Is the new Mac Pro a failure?

[AidenShaw]

I'd have to get three quotes, run them through finance to find out which I can buy, then find the person with the magic card....


It must be nice

I have to do something similar for Capital Expenditures - although we have some vendors (like NeweggBusiness and HPE) where only a single quote is enough.

Graphics cards are too cheap to bother.

 

[lowendlinux]

I have to do something similar for Capital Expenditures - although we have some vendors (like NeweggBusiness and HPE) where only a single quote is enough.

Graphics cards are too cheap to bother.

If I have to spend over $2500 I need quotes unless it's someone we contract through currently. My new printer is on it's way getting that contract modified was a cake compared.

 

[Daisy81]

and what? you can't change a processor in an imac? or a mac pro?

you can swap all the parts in nmp.. the thing is very modular in design in case you haven't noticed already.

The Mac Pro is like an old Dell laptop. The parts are not solderd but you can only uses the Graphics chips it was designed for and their is the unknown factor of if it would support other processors. On the processor front they offer all the way to 12 so that at least eliminates that unknown variable. Some premades leave the question of the top processors being supported open ended.

The iMac started soldering the processor onto the logic board in 2012. On top of that you need a heat gun to get the screen off and even then you need to be very careful. The only thing you can swap is the drives and the memory. In the 27" the memory thankfully has an access door in the first gen retina iMac. I don't know about the new one but I hope it still has it.

yeah, well.. according to you, end of life comes very quickly for a professional machine.. here's what you said earlier (and it's one reason why i'm having such a difficult time accepting your 'disposable consumer goods' claims.

Don't presume to put words in my mouth. My first professional machine was from the early 2000s based off the 533FSB Xeons. My second was a Core 2 Quad and my third is my current Core i7 Extreme. That is six years for the first and about seven years for the second and we'll see how long this one lasts but it will be more then you imply. They last so long because everything is replaceable. The Mac Pro is the only Apple device that can do the same. This is why the cMP is still worth so much.

there are cMps still under warranty even.. the machine that's often touted as being a real workstation.. and a money saving upgradeable thing etc..

and you're saying it's hopelessly outdated ??

You are a real piece of work.

You know perfectly well that when I said they where outdated I meant in terms of comparing them to the performance of a nMP when people where bashing nVidia. This is one of your goal post moves. Forget it. You wonder why people keep asking if you are trolling. It is because you twist words around.

I never said that the cMP was bad. I said I passed on it because of the timing. I didn't want the old parts. I was hoping the cMP would have been refreshed and not turned into the nMP.

I'm done talking to you.

 

[flat five]

The repercussions of this is that A) the cMP wasn't profitable enough for Apple's taste, B) they thought they could "think different" and create a nMP that would be better in that regard and C) the nMP is exactly what they wanted it to be in order to drive the required profit margin.

how about D) what really happened?

the idea(s) a,b,&c that the design process is profit based.. or anything to do with profit.. is incredibly shortsighted.
... or, just points out that you don't have much of a clue as to what it's like to be a designer.

i don't know what to tell you.. if you think the reason the 6,1 is designed as it is has its basis in profit margins etc then so be it.. i honestly don't think i can explain to you otherwise.

 

[-hh]

Egads, five new pages over the New Years weekend. Hope that ya'll actually took some time off to relax! ;-)

The question should be what does it fail at? I bought a base nMP for video editing. It was overkill for my video editing needs, but I was surprised at functionality as a Video Database. My project has 15TB of video, I use reference videos...My main databases are on two thunderbolt 20TB raid5 drives and the speed and ability I can search through 15TB of video amazes me.

Quoted because my use case also uses a bunch of data.

The compare/contrast that I get when I look at the cMP versus nMP is that the former has a degree of affordable internal storage, whereas the latter requires all storage to be externalized ... which invariably costs more, especially when on Thunderbolt interface.

Naturally, the storage question will be "how much is enough" in terms of the specific use case, but the counterpoint to this is also the Law of Diminishing Returns: the initial instance of providing some level of capability will be satisfactory for the proverbial 80% (of the 80/20 rule)...its just a question of how much is "some"?. In the case of the cMP, the answer was 4 internal 3.5" bays, after which point expansion became more expensive because it then had to be external like on the nMP.

