MP 7,1 Mac Pro 7,1 - hit or Miss?

[ZombiePhysicist]

I initially defended the 7,1 when it was announced, mostly based on unrealized potential that Apple was touting for Metal support. As time as passed, its become clear to me that:

1) It's simply another stopgap machine, just like the iMac Pro, to keep people distracted while Apple finalized its transition to Apple Silicon.
2) It has extremely limited use-cases for true "Pros." Let's be honest...it's a FCP/Logic machine. Seems that Apple leaned heavily into high-profile YouTube creators as their target market. Or Apple enthusiasts with deep pockets who don't use the machines for any Pro work at all.
3) Price to performance value is absolute garbage.

Also, why did they bother making this thing upgradable at all. They might as well have just made another iMac Pro, because the Apple Silicon version of this is going to make it totally obsolete. It arguably already is.

I agree in part and disagree in part. It was outdated on introduction. You already had 64core PCIe 4 machines out at the time selling for substantially less than a 28 core PCIe Mac Pro (at best).

That said, look how long the 4,1 and 5,1 machines have stayed relevant and vibrant. This is the only true Mac that is expandable and is at least more modern than the ancient 4,1/5,1 machines. Bang for buck it is a complete loser to the 4,1 and 5,1, but still, it's the only true Mac game in town.

The second big feature, other than being a real Mac, is it's intel. That means regular PC Cards work with it. That means this thing is more expandable than the ancient 4,1 and 5,1 in that even normal PC video cards will work with it. Also, if you need any Windows/PC/Intel virtualization, it's the only expandable Mac game in town that can do that. At some point maybe VMware will make some intel virtualization for the new apple chips, might not be for a while, and I highly doubt it will run as fast as on native intel chips for quite a while. You need a lot of single core grunt for the 'experience' of virtualization to feel like it's running well, and in the past you needed around 4x the throughput to feel like 1x the speed (back when you emulated intel on PPC).

And lastly, it's not clear if Apple Chip based Macs with slots will be able to use PC Cards. One hopes they do the right thing and it will be able to, but a lot of the PCIe boards on PCs may need the other chipsets found with intel chips, and so, you may be looking at a world where you need Mac based PCI cards. An intel based Mac with PC slot support may then become one of the the last machines that offer that broad compatibility, and a bit of a Rosetta Stone Mac at that; a lot of specialized cards from the audio/video industry that those companies will not bother making a Mac only version for will only be usable on the intel Mac Pro.

That said, if youre looking for pure grunt processing per $ spent, the 7,1 came out a dud, and unless there is a crazy price drop, will remain a dud. I guess the best case cost wise is to get a base level, maybe luck out and get near a 10% discount at some outlet or EDU, add ram yourself, and add out a maxed out 28core chip for less than $3k, and you can get that system at around $8k... Still grossly expensive and a loser to a 64core PCI4 AMD system. But thats the price you pay to still be on macOS. Only game in town.

BTW, I was disgusted to read that apple may plan to STILL price gouge Mac users with the apple processor chip models still going for ~$20k. Their pricing suggests they just really hate pro and enthusiast users. Disgusting price levels if true. They will drive the last pro and enthusiast users away for sure with this tone deaf price gouging:

"Mac Pro, 2022. Configurations:
1) 32 cores (24 performance). 64GB Ram 32 GPU cores $5499+
2) 48 cores (36 performance). 256GB Ram 64 GPU cores $11999+
3) 64 cores (48 performance). 512GB Ram 128 GPU cores $18999+"

A 64-core Mac Pro priced at $19,000+ rumored to arrive next year

The speculation comes from @LeaksApplePro, who claims at least three Mac Pro configurations will arrive next year featuring Arm-based SoCs that mix performance and efficiency cores, just...

www.techspot.com

Definition of price gouging and tone deaf if above is true. AMD pricing makes it clear IMO.

 

[choreo]

All the speed benchmarks in the world won't help me since I mainly work in Adobe CC. I was working on an Illustrator file yesterday with nothing in the document but a logo I designed. I admit it was moderately complex and had a couple effects applied to it, but when I tried to scale it up I got "Not enough memory"!!! Restarted and just moved the logo to the right about an inch and it took over one minute to redraw! Illustrator has always brought every Mac Pro I have ever owned to its knees!

