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"Little Bird" MacPro Specs

MacVidCards said:
All I am saying is that the OP's request for "Open GPU" support is like asking for Ice Cream to rain from Heaven. It isn't going to happen and it isn't even possible. The closest thing to this is what now exists, most cards work without EFI. I am the MESSENGER here folks, trying to pass along some intelligence but instead I get back the opposite.
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It's the word support.

Support means Apple would say "Hey, you know all those random graphics cards out there you can buy off the shelf? We will support that." At which point everything changes.

You're right, at this point Apple isn't stopping you from installing your own drivers or your own cards.

But also right now the support they added in the drivers isn't officially acknowledged. Not by Apple. Not by NVidia. Not by ATI. That's a far cry from "supported."

If I stick a new ATI card in my machine, using Apple's drivers, and I hit a bug, who do I go to to get it fixed?

Again, the keyword is support, which is something we don't have right now. If Apple said with the new Mac Pro they were going to support that sort of thing, that would be a huge step.
 
I'm not sure exactly what open GPU support means, just passing along what I heard. I'd assume it means PC cards will now officially work in the MacPro.

And to the guy that says it's impossible, didn't everyone say that about OSX on Intel?
 
goMac said:
It's the word support.

Support means Apple would say "Hey, you know all those random graphics cards out there you can buy off the shelf? We will support that." At which point everything changes.

You're right, at this point Apple isn't stopping you from installing your own drivers or your own cards.

But also right now the support they added in the drivers isn't officially acknowledged. Not by Apple. Not by NVidia. Not by ATI. That's a far cry from "supported."

If I stick a new ATI card in my machine, using Apple's drivers, and I hit a bug, who do I go to to get it fixed?

Again, the keyword is support, which is something we don't have right now. If Apple said with the new Mac Pro they were going to support that sort of thing, that would be a huge step.
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And again I say, if you are waiting for this, you are waiting for Godot.

You can do that if you wish. You obviously have more time to spare then most.

Or you can take advantage of the drivers that exist in the OS today.

I think that you are using the word "support" in a different sense than I am. I think you are meaning "tech support" as in "AppleCare"

The drivers "support" these cards in the sense that the cards boot up and work. If you are changing the word "support" to now mean that Apple Employees will "support" your decision to run these cards with answers to questions, etc, we both know that will never, EVER happen.

I never used the word in that fashion, any more than I used the phrase "Fully Support" that you tried to put in my mouth a few posts up. How about I speak for myself, and you speak for yourself? I'm sorry if that sounds a little anal, but I work in the high pressure/high precision Film Production biz where the exact meaning of words is VERY important.

"Open GPU Support" as mentioned by OP can't and won't exist with this vaunted "full support" you demand. The architecture of a Mac Pro and the company behind it will NOT do that. You may as well wait for Epson to include a license from the Treasury (with Federal Tech Support ! ) for you to print $20 bills on your new "Stylus 2020"

You can either buy one of the 3 "Fully Supported" cards on the Apple website, or use some other "hack". (or a used Apple card) There are currently no other options in the "Fully Supported" department.

Can we agree on that and let it drop?
 
I currently don't see any "anger" or "yelling" at all, except from MacVidCards.

I get what MacVidCards is saying, which is that if you want to, you can make non-Apple cards work. He's also saying that if you hit a snag, you had better be willing and able to fix it yourself.

To me, this is like the early mp3 days, when many songs were being ripped with crappy codec settings, and vast numbers of those songs sounded like trash. I was really into the endless modifications to LAME encoding switches at the time, and finally decided to just settle on a setting that worked beautifully on every album I had. As it turns out, that was pretty much the end of the line for improving the encoding presets, so all my music was fine.

I spent months researching and tweaking back then, and I don't feel like going through all that again, but I *am* willing to do *some* research and tweaking, given a certain result / product in GPU performance. If it comes to a point where I'm bricking GPUs and having to go buy new ones so I can get work done for clients, I won't be doing that. Thing is, my 5870 from Apple works perfectly for me now, so my motivation is relatively low when it comes to messing with newer cards.

