Let's rev up some excitement for the 2013 Mac Pro!

[A Hebrew]

What I want:

5mm MAX thickness
No optical drive
You can ditch Ethernet and FireWire for the thinness
4gb RAM Standard
5400 RPM Drive, 1tb upgradable to 4tb



Ports:
3 Thunderbolt ports
1 USB 3.0
Maybeee a HDMI, as a bonus feature



Oh yea, almost forgot to mention I want RAM to be user upgradable, IDC about other stuff though.

 

[xgman]

What I want:

5mm MAX thickness
No optical drive
You can ditch Ethernet and FireWire for the thinness
4gb RAM Standard
5400 RPM Drive, 1tb upgradable to 4tb



Ports:
3 Thunderbolt ports
1 USB 3.0
Maybeee a HDMI, as a bonus feature



Oh yea, almost forgot to mention I want RAM to be user upgradable, IDC about other stuff though.

5400 drive? You're kidding right?

 

[A Hebrew]

5400 drive? You're kidding right?

Well how will you fit a full size drive in 5mm?

 

[derbothaus]

Well how will you fit a full size drive in 5mm?

Lol. That's funny.
Can't really see a Mac Pro coming to market less than 5mm thick. I can always be surprised.

 

[OS6-OSX]

When NVIDIA announced it's K5000 did they:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-k5000-mac.html

(a) "rev up some excitement for the 2013 Mac Pro?"
(b) reveal the card for the 2013 Mac Pro?
(c) give current MP users a high end card because
there will not be a 2013 MP?
(d) say of course there will be a 2013 MP. Do you
think we would make another "Mac only" card if
we did not have the inside scoop?

 

[theSeb]

What I want:

5mm MAX thickness
No optical drive
You can ditch Ethernet and FireWire for the thinness
4gb RAM Standard
5400 RPM Drive, 1tb upgradable to 4tb



Ports:
3 Thunderbolt ports
1 USB 3.0
Maybeee a HDMI, as a bonus feature



Oh yea, almost forgot to mention I want RAM to be user upgradable, IDC about other stuff though.

Head on over to the MacBook pro section.

 

[calaverasgrande]

I work for a major television media outlet.
We just bought 6 maxed out Mac Pros for one of our graphics depts a little while ago. We expect these to last 2 years. After that we will almost certainly go with PC workstations for Art and Video depts.
This current batch of Mac Pro's is barely adequate for HD video. It is not adequate for 3k or 4k. You have to manage which applications are open and so on when working at that level.
In the meantime we are leaning on a windows based cluster for renders.

Apple can't play this coy marketing game with professional users anymore.
We expect to know what hardware lifecycles will be. Every other manufacturer that sells to the enterprise market gets this. They provide information on when the next model is out, how long a model will be available, and what the upgrade path is.
Apple is keeping us in the dark.
That all said.
If they do come out with a re-imagined Mac Pro I would expect it to have much less PCI slots. We simply don't need those like we used to just 4-5 years ago.
I would also expect them to eliminate the optical entirely. I need an optical drive but I get that most users are going to thumb drives and services like Dropbox and yousendit for distribution of content deliverables.
They need to have the ports updated to match the rest of the line. However they absolutely need to recognize that most pro users are heavily invested in firewire. If they drop firewire for thunderbolt, they better put 4 thunderbolt ports on the back.
Case needs to change.
I expect it will carry the new grey black color scheme that we see on the black ipad mini and iphone5.
I would expect easy access to drives such as we have now as well.
They also simply have to make it smaller. First, the Mac Pro is absurdly large for any desktop. Second, users are averse to having a "big ugly box" in their work area. Even if it is an Apple product. Finally, Apple is obsessed with thin and small. They never make products larger, only smaller.
Personally, I expect a stretched mac mini with space for two PCIe slots. Onboard video using an underclocked workstation chipset. Dual CPU, 6 or 8 ram slots. I expect them to nuke 1394 and opticals. I also expect it incorporate USB 3.0 and thunderbolt. Though it may be kind of odd if it has more thunderbolt outs than it can drive displays on.

 

[Moonjumper]

I work for a major television media outlet.
We just bought 6 maxed out Mac Pros for one of our graphics depts a little while ago. We expect these to last 2 years. After that we will almost certainly go with PC workstations for Art and Video depts.
This current batch of Mac Pro's is barely adequate for HD video. It is not adequate for 3k or 4k. You have to manage which applications are open and so on when working at that level.
In the meantime we are leaning on a windows based cluster for renders.

