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

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ViRGE said:
Well thank goodness. Apple hasn't gone completely off the reservation then. However the SSD looks non-standard, which means replacements will be expensive.
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PCIe SSDs are expensive anyway. Or at least the ones from respected brands are.

I wouldn't be completely surprised if Apple Mac Pro-appropriate 3rd party SSDs end up being cheaper than a lot of the other PCIe SSDs out there.
 
Eug said:
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.
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The individuals I know with Mac Pros, admittedly a small N sampling, are all folks who have had it for years (2007-2008) and enjoyed performing some upgrades to it in that time to keep it meeting their needs rather than spending a ton of money on a new Mac Pro. I have heard similar things about design houses, and I think it's pretty obvious that the 3ish year turnover into a brand new product, rather than supporting end-user upgrades, is far better for apple's business, and basically what already happens with their laptop, imac, and mobile markets.

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.
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I also dislike the ergonomics of the imac. I hate that metal "chin" at the bottom, and it's frustrating that it isn't height adjustable, or swivel-able.

With those internal specs, I think you're right, it will probably be starting in the 2k+ range. IVB-E CPUs are pricey, as are FirePros, as are PCI-SSDs...
 
I'm really surprised at all the tongue wagging going on with this design. It looks horrible IMO, like something Dyson would design. I would honestly mistake it for some future Dyson trash can if I didn't know what it was before-hand.
 
did steve jobs just announce the death of the traditional desktop? dat thang looks like its from freakin star wars
 
From Apple:
Traditionally, pro computers have relied primarily on the CPU for their computing power. But as GPU performance has dramatically increased, software developers have begun to leverage that power in their apps. With the new Mac Pro, we looked ahead and engineered an even more powerful GPU architecture. 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. With all that power, you’ll be able to do things like seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video while simultaneously rendering effects in the background — and still have enough power to connect up to three high-resolution 4K displays.
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Yeah. Because any "pro" needs to edit full resolution 4K video, render, and drive 3 more 4K displays. LOL.
People will bitch and moan. Guess what, if it gets you from point A to point B in the most efficient manner I don't care what it is.
 
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It's kinda lame that it will be a few months before it ships. Hell... The Chinese knockoffs will be out before the actual product is 🙂

Something tells me that If Steve Jobs was still in charge, this sucker would be shipping today.
 
Does this mean you have to buy a special Mac Pro turbine GPU in order to upgrade?

Oh, and I'll bet Nvidia and AMD are kicking themselves for releasing the 7970 and GTX680 Mac editions a few weeks ago.
 
This design is a problem. I'm not a Mac Pro user, however reading comments from actual Mac Pro users this is going to be a problem. Ok you can do thunderbolt raid storage fine. But what if you need to upgrade your gpu? Or worse what if you use a RED accelerator card? Some of these rendering programs have dedicated accelerators.

Apart from all that who wants 3-4 boxes lying around with cables running all over?

This is form over function design. And that works for all in ones etc. but not for a proper workstation.

And while I have an iMac and agree the ergonomics suck. I'm not about to drop $4k on this plus display. And I bet that's a minimum price.

Oh well this product is not for me. I wonder who it is for.

Addendum: Maybe this is Apple's way of weaning video editors and graphic designers off of Mac OS. Because this is going to have a lot of them switching to Windows or attempting Hackintosh. And I doubt people who rely on machines for an income stream like working on hacked machines. That was the whole premise of the Mac Pro price premium. (Over) Pay to have expansion capability.
 
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sxr7171 said:
This design is a problem. I'm not a Mac Pro user, however reading comments from actual Mac Pro users this is going to be a problem. Ok you can do thunderbolt raid storage fine. But what if you need to upgrade your gpu? Or worse what if you use a RED accelerator card? Some of these rendering programs have dedicated accelerators.

Apart from all that who wants 3-4 boxes lying around with cables running all over?

This is form over function design. And that works for all in ones etc. but not for a proper workstation.

And while I have an iMac and agree the ergonomics suck. I'm not about to drop $4k on this plus display. And I bet that's a minimum price.

Oh well this product is not for me. I wonder who it is for.