If after all these years Adobe has not been able to catch up on Intel, I have no hope they will be any better on AS.

 

[goMac]

"Mac Pro, 2022. Configurations:
1) 32 cores (24 performance). 64GB Ram 32 GPU cores $5499+
2) 48 cores (36 performance). 256GB Ram 64 GPU cores $11999+
3) 64 cores (48 performance). 512GB Ram 128 GPU cores $18999+"

A 64-core Mac Pro priced at $19,000+ rumored to arrive next year

The speculation comes from @LeaksApplePro, who claims at least three Mac Pro configurations will arrive next year featuring Arm-based SoCs that mix performance and efficiency cores, just...

www.techspot.com

Definition of price gouging and tone deaf if above is true. AMD pricing makes it clear IMO.

Rumor smells funny to me. I'd be very surprised if we ever see that many efficiency cores on a desktop. Especially nearly 20% efficiency cores.

It's a big desktop. Why would you implement power efficient cores? And M1 efficiency cores seem even more underpowered than their mobile counterparts.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Rumor smells funny to me. I'd be very surprised if we ever see that many efficiency cores on a desktop. Especially nearly 20% efficiency cores.

It's a big desktop. Why would you implement power efficient cores? And M1 efficiency cores seem even more underpowered than their mobile counterparts.

Dunno, and it's a fair question. I suspect you have a certain amount of block line up on feeding the cores, so you can just have say 2 efficiency cores on a 32 core system because what feeds all the cores is likely a kind of MxN switch and you want that pipe to be fat. So if you in essence have a 4x8 switch, it seems you would likely have at least 4, or alternatively at least 8 cores if you take the bigger axis. That seems to be what they did. You have an 6x8 switch for the 48 core chip but for some reason they used up 2 banks of 8 there. Same with the 64 core chip, if they have an 8x8 switch, they used up 2 banks of the switch.

I dont have any clue if thats how the interconnect works, or why they would choose that many Low power cores. I'm with you, I would keep them to a minimum on a machine of this class.

 

[goMac]

Dunno, and it's a fair question. I suspect you have a certain amount of block line up on feeding the cores, so you can just have say 2 efficiency cores on a 32 core system because what feeds all the cores is likely a kind of MxN switch and you want that pipe to be fat. So if you in essence have a 4x8 switch, it seems you would likely have at least 4, or alternatively at least 8 cores if you take the bigger axis. That seems to be what they did. You have an 6x8 switch for the 48 core chip but for some reason they used up 2 banks of 8 there. Same with the 64 core chip, if they have an 8x8 switch, they used up 2 banks of the switch.

I dont have any clue if thats how the interconnect works, or why they would choose that many Low power cores. I'm with you, I would keep them to a minimum on a machine of this class.

Looking at the rumor again, the other smelly thing is where it implies that there will be 512 gigs of RAM on an SOC.

That seems... highly improbable.

Gurman has already weighed in that there is no full size Apple Silicon Mac Pro in design right now. I'm more inclined to go with that. Maybe the above rumor is talking about the Mini, but at those prices and configurations doesn't seem like it.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Looking at the rumor again, the other smelly thing is where it implies that there will be 512 gigs of RAM on an SOC.

That seems... highly improbable.

Gurman has already weighed in that there is no full size Apple Silicon Mac Pro in design right now. I'm more inclined to go with that. Maybe the above rumor is talking about the Mini, but at those prices and configurations doesn't seem like it.

Yea no way they do that. It’s nuts to put 512gb of on a die. It will be way too much for some and way too little for others. Ram, just like storage, for this class of machine, needs to be user appointable.

 

[dazzer21-2]

Did anyone ACTUALLY get a fully spec’d out one of these? Was it worth it?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Did anyone ACTUALLY get a fully spec’d out one of these? Was it worth it?

I got one with 28 cores. Got ram and storage elsewhere. Overpriced but yea, really great throughput.

 

[The_Interloper]

Just saw Peter Paul Chato’s video on this (responding to Max Tech). Seems like Apple has lost all interest in it already.

 

[Average Pro]

I have a feeling it is way, way less than most people imagine. It would be interesting to see the sales numbers...

I have a feeling it is way, way more than most people imaging. It would be interesting to see the sales numbers... then again, I do contradict myself on occasion.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Just saw Peter Paul Chato’s video on this (responding to Max Tech). Seems like Apple has lost all interest in it already.