It will be interesting to see if the nMP is actually going a new direction instead of supporting mature technologies. You cannot measure a new tool by old benchmarks.

True, but by the same token, benchmarks aren't static either: they change & adapt to what the new workflow needs are, since their purpose is to be an effective means of informing perspective customer(s).

Insofar as Apple's direction...

With the changes to Disk Utility in OS X 10.11, Apple has chosen to depreciate RAID support. When one then also looks at the overall Mac product lines, they've all now gone to a single internal 'disk' (regardless of if it is HDD or SDD hardware), which is what allows this simplification of their OS architecture to not have to deal with RAID. In essence, that previously in-house capability has been curtailed and one has to now rely on third party solutions. Functionally, this is telegraphing that Apple doesn't intend to offer multi-disk Macs for the foreseeable future (if not 'forever' gone). While this may not necessarily be a bad thing in the long term, what is disturbing ... and anti-business ... is that the move was done despite the fact that the cMP is still officially supported hardware.

 

[-hh]

The Mac Pro is like an old Dell laptop. The parts are not solderd but you can only uses the Graphics chips it was designed for and their is the unknown factor of if it would support other processors...

This statement is IMO reminiscent of several observations that we've had in this thread, which IMO bear pointing out: there are decisions that Apple - - quite deliberately - - chooses to make which functionally "lock down" their product into being less compatible with the rest of the industry, and which limit its flexibility & usability to its customers.

Needing proprietary drivers for video cards is the example alluded to above.

Similarly, the whole CUDA vs OpenGL stuff.

The facts of the matter are that Apple can't be so ignorant of what the rest of the PC industry is doing, such that their choice was accidental to functionally "cut off" something that the mainstream has/uses. And yes, some of this very much probably is the old Apple-Adobe feud ... but in the end, Apple is choosing to hurt their own customers by being so petulant.

So then, just what is "in it" for Apple to make such bass-ackwards contra-customer decisions?

Speculating, it looks again to me that Apple is choosing what's best for Apple in terms of simplifying OS X so as to reduce Apple's development & maintenance expenses (& QA). While this sort of strategy does have business merit, it also has the potential risk of going too far. YMMV on if Apple is still approaching this and can do more, or has already gone past and needs to reverse course - - the simple/short answer is that one's opinion will likely depend on what kind of customer you are.

 

[Daisy81]

This statement is IMO reminiscent of several observations that we've had in this thread, which IMO bear pointing out: there are decisions that Apple - - quite deliberately - - chooses to make which functionally "lock down" their product into being less compatible with the rest of the industry, and which limit its flexibility & usability to its customers.

Needing proprietary drivers for video cards is the example alluded to above.

Similarly, the whole CUDA vs OpenGL stuff.

The facts of the matter are that Apple can't be so ignorant of what the rest of the PC industry is doing, such that their choice was accidental to functionally "cut off" something that the mainstream has/uses. And yes, some of this very much probably is the old Apple-Adobe feud ... but in the end, Apple is choosing to hurt their own customers by being so petulant.

So then, just what is "in it" for Apple to make such bass-ackwards contra-customer decisions?

Speculating, it looks again to me that Apple is choosing what's best for Apple in terms of simplifying OS X so as to reduce Apple's development & maintenance expenses (& QA). While this sort of strategy does have business merit, it also has the potential risk of going too far. YMMV on if Apple is still approaching this and can do more, or has already gone past and needs to reverse course - - the simple/short answer is that one's opinion will likely depend on what kind of customer you are.

Beautifully put.

 

[Mago]

I would hope that anyone with sense would now understand why I really want to see nVidia in the next Mac Pro. If you are going to spend 5+ grand the machine needs to be faster then a iMac.


No but it saps the speed out of programs being worked on in the foreground.

So you must ditch your dual socket pc-clone workstation along any Mac Pro with cMP or nMP.