Addendum: Maybe this is Apple's way of weaning video editors and graphic designers off of Mac OS. Because this is going to have a lot of them switching to Windows or attempting Hackintosh. And I doubt people who rely on machines for an income stream like working on hacked machines. That was the whole premise of the Mac Pro price premium. (Over) Pay to have expansion capability.
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There are Thunderbolt to PCIe boxes that you can get and put a PCIe card in it. I have one made by Atto for Dual 10Gbps ethernet. Its basically a box with a PCIe slot in it that uses Thunderbolt. In many ways, its no different than pro users today who use MacBook Pros. This is just craploads faster.
 
Childs said:
There are Thunderbolt to PCIe boxes that you can get and put a PCIe card in it. I have one made by Atto for Dual 10Gbps ethernet. Its basically a box with a PCIe slot in it that uses Thunderbolt. In many ways, its no different than pro users today who use MacBook Pros. This is just craploads faster.
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But thunderbolt speeds are expressed in Mbps while PCI-E speeds are expressed in MBps. So there is a whole magnitude of speed difference. Now if the speeds were actually comparable then I would say this design is genius. Because it would be sized for most people and those who need expansion would attach a box. But given the speed difference it isn't quite there yet.

So as I understand it thunderbolt 1 was PCI-E 2.0 x4. So this is PCI-E 3.0 x4. Now perhaps most of these speciality expansion cards can run at that speed effectively. But somehow I doubt it if they are to accelerate 4k+ full data rate raw video. Plus Thunderbolt has some overhead.

If someone can get the job done on MacBook Pro then this would be great. But this is supposed to be an upgrade for current Mac Pro users who have likely upgraded their machines. It's a whole other level of performance expectation.

To tell you the truth I don't really know much about what video editors need but I'd imagine they need everything they can get. At least some of them. And those people will be pushed to Windows. So this machine by its design is pushing away a subset, however small, of its prior users.


Also while I know their revenue model depends on people buying whole new machines it's disheartening to know that not even one (overpriced) option exists for people who want to upgrade or expand a Mac OS running machine. The old Mac Pro premium pretty much priced an upgradability tax. And people accepted that. But now that's not even an option anywhere in the line up.
 
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Eug said:
PCIe SSDs are expensive anyway. Or at least the ones from respected brands are.

I wouldn't be completely surprised if Apple Mac Pro-appropriate 3rd party SSDs end up being cheaper than a lot of the other PCIe SSDs out there.
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PCIe SSDs will be cheap(ish) within a year. Once M.2 form factor SSDs and Intel chipsets with SATA Express are ready for deployment, that will quickly become the preferred interface for SSDs across the board.
 
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This POS only has 4 ram slots and a 3 monitor limit? What power user was this actually designed for? iOS 7 icon designers?
 
It'll be interesting to see a pricing comparison between this new Mac Pro and competitively-specced workstation designs from Dell, HP, or Lenovo. I imagine that a Gigabyte workstation motherboard equipped system + 2x similar Xeon CPU's + 4x or more ECC memory slots @ 1866 GHz speed, + with 1 or 2 normal PC nVidia graphics cards would be prime Hackintosh candidates.
Although: I guess it's still possible for Apple to still offer such a "normal video card configurated" & user-upgradable machine themselves. Maybe.
Could the "cheese cutter" chassis (with revised innards) keep chugging along for years yet?
 
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I think its fine for the Mac Pro's target audience which are graphics artists, designers, and scientists. They are typically bought through departmental funds, so they hardly ever upgrade individual components. The hobbyist and self employed content creator may miss out, but for most of the audience its fine.
 
Subyman said:
I think its fine for the Mac Pro's target audience which are graphics artists, designers, and scientists. They are typically bought through departmental funds, so they hardly ever upgrade individual components. The hobbyist and self employed content creator may miss out, but for most of the audience its fine.
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Well, except for the GPU's being "AMD only".
Maybe they'll relent and offer optional nVidia workstation GPU's?
 
vailr said:
Well, except for the GPU's being "AMD only".
Maybe they'll relent and offer optional nVidia workstation GPU's?
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Hopefully, I'd rather have a GK110 based GPU in there than AMD stuff for Photoshop and such.
 
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