Apple can't play this coy marketing game with professional users anymore.
We expect to know what hardware lifecycles will be. Every other manufacturer that sells to the enterprise market gets this. They provide information on when the next model is out, how long a model will be available, and what the upgrade path is.
Apple is keeping us in the dark.
That all said.
If they do come out with a re-imagined Mac Pro I would expect it to have much less PCI slots. We simply don't need those like we used to just 4-5 years ago.
I would also expect them to eliminate the optical entirely. I need an optical drive but I get that most users are going to thumb drives and services like Dropbox and yousendit for distribution of content deliverables.
They need to have the ports updated to match the rest of the line. However they absolutely need to recognize that most pro users are heavily invested in firewire. If they drop firewire for thunderbolt, they better put 4 thunderbolt ports on the back.
Case needs to change.
I expect it will carry the new grey black color scheme that we see on the black ipad mini and iphone5.
I would expect easy access to drives such as we have now as well.
They also simply have to make it smaller. First, the Mac Pro is absurdly large for any desktop. Second, users are averse to having a "big ugly box" in their work area. Even if it is an Apple product. Finally, Apple is obsessed with thin and small. They never make products larger, only smaller.
Personally, I expect a stretched mac mini with space for two PCIe slots. Onboard video using an underclocked workstation chipset. Dual CPU, 6 or 8 ram slots. I expect them to nuke 1394 and opticals. I also expect it incorporate USB 3.0 and thunderbolt. Though it may be kind of odd if it has more thunderbolt outs than it can drive displays on.

A lot of what you suggest would allow engineering a lot of the cost out of the case. That might make it economical to add low end i7 options so that the Mac Pro can cover a wider market. And Apple probably need to cover a wider market to make a new model financially viable.

But I don't see a stretched Mac Mini style as a potential Mac Pro replacement. It is going to need a desktop motherboard, room for full size video cards, and space for cooling dual Xeons. I agree with the potential for everything else though.

 

[goMac]

First, the Mac Pro is absurdly large for any desktop.

Clearly you've never seen a Windows based dual Xeon tower... They're even larger...

 

[calaverasgrande]

Clearly you've never seen a Windows based dual Xeon tower... They're even larger...

Oh we got a ton of those.
All our Avid rigs are HP Z820 or Z800.
Freakishly large cases just to hold a double wide video card a host card and 2 cpus?
You could fit that in shorter wider box, take the DL380 for example.
take away half the drives and half the ram maybe knock off a few inches?

 

[theSeb]

Oh we got a ton of those.
All our Avid rigs are HP Z820 or Z800.
Freakishly large cases just to hold a double wide video card a host card and 2 cpus?
You could fit that in shorter wider box, take the DL380 for example.
take away half the drives and half the ram maybe knock off a few inches?

Why should the obsession with thin move into the workstation market? One of my best friends works for the moving pictures company. They are rather large in the business of making movies /sarcasm. None of the people working there are particularly concerned about the size of their workstation. It is simply not a consideration.

 

[deconstruct60]

Oh we got a ton of those.
All our Avid rigs are HP Z820 or Z800.
....
You could fit that in shorter wider box, take the DL380 for example.

Very few will want a DL380 packed to the gills sitting right by their desk. The box can be made smaller and louder. But smaller, same internals , and keep the same noise level isn't likely to happen in an affordable package.

 

[calaverasgrande]

Very few will want a DL380 packed to the gills sitting right by their desk. The box can be made smaller and louder. But smaller, same internals , and keep the same noise level isn't likely to happen in an affordable package.

of course the DL380 is kind of a wacky example.
But think about it, there really isnt any need to support 3.5" drives anymore. SSDs are all 2.5" or smaller. if you need 1TB or larger drives, they got those in 2.5", or you can go external.
My main point is that a redesigned Mac Pro only has to accomodate a video card and maybe a single host card. I dont think I have seen a Mac Pro with more than two cards in it since G5 days. that is wasted space.
And given that there are rarely more than a handful of Mac video cards you would ever buy, going with an onboard video solution may not be as weird as it sounds. There is no reason you cant go with highend Nvidia or AMD chips. so long as there is adequate cooling.
The main forte of the Mac Pro is that you have dual multicore CPUs, so just by virtue of having that voracious mouth of CPU sucking up data and spitting it out, it's performance is huge. That is why 2 and 3 year old Mac Pros can hold their own against Core I7's with faster ram.
If they try and pawn off a single cpu Mac Pro due to limited thermal envelope in a smaller case, I think they would lose many higher end users.
I know my art and video guys would balk.

