madan
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Apple's macOS Catalina causing problems with select eGPU setups
Egpus are actually a great solution for the average user, if albeit an expensive one. You get the perfect portability of a slim laptop or small desktop, coupled with the grunt/horsepower of a desktop computer. The fact that Apple's run into an egpu upgrade snag isn't a big deal. Windows updates have broken egpus, both of the Bootcamp/Mac variety and of the Windows-Razr variety. They've broken egpus through updates 1903.1862.300, 329, 356, 387/8/9 & 418. They've broken egpus for TWO MONTHS. As for nVidia gpus...there is no problem with avoiding nVidia gpus as there's really nothing you're missing out on with nVidia support other than CUDA and it is: A. A software issue. There's no reason why other applications can't adopt OpenCL, Vulkan or, yes, Metal 2 support for advanced computing API capabilities. The reason people are pushing CUDA so hard is that nVidia paid a bunch of people off to adopt it in the first place. nVidia, for many that don't know are pretty sleazy. Metal 2 competes favorably with DX 12 in graphics API performance and isn't far behind CUDA in compute performance. The reason Metal 2 isn't more prevalent in applications is that Apple hasn't paid everyone under the table and nVidia is as dirty as it gets. B. CUDA is dead in the water. Even with CUDA and dedicated hardware, AMD cards, including Vega, Vega 2 and Arcturus are far, far better at FP and compute. How much better? I use my Radeon VII egpu setup for several math/science test suites and I get benched performance in line with a 100% more expensive 2080 Ti. nVidia is really a gaming gpu and not much more. If you stripped CUDA support off some apps (specifically some video apps), you'd quickly see that in brute computing performance through OpenCL or Metal 2, AMD would bury nVidia pretty much everywhere except gaming where it has parity/slight disadvantage. Oh and AMD cards are not only more well-rounded, they're cheaper to boot. While a Radeon VII is about the same as a 2080 and only about 5% behind a 2080 Super in games, it's up to 50% faster *on average* in compute, FP, and mining. You know, work/money stuff. All for less than a 2080. This isn't Apple's fault. nVidia refused to allow Apple to use egpus without pushing its CUDA platform and Apple told them to get drenched. This happened AFTER that fiasco where nVidia shipped hundreds of THOUSANDS of defective 8600 GT mobility chipsets to Apple that were failing and cost Apple millions in replacement costs. If anyone's to blame over nVidia not appearing in a Mac, look to nVidia and stop blaming Apple.
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Editorial: Apple is making us wait for a new iMac for no good reason
This article is a hatchet-job on Apple for no good reason.Dave Kap said:For no good reason? How do you determine what is a good reason?
Apple is waiting because iMacs don't use mobility CPUs and they're between cycle right now. It makes no sense to produce a new iMac with identical specs and just a small generational speedbump in Intel CPUs. The 2013, 15 and 17 all have desktop class CPUs...not mobility. That's a prime reason Apple is waiting.
They may be ironing out the technologies and economies of scale for the new screen. Screens that rich and dense are extremely difficult to produce and to roll into an AiO pricepoint.
The biggest reason Apple is waiting is because the 2017 iMacs are using AMD GPUs: 570 and 580s. What would they upgrade to 2 years later? Apple doesn't expect users to be clueless and purchase brand new computers based on a 7xxx to 8xxx Intel speedbump. They also expect a noticeable, significant performance increase in graphics horsepower. What AMD GPU would they sneak into the iMac to make that happen?
Surely they wouldn't just put another 580 in there would they? You're going to pay 2000 dollars for a computer that gets nuked by a GTX 2060 or 1660 Ti? A 2000 dollar computer with an almost 3 year old midrange graphics card? Only an abject fool does that. They don't use NVidia. So that eliminates the 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, 2060, 1060Ti, 2070 and 2080.
AMD only has FOUR graphics cards faster than the 580: The 590, which is only 8% faster with the newest drivers. And It has 20% more TDP no less. Then you have the Vega 56 (iMac Pro), 64 (iMac Pro) and the VII, which is faster than any of the aforementioned and is an 800 dollar card.