Those guys are way late to the party...

Is the new 7,1 Mac Pro a failure on arrival

The 7,1 cheese grater will arrive with a maximum of 28 cores and PCIe 3.0 in a market selling 64core (and even intel has 56core chips now) PCIe 4.0 machines. It's been over 5 months since the announcement and still nothing. By the time the machine ships we may see PCIe 5.0 mother boards. In...

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www.macobserver.com

The ‘Uncanny Valley’ Mac Pro - Failure on Arrival

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[blackadde]

Totally disconnected from any judgement on the MP, I can't help but viscerally feel the cynical sting of the YouTube tech-hype-cycle watching those videos.

New Thing sounds incredible - I can't believe they're finally making NEW THING!
Look at this unboxing beauty shot! New Thing is amazing and will totally change your life!
...
It turns out New Thing was actually Worst Thing, watch 11 minute video to find out why.

 

[penguinlust]

If Apple would just communicate with its high-end users more frequently a lot of the negative press could be avoided. As is, if there is no update by the end of WWDC then we can probably safely assume we've been abandoned.

 

[macguru9999]

Just saw Peter Paul Chato’s video on this (responding to Max Tech). Seems like Apple has lost all interest in it already.

I doubt the Mac Pro design team were even told what the M1 timeline and products were .....

 

[th0masp]

I doubt the Mac Pro design team were even told what the M1 timeline and products were .....

Isn't Apple famous for its internal secrecy? Everything I heard about that made it sound like it would feel like working at a clandestine agency. Everything on a need-to-know basis - and you don't.

Anyway, not sure what the expectations for the machine were - I don't think any MP has ever held the performance crown long - not even within Apple's own lineup. The new thing with this one was the perverse pricing starting right at the lowest tier though.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Isn't Apple famous for its internal secrecy? Everything I heard about that made it sound like it would feel like working at a clandestine agency. Everything on a need-to-know basis - and you don't.

Anyway, not sure what the expectations for the machine were - I don't think any MP has ever held the performance crown long - not even within Apple's own lineup. The new thing with this one was the perverse pricing starting right at the lowest tier though.

It would be so rich if the only people actually subject to apple’s non existent secrecy were Apple employees. They leak more than a broken faucet.

Apple Can’t Keep a Secret – The Mac Observer

John Kheit thinks Apple has lost its ability to keep a secret, and that this is hurting the company. He thinks it's time for Apple to either put up—and surprise us—or shut up about its supposed

www.macobserver.com

 

[Grumply]

What updates are people expecting for the 7,1? The CPU socket is end of life (we knew that going in to it), so no CPU upgrades will be forthcoming.

GPUs are the only area that was ever going to be properly expandable, and we're only a single generation of GPUs on from the current ones we have (and that new generation is barely available for purchase for PC users yet).

Yes, they need to update the GPU drivers so we can access them. But that's literally the only potential thing we're missing out on - one generation of GPUs that aren't even in mass production yet.

It really doesn't strike me as something to get into a tizzy about just yet.

 

[fuchsdh]

It's really impossible to say. Apple targeted a substantially different segment with the 7,1 than its previous midrange towers, and we still really don't know what the Pro Mac side of the coin is going to look like on Apple silicon.

From the standpoint of "demonstrate Apple is serious about professional users" I think the 7,1 did that, but as likely the last Intel Pro Mac we really can't say if we're going to see something like it. Like the iMac Pro if it's not more-or-less directly replaced by a Silicon model people will think, rightly or wrongly, it was ultimately a failure.

I'm especially interested in seeing what Apple does once they're not locked into Intel's own interests with pricing and segmenting their CPUs. Will they just focus on high-core counts? Will they keep ECC RAM? I'm not sure if I see a AS Mac Pro dropping in price substantially if it's the same capabilities and form factor, though I can't imagine it would cost anywhere as much to load it up just on the processor markup alone.

What updates are people expecting for the 7,1? The CPU socket is end of life (we knew that going in to it), so no CPU upgrades will be forthcoming.

GPUs are the only area that was ever going to be properly expandable, and we're only a single generation of GPUs on from the current ones we have (and that new generation is barely available for purchase for PC users yet).