 

[makaveli559m]

What I want:

5mm MAX thickness
No optical drive
You can ditch Ethernet and FireWire for the thinness
4gb RAM Standard
5400 RPM Drive, 1tb upgradable to 4tb



Ports:
3 Thunderbolt ports
1 USB 3.0
Maybeee a HDMI, as a bonus feature



Oh yea, almost forgot to mention I want RAM to be user upgradable, IDC about other stuff though.

So basically you want a MacBook Pro minus the pro part you might as well ask for integrated graphics. Non of what is even on the rMBP should even be considered pro, not a lot of ports and no optical price equals really expensive ultra book/netbook, as for the Mac Pro without the pro should be just a net desktop.

 

[siroma]

Just got an Hackintosh and up to now I am quite happy
The case is from an old g5
Top range i7 inside seen as a 8 core
I'm getting a new card with dual dvi and miniport
I'll buy extra ram (up to 32)
Up to now no compatibility problems..
The only thing... I miss thunderbolt but... Hey... Isn't it the same for MacPros?

 

[Lesser Evets]

What I want:

5mm MAX thickness
No optical drive
You can ditch Ethernet and FireWire for the thinness
4gb RAM Standard
5400 RPM Drive, 1tb upgradable to 4tb



Ports:
3 Thunderbolt ports
1 USB 3.0
Maybeee a HDMI, as a bonus feature

I can beat that. I want:

1mm MAX thickness
4 3TB 10000 RPM drives
All ports including HDMI and and FW and Ethernet
2 optical drives
4 wheels to drive it all over the world and show people how awesome it is.
$10 starting price.

 

[deconstruct60]

there are three thermal zones inside of the current Mac Pro design.

a. 5.25 bays / Power Supply
b. 3.5" bays / PCI-e cards
c. CPU/RAM tray

b+ c are roughly 2/3 of the height. That's isn't moving to new requirements.

With modern equivalents for GPU PCI-e cards and CPU, the amount of power ( and hence thermal) doesn't go down at all. In fact may go up a bit since many of the top end GPU cards are now just as big, if not larger, power hogs these days. The need for just as large diameter fans that are present now will still be there if want to efficiently move just as much air (if not more) at the same relatively low levels of noise.

Apple could shift to 2.5" drives and move them to the Power Supply thermal zone. That would perhaps trim some height, but not to the point of some mini tower height.

And given that there are rarely more than a handful of Mac video cards you would ever buy, going with an onboard video solution may not be as weird as it sounds.

embedded video isn't even much of a trade-off if leave most of the slots available. If there are 3-4 slots then not really a big issue. Eventually though I suspect that even the Xeon E5 series will pick up models with GPUs in them. It is already true in the Xeon E3 series.

If they try and pawn off a single cpu Mac Pro due to limited thermal envelope in a smaller case, I think they would lose many higher end users.
I know my art and video guys would balk.

The Mac Pro cases is stretched over a pretty diverse set of users. Even collected together as an aggregate they are still relatively small subset of Mac users. The case to cover single and dual CPU package is probably just necessary to make the product worthwhile.

However, focusing on the CPU is misguided going forward. Currently and going forward there will likely be much more computational "horsepower" in two 200W PCI-e cards than there will be in the CPU "chamber" of a workstation. It isn't primarily just about the CPUs anymore and that is one of the problems with the current Mac Pro case design. How they managed he PCI-e zone is just as import, if not more so, now and into the future. 3-4 slots should be enough but 1 is likely too few and two is likely too inflexible given the highly diverse target audience.

 

[d-m-a-x]

there are three thermal zones inside of the current Mac Pro design.

a. 5.25 bays / Power Supply
b. 3.5" bays / PCI-e cards
c. CPU/RAM tray

b+ c are roughly 2/3 of the height. That's isn't moving to new requirements.

With modern equivalents for GPU PCI-e cards and CPU, the amount of power ( and hence thermal) doesn't go down at all. In fact may go up a bit since many of the top end GPU cards are now just as big, if not larger, power hogs these days. The need for just as large diameter fans that are present now will still be there if want to efficiently move just as much air (if not more) at the same relatively low levels of noise.