You cry the nMP is not faster (at launch was the faster workstation on single socket on every category except gpu processing), ok the nMP now is outdated on storage and memory and can't grew to multi socket cpu so an upgraded cMP with current NVMe and faster dual six core Xeon plus faster GPUs (either nVidia or AMD) IS Faster on almost every category except memory bandwidth.

Then you argument (on sole storage speed basis) that the iMac retina is faster than the nMP so you can't justify...
So justify you purchasing q workstation if it's well known the iMac retina still the king of the single thread speed, no matter how fast is your gpu and NVMe, the iMac retina processing single threaded routines (as usual on CAD) IS at least 30% faster in single or double precision.

This is only one benchmark, Apple Really did wrong not offering quick yearly updates on the nMP hardware, we miss Xeon e5v3 and ddr4 plus faster pcie ssd as on the iMac, but we are now weeks to know the full updated nMP with at least NVMe blade ssd (hopefully dual and std m.2 x4), plus every thing updated, but I feel you still will not be satisfied since 20 core maybe not enough for you...

Did you know what I think on you?, sorry I'll not write that, it's very obvious your behavior and commitment.

I'm on cpu intensive application and decided no to switch either platform or buy an slower cMP (in no way an cMP could be faster than the upd nMP no matter what improved combo of cpu or storage is installed), it's easier I switch to an iPhone - Plus than to other workstation other than an nMP.

 

[tuxon86]

If I have to spend over $2500 I need quotes unless it's someone we contract through currently. My new printer is on it's way getting that contract modified was a cake compared.

I don't have to get permission if it's below $10k and justified by a project.

 

[Mago]

Insofar as Apple's direction...

With the changes to Disk Utility in OS X 10.11, Apple has chosen to depreciate RAID support. When one then also looks at the overall Mac product lines, they've all now gone to a single internal 'disk' (regardless of if it is HDD or SDD hardware), which is what allows this simplification of their OS architecture to not have to deal with RAID.

I'm curious on Apple about this, actually is an non sense to ditch native software raid support (while really raid 0/1 is not much here, most people using raid usually goes for hardware raid (indeed faster) or third party software raid.

What's the truth is that on storage OSX is way outdated, apple ditched ZFS (after funding and developing) which could help to modernize osx outdated HFS, I understand ZFS has the inconvenience to be a memory /cpu hog fully implemented.

Now I've hopes Apple could support Btrfs, with better intrinsic hybrid raid, since they adopted mDnsresponder there is a chance at least as option Apple offers support for Btrfs as well Hybrid Raids aren things which c
Should be part of the core os and not from a 3rd party.

Also Apple should bring us native iSCSI support.

 

[AidenShaw]

...apple ditched XFS...

typo - s;XFS;ZFS;g

 

[Mago]

typo - s;XFS;ZFS;g

Right ZFS

 

[Daisy81]

So you must ditch your dual socket pc-clone workstation along any Mac Pro...

So justify you purchasing q workstation if it's well known the iMac retina still the king of the single thread speed, no matter how fast is your gpu and NVMe, the iMac retina processing single threaded routines...

Did you know what I think on you?, sorry I'll not write that, it's very obvious your behavior and commitment.

Wow. I don't know where to start but the personal attack is out of line.

The iMac will never be a workstation. It's a nice machine but it overheats and as a result throttles the speed. It is far from the king. In long intensive tasks the 4 core Xeon will beat it because it doesn't throttle.

I have nothing else to say to you.

 

[Roykor]

off-course is the iMac fast. It uses a very high clocked i7. The 5820 / 5930K can be OC with some simple steps to 4+ Ghz tho. (just like the 4Ghz i7 itself, but thats not possible in the iMac right?)

 

[Mago]

off-course is the iMac fast. It uses a very high clocked i7. The 5820 / 5930K can be OC with some simple steps to 4+ Ghz tho. (just like the 4Ghz i7 itself, but thats not possible in the iMac right?)

Neither the 5930 or the 6700 need oc to go faster than Xeon on single thread.

 

[wallysb01]

how about D) what really happened?

the idea(s) a,b,&c that the design process is profit based.. or anything to do with profit.. is incredibly shortsighted.
... or, just points out that you don't have much of a clue as to what it's like to be a designer.

i don't know what to tell you.. if you think the reason the 6,1 is designed as it is has its basis in profit margins etc then so be it.. i honestly don't think i can explain to you otherwise.

