New Mac Pro - PCIe 1.25 GB/s SSD, Dual ATI/AMD FirePro GPUs with 3X 4K monitors

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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Finally you guys get a new Mac Pro.

Xeon based, with 1866 MHz DDR3.
PCIe SSD, with 1.25 GB/s read, 1.0 GB/s write.
ALL expansion is external - USB 3 + Thunderbolt 2 (20 Gbps).

It almost looks like an early SVS subwoofer, a black cylinder.



So, no front ports - but the back lights up when the machine is turned. No optical either, which isn't a big surprise.
 
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bearxor

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2001
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I have a huge fear that this thing has those ATi chips on board, meaning no replaceable/upgradeable gfx card.
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
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I have a huge fear that this thing has those ATi chips on board, meaning no replaceable/upgradeable gfx card.

Considering how small it is, that's not the only thing I'd be worried isn't replaceable/upgradeable.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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Yes, there is no internal expansion. So, for the GPUs at most you'll get is daughter cards, but there's a good chance everything is soldered.

However, I also think that while the Mac Pro used to be within reach for me (although the iMac is more price appropriate), this new Mac Pro is probably going to be priced beyond reach, partially because of the PCIe SSD.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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A tiny desktop computer with no internal expansion? Apple understands this is a Mac Pro right?:|

Thunderbolt at least partially mitigates that, but who wants to go back to the hellish days of external expansion and cables all over the place?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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This is our headless xMac, except instead of being cheaper than an iMac, it's much higher end than the previous Mac Pro. :p

I suspect this will be popular with pro sales departments selling complete hardware + software workstation solutions. It should be noted that in some of these markets, the hardware isn't upgraded anyway. They simply replace the machines. I wonder how much of the previous Mac Pro market was this way.
 

phreaqe

Golden Member
Mar 22, 2004
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that is one of the stupidest designs i have ever seen. i am actually speechless as to how dumb that thing is.

from a specs perspective i think its awesome. but from a design perspective holy crap....
 

Kadarin

Lifer
Nov 23, 2001
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For those complaining about a lack of expansion slots, I'm wondering what you typically put in these things. But damn, EVE Online on 3x 4k monitors? Wow...
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
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A tiny desktop computer with no internal expansion? Apple understands this is a Mac Pro right?:|

Thunderbolt at least partially mitigates that, but who wants to go back to the hellish days of external expansion and cables all over the place?

Yeah...my thoughts exactly. Was there any indication as to whether or not the HDD bays will even be accessible?

IMO, not having any opportunity for internal expansion sort of makes something ipso facto NOT a professional workstation. A bug chunk of the motivation for going Mac Pro over imac is this opportunity for neat and tidy expansion without cluttering up a workspace with external drives and such.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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For those complaining about a lack of expansion slots, I'm wondering what you typically put in these things.
Mostly swapping out hard drives and memory. However if a chassis lives long enough, then being able to swap out the video card is also nice.
But damn, EVE Online on 3x 4k monitors? Wow...
In bootcamp perhaps. The Mac EVE client unfortunately varies between "bearable" and "terrible" depending on the state of Cider.:(
 

jpeyton

Moderator in SFF, Notebooks, Pre-Built/Barebones
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Aug 23, 2003
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When I woke up today, my first thought was how nice it would be if someone would produce a disposable, non-upgradeable professional workstation in the $2500+ price range.

Apple delivers yet again :thumbsup:
 

Kadarin

Lifer
Nov 23, 2001
44,296
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Mostly swapping out hard drives and memory. However if a chassis lives long enough, then being able to swap out the video card is also nice.

Makes sense. I can totally imagine my future home office being powered by one of these things, with 3 4K displays. Upgradeable HDD and RAM would be important.

In bootcamp perhaps. The Mac EVE client unfortunately varies between "bearable" and "terrible" depending on the state of Cider.:(

Before I stopped playing EVE, I used the Mac client and it was ok, but flawed. I doubt I'll get back into it, but you never know... (a coworker offered to buy my characters lol) I really don't want to go buy and then have to deal with Windows, too.
 

joshhedge

Senior member
Nov 19, 2011
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The use of dual GPUs will certainly be an interesting development for the hackintosh community.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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Finally you guys get a new Mac Pro.

Xeon based, with 1766 MHz DDR3.
PCIe SSD, with 1.25 GB/s read, 1.0 GB/s write.
ALL expansion is external - USB 3 + Thunderbolt 2 (20 Gbps).

It almost looks like an early SVS subwoofer, a black cylinder.



So, no front ports - but the back lights up when the machine is turned. No optical either, which isn't a big surprise.

#1 - I'm thinking Hackintosh casemod :D

#2 - The PCIe cards sound fast, but aren't all that fast (compared to stuff that's been out for awhile). OWC makes an off-the-shelf SSD card right now that does 960 MB/s (up to nearly a terabyte in size, too). I have several at work, they're decent:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

My only complaint is that they don't make maintenance easy. I can ghost a drive with Macrium or SuperDuper via a USB dock and get a new machine setup pretty easily, but I can't do that with a PCIe card. But it's also much simpler compared to installing a RAID array.
 

Duncan C

Junior Member
Jun 10, 2013
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Yeah...my thoughts exactly. Was there any indication as to whether or not the HDD bays will even be accessible?

