to imagine it wouldn't have any influence. You might notice that its design still parallels the older imac style. I suspect the newer process is more expensive, and they didn't like the choice between (lower) margins and a price hike.
This is certainly true but I see these high performance cards getting very expensive. As revenue shrinks the only way to sustain Nvidia will be to raise prices, lay off staff or deliver new products. The will likely do all three.
It isn't extremely bad for that configuration, it is extremely bad for Mac Pro though.
I've read that they were already doing some of this stuff, in terms of cutting out some of the third party companies who sell and support working cards based on NVidia's chips.
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I would point out that it was still a price hike when comparing to comparable hardware. Apple tends to round to even numbers most of the time on the mac pro line. They won't typically migrate price points more than $200 or so at a time, but I'm pretty sure $2900 would get rounded to $3000.
It also seems really high to me considering the other necessary items to end with a working solution. As has been mentioned they may have a lot of repurchasing to make up for the lack of direct PCIe, which does add to the cost. If a working solution ends up at $5k, it really needs performance that justifies that. I suspect this won't be the case for a lot of guys with beefed up 2009-2010 models, as performance per dollar may not scale well here in all applications.
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Iris Pro is better obviously, though Iris would be perfectly fine for me as a nice upgrade over the Intel HD 3000.
Yeah well that does equate to 2 years of significant gpu gains. I didn't realize you owned a 2011 model.
That was my first Mac ever. I had wanted one since the (now classic) MacBook Pro was released in 2008. I am pretty motivated now to buy a mini and I don't know if I would be as motivated to buy one when Broadwell comes out. By that point, I would rather wait for DDR4.