I used to buy the latest Mac when they came out and it was affordable for the performance. Simply do yourself a favor and price out the gear that comes with the $6k machine and you'll quickly see you can insanely more power for the same money.
Yeah, you'll need to throw another few hundred bucks at it for cooling, etc.
I think we all know that for the 28 core processor in the mac pro, that machine is going to cost well over $10k, most likely over $15k.
Even dumber is the fact that Apple could have gone dual socket. Which for the PC you can, pretty much only doubling the price for the processor and you'd have 56 cores!
For $9500 you'd have 56 cores! Stack in a few more of those NVIDIA cards are you'd be destroying worlds for a 3rd of the cost of an equivalent Mac Pro.
- Your chip is previous-generation. You'd need the X3275M to match (almost) Apple's 28-core chip. That one costs about $7500.
- Good luck finding a motherboard that supports 1.5 (or 2?) TB of RAM in 12 slots at that price. And that has 10GbE (much less two). And thunderbolt. And eight PCIe slots and a PCIe switch chip (which is insanely expensive). Etc. If you can even get close, you're probably looking at $1500-$2000.
I just saw interesting new MB with upto 3TB support and many PCIe slots- only $499!: Just make yourself and Hackintosh with the new Xeon W if they will start selling on online PC stores. https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813183686
So what do you think about Ryzen 9 3950X 16C 4.7Ghz Boost @ $749? How many among you will go for Base $6000 MacPro instead of Ryzen 9 3950X/X570 TB3 Hackintosh? P.S- turns out 64C TR coming Q4, great timing to make 40K MacPro 28C owners angry.
Yeah, I'm glad Macs are moving away from Intel too.
There are 3 memory controllers in the Xeon W-3xxx series, while Intel is limiting memory support to 1 TB and 2 TB depending on model, which don’t happen to be a convenient factor of 3*2^x. How would you do it?
Going with 8 DIMM slots, 4 slots per controller, means forgoing 1 memory controller and reducing memory performance by a 3rd. And having uneven slots per memory controller (if possible) typically means memory performance drops down to the lowest symmetric configuration.
Why no PCIe Gen4? The standard has been released for 2 years and Gen5 is coming very soon. From Wiki
On November 29, 2011, PCI-SIG preliminarily announced PCI Express 4.0,[51] providing a 16 GT/s bit rate that doubles the bandwidth provided by PCI Express 3.0, while maintaining backward and forward compatibility in both software support and used mechanical interface.[52] PCI Express 4.0 specs will also bring OCuLink-2, an alternative to Thunderbolt connector. OCuLink version 2 will have up to 16 GT/s (8 GB/s total for ×4 lanes),[30] while the maximum bandwidth of a Thunderbolt 3 connector is 5 GB/s. Additionally, active and idle power optimizations are to be investigated.
In August 2016, Synopsys presented a test machine running PCIe 4.0 at the Intel Developer Forum. Their IP has been licensed to several firms planning to present their chips and products at the end of 2016.[36]
PCI Express 4.0 was officially announced on June 8, 2017, by PCI-SIG.[53] The spec includes improvements in flexibility, scalability, and lower-power.
NETINT Technologies introduced the first NVMe SSD based on PCIe 4.0 on July 17, 2018, ahead of Flash Memory Summit 2018[54]
Broadcom announced on 12 September 2018 the first 200 Gbit Ethernet Controller with PCIe 4.0.[55]
AMD announced on 9 January 2019 their upcoming X570 chipset will support PCIe 4.0.[56] AMD planned to enable partial support for older chipsets, but they retracted that promise because of the instability caused by PCIe 4.0.[57][58]
Because Intel Xeon Cascade Lake does not support it, and even the next 14nm++ generation, Cooper Lake (2020), also does not, at least not in samples currently shipping. Note that Cooper Lake has a new socket (LGA 4189) and platform, Whitley, which it shares with the first 10nm+ generation, Ice Lake (2020), which will support PCIe Gen4. The new socket and platform support eight channels of DDR4 memory.
Both of the above currently exist -- we can assume Apple already knows what will happen with Xeon-W.
After that is 10nm++ Sapphire Rapids in 2021 with PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 support, but that has another new platform, Eagle Stream.
So it's very possible that Apple will skip PCIe Gen4 -- it may depend on what Intel does with Xeon-W in relation to the above dual (both 14nm and 10nm) approach to Xeon-Scalable (a.k.a. Xeon-SP). If only Cooper Lake gets Xeon-W and it uses the new socket/platform, then Apple might choose to skip from PCIe Gen3 directly to PCIe Gen5 in late 2021 or 2022.
Given Intel's troubles with the 10nm process, it seems unlikely the Ice Lake would be used for Xeon-W. But maybe they've solved the yield problems?
First post with a question that I cannot find the answer to - or find any reviewer that is even asking the question.
Given that the new Mac Pro is using Xeon processors, why is there no second slot for dual processors? or more processors? the machine seems to be skewed towards multiple graphics cards - but suppose you wanted maximum cpu power but relatively basic graphics?
Just an idle question - the machine is well outside my price range.
First post with a question that I cannot find the answer to - or find any reviewer that is even asking the question.