There simply isn't a GPU available for Apple to use in its TWO year upgrade on the iMac and using a THREE year old MIDRANGE GPU in a premium 2000 dollar computer is absolutely unacceptable.
That leaves us...and Apple waiting for AMD and the Polaris 11 based 3080 which uses about the same wattage as a 580 but has 1070 Ti- 1080 performance.
That is what we're waiting for.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
StrangeDays said:
Not kidding, just ignorant. Please post your $1500 DIY version of equal performance. Then add additional cost for assembly, and support, which your DIY model doesn't have.madan said:At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. [...]
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding. .
First of all, you could swap the Xeon for a Core i9 and save yourself a truckload of money. No, Core i9s aren't synonymous with Xeons and I've owned both. But if you think that someone running an 8 core Xeon and a 580 is running mission critical apps you're either disingenuous or ignorant. Core i9s will outperform low end Xeons on single-threaded workloads by as much as 50% and only lose to Xeons by as little as 15%. So it's a good tradeoff and you can have a Core i9 for as low as 550 bucks.
You can buy a 580 for less than 200 bucks. You're right. It might not even be a 1500 dollar system. It's probably less. The 2017 iMac is 95% the performance of a base Mac Pro for 1/4 the price and it comes with a 5K monitor.
Ignorant indeed.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch-3.7ghz-6-core-processor-with-turbo-boost-up-to-4.6ghz-2tb#
2019 iMac Core i9 @ 3.7 (50% faster than the Mac Pro in single-dual thread performance, slower in multi by only about 15%).
32 GB of RAM.
Vega 48 (20% faster than the 580X in gaming. 100% faster at compute which is what you would get a Mac Pro for)
No M.2 storage but 256 GB of SATA and 2 TB of platter.
The iMac is pretty much faster substantially across the board. It misses out on ECC but what kind of ECC do you need sporting a budget card like a 580. Anyone running a low end Xeon and 580 won't be computing fast enough to produce workloads that mandate ECC in the first place.
2 TB3 and giga ether vs 4 TB3 and 10 giga ether
But the iMac has a 5K screen vs no screen on Mac Pro. Oh and it costs a little more than HALF the Mac Pro (3400 vs 6000). And that's an top of the line iMac.
iMac Pro?
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro/3.2ghz-1tb#
2019 iMac Pro Xeon vs Mac Pro Xeon - Wash (same Xeon)
32 GB of RAM
Vega 56 (25% faster than the 580X at gaming. 150% faster at compute which is what you would get a Mac Pro for)
1 TB of M.2 storage vs 256 M.2 in the Mac Pro.
4 TB 3 and 10 gig ether vs 4 TB 3 and 10 gig ether
iMac Pro is 1k cheaper than the Mac Pro and beats the pants off of it in storage, graphics, compute, as well as coming with a free 5K monitor, for LESS.
With either option, you would just sell the computer and buy a new version of the same and get the same performance over a 5-10 year span. The purpose of the Mac Pro is not to perform at the same level. It's to be upgraded and then operate at a level far above an iMac Pro:
28 Core Xeon, 2 TB of RAM, 2x Dual Pro Vega 2s. Etc. But at those levels, the computer costs 50K+.
Best part is I haven't even looked at other OEMS. Apple kills its own base system. The Mac Pro only shines when stacked with upgrades. The base model isn't a good deal. So, yeah keep making a fool of yourself.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
Oh? I don't get what a Mac Pro is? Fill me in.Maurizio said:
No, i do not think you get what a new Mac Pro is.madan said:You know, come to think of it. You could get an iMac Pro, with 64 GB of RAM, a base Xeon, more storage and a Vega 56, stone the base Mac Pro over the head and it STILL COMES WITH A 5K LG MONITOR BUILT IN. How nuts is that?