Apple could shift to 2.5" drives and move them to the Power Supply thermal zone. That would perhaps trim some height, but not to the point of some mini tower height.




embedded video isn't even much of a trade-off if leave most of the slots available. If there are 3-4 slots then not really a big issue. Eventually though I suspect that even the Xeon E5 series will pick up models with GPUs in them. It is already true in the Xeon E3 series.



The Mac Pro cases is stretched over a pretty diverse set of users. Even collected together as an aggregate they are still relatively small subset of Mac users. The case to cover single and dual CPU package is probably just necessary to make the product worthwhile.

However, focusing on the CPU is misguided going forward. Currently and going forward there will likely be much more computational "horsepower" in two 200W PCI-e cards than there will be in the CPU "chamber" of a workstation. It isn't primarily just about the CPUs anymore and that is one of the problems with the current Mac Pro case design. How they managed he PCI-e zone is just as import, if not more so, now and into the future. 3-4 slots should be enough but 1 is likely too few and two is likely too inflexible given the highly diverse target audience.

3.5 hard drives are still the best bang for the buck, storage speed, cost and reliability. SSD's are great, but are expensive - and less reliable than spinning hd's. A quick search shows no 3tb 2.5 7200rpm hd's. The sentiment is great, and i'm sure it is the direction we are moving towards. But i wish apple and other computer hardware makers would respect the professional sector, and not just go with the trends.

 

[Tutor]

... . However, focusing on the CPU is misguided going forward. Currently and going forward there will likely be much more computational "horsepower" in two 200W PCI-e cards than there will be in the CPU "chamber" of a workstation. It isn't primarily just about the CPUs anymore and that is one of the problems with the current Mac Pro case design.

No truer words have been spoken about the diminution of the CPU by PCI-e cards, especially the CUDA cards. The first pic, below, shows a Blender render of a scene that 4 E5-4650s took 11:56.40 minutes to complete. The second pic shows a Blender render of the same scene that 1 GTX 690 took 4:57.32 minutes to complete. In this case, one GTX 690 ($1k each retail) renders 2.4x faster than 4 E5-4650s ($3.6k each retail). Thus, when deconstruct60 speaks, all who care about valuable information should listen.

How they managed the PCI-e zone is just as import, if not more so, now and into the future. 3-4 slots should be enough but 1 is likely too few and two is likely too inflexible given the highly diverse target audience.

Blender is able to use all of the qualifying CUDA cores in your system [ http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/GPU_Rendering ]. Because of this flexibility and innovation, I, on the other hand would advocate 6-8 PCI-e slots (and PSU and connecting cables sufficient for 2-4 dual eight pin connectors) for those 3d/video artists who have access to and use a progressive app like the free Blender 2.64 that allows the selection of all CUDA cores, rather than the CPU, as the renderer. Accordingly, some of our time might be better spent getting the various creative app houses like Adobe, Autodesk, Sidefx, and Maxon to fully open their eyes and read all of the CUDA/OCL code on the wall. I know that Autodesk and Adobe have begun looking at the wall, but they too have a way to go to become comprehensive. [ http://www.nvidia.com/object/media-and-entertainment.html ]

BTW - I also recommend that all of your CUDA card purchases be of the same model/specs where you will be using them on the same scenes/projects.

 

[Neodym]

But i wish apple and other computer hardware makers would respect the professional sector, and not just go with the trends.

Even the professional sector isn't static, but in constant flux. Significant changes may occur less often, but they do happen. Some trends will have a higher, others a lower influence. But the professional sector can't completely ignore them all of the time. My feeling is that we are about to see another change coming up - perhaps so big it is in fact a complete paradigm change...

 

[deconstruct60]

... In this case, one GTX 690 ($1k each retail) renders 2.4x faster than 4 E5-4650s ($3.6k each retail). ....
.... Because of this flexibility and innovation, I, on the other hand would advocate 6-8 PCI-e slots (and PSU and connecting cables sufficient for 2-4 dual eight pin connectors) for those 3d/video artists who have access to...

The same reason ( cost and extremely marginal market penetration increase ) that there aren't E7's or new E5-4000 class CPUs in Mac Pros is the same reason there won't be more than 4 PCI-e slots in any new Mac Pro.

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple may retain 1-2 3.5" bays in a revised Mac Pro ( more likely if drop both 5.25" bays). However, a 4 x 3.5" set up would be ignoring several significant factors that already have deep traction.

3.5 hard drives are still the best bang for the buck, storage speed, cost and reliability.

