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Apple Mac Pro: Does Expandability Really Matter?

1st-The article was written in "PCmag"!
The author may have been the "resident Mac" guy
Would Mac World have made the same mistake?
Should Mr. Domingo have performed more research before writing?

He starts a paragraph with the heading "External Expansion Is Doable". It ends by saying "Functionally, external expansion can work just fine."
If that is the case why not give comparisons. Take specific programs with specific purposes and compare a "Souped up 5.1" with the 6.1
In a rendering instance the 6.1 may blow the 5.1 out because of the 2 AMD Fire Pros. But if the 5.1 has 2 Nvidia Tesla's how does it compare?
Show how they both deal with R3D 5K.

Just do some comparisons and show real world numbers!
Apple, don't be afraid to put your MP 6.1 in competition and let people see if it's worth the time and money to convert! :)
 
How do we even know if the CPUS are even socketed or soldered? Given Apple not wanting anyone to upgrade and continue to use older tech, they want to stop this by soldering processors and video chips which instantaneously will kill any effort into upgrading both processors and video ram.

Sorry, but I prefer my 2010,2012 Mac Pro - the LAST truly expandable Mac Pro.

RIP Mac Pro: 2006-2012 - We will miss you.. replaced by the iCan.

goMac said:
To be fair, I'd expect CPU swaps in the new Mac Pro would be just as Apple supported as they were in the old Mac Pro.

That is to say, they can be done, but they're not at all Apple supported.
Click to expand...
 
goMac said:
To be fair, I'd expect CPU swaps in the new Mac Pro would be just as Apple supported as they were in the old Mac Pro.

That is to say, they can be done, but they're not at all Apple supported.
Click to expand...

I know they weren't supported. The old machine just did nothing to prevent them. In this case they're going right into Ivy. There's no Sandy to Ivy upgrade. In the case of the W3680 which was a popular mac pro upgrade, it was a different generation, and most people did the upgrade after a 40% price drop on the cpu. In this case the only upgrade would be ivy to ivy if you wait long enough to see dismantled server parts show up on ebay. Without that it might not be worth the money and effort.
 
TheKev,

I have a 2010,2012 Mac Pro with the w3680 processor. Do you think there will be anymore westmere upgrades over 3.33 Ghz? I know the w3690 is really overkill considering I am already at 6-core 3.33, but is it worth the money in prolonging the machine to go with a dual setup? I have a friend of mine who is willing to sell off his entire dual processor board + processors x5680 I think for like 700.00 simply because he is my friend.

Also, I really have no use for thunderbolt, so do you think the current cheese grater Mac Pros are still worth it to keep once the iCans finally come out?

Thanks.. Nano told me you are pretty knowledgable about these things..

thekev said:
I know they weren't supported. The old machine just did nothing to prevent them. In this case they're going right into Ivy. There's no Sandy to Ivy upgrade. In the case of the W3680 which was a popular mac pro upgrade, it was a different generation, and most people did the upgrade after a 40% price drop on the cpu. In this case the only upgrade would be ivy to ivy if you wait long enough to see dismantled server parts show up on ebay. Without that it might not be worth the money and effort.
Click to expand...
 
spunkgarLEWII said:
TheKev,

I have a 2010,2012 Mac Pro with the w3680 processor. Do you think there will be anymore westmere upgrades over 3.33 Ghz? I know the w3690 is really overkill considering I am already at 6-core 3.33, but is it worth the money in prolonging the machine to go with a dual setup? I have a friend of mine who is willing to sell off his entire dual processor board + processors x5680 I think for like 700.00 simply because he is my friend.

Also, I really have no use for thunderbolt, so do you think the current cheese grater Mac Pros are still worth it to keep once the iCans finally come out?

Thanks.. Nano told me you are pretty knowledgable about these things..
Click to expand...

If someone is selling Dual Processor board, heatsinks & 5680s for $700 you would be a PRIZE FOOL not to buy the lot.

You could turn around and sell the bunch for $1600-2K if nothing else.
 
spunkgarLEWII said:
TheKev,

I have a 2010,2012 Mac Pro with the w3680 processor. Do you think there will be anymore westmere upgrades over 3.33 Ghz? I know the w3690 is really overkill considering I am already at 6-core 3.33, but is it worth the money in prolonging the machine to go with a dual setup? I have a friend of mine who is willing to sell off his entire dual processor board + processors x5680 I think for like 700.00 simply because he is my friend.

Also, I really have no use for thunderbolt, so do you think the current cheese grater Mac Pros are still worth it to keep once the iCans finally come out?

Thanks.. Nano told me you are pretty knowledgable about these things..
Click to expand...

I think it's a good deal and go for it. I am with you also in keeping the current Mac Pro towers as being the last expandable towers. It's nice to be able to swap GPUs, CPUs, add PCIe cards based on one's needs.

