Yea I was assuming that any new Mac Pro would be all T3 only and match the technology in the new Macbook Pro.
The MBP is making compromises to GPU and/or TBv3 bandwidth to get to 4 ports. Not sure why the Mac Pro should make compromises just to populate more TBv3 ports on the edge. Previous versions of MP had 400 and 800 FW ports during the transition to FW 800. This next Mac Pro is also a transitionary system. The MBP is so thin that it drives Type-C. For the Mac Pro everything Type-C has no such motivator. Type-C
cannot cover the power for this system. So if have room for a three prong power connector this whole "have to save vertical space" is a bunch of hooey.
Part of the driver fro the MP 2013 to have 6 TB ports was the presence of a fairly high number of legacy mode DP devices that were likely to be hooked up. You need 6 TB mDP ports if going to "blow" 2-3 of them on monitors. That way have 4-3 left to actually do TB specific work. If only have 4 TB v3 port blowing 2-3 of those on pure legcacy DP work is highly limitiing. (e.g., a MBP 2015 with two TP ports covered to drive a 5K monitor leaves you with no high bandwidth I;O left for externals. )
There is still going to be be a large number of mDP/DP devices for desktops even if Type-C moves in. Same market forces that drove having the HDMI port on the MP 2013 are even bigger now than then ( many 10's of millions more monitors with HDMI on them.) Apple themselves
drove substantive increase in 4K monitor sales with the MP 2013.
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I read about going HDMI but that limits the refresh rate at higher resolutions so the best answer seems to be display port over USB-C. [/quote]
Yes, getting the raw legacy DP signal out is best. That Apple does not have a Type-C to mDP adapter is quite off if their intention is to throw all DP display owners under the bus. Maybe they are still working on it.
I recall someone found a reference to a potential Mac Pro with 8 or 10 T3 ports but I can't recall where it was....
4-5 TBv3 controllers in a single machine is drinking a whole lot of kool-aid. Three is a bit contrived when there was mDP overlap. With pragmatically no display's with Type-C overlap it is mostly contrived. Besides, the next Mac Pro isn't going to have that kind of bandwidth. At least if they keep the 2nd GPU. Dumping the compute GPU just to have uniformity for uniformity sake of the external ports is goofy. Pushing the MP's compute GPU capability out onto a slightly less than x4 PCI-e v3 external connection isn't going to be make it more generally competitive.
The more TBv3 port pairs you have while keeping the GPU constant starts to create problems in keeping up with the number potential screens you need to drive.
5 is too many. If they do blow away x16 consuming compute GPU then 4 would be trackable. You are still down ports ( 8 TBv3 versus 10 ( 6 TB and 4 USB0 from the MP 2013 for no good reason what so ever.