I think it's awesome that I can use a 580 right now, if I need to. Thanks for the info on that. Furthermore and back on topic, I hope this rumor on future Mac Pro possibilities turns out to be true or close to it. That would be a rad machine!
 
JesterJJZ said:
Here's what my little bird said.

Intel C606 chipset dual Xeon-E5
6 PCIe 3.0 slots (4 @ X16, 2 @ X4)
16 DIMM sockets
Dual Thunderbolt ports
Rack-mountable, redesigned tower
Onboard SAS/SATA hardware RAID 0,1,5
Open GPU support, NVIDIA at first, ATI Later
No USB 3.0
Coming in April

What does your little bird say? ;)
Click to expand...
I think it very likely!!
 
I'm not sure exactly what open GPU support means, just passing along what I heard. I'd assume it means PC cards will now officially work in the MacPro.

And to the guy that says it's impossible, didn't everyone say that about OSX on Intel?
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It is highly improbable that Apple would see it fit to put that much time and effort into allowing their platform to use devices which may not be supported properly or outdated the moment they come out. AMD and NVIDIA already offer Mac compatible cards (or they did), and yet the driver support for these cards was dismal and a PITA at best.

Why would Apple want to extend this sort of support to -all- PC GPUs as well? The manufactures of these cards would still need to write their own kernel extensions, since the drivers Apple offers do not necessarily support "everything" under the sun.

If they wanted to, sure, they /could/ run PC cards in the Mac Pro- complete with EFI boot graphics. Silicon Graphics (SGI) did something very similar for their Prism desktop- an Itanium (IA64) machine that ran two slightly modified PC ATI graphics cards in tandem (these were AGP cards- yes, the motherboard had two AGP slots). The graphics cards that the Prism used came with PC firmware on them, so SGI wrote a BIOS emulator of the sorts and a thunking layer that allowed them to initialize the GPUs under the Itanium version of EFI and use them for boot-time graphics.

This solution was extremely complicated and few (if any) additional graphics cards actually worked with the BIOS emulator inside the EFI firmware- even if you did get another pair of ATI cards inside the system physically, they often didn't work with the specialized version of Linux required to drive the wonky SGI hardware on the other end.

Anyways, my point here is that getting PC GPU cards to run under EFI is not impossible, but getting manufactures to write GPU drivers for Mac OS X could quite possibly be. Why does everyone want to subject themselves to situations where your brand new ATI 9970 8GB hexa-core GPU is only supported in Mac OS X 10.9.3 because Saphire or Diamond didn't feel like keeping the drivers up to snuff for Mac OS X 10.10, and the PCI IDs for the GPUs are such that any other driver won't work without hacking the preference lists first?

I'd rather just stick with my slightly underpowered, but Apple approved card. It works, Autodesk supports it, and I don't have to worry about drivers for it because it's driven by a 64-bit compatible kernel extension.

-SC
 
personally I want to see a triple output card with no fans on it. Low power for my display is fine. If I wanted to game on a macpro it would be different but I dont.
 
MacVidCards said:
I have started 3 separate threads regarding the fact that YOU ALREADY HAVE THIS.

Last spring 5870s and 6870s started working with no EFI.

Then 10.8 came out and suddenly 6950s and 6970s started working OOTB.

And now Nvidia has released a 10.7.3 driver that makes MOST of their cards work with no EFI.

No EFI = No boot screens but hey...YOU CAN PUT A GTX470/570/480/580 IN YOUR MAC PRO RIGHT NOW AND IT WILL WORK !!!!

If you want Boot screens you can pay more for a card that has EFI. But with a current 10.7.3 install, quite a few video cards now work without a single hack or trick.

Oddly, whenever I post this info ANGRY people come and insist that this isn't "real" news or good news until everything works perfectly all of the time.

Once you understand how EFI vs BIOS works, you will understand why this can't happen.Every now and then, someone decides to create an aftermarket Mac GPUU and writes the EFI for it. Those cards can work perfectly, but for the rest, the drivers are THERE ALREADY. Just be patient and you have support for MANY PC video cards RIGHT NOW...you just don't see a boot screen.