$/GB perhaps. $/GB/random-IO-Mbps not really. Drop 'speed' and that is closer to being an accurate assessment. The question though is whether one of the Mac Pro's primary duty is bulk storage server.

For example, on Seagate's site:

" ... Switch to 2.5” drives for cost-effective performance

Improve your performance by 15% by switching to Savvio 15K. Additionally, these drives deliver up to 10% faster random reads and up to 8% faster random writes vs. legacy 3.5-inch 15K drives. ... "
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/3-5/cheetah-15k/

SSD's are great, but are expensive - and less reliable than spinning hd's.

There is little quantitative evidence that SSDs are significantly less reliable in general. There are bad SSD models, but there are bad HDD models also. The expectation management has been bad with SSDs. Due to "Solid State" in the name folks expected them to last longer. That hasn't really proven true. Flash wears out and controller/firmware can be problematical in both HDDs and SSDs.

A quick search shows no 3tb 2.5 7200rpm hd's.

15Krpm 3.5" HDDs introduced over last 12-18 months ? [There are older ones around but since SSDs have gained deeper traction, power efficiency is higher priority, and HDD platter density has gone up the trend is toward 2.5". ]

You are cherry-picking the 3TB capacity threshold. In about 12-18 months there will be 3TB 2.5" drives.

If go back to the era where the current Mac Pro's basic design parameters were form there weren't folks stuffing 3TB of data inside of a Mac Pro. [ e.g., in 2006 4 x 500GB would get you about 2TB total. ] So "pros" needing to deal with 3+TB have been dealing with external storage for a long while. It doesn't disappear now. There is always going to be a subset of the Mac Pro population that needs to use storage outside the box.

3-4 2TB 2.5" drives ends could provie 6-8TB of usable space. It isn't like internal capacity would not be making progress over time.

The sentiment is great, and i'm sure it is the direction we are moving towards.

So they shouldn't skate toward where the puck is going. They should skate to where the puck has been?

But i wish apple and other computer hardware makers would respect the professional sector, .

The "legacy" sector is probably more accurate adjective than the "professional" sector. Lots of professionals who handle large data sets have been moving to 2.5" drives to handle near-line storage for several years already.

 

[thekev]

No truer words have been spoken about the diminution of the CPU by PCI-e cards, especially the CUDA cards. The first pic, below, shows a Blender render of a scene that 4 E5-4650s took 11:56.40 minutes to complete. The second pic shows a Blender render of the same scene that 1 GTX 690 took 4:57.32 minutes to complete. In this case, one GTX 690 ($1k each retail) renders 2.4x faster than 4 E5-4650s ($3.6k each retail). Thus, when deconstruct60 speaks, all who care about valuable information should listen.

I remember reading about people using GTX cards with iray as well. The problem is when it gets to more complex setups. Looking at the example there, they seem to be reliant on procedural textures for the car. A bump map could have been used to get that look to the paint, or it could just be a procedural flake map. The point being that only a few cards could handle something heavy with seamless textures applied. The Tesla cards would be an amazing choice for something like that, but it pushes you up to a much higher price point. Apple has been a little stingy on video ram. I was going by the memory figures listed at the top of the page in those attachments. On blender itself, it has become a really interesting application in the past year or so, as they reworked so many things. The ui still looks abysmal, but it has really evolved quite a lot.

Blender is able to use all of the qualifying CUDA cores in your system [ http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/GPU_Rendering ]. Because of this flexibility and innovation, I, on the other hand would advocate 6-8 PCI-e slots (and PSU and connecting cables sufficient for 2-4 dual eight pin connectors) for those 3d/video artists who have access to and use a progressive app like the free Blender 2.64 that allows the selection of all CUDA cores, rather than the CPU, as the renderer. Accordingly, some of our time might be better spent getting the various creative app houses like Adobe, Autodesk, Sidefx, and Maxon to fully open their eyes and read all of the CUDA/OCL code on the wall. I know that Autodesk and Adobe have begun looking at the wall, but they too have a way to go to become comprehensive. [ http://www.nvidia.com/object/media-and-entertainment.html ]

BTW - I also recommend that all of your CUDA card purchases be of the same model/specs where you will be using them on the same scenes/projects.

I don't know how you'd dissipate the amount of heat to use that many cards. In terms of bandwidth, that pretty much limits you to a dual package configuration if you want an array of gpus. Given Apple's desired margins, you're looking at a very expensive package. This is an area where I wouldn't necessarily look to Apple. Dell and Boxx may be more responsive to that kind of market. Even then I don't think you'll see that number of slots capable of supporting gpus. Usually they'll have 2-3 high bandwidth slots.