You are just completely delusional if you think any product design from Apple isn't 100% about maximizing profit.

 

[Daisy81]

off-course is the iMac fast. It uses a very high clocked i7. The 5820 / 5930K can be OC with some simple steps to 4+ Ghz tho. (just like the 4Ghz i7 itself, but thats not possible in the iMac right?)

I can push mine up to 4.7GHz. I don't do it very much because I'm aiming to keep the machine for a while. But I couldn't resist finding out what it is capable of.

Just to be clear I'm not knocking the iMac at all. My boyfriend loves his. Although he is using a i5 in it. The screen is nothing short of amazing. I'm just saying it isn't workstation class.

 

[maflynn]

[MOD NOTE]
The thread is getting derail, please stay on topic and stop with the arguing/bickering.

 

[rawweb]

I'm surprised this thread is still alive and cooking. 53 pages of the same peoples opinion over and over. Occasionally someone new steps in the same hole and the cycle repeats.

-- EDIT --

^ Apologies maflynn, I was replying at the same time you posted.

 

[Daisy81]

It's been 746 days since the late 2013 Mac Pro was released. Has Apple soft killed it?

 

[ManuelGomes]

Will you please just give it a rest?
Soon enough you'll get your answer...

 

[Daisy81]

Will you please just give it a rest?
Soon enough you'll get your answer...

It was a legitimate question.

 

[Demigod Mac]

[MOD NOTE]
The thread is getting derail, please stay on topic and stop with the arguing/bickering.

Not so much getting derailed as going in circles.

We'll have more material to chew on when (more like 'if' at this point) Apple announces upgrades to the Mac Pro.

 

[AidenShaw]

Will you please just give it a rest?
Soon enough you'll get your answer...

It was a legitimate question.

Not so much getting derailed as going in circles.

We'll have more material to chew on when (more like 'if' at this point) Apple announces upgrades to the Mac Pro.

Maybe we could put a positive spin on it and consider the question "What can Apple do to make the nnMp a success?".

And no, koyoot, some mythical, faster, lower wattage ATI GPUs won't be enough (if they ever actually ship) - too many apps can't use GPU acceleration, and too many apps that can are deeply embedded in the CUDA ecosystem. And continuing to give 32 of the 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes to under-utilized mid-range GPUs is not a good idea.

I'd start by trashing the monolithic can. Go modular. Base CPU module has the core goodies (CPU, RAM, USB, dual 10GbE,...), and sends 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes (72 lanes for the dual CPU module) out to expansion modules. License the expansion connector at prices that aren't an arm and a leg like T-Bolt, so that a 3rd party ecosystem can develop.

What modules should appear? I'd start with the module that holds eight Titan-X GPUs. Some would love it, others would cry "doomed" because it needs a 220-240v power feed (not a problem in most of the civilized world).

 

[Daisy81]

Maybe we could put a positive spin on it and consider the question "What can Apple do to make the nnMp a success?".

And no, koyoot, some mythical, faster, lower wattage ATI GPUs won't be enough (if they ever actually ship) - too many apps can't use GPU acceleration, and too many apps that can are deeply embedded in the CUDA ecosystem. And continuing to give 32 of the 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes to under-utilized mid-range GPUs is not a good idea.

I'd start by trashing the monolithic can. Go modular. Base CPU module has the core goodies (CPU, RAM, USB, dual 10GbE,...), and sends 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes (72 lanes for the dual CPU module) out to expansion modules. License the expansion connector at prices that aren't an arm and a leg like T-Bolt, so that a 3rd party ecosystem can develop.

What modules should appear? I'd start with the module that holds eight Titan-X GPUs. Some would love it, others would cry "doomed" because it needs a 220-240v power feed (not a problem in most of the civilized world).

YES!!!

I like the core idea and the GPU modules. Can more CPUs be linked up via thunderbolt to expand for clients that need more processing power. Maybe a module that supports installing drives.

Could this be used to create a super computer? The worlds first Mac super computer. Cray eat your heart out.