We are MEANT to do this guys. Ask yourselves why there have been Quadro 5000 drivers since 10.6.5? You could use ATY_Init in the past. But I also believe that Apple or Nvidia was counting on someone like myself to come along and write EFI for the cards. I did, and if you want a Quadro 5000 that runs Apple Displays and shows boot screens, I sell them. If you want a GTX480 that works in your Mac Pro with no outside power, I sell them.

If you want a 6870 that shows boot screen on DVI, you can make it yourself if you have a 3,1 or later. (Or buy it from one of many people who have used Netkas' work to make 6870s)

Apple could probably write their machine EFI boot rom to allow limited VGA functionality to ALL PC cards. But it would be clunky, low res, single color, etc. That isn't how Macs work. To make a seamless, pretty boot screen, you need a custom EFI for each variety of card. And nobody is going to write one of those for every card being made.

So...it seems that AMD and Nvidia have opened up their drivers to self initialize most of their cards in OSX. When I post this info I frequently get screamed at that it isn't perfect. Well, it isn't. But at least it is there. If you want a cheap Mac GPU, you have options. If you want smooth boot screens and solid monitor support, pay a little more and get a flashed card or an Apple OEM card.

In the past, your ONLY option was Apple OEM or flashed cards. Now it is about as "open" as it is going to get. Rejoice !!! Order a GTX570 from Newegg and use a GT120 or 2600XT as your "Boot Screen" card. Barefeats is in the process of posting more info and tests on this.

GPU options are about as "Open" as they are going to get.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this info MacvidCards, I am currently using a 5850 on my 1,1 and was wondering when this was going to come to happen, but it seems it already is there. Thankfully, most of the people on the market for a upgradeable powerful machine from Apple, care a lot more about having those options than a boot screen, those are generally for those who will buy an iMac. Great to see apple is finally realizing there is a market in this for people demanding power wether it is for heavy applications or gaming.
 
MacVidCards said:
And again I say, if you are waiting for this, you are waiting for Godot.

You can do that if you wish. You obviously have more time to spare then most.
Click to expand...

Never said I wasn't. I've got my Radeon 5870. But it would certainly be nice.

MacVidCards said:
Or you can take advantage of the drivers that exist in the OS today.
Click to expand...

I certainly wouldn't deploy 200 workstations with cards that Apple nor NVidia has ever indicated work. If the drivers stop working with the card next OS update, you've got 200 paperweights.

If Apple or NVidia actually list those cards as supported, at least if they turn into 200 paperweights you can go demand they fix it. As it is now, they can say "Well why did you do that? We never told you those cards worked in OS X."

MacVidCards said:
I think that you are using the word "support" in a different sense than I am. I think you are meaning "tech support" as in "AppleCare"
Click to expand...

Which is the only kind of support that matters if you are using a computer for serious work.

MacVidCards said:
The drivers "support" these cards in the sense that the cards boot up and work. If you are changing the word "support" to now mean that Apple Employees will "support" your decision to run these cards with answers to questions, etc, we both know that will never, EVER happen.
Click to expand...

I'm quoting you quoting the OP. The OP meant "AppleCare support". At which point you responded "but they totally do!"

MacVidCards said:
I never used the word in that fashion, any more than I used the phrase "Fully Support" that you tried to put in my mouth a few posts up.
Click to expand...

Sure you did, when you quoted the OP.

MacVidCards said:
"Open GPU Support" as mentioned by OP can't and won't exist with this vaunted "full support" you demand. The architecture of a Mac Pro and the company behind it will NOT do that. You may as well wait for Epson to include a license from the Treasury (with Federal Tech Support ! ) for you to print $20 bills on your new "Stylus 2020"
Click to expand...

May not exist, that doesn't change what I said.
 
MovieCutter said:
One more, not much more than thunderbolt added with Ivy Bridge...after that, based on their treatment of the Pro apps...it's foggy. Focus shifted too much to consumer.
Click to expand...

Honestly, the whole Mac line is foggy.

Does a thinner Macbook Pro mean a worse GPU? No swappable storage? No one knows!

Windows 8 means my backup choice of OS is entering it's "everything should be giant squares with pictures on them" phase, so I guess I don't have much choice than to go along with Apple.
 