Sure it doesn't come with support with 12 TB 3 lanes but srsly, you're probably not going to need that. A base Xeon wouldn't be able to handle that throughput anyways. So honestly, the iMac Pro is a better deal because in 5-6 years you just buy another iMac Pro and you get a whole new system, PLUS A WHOLE NEW MONITOR, to boot, for the same price. Like I said, the Mac Pro only makes "sense" once you start cracking the 20,000 USD threshold. Once you start putting in gpus and cpu configurations that can handle the crazy bandwidth and performance than an iMac Pro just can't touch. But the base system? A Vega 56 is 30% faster than the Mac Pro's base Radeon 580. And the system costs LESS and BRINGS A MONITOR.
I have a Mac Pro 2009 running in my home studio; in 2009, i paid 3000 euros for it; it had Sata 2, USB 2, a few hard disk, and a GT120 graphic card, and an 8 core double cpu running at 2.16 Ghz. The lowest possible end.
Today, it run with nvme SSD, has USB3, an RX580, and two 6 core 3.4Ghz CPU, and it still current.
All this was massively less expensive than buying the 3 iMac that has become obsolete in the same timeframe.
The Mac Pro is a PCI machine; it is evolutive, that is the whole point; of course, the stellar point is when you spend more than 20K$, but it fully make sense in
a context where needs and gains evolve.
But as of today, if i had the kind of needs and money, i wouldn't buy an iMac Pro, i would buy a new Mac Pro, low end, and let it evolve in base of my needs; it would
be massively less expensive, and upgradable to technologies that today not yet exists, like USB4. In ten years from now it would be still useful.
An iMac Pro bought today, before a refresh, will be obsolete in about 3 years, and not upgradable.
Anyway, the point about the Mac Pro, as many poster said here, it is not a machine for gamers, it is not a machine for the masses; it is a machine for those that need it; they will reconise it.
Maurizio
In 2009, for one of my studios, I bought an iMac 27" with a quad core Core i5 (faster in single-threaded ops than your cpu but slower in parallelized), a 4850 (4.5 times faster than your 120) and 1 TB of storage.
It cost me 1800 without AppleCare. For an extra 1800 TODAY, I could go out and buy a 2017 27" iMac with a Core i7 8 core, 16 GB of RAM and a 580x...and I'd have spend only a hair more than you and have TWO monitors to show for it. Actually, I could've sold the first iMac (I never sold it, it's a baseclient now) and applied money towards the purchase of the new system and walked away with...a monitor for free for the same performance.
You don't have to buy a Mac Pro to be "pro" or to have lots of expandability options.
My current computer Is a Mac Mini with M.2 storage, 32 GB of RAM and a Core i7 married to a Radeon VII via a Razer Core X. It has 10 Gig Ether that I have connected to 10 TB of work storage. That is separate from my own Ryzen home media build with another Radeon VII that has 25 TB of dedicated personal storage.
I can assure you that I understand just fine what expandability and nice machines are. The issue isn't expandability because 10 gig ether and TB 3 render that moot. And the point isn't gpu upgrades because egpus also render that moot. The point is that for 8k, you're getting a 1500 dollar system. That's it. The end. Beyond that, you can do whatever you want. Go buy the Pro. But I was just warning people of what to expect when they bought their new Mac Pros and ran into a brick wall when they realized that they had 0-15% performance improvement over a 5 year old computer. That's because the Pro is basically a 2-3 year old computer. And it was MIDRANGE when it was initially conceived.
Now if you plan on buying 2 Vega Pro Duos. Congrats. You're spending 15k and you're probably running weather simulations or advanced financial modeling and you need that kind of teraflop performance. The Mac Pro makes perfect sense.