Yes, they need to update the GPU drivers so we can access them. But that's literally the only potential thing we're missing out on - one generation of GPUs that aren't even in mass production yet.

It really doesn't strike me as something to get into a tizzy about just yet.

It'll be curious to see however many years on from this current period how much Apple has been or was delayed or derailed by the pandemic and chip shortage.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

It's really impossible to say. Apple targeted a substantially different segment with the 7,1 than its previous midrange towers, and we still really don't know what the Pro Mac side of the coin is going to look like on Apple silicon.

From the standpoint of "demonstrate Apple is serious about professional users" I think the 7,1 did that, but as likely the last Intel Pro Mac we really can't say if we're going to see something like it. Like the iMac Pro if it's not more-or-less directly replaced by a Silicon model people will think, rightly or wrongly, it was ultimately a failure.

I'm especially interested in seeing what Apple does once they're not locked into Intel's own interests with pricing and segmenting their CPUs. Will they just focus on high-core counts? Will they keep ECC RAM? I'm not sure if I see a AS Mac Pro dropping in price substantially if it's the same capabilities and form factor, though I can't imagine it would cost anywhere as much to load it up just on the processor markup alone.


It'll be curious to see however many years on from this current period how much Apple has been or was delayed or derailed by the pandemic and chip shortage.

Well one thing we can be sure of, is apple has told enthusiasts to go **** themselves. Enthusiasts being those that 'think different' who the original plea to 'save our a**' from apple went to... it was the enthusiasts that saved apple.

The high money pros that they at least threw a bone to, they're not the think different crowd. They are the drown in money at companies crowd and mostly care about getting work done and have no thoughts of giving a darn about apple.

I guess what goes around, comes around

 

[th0masp]

I'm not an expert on Apple's history, far from it - but surely 'Think different' - that period must have ended with Jobs getting the boot and the Pepsi guy taking the reins?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I'm not an expert on Apple's history, far from it - but surely 'Think different' - that period must have ended with Jobs getting the boot and the Pepsi guy taking the reins?

It was when Jobs came back and saved the company.

 

[fuchsdh]

Well one thing we can be sure of, is apple has told enthusiasts to go **** themselves. Enthusiasts being those that 'think different' who the original plea to 'save our a**' from apple went to... it was the enthusiasts that saved apple.

The high money pros that they at least threw a bone to, they're not the think different crowd. They are the drown in money at companies crowd and mostly care about getting work done and have no thoughts of giving a darn about apple.

I guess what goes around, comes around

Enthusiasts aren't really a product category you can build around if you're Apple.

 

[sn1p3r845]

I've been wanting to afford the new Mac Pro since release, but holy damn is it hard to justify right now. They gave us what we wanted but drove the price up so high that a large part of the market was shy to invest in something that falls in value extremely quickly (even faster then cars). I love the format, if they get the new Apple Silicon in them and bring the price to a reasonable level I'm game. I'm happy to spend $10k on a workstation, but it has to make sense.

 

[Grumply]

I've been wanting to afford the new Mac Pro since release, but holy damn is it hard to justify right now. They gave us what we wanted but drove the price up so high that a large part of the market was shy to invest in something that falls in value extremely quickly (even faster then cars). I love the format, if they get the new Apple Silicon in them and bring the price to a reasonable level I'm game. I'm happy to spend $10k on a workstation, but it has to make sense.

Except the price is actually more of an intel tax than an apple one. Just look at what it costs to build the same system in a PC - the price difference is negligible.

I know that fact doesn’t help anyone afford the crazy prices, but it isn’t purely greed on Apple’s part.

Look into picking up a used 7,1 - they’re starting to pop up here and there, and the one thing you can’t deny with Xeons - is that they’re hard to kill.

 

[goMac]

Ah. The YouTubers hot take is that the 2019 Mac Pro is going to be completely outdated by.... the next Mac Pro.

Dooooooom. Doom and despair all ye Mac Pro buyers.

The next Mac Pro will fix all their problems with the current one and be better and faster? How horrible.

Honestly, I also don't think the Apple Silicon transition will be completely problem free. So I don't tend to buy the YouTube overconfidence in performance. So far Apple Silicon GPU performance has been fine, but not that competitive with something like a Mac Pro. Max Tech was talking about the W5700 and performance, but he neglected to mention we haven't seen anything from Apple anywhere in the league of a W5700 yet.