Does anyone know with confidence whether other internal storage should be boot-able? It's quite comforting to be able to boot from say a cloned boot drive as a backup.
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MP 7,1 Mac Pro 7,1 Configuration Pricing and Accessories
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Does anyone know with confidence whether other internal storage should be boot-able? It's quite comforting to be able to boot from say a cloned boot drive as a backup.
No one knows for sure, but if they went through the trouble to make it bootable on the cMP.... It seems likely.
I think the T.2 storage also technically operates as an NVMe device, which also lends to the idea that the firmware supports NVMe boot. I think all other modern Apple firmware supports NVMe boot.
Bootable in the initially "out of the box" state. Maybe not. ( well a bit past just maybe ).
Not able to boot at all in any setting? Extremely likely not. It isn't isn't true for external drives. There is about zero rational reason why the external 3rd party drives should have a lower threshold than the internal ones.
The open question is whether Apple will toss the non T2 drives into the same category as the external drives. Given the standard system does not ship with a case lock there is a decent chance that it will.
From a security evaluation standpoint there isn't much difference between "plug in external drive" and " open case , plug drive in , close case " . It is a bit of an extra physical step, but it can be the same unauthorized, highly rogue drive if simply switch physical drive carriers/enclosure.
Other T2 Macs also allow NVMe boot (over Thunderbolt, which is pretty much the same thing.) So It seems unlikely Apple would cut NVMe boot on the Mac Pro. It doesn't make sense that you can boot off NVMe on a MacBook Pro but when you plug that same drive into a Mac Pro it won't work.
Also, there hasn't been anything outright malicious so far on this Mac Pro design.
I've also seen that the newest Mac minis also do boot screens with generic PCIe GPUs over Thunderbolt, so it's likely that would work on the Mac Pro as well.
If you’re thinking about adding your own Radeon VII (to save money against the Vega 2 Pro MPX), you might want to look now as supply is starting to dry up. My gut feeling is that a Radeon VII will be about half the price, but you loose the 32 GB vram advantage and the fan less cooling of the MPX.
The basic chip die is the same. So if Apple is ordering thousands of Vega 2 it isn't like there will be deep supply of "extra" dies lying around to form Radeon VII chips with. Some binning goes on but a substantial amount of dies are just 'set' to a specific feature set. AMD also has a relatively fixed number of 7nm wafers they have access to. So between EPYC 2 , Ryzen 3000 , RX 5700 , ramping Threadripper, and ramping entry Navi ( 5600 ? ) and max config Vega 20's for Vega 2 there are only so many slices of the pie. ( Apple is on same fab, Qualcomm is on same fab, ..... there are lots of folks with holiday season orders. ).
Radeon VII supply will get thinner but it probably won't drop down to zero. AMD doesn't have a NAVI (or RDNA v1.1 ) to replace it for a substantial amount of time. Some stuff isn't going to 'bin' into max Vega 20 and some of that will fill the Radeon VII pipeline. Radeon VII is probably priced close to breakeven for AMD. They aren't going to cry tears if the price goes slightly up due to a supply/demand mismatch.
If Apple prices the Vega 2 too high the supply for the Radeon VII will come back. Apple has a demand bubble to get through this Fall but that too will adjust over time.
Reason VII is missing the Infinity Fabric links. ( even the Solo can be linked up with a Solo and probably a Duo. ) .
If the Mac Pro will boot from a SSD in a PCIe slot, there's even less reason to pay for big SSDs from Apple, unless they price them competitively with anything else with similar performance. Apple can charge for performance - there are plenty of NVMe SSDs that aren't close to as fast as what Apple uses. While the PCIe to NVMe interface boards are pretty simple, they, too, could affect the speed of the drives (some offer more lanes in NVMe sockets than they take up in PCIe slots, and how they manage that contention could affect speed).
What they cannot do successfully is charge more per gigabyte than very fast PCIe solutions. The fastest drives (apart from Optane) seem to go for about $250/terabyte...
What they cannot do successfully is charge more per gigabyte than very fast PCIe solutions. The fastest drives (apart from Optane) seem to go for about $250/terabyte...
Apple has been phasing out optical audio out across the whole Mac line up. Mac Pro not particularly different. ( the iOS devices have incrementally dropped the jacks altogether. )
HDMI has digital audio out and there are adapters back to optical from that.
The headphone jack is on an I/O card. If desperately need optical in then could remove that card and replace with one that has it. Or just use one of the other open slots. Yes that will cost more, but folks can buy specifically what they need.
