Makes sense. I don't think I'm saturating USB at all (if so I've never noticed) so I just use external hubs. YMMV.
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MP 7,1 Mac Pro (2019) most popular configuration
- Thread starter Romanesco
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Makes sense. I don't think I'm saturating USB at all (if so I've never noticed) so I just use external hubs. YMMV.
welcome to the brotherhood.
i pretty much got the same setup as you
My initial ordered config was
- 3.3GHz 12‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
- 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
- 4TB SSD storage
- Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
- Apple Afterburner card
- Stainless steel frame with wheels
- Promise 2Ji equipped with 8TB and 16TB disks
The new config is, and the change was made for following reasons
- Benefit for the Afterburner was impossible to estimate or know precisely for workload. Apple video/editing software other than QT is not used. The Afterburner if ordered with the new Mac Pro cannot be returned for refund if found to produce no benefit. As it can be purchased separately as an accessory later on, it can be purchased, tested for benefits, and returned for full refund if found to be of little benefit.
- The Apple cost for upgrading to 4TB SSD was considered unacceptable and its SSD not as fast as some alternatives such as Sonnet/Samsung combo card with its flexibility and upgradeable Samsung EVO Plus SSD/flash blades.
- The Radeon Pro Vega II with 32GB with HBM2 memory was considered to be far superior to the Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. In addition the Radeon Pro 580X cannot be returned for refund if purchased as part of the MP7,1 order.
- 3.2GHz 16‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
- 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
- 1TB SSD storage
- Radeon Pro Vega II with 32GB with HBM2 memory
- Stainless steel frame with wheels
- Promise 2Ji equipped with 8TB and 16TB disks
Will be adding extra RAM from 3rd party vendor.
Will be adding adding a Sonnet/Samsung M.2 combo x16 PCIe card with 1x 2TB blade and 3x 1TB blades. Setup as a 1TB APFS boot image and 1TB HFS+ on the 2TB blade and the other three 1TB blades as HFS+ allowing RAID-0 across the 4x ITB HFS+.
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FYI...
After changing my MP7,1 order from my original order the delivery date time frame has changed slightly, as was expected.
The original was estimated Jan 30 - Feb 5, 2020.
The changed order is now estimated Arriving Feb 7 - Feb 13, 2020.
So essentially, its slid just one week and IMO acceptable.
US Pacific NW coast location.
My new changed order went from
- 3.3GHz 12‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
- 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
- 4TB SSD storage
- Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
- Apple Afterburner card
- Stainless steel frame with wheels
- Promise 2Ji equipped with 8TB and 16TB disks
- 3.2GHz 16‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
- 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
- 1TB SSD storage
- Radeon Pro Vega II with 32GB with HBM2 memory
- Stainless steel frame with wheels
- Promise 2Ji equipped with 8TB and 16TB disks
Identical config with "Stainless steel frame with feet" is Jan 6 - Jan 10 delivery.
Switch to "Stainless steel frame with wheels" and delivery is Feb 10 - Feb 14.
FWIW, there appears to be a way to buy the wheels from resellers and add them. Cannot 100% confirm that yet.
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but what do you do with your RAM? I edit 4k and high FPS video. And 64GB was great for me on nMP. Im using 96GB ram on the 7,1. And I feel like i wont be using all of it.
- I will be adding 8x 32GB R-DIMMs (3rd party RAM), so total RAM footprint will be 288GB and all 12 RAM slots used.
- Also, I've checked my change order and its new pricing, and had trouble reconciling Apple's new pricing to what I had figured it to be, and after struggling with this I found out they did not remove the Afterburner.
- Our intent was to consider buying the Afterburner at a later date so we could test its benefits and return it if we found insufficient benefits. So we now have to consider calling Apple back to change the ordered again to have the Afterburner removed from the order, or just let it be and accept the Afterburner. After discussing this with co-worker we decided to keep the Afterburner as we do a lot of QT Player X work and hope the Afterburner will be useful for this.... fingers and toes crossed.
- I always thought changing an order could cause issues to arise, and I was right. I could get confrontational with Apple about this issue as I have a record/proof of my Chat session that I used for asking for the order change, and that Chat session is very clear I asked for the Afterburner to be removed, and have an Apple "change order" Reference Number that shows Afterburner had been removed.
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- I will be adding 8x 32GB R-DIMMs (3rd party RAM), so total RAM footprint will be 288GB and all 12 RAM slots used.
- Also, I've checked my change order and its new pricing, and had trouble reconciling Apple's new pricing to what I had figured it to be, and after struggling with this I found out they did not remove the Afterburner.