You mention the software houses. Adobe specifically geared their raytracer for CUDA calculations. SideFX I'm not sure, but they develop it in house. With Autodesk their standard renderers are plugins from NVidia, which acquired Mental Images a long time ago. You'd probably see this take off more if the bulk of cards sold took on more memory. As far as I'm aware, they can't go with typically memory mapped textures for gpu processing where they're simply loaded into virtual memory. The entirety must fit on the card memory of the gpu, at least for now.

 

[Tutor]

The same reason ( cost and extremely marginal market penetration increase ) that there aren't E7's or new E5-4000 class CPUs in Mac Pros is the same reason there won't be more than 4 PCI-e slots in any new Mac Pro.

... . .. . The Tesla cards would be an amazing choice for something like that, but it pushes you up to a much higher price point. Apple has been a little stingy on video ram. I was going by the memory figures listed at the top of the page in those attachments. ...
I don't know how you'd dissipate the amount of heat to use that many cards. In terms of bandwidth, that pretty much limits you to a dual package configuration if you want an array of gpus. Given Apple's desired margins, you're looking at a very expensive package. This is an area where I wouldn't necessarily look to Apple. Dell and Boxx may be more responsive to that kind of market. Even then I don't think you'll see that number of slots capable of supporting gpus. Usually they'll have 2-3 high bandwidth slots.

I agree with you both that one should't expect such expansion possibilities on a stock Mac Pro next year. That's why I have been, and in the future will be, building my own systems. My EVGA SR-2s (one with dual 5675s and the other with dual 5680s), EVGA SR-X (dual E5-2690s), and Asus Z9PE-D8 WS (dual E5-2687Ws) can each handle 4 PCI-e dual slot video cards (they each have 7 PCI-e slots). I prefer the 4 gig Galaxy 680s video cards for CUDA chores in my PCI-e 3 x16 slots (and 580s for my PCI-e 2 x16 slots). At $525 each, the new Galaxy cards are cost effective, stable, extremely fast and tweakable. I keep all of the GPUs extremely cool with Sunon fans coupled with a fan controller: blowing on them from the front of the case and on the top of them from the side door and sucking the warm air out from the rear.

I have but one GTX690 that I use on board in WolfPackPrime0 because it is slot challenged (it has just four internal slots - two slots used by the GTX690, one slot for the OWC SSD PCI-e 240g storage card and one slot used by an expansion chassis interface card). Right now I'm using my eight slot external PCI-e expansion chassis and my four slot external PCI-e expansion chassis for rendering chores with other systems.

 

[thekev]

I agree with you both that one should't expect such expansion possibilities on a stock Mac Pro next year. That's why I have been, and in the future will be, building my own systems. My EVGA SR-2s (one with dual 5675s and the other with dual 5680s), EVGA SR-X (dual E5-2690s), and Asus Z9PE-D8 WS (dual E5-2687Ws) can each handle 4 PCI-e dual slot video cards (they each have 7 PCI-e slots). I prefer the 4 gig Galaxy 680s video cards for CUDA chores in my PCI-e 3 x16 slots (and 580s for my PCI-e 2 x16 slots). At $525 each, the new Galaxy cards are cost effective, stable, extremely fast and tweakable. I keep all of the GPUs extremely cool with Sunon fans coupled with a fan controller: blowing on them from the front of the case and on the top of them from the side door and sucking the warm air out from the rear.

I'd like Apple to go the direction of leveraging gpu capability. It would be awesome. We seem to agree that if they did this with the mac pro, the price would likely drift into astronomical territory. The problem is also likely coupled with uncertainty regarding long term support from Apple, given how this line has been treated.

As for your rig, I'm jealous whenever I read about it. I figured you had a couple 16 lane slots and maybe an 8 on a dual package board or something of that sort. I was close enough. May I ask how gpu rendering holds up with heavier scenes or a lot of textures or if you've tried any workflow aside from Cycles? I'm just wondering. When I look at the example, it appears to be both a studio shot and an extremely light model that has just been smoothed a bit. I'm really interested in how these cards hold up on something heavy with lots of attributes mapped to 4k or so and complex lighting. One of the interesting things about CG is you don't have to comp as many shots. Rather than light something 10 different ways in a studio and frankenstein it together, you can resolve quite a lot via light linking, render pass elements, and well organized object ids.