But then you shouldn't be offended by someone like me warning base-entry purchasers from avoiding the system anyways.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
tht said:
It uses Xeon W 3000 series CPUs. Unless Apple has ordered custom packaging, it will use FCLGA3647 sockets.MacPro said:
Won't the CPU be upgradeable, is it soldered in? That would be a shame of epic proportions.madan said:
You can totally upgrade the RAM and GPU yourself. The problem is anything worthy of that motherboard is going to run you thousands of dollars. Which means you're looking at an 8k system. Again, that kind of workflow lends itself to mission-critical server work, not prosumer production. The Radeon 580 is about 20% more than the D700s in the old Mac Pro. That's it. Sure, you only have one gpu so the support is probably better but a Radeon 580 is a budget card. If you move to a Pro Vega 2, you're looking at least a 1000 dollar increase in price. That's because the card is basically an up-RAMMED Radeon VII which MSRPed at 700 USD. It's basically an mi60 on steroids.MacPro said:
I agree the base config is not ideal. I am hoping it is possible for DIY RAM upgrade as I don't want to may Apple RAM prices and I am used to 64 GB in the trash can so I'd want at least that and the GPU choice is still open in my mind until I see pricing but I suspect even the base is a leap from my dual AMD Firepros. 8 or 12 core would be enough for me for sure. That all said in five years this machine will still be totally configurable an iMac Pro isn't.madan said:Unfortunately, the Mac Pro has a distinct issue on its value curve. It's a horrible value system at its base price, that quickly ramps in value as the price becomes astronomical.
At its 6000 USD base price tag, the computer is a joke. The base Xeon it has was about 1200 bucks (on release). It was blessed with 240 dollars of ECC RAM (on release). It had a nice, airflow-centric case to be sure. Good cases that are solid steel/aluminum are, often, 200-300 USD. Even if we counted the Mac Pro's case as a 500 dollar case, and counted its M.2 storage in the default model as 240 dollars, we'd still be sitting at 3000 dollars for the system. The Radeon 580 is a naught 200 dollar card (even on release).
That means you're paying effectively ~ 3000 dollars for a power supply and motherboard. Which is kinda nuts. I mean the power supply itself is about 200 bucks at most (actually less) and the fans can't be more than 100 bucks. So you're buying a, albeit ultra bleeding edge, motherboard for 2700 USD, which is highway robbery.
Yes, the special component of the Mac Pro isn't the CPU or the GPU (although the Mac Pro can top out with sky-high Xeons and absolutely monstrous Arcturus-precursor dual Vega 2s), it's the motherboard. The base system doesn't ship with any of that super hardware though. Yes, the motherboard accommodates 1.5 TB of ECC RAM. Yes it has the ability to run almost a dozen bus lanes for TB 3. Yes, it accommodates both power via the port and via adapter for gpus. Yes the Pro Vega 2 is a beast of a card, dwarfing the Radeon VII's already ludicrous 16 GB of HBM2. But you get NONE of that with a 6000 dollar base system.
With a 6000 dollar base system, you get an amazing motherboard, that might never be used. You get a low-end Xeon that is outperformed by most Core i9s (Xeon reliability is worth 800 dollars?!). You get a gpu that is budget by today's standards (the MacBook Pro's Vega gpu is about as fast as a 565-570 which itself is only 10-15% slower than the Mac Pro's 580...). And a bunch of super components like psus and the like that may never be used unless you upgrade them yourself down the line.
You could build a DIY computer with pretty much identical performance for less than 1500 dollars. No, I'm not kidding. Sure, it's not upgradeable with ECC RAM. Sure, it doesn't have 12 TB 3 lanes or 10 gigabit ether. No, it doesn't have a ridiculously overpowered psu for a system that draws under 300 Watts. But still, you're buying a system with such low specs all those upgradeable touches are pointless unless you spend thousands more upgrading the system anyways.
Sure, you can get a great high end Xeon and push the RAM to 1.5 TB. Yes, 2 Pro Vega 2s are absolutely nuts, with a max of 128 GB of HBM2 RAM. But that system costs 50k. The base system gets you NOTHING. And it's 6000 USD. For workflow alone, a computer 1/4 the price will do the job.
So yes, the Mac Pro may be a great machine at the high end but anyone that buys it in the low end better not convince themselves they're getting a super computer because it's a budget system, at most and they're paying between 4-10x as much for the privilege of the Apple emblem.
In 6 years, the system's CPU will be woefully underpowered. The GPU will be upgradeable. But you're paying almost 10,000 USD for the privilege if you do it correctly.