- Our intent was to consider buying the Afterburner at a later date so we could test its benefits and return it if we found insufficient benefits. So we now have to consider calling Apple back to change the ordered again to have the Afterburner removed from the order, or just let it be and accept the Afterburner. After discussing this with co-worker we decided to keep the Afterburner as we do a lot of QT Player X work and hope the Afterburner will be useful for this.... fingers and toes crossed.
- I always thought changing an order could cause issues to arise, and I was right. I could get confrontational with Apple about this issue as I have a record/proof of my Chat session that I used for asking for the order change, and that Chat session is very clear I asked for the Afterburner to be removed, and have an Apple "change order" Reference Number that shows Afterburner had been removed.
Or you leave it for now, allow it to arrive and then raise the issue. If you’re lucky apple might just let you keep the afterburner like they did with some other people who received higher specs than they asked for!
VMs.
Also note that "excess" RAM isn't wasted, it will be used for file system caches.
Forgive me ignorance. is that always the case with file system caches using up all excess ram? What's the purpose of that?
Also, I kind of have an idea how VM's use all that ram, but what line of work are you in? Curious about other's people use of the BEAST7,1!
Well, Apple will have charged my account for the Afterburner when they ship the assembled MP7,1 to me. So it's unlikely to be a 'freebie'.
My only hope if it proves to be of no benefit, will be that they accept me returning it for a full refund, based on Apple's fumbling the change order, along with my proof in the recorded Chat session.[automerge]1577030938[/automerge]
The kernel file cache resides in RAM. The cache size is extremely dynamic and grows and shrinks as needed. The cache holds recent data that is read or written to storage space such as the internal SSD, internal disks/SSDs, and external storage devices. If data in the cache is read frequently the reader process/application will enjoy extremely fast RAM/memory to user-level RAM/memory transfers.
The kernel will shrink the buffer cache if necessary quickly to accommodate applications' demand for more RAM/memory. It's one of the best memory management aspects of macOS and its underlying UNIX pinnings.
There's a lot more that can said about the usefulness of the kernel buffer cache but rest assured, the kernel will be very happy (and making the user very happy) to use as much RAM/memory as it can lay its hands on.
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The purpose is that accessing RAM is often an at least an order of magnitude (if not more) faster than accessing the storage drive. If the CPU needs the data on the storage device and it is not in RAM then it will sit and wait for 100's or 1,000's of cycles doing nothing. So it is better to gather data before need it if you can. Some HPC examples are here in nanoseconds (ns).
The file system cache won't use literally all of the memory, but if the OS thinks there is a "too much " free RAM then the file system will get more as data transfers back and forth to the storage drive. As the memory pressure goes up the File System can safely and quickly "toss" the read cache data by just abandoning it ( master copy is on the drive ). So it only takes time to zero out the page to allocated it to a program for some other use ( many times, caching by the app itself with a app specific scheme it hopes works better. )
On macOS, you can go to 'Activity Monitor' and and look at the 'Memory' tab and there likely will be 1-3 GB (or more) allocated to cached files if there is lots of free RAM.
It used to be the case that some folks would have 2-3 computers on/around their desk so that could test applications and code on different systems ( windows, linux , macOS or interaction of 2-3 linux systems, etc.) big memory footprints allow that to be collapsed into one bigger box.
If you wanted to use just 2x64GB you’d have to order it with the base memory and buy aftermarket. The fewest 64GB modules Apple will sell pre-installed is 6, which leads me to:
Effectively you want slightly more memory (using just 8GB dimms it’ll max out at 96GB), but at much slower speeds?
That makes no sense. The quote that didn’t actually happen has been around since at least the early 90s. Which 8GB dimms were you using 30 years ago?
16core, 2TB, 32GB, Vega II 16GB, Trackpad (using existing Dell UW34 & BenQ displays).
+ 192GB Nelix Ram, Sonnet M.2 4x4 (migrate 4x Samsung 970 Evo+) as Raid 0 fast cache
+ OWC Thunderbay 6 (migrate 6 x Samsung 2.5" SSDs as RAID 4 media; 1 x Samsung SM951 M.2 as Alt Boot)
Thinking of getting the Sonnet/Samsung combo as well, but with four 2TB
970 Evo Plus blades. Thinking of doing something similar with the blades.
Curious as to why:
- Two boot images on the 2TB and why one is APFS and the other HFS+
Are you going to boot off this card?
- HFS+ (as oppose to APFS) on the RAID-0, for speed?
Thanks!