Maybe Apple's direction is lesser user expansion so the user has to buy new models at a shorter period of time. And if newer GPUs are released, we can't upgrade the 2013 Mac Pro.
 
Last edited:
spunkgarLEWII said:
TheKev,

I have a 2010,2012 Mac Pro with the w3680 processor. Do you think there will be anymore westmere upgrades over 3.33 Ghz? I know the w3690 is really overkill considering I am already at 6-core 3.33, but is it worth the money in prolonging the machine to go with a dual setup? I have a friend of mine who is willing to sell off his entire dual processor board + processors x5680 I think for like 700.00 simply because he is my friend.

Also, I really have no use for thunderbolt, so do you think the current cheese grater Mac Pros are still worth it to keep once the iCans finally come out?

Thanks.. Nano told me you are pretty knowledgable about these things..
Click to expand...

Nano said that? That makes little sense. He's the insightful one. I'm a huge display nerd. I comment on displays more than anything else. If it was my machine, I wouldn't bother switching a W3680 for a 90. That dual x5680 setup would be great as long as you can put that power to use. I would check the old threads involving upgrades before trying something that extreme. There might be extra details.
 
At some point though OS X will fail to run on our highly expandable Mac Pros, but they do make good system administration based workstations through Linux, FreeBSD or even Windows. Its no surprise here. Apple is all about us users abandoning the old and going with the new.

Unless thunderbolt really starts to take off and prices come down to a consumer-mid level pricing, its not going to fly. For Pixar, Disney, etc.. those are the NEW PRO USERS.. for simpletons like us and enthusiasts, I don't see the reason to jump on board to the 2013 Mac Pro Mini..

While USB 3.0 might be a viable option for some, the main focus is thunderbolt.. No thank you, I want to have freedom to do with my Mac Pro what I want and when I want.


Macsonic said:
I think it's a good deal and go for it. I am with you also in keeping the current Mac Pro towers as being the last expandable towers. It's nice to be able to swap GPUs, CPUs, add PCIe cards based on one's needs.

Maybe Apple's direction is lesser user expansion so the user has to buy new models at a shorter period of time. And if newer GPUs are released, we can't upgrade the 2013 Mac Pro.
Click to expand...
 
spunkgarLEWII said:
How do we even know if the CPUS are even socketed or soldered?
Click to expand...

A soldered Xeon? I'll believe it when I see it. But I've never heard of that, ever.

I would bet there is no reason you couldn't swap the CPU in a new Mac Pro. But it would be just as unsupported.
 
ekwipt said:
Already here, Netstor are being used by other companies including Magma as OEM for Thunderbolt expansion, Areca makes similar products as well
Click to expand...

Not really. None of these are "do everything tinker " boxes that has one of each thing removed from the Mac Pro.

1-2 5.25 drive bays
1-4 3.25 drive bays
[ perhaps some 2.5" drives ]
2 more PCI-e slots.
maybe missing ports.


The fact trying to squeeze all that through a single x4 PCI-e v2.0 link isn't as important as a box to rattle around in. Of Of course this can't be more than dual drive USB drive or it will be too expensive.

From what I can see the Netstor box doesn't put a SATA controller in the box. It is waiting for a discrete SATA/RAID card to go in. The problem is all of the certified drive cards RAID like and really all need is a JBOD functionality. That is going to drive the large mismatch on costs.

Folks want a drive bays and a very simple SATA controller that folks don't like to sell anymore because the AMD/Intel core chipsets all delivery 6-10 SATA lanes relatively cheaply. So folks mainly build "higher value" controllers that loop in RAID which drives up the cost.

----------
goMac said:
A soldered Xeon? I'll believe it when I see it. But I've never heard of that, ever.
Click to expand...

Not here yet. Next generation desktop/laptop line ( Broadwell) up is going to move a chunk of desktop CPUs to BGA format. ( the number of socked CPUs is going to go down). It will not be surprising if some Xeon E3 go BGA. Perhaps they will just stick with the lower end iGPU ( 4600++ ) , but all of the higher end iGPU options (Iris, Iris Pro, 5000+++ ) are likely going BGA.

Now whether Mac Pro is going Xeon E3 ... probably not if these E5's do OK in the marketplace.

It also would be surprising if some of these Atom Server offerings eventually got Xeon branding too. Those aren't going to be socketed either.

Xeon spans past just the E5 subsection.
 
goMac said:
It's a question of distance. It's why Thunderbolt is also not really long distance until you get to the optical cables.

And anyone comparing Thunderbolt to high speed PCIe is wrong at this point. It'll happen eventually, but we're not there yet.
Click to expand...

One Thunderbolt is nowhere near PCIe speeds. But the MacPro has six of them. And one 20 GBit channel is plenty for most purposes; you'd need a substantial SSD hardware raid system to get anywhere near that.
 
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