But as has been said over and over. It’s not a hobbyist machine. Any CPU you are upgrading too, likely is going to cost $1000, $2000, $5000, and you probably shouldn’t be dinking around with a piece of hardware with 3647 pins on it.
Exactly. They're chips designed for jobs with high parallelism, with ECC support baked in for stability and durability in mind. They're not really designed to play Doom or diddle on Blender on the weekends. You COULD do those things but you'd be happier with a Skylake/Cannonlake Core i7/i9.
I don't think most super purchasers that procure these upgraded systems will be swapping out the CPUs often, if at all. Since gpus are used more often with Cuda or OpenCL(now Metal 2) for high-end compute, you're more likely to see the gpus being swapped out with time. Simply look at a 2013 Core i5 4670 vs a Core i5 8400. The performance jump isn't even 100%. Now compare a nvidia 760 GT vs a 2060 Super. The difference is almost 500%. A 760 GT produces about 2 Teraflops in compute, vs 10 Teraflops for a Vega 56. Huge gains.
So gpus are definitely improving in performance at a far greater pace. But the RAM? CPU? I think that's staying static for most. And storage? It's nice to have room for storage inside the computer but with TB3... Meh.
It's all about the motherboard, the crazy 2 10 giga ethers and the insane amount of TB buses / MPX modules. AMD gets to move its spare Vega 2 dies and Apple gets bonafide compute beast cred. You'd have to avoid Navi though since the compute for those cards is far lower pound for pound, than vega 2.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
dysamoria said:
People forget to consider taxes all the time. Are you seriously taking issue with this person reminding people that taxes are something to consider?Soli said:
What a weird statement within a thread of your weird statements. It's bad enough that you state "PLUS TAX" at all but then you put it in all caps as if this is some hidden Apple Tax that no other vendor has to apply to a purchases.madan said:Remember that it's 5999 PLUS TAX and Apple Care. With those additions, that computer almost hits 7000. If you upgrade the RAM yourself and the storage (the measly 256 GB) yourself, you're looking at another 500 dollars MORE. And that's BEFORE you even look at a real graphics card. The Mac Pro's 580 is only 30% faster than the AMD APUs in higher level 3400Gs. 30% over integrated graphics isn't "powerful". So by the time you sink another 1000+ in a Vega 2 card, you're looking at least 8500 dollars (probably closer to 9000).
And even then, you could build a Mac with 90% that performance for a quarter of the price.
Would you also complain about someone pointing out that $5999 is just marketing speak for $6000? It’s a known fact that this is a manipulation of perception.
Forgetting the sales tax is a trap, too, even if it’s not a marketing decision (due to variable sales tax rates).
They think I'm an Apple hater because I pointed out that the top end Mac Pro is awesome but the low end is a very poor buy and that it's targeted at high compute entities not prosumers. The prosumer product is the iMac Pro.
I'm sitting on: 3 iMacs, my FrankenMac, 4 ipads, 2 iPhones, 2 ipods and my venerable Apple IIC (which still works) and Macbook Pro. But I've had my "Apple geek cred" pulled because I dared to compare hardware/price skus throughout Apple's lineup, or something.
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Editorial: Will Apple's $6k+ Mac Pro require brainwash marketing to sell?
And you want to buy one and convince yourself that an 8 core 3 GHz Xeon married to 256 GB of storage and a 3-year midrange gpu is a "supercomputer". Go get one. I was just trying to help you. Just avoid spouting nonsense about how the iMac Pro is "old" and "slower" when it has a better cpu, gpu and more storage...by default, for about 40% less money and it comes with a 5k monitor.MacPro said:
You don't want one we get it.madan said:melgross said:
Except that other in your own mind, it doesn’t.madan said:I'm not trying to make it hard on anyone. But I am trying to clear things up so people know what they're getting into. Buyers remorse sucks. It would be a shame to spend 8k on a computer and find out that it competes unfavorably with a 5k iMac Pro.