P.S. the speaker on the Mac Pro is probably good enough for system "beeps" , notifications, and nominal sound. It isn't going to be 'hi-fi' sound reproduction.
You wouldn't need to remove the card- all you need is a USB audio interface with a Toslink connection. Or, if you want a TB3 dock, plenty of those have Toslink as well.
Yes Thunderbolt is another option, but I had put dropping the I/O card into the desperate class. If have many other things to plug up and PCI-e slots to fill then it is an last option.
About zero of the TB docks have optical in. The HDMI out doesn't provision optical in either.
The subset of folks trying to duplicate the ports of the Mac Pro 5,1 as close as possible ( need two way digital optical , Firewire , etc. ) then internal cards are an option as ports on the side of the system.
Added the pricing I could find so far. It looks like most of the accessories aren't available yet.
Probably can accurately infer some though. Apple prices for the accessory kits will probably be consistent with the BTO differences.
The price for a single Vega II solo is different than buying two of them. Apple is giving a $400 'credit' for the swapped out 580X . So ( 2 * 2,400 -> 4,800 and 5,200 - 4,800 = 400 ). So about $2,600 is likely for the kit. Similar for the Duo ( which is also non linear over 2 * solo price). Probably in $5,600 range for the Duo Kit.
But yeah can't find the Vega II stuff in the accessories store. Probably too scarce to sell there at this point anyway.
P.S. AMD's list price fora W5700 was announced at $799
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15124/amd-announces-radeon-pro-w5700-navi-gets-drafted-to-the-pros
If Apple is selling that "off the shelf , slap in" then I suspect they aren't going to be able to move that much.
Added education discount pricing. Please be aware you must meet the requirements to purchase from the education store. 
The model I really wanted - 16 core, 1 TB, min RAM, Vega II, Afterburner - is 13k. Over my budget, because I still need to buy a few thousands worth of media storage and 2 new monitors. And 3rd party RAM soon.
Thinking of going without Vega II and afterburner, getting a cheaper, better graphics card later, and afterburner later.
Thinking of going without Vega II and afterburner, getting a cheaper, better graphics card later, and afterburner later.
That's a good idea. The Radeon VII PC card is only about $529 right now and would offer close performance to the Vega II. You could even pop in two of those.
[automerge]1576000253[/automerge]
The wheels won't be available until late January or early February.
[automerge]1576000253[/automerge]
The wheels won't be available until late January or early February.
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There are no new Radeon VII being made (for months back) . At some point, if demand spikes too high the prices will go back up to the initial retail ones.
Those Vega II prices are over the top. I know that the nVidia Quadro RTX cards are expensive too, but this is more rich than it needs to be when you think about the Radeon VII (only 16 GB Vram, but still). It bit of a shock to me.
LMAO at these GPU prices. I don't need the VRAM, so I'll continue to virtualize MacOS on HP Z8 workstations and add Cyclone or OSS backplanes to host reasonably priced GPUs.
[edit] and $400 for wheels!!!
[edit] and $400 for wheels!!!
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As we have been told on these boards over and over - real professionals won't bat an eye and will just lap those up like a hungry dog. Total impulse-buy zone.
I am surprised that the UK base price is £5499.......
More often than not it’s the same figure in pounds/dollars.
And even more surprised that I could have one before Xmas (if I really needed one, which I don’t.... )
Presumably these are put together in Ireland.
More often than not it’s the same figure in pounds/dollars.
And even more surprised that I could have one before Xmas (if I really needed one, which I don’t....
)Presumably these are put together in Ireland.
Sorry. Probably more than $799. I missed the 'X' suffix on Apple's card. W5700X (there is another 8GB of VRAM over the baseline W5700 ) so it would be more and perhaps exclusive to Apple so they can goose the prices more than just a $100 or so.
This is going to be the most popular model for initial purchases:
3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
48GB (6x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
1TB SSD storage
Checks in at around $6300 via Apple Business.
Says delivery 12/19-12/27.
Would be really interested to see benchmark scores for that exact configuration.
At those arrival dates, it's not even worth jumping through hoops to rush and order for my scenario. Good luck to those who do purchase. I'll wait for additional GPU pricing and possible sale or discount. Probably reevaluate in January 2020.
3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
48GB (6x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
1TB SSD storage
Checks in at around $6300 via Apple Business.
Says delivery 12/19-12/27.
Would be really interested to see benchmark scores for that exact configuration.
At those arrival dates, it's not even worth jumping through hoops to rush and order for my scenario. Good luck to those who do purchase. I'll wait for additional GPU pricing and possible sale or discount. Probably reevaluate in January 2020.