IMO, not having any opportunity for internal expansion sort of makes something ipso facto NOT a professional workstation. A bug chunk of the motivation for going Mac Pro over imac is this opportunity for neat and tidy expansion without cluttering up a workspace with external drives and such.


It sounds to me like this device does not have ANY HDD bays. It's a toaster. The flash drive is likely right on the motherboard, and the ONLY expansion is through the firewire and Thunderbolt ports.

This is the death of actual, expandable computers from Apple.

They already crippled expansion of the previous Mac Pro line by only supporting a small fixed set of graphics cards per machine. Now there is no graphics card slot at all. No HD bays. No internal expansion whatsoever.

The performance on this machine sounds impressive, but it's an all-in-one. It's a tubular Mac Mini on steroids. Really strong steroids.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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960 MB/s and 1.25 GB/s "aren't all that fast"?!?

To clarify, I mean relatively speaking - OWC's PCIe SSD solution was released over a year ago. I use them occasionally when I'm feeling lazy on engineering stations - just pop the card in, no cables, no fuss, install the OS, boom, done. Pretty easy. But your average SATA-III SSD will give you 500 MB/s easily, and it's cake to throw those on a RAID card for faster speeds, so while 1.2 GB/s sounds fast (and IS fast), it's not necessarily new tech.

Also, I haven't seen much performance improvement once you get past like 300 MB/s. Everything is pretty dang instant by then, you know?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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Memory looks potentially user upgradable. Same goes for the SSD.
MacPro-Memory_zps3cb438e1.jpg


MacPro-SSD_zpsde0b1640.jpg



The performance on this machine sounds impressive, but it's an all-in-one. It's a tubular Mac Mini on steroids. Really strong steroids.
Actually it's more of a design modification of the Power Mac Cube, except that it's a cylinder now. For this reason, it's also 10" tall, a fairly tall "small" all-in-one like the Cube. Both the Cube and the Cylinder were/are positioned as pro machines too.

MacPro-ThermalCore1_zpsee1fb7ad.jpg


g4cubefron326x408t.jpg


It's the same top venting design, with the air flow going rising upwards from the centre of the machine. It's funny though, since their PR fluff says no computer has been built this way before, even though they did it themselves with the Cube.

MacPro-ThermalCore2_zps2264e31e.jpg


I guess it is a bit different though because the GPU wasn't cooled the same way. The GPU in the Cube kinda sat off on its own in a regular slot, and had a big heatsink.

The Cube also had no fan, but if you actually rip one apart you can see a spot for a fan complete with the screw holes inside. In fact, I put a low power fan in my Cube. The difference though is the Cube's fan spot is at the bottom, whereas the Mac Pro's fan is at the top.

Of course, the Cube failed miserably in the market. Then again, I have two of them, and it's one of my favourite Mac designs of all time (with the other one being the iLamp).
 
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ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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Memory looks potentially user upgradable. Same goes for the SSD.
960 MB/s and 1.25 GB/s "aren't all that fast"?!?
Well thank goodness. Apple hasn't gone completely off the reservation then. However the SSD looks non-standard, which means replacements will be expensive. And there's no 2.5"/3.5" bay at all, so you won't be putting a HDD in there for storage.:(
 

TheStu

Moderator<br>Mobile Devices & Gadgets
Moderator
Sep 15, 2004
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Memory looks potentially user upgradable. Same goes for the SSD.
960 MB/s and 1.25 GB/s "aren't all that fast"?!?

We'll have to see if the CPU is replaceable, it looks like there's a proper socket in there in the images.

Also, it's entirely possible that the GPUs are replaceable cards as well. So, it's limited in terms of INTERNAL upgrading, but we'll see.
 

Koing

Elite Member <br> Super Moderator<br> Health and F
Oct 11, 2000
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Seems like a disaster for PRO users...

Koing
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
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It sounds to me like this device does not have ANY HDD bays. It's a toaster. The flash drive is likely right on the motherboard, and the ONLY expansion is through the firewire and Thunderbolt ports.

Yikes...that's worse than I thought then.

I mean...it looks nice, and it's great that they're finally caught up on CPUs and such...but I don't understand why external-only expansion is such a big feature. Why go through the effort of improving the computer aesthetics, and making the footprint smaller, but then require you to have a bunch of external drives around/nearby so that the system footprint may actually increase, and additional cables are decidedly NOT aesthetically pleasing.

Maybe they have a different use model in mind than I do? I guess that a mac pro daisy chain'd to a pegasus RAID, and a pair of high-end displays still only requires 3ish cables...
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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Maybe they have a different use model in mind than I do? I guess that a mac pro daisy chain'd to a pegasus RAID, and a pair of high-end displays still only requires 3ish cables...
Exactly. It seems to me a lot of the lower end pro design houses are going iMac these days from my superficial understanding of them. There are few true Mac Pro users that actually need a Mac Pro, but like I mentioned before, it seems a fair chunk of them buy the machine, and then leave them as is until 3 years later when they buy a brand new machine.

The question for me though is pricing. The Cube was cool, but horrendously overpriced for what it did, esp. since it was competing against the regular Tower Mac at the same time, aimed at a mid-end to lower high end crowd.

If it was priced in the same ballpark as an iMac, I'd actually buy one, because I personally hate the ergonomics of the 27" iMac. However, unfortunately I'm thinking it will be priced like a high end Mac Pro, which is out of my pricing comfort zone... and aimed squarely at the buy-then-trade-up-in-3-years crowd.