? A base Mac Pro has a slower CPU than an iMac Pro. Fact. It has a slower GPU. Also fact. It has less storage. Also fact. I suppose people can delude themselves if they want. That won't change reality.
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Rosetta 2 lacks support for x86 virtualization, Boot Camp not an Apple Silicon option [u]
This is a mistake. This is a move away from professional work to “grandma wordprocessing”. Interoperability. Unix base. Bootcamp. They did a lot to undermine Mac’s reputation that it is a toy computer and here Apple goes again trying to destroy everything.
If you work in development, AML, cybersec, pentesting, or distributed networking, virtualization isn’t recommended—it’s required. Sharing a 64 bit cpu co-operability with Windows, Linux and BSD means that virtualization works natively and out of the box. Having to run resource limited code through an emulating interpreter is a devastating nonstarter.
Forget gaming. Gaming is already a wasteland on Mac but it’ll get worse after that. Forget large, complex, robust titles like GTA VI, Diablo IV or the like. If coding wrappers for Open GL to DX12 was a pain before, and moving to only 64bit code wrecked games as devs refused to expend resources to fix the issue. Anyone that thinks that Apple has gaming on iOS is lying to themselves. Most titles are ten year old remakes or microtransactional vomit stew. And no, the occasional indie title doesn’t make up for saying goodbye to companies like iD, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics, et al.If my neighbors computer can do work, play games and inter operate out of the box, while Macs need Wintel machines or consoles on top of of the already purchase price to get stuff done, you’ve diminished the platforms utility.
This isn’t about speed. Apple A series chips may get close to Intels Coffee Lake i5/7 levels of performance but they’ll lag compared to Golden Coves 10 nm cores next year. If Apple was concerned about security or supply chain, they could’ve gone AMD. Ryzen 3 4xxx series chips have a 15% uplift over 3700x or Core i7s in the 50W envelope and they have a great relationship with AMD. No one will take enterprise seriously with Mac not because A series chips are weak, although they surely are against EPYC, Xeon, Intel HEDT, Vega II, Ampere... etc but because no one will rewrite entire code based for Apple.
Apple software development will be based solely on scraps left over from iOS. No enterprise. No AML. No shared development. No real gaming. No virtualization. Macs become 3000 dollar email terminals. This is devastating news for the Mac platform. -
Apple's macOS Catalina causing problems with select eGPU setups
I would like to know which Windows desktops come with: 1. LG 5K pro-class screens. 2. Quality parts (psus/motherboards), rather than the Chinex-Walmart trash that everyone else gets. 3. Have Thunderbolt 3 in multiple, on MORE THAN ONE BUS so you can use TB3 devices at full speed. 4. Come with quality cpus. Not the gimped trash that so many companies ship. As for laptops, I'd love to see you spec a laptop that has the portability of a MacBook Pro with that 2080 and that has the: 1. Same quality screen. 2. Same quality case/externals. 3. Has Thunderbolt 3. 4. Same cpu. All that the same price-to-weight ratio. Oh and while the 2080 (downclocked or mobility) are decent compute performers, the MacBook pro's Vega gpu is actually almost matching it in FP/compute workloads. It only gets wrecked in gaming, where it produces RX 565-570 level performance. But if you want a gaming laptop...BUY A GAMING LAPTOP. It's still an inferior option however. Because now you're carrying a heavy, massive brick around, in a flexing magnesium/plastic case. Sure you have better gaming performance by a lot, but in terms of WORK performance, you've only got a small boost. And when you get home, since your laptop doesn't have TB 3, you're stuck at that performance. Meanwhile, the MBP user can use an egpu setup in a Core X setup to upgrade the gpu and keep performance at contemporary levels. Within 5 years that 2080 will be as effective as a 780 Ti is today...which is to say...not very much.OutdoorAppDeveloper said:For a company that prides itself on elegant designs, an "eGPU" is the least elegant design in the entire computer industry. Of course it is going to break if the system software is updated or the wind changes direction. I would feel ashamed to own one when seeing thin and light Windows laptops with built in RTX 2080 GPUs (for a lot less money).