My little bird configuration :

BETTER - K80 , USA - MC563LL/A
One 3.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5
4GB (two 2GB) memory
1TB hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 with 2GB memory
$2299

BEST - K92 , USA - MC586LL/A
Two 2.3GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
4GB (two 2GB) memory
1TB hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 with 2GB memory
$3499

ULTIMATE - K92I , USA - MC587LL/A
Two 2.4GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5
4GB (two 2GB) memory
1TB hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 with 2GB memory
$5299
 
What? How many little birdies are there out there? I think Apple had a little birdy security breach. :p
 
i'm interested in seeing if there will be a re-design. not that i'd be upset if it stayed the same. but the professional line has had some of the best industrial design ever and i'd love to see what they could come up with.
 
goMac said:
I'm quoting you quoting the OP. The OP meant "AppleCare support". At which point you responded "but they totally do!"


.
Click to expand...
I know you are feeling very eager but did you notice that the OP posted some more?


JesterJJZ said:
I'm not sure exactly what open GPU support means, just passing along what I heard. I'd assume it means PC cards will now officially work in the MacPro.

And to the guy that says it's impossible, didn't everyone say that about OSX on Intel?
Click to expand...

He just wanted to know if PC cards worked in Mac Pro. I don't think he ever mentions "Applecare". Maybe my eyes are failing?
 
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wonderspark said:
I currently don't see any "anger" or "yelling" at all, except from MacVidCards.

I get what MacVidCards is saying, which is that if you want to, you can make non-Apple cards work. He's also saying that if you hit a snag, you had better be willing and able to fix it yourself.

... . Thing is, my 5870 from Apple works perfectly for me now, so my motivation is relatively low when it comes to messing with newer cards.

... .
Click to expand...

I feel the same way about my antique H.I.S. and PowerColor 4890's that yield Cinebench 11.5 scores in the high 40's in OSX and mid 80's in Win7, even though if they break I have to fix them myself.
 
goMac said:
What? How many little birdies are there out there? I think Apple had a little birdy security breach. :p
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing.

In any case, what this flock of birdies has in common is that there's no evidence of innovation on getting Apple's highest performing Mac off of a spinning hard disk and onto an SSD as a performance enhancement...a technology that - if memory services - now literally exists in every other Mac model.



-hh
 
goMac said:
It's the word support.

Support means Apple would say "Hey, you know all those random graphics cards out there you can buy off the shelf? We will support that." At which point everything changes.

You're right, at this point Apple isn't stopping you from installing your own drivers or your own cards.

But also right now the support they added in the drivers isn't officially acknowledged. Not by Apple. Not by NVidia. Not by ATI. That's a far cry from "supported."

If I stick a new ATI card in my machine, using Apple's drivers, and I hit a bug, who do I go to to get it fixed?

Again, the keyword is support, which is something we don't have right now. If Apple said with the new Mac Pro they were going to support that sort of thing, that would be a huge step.
Click to expand...

What's funny though, is as maligned as they are, Microsoft has been doing this for years and they're still the devil :)
 
JesterJJZ said:
Here's what my little bird said.

Intel C606 chipset dual Xeon-E5 Almost certainly
6 PCIe 3.0 slots (4 @ X16, 2 @ X4) Not a chance
16 DIMM sockets Not a chance - You WILL have 8
Dual Thunderbolt ports Probably
Rack-mountable, redesigned tower Probably Not
Onboard SAS/SATA hardware RAID 0,1,5 Probably Not
Open GPU support, NVIDIA at first, ATI Later Not a chance
No USB 3.0 Probably Not
Coming in April Probably

What does your little bird say? ;)
Click to expand...

My take...
 
JesterJJZ said:
Here's what my little bird said.

Intel C606 chipset dual Xeon-E5
6 PCIe 3.0 slots (4 @ X16, 2 @ X4)
16 DIMM sockets
Dual Thunderbolt ports
Rack-mountable, redesigned tower
Onboard SAS/SATA hardware RAID 0,1,5
Open GPU support, NVIDIA at first, ATI Later
No USB 3.0
Coming in April

What does your little bird say? ;)
Click to expand...

You have forgotten the flux capacitor.
 
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