Given that the new Mac Pro is using Xeon processors, why is there no second slot for dual processors? or more processors? the machine seems to be skewed towards multiple graphics cards - but suppose you wanted maximum cpu power but relatively basic graphics?
Just an idle question - the machine is well outside my price range.
Intel has segmented its Xeon branded processors even more so than its Core branded processors. The multisocket Xeons, “a second slot for dual processors”, are branded as Xeon SP, scalable processors, that come with metal suffix name sub brands. (Gold, Silver, Platinum, etc).
Unfortunately, these are really low GHz, high core count processors, really meant for servers. A big part of the desktop or workstation experience is it being fast. The low GHz, the single thread experience is a big part of this. There were only 2 Xeon SP processors that were suitable for desktop systems.
Towards this end, Intel created the Xeon W, “W” for workstation, line which has the high GHz, single thread performance for desktop systems. These are only 1 socket systems though.
Apple could create a 2 socket, or even 8 socket, Xeon SP system, but the market that wants that many cores on a desktop gets ever smaller. At same point, the buyer would just have a rack in a server room.
tht said: Apple could create a 2 socket, or even 8 socket, Xeon SP system, but the market that wants that many cores on a desktop gets ever smaller. At same point, the buyer would just have a rack in a server room.
I think that's the big point. While I'm sure some of these MPs will be deployed as app servers or things like that, most of them will be workstations. 28 cores, even, is probably overkill for that kind of work, at which point you go to cloud or server-farms.
How many months / years are we going to have to wait for the notify me?
"Coming this Fall"
Not quite there yet.
Monday then? Or most likely, Dec 22nd on the very last day...
I think (guess) the original plan was October 4 along with Catalina, but the need for certainty with regard to tariff exemptions led to delays. So mid-December now?
Comments
The standard has been released for 2 years and Gen5 is coming very soon.
From Wiki
On November 29, 2011, PCI-SIG preliminarily announced PCI Express 4.0,[51] providing a 16 GT/s bit rate that doubles the bandwidth provided by PCI Express 3.0, while maintaining backward and forward compatibility in both software support and used mechanical interface.[52] PCI Express 4.0 specs will also bring OCuLink-2, an alternative to Thunderbolt connector. OCuLink version 2 will have up to 16 GT/s (8 GB/s total for ×4 lanes),[30] while the maximum bandwidth of a Thunderbolt 3 connector is 5 GB/s. Additionally, active and idle power optimizations are to be investigated.
In August 2016, Synopsys presented a test machine running PCIe 4.0 at the Intel Developer Forum. Their IP has been licensed to several firms planning to present their chips and products at the end of 2016.[36]
PCI Express 4.0 was officially announced on June 8, 2017, by PCI-SIG.[53] The spec includes improvements in flexibility, scalability, and lower-power.
NETINT Technologies introduced the first NVMe SSD based on PCIe 4.0 on July 17, 2018, ahead of Flash Memory Summit 2018[54]
Broadcom announced on 12 September 2018 the first 200 Gbit Ethernet Controller with PCIe 4.0.[55]
AMD announced on 9 January 2019 their upcoming X570 chipset will support PCIe 4.0.[56] AMD planned to enable partial support for older chipsets, but they retracted that promise because of the instability caused by PCIe 4.0.[57][58]
Because Intel Xeon Cascade Lake does not support it, and even the next 14nm++ generation, Cooper Lake (2020), also does not, at least not in samples currently shipping. Note that Cooper Lake has a new socket (LGA 4189) and platform, Whitley, which it shares with the first 10nm+ generation, Ice Lake (2020), which will support PCIe Gen4. The new socket and platform support eight channels of DDR4 memory.
Both of the above currently exist -- we can assume Apple already knows what will happen with Xeon-W.
After that is 10nm++ Sapphire Rapids in 2021 with PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 support, but that has another new platform, Eagle Stream.
So it's very possible that Apple will skip PCIe Gen4 -- it may depend on what Intel does with Xeon-W in relation to the above dual (both 14nm and 10nm) approach to Xeon-Scalable (a.k.a. Xeon-SP). If only Cooper Lake gets Xeon-W and it uses the new socket/platform, then Apple might choose to skip from PCIe Gen3 directly to PCIe Gen5 in late 2021 or 2022.
Given Intel's troubles with the 10nm process, it seems unlikely the Ice Lake would be used for Xeon-W. But maybe they've solved the yield problems?
Given that the new Mac Pro is using Xeon processors, why is there no second slot for dual processors? or more processors? the machine seems to be skewed towards multiple graphics cards - but suppose you wanted maximum cpu power but relatively basic graphics?
Just an idle question - the machine is well outside my price range.
Unfortunately, these are really low GHz, high core count processors, really meant for servers. A big part of the desktop or workstation experience is it being fast. The low GHz, the single thread experience is a big part of this. There were only 2 Xeon SP processors that were suitable for desktop systems.
Towards this end, Intel created the Xeon W, “W” for workstation, line which has the high GHz, single thread performance for desktop systems. These are only 1 socket systems though.
Apple could create a 2 socket, or even 8 socket, Xeon SP system, but the market that wants that many cores on a desktop gets ever smaller. At same point, the buyer would just have a rack in a server room.
Not quite there yet.