MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...

[ZombiePhysicist]

I think you are a bit too pessimistic about the new Mac Pro.

Or, at least, you seem to judge the Mac Pro after your own needs and wishes. On some level, that is what we all have to do when it comes to buying it or not, but I don't think it's a fair benchmark on how to judge Apple's efforts 'in context'.

I also think that waiting for M3 does little to solve your problems. It will only keep iterating on what the M2 is. I wouldn't expect major architectural changes like: the M2 doesn't support GPUs, but the M3 does.

I can't say that I have dug deep into the M2 benchmarks, but my impression was that the speed bump was quite OK compared to M1?

But it seems likely that there will be a shift within the user group. Apple will lose some customers and gain new ones. The ones who end up buying the Mac Pro will be very happy with it.

The ‘it works for some people’ argument was used to prop up the dead-parrot trashcan. An apple admitted loser machine. It’s a lame argument. Part of apple’s apology tour admitted that pros have a wide, crazy wide, sets of needs and the machine needs to support all those crazy ‘everything’ niches.

Inability to have huge ram, to have 3rd party video destroys too many of those niches. It means it’s not a pro/enthusiast machine capable of servicing a super wide array of niches, but instead a narrow specialist niche machine, just like the trashcan was. If you just happen to fit the suit, Greg, it’s great. But in the end, a loser machine.

Obviously YMMV, but, IMO, it’s perfectly fair. 20% speed bump is nice but meh. Inability to support GPUs just gave the finger to 3D/video and deep science work. Perhaps this glorified trashcan works for you, that’s great. The trashcan worked for some but the Mac Pro needs to be a super inclusive machine, not a specific niche machine, but an every niche machine.

The trashcan failed because it was a specific niche machine and not an every niche machine. So by limiting ram and not providing 3rd party gpu options, it ignores history of what pro/enthusiasts need/want and history of what such machines have suppled basically through most of history. And it forgets that apple apologized for making a specific niche machine, and said one of the important lessons they learned and were designing into the 7,1 as a remedy for those failures is to serve a wide variety of niches, an every niche machine.

And for the record, it probably could work for me, at least today. But I need it to support whatever crazy thing I want to do that apple didn’t foresee, tomorrow. And apple has been pretty **** at basics, much less reading the minds of people in the future. Any day now we’ll get that table of authorities feature in Pages, or the exotic ability to customize paragraph numbering.

But I digress.

If it lacks 3rd party gpu support: loser machine.

 

[AndreeOnline]

The ‘it works for some people’ argument was used to prop up the dead-parrot trashcan.

But I digress.

I can easily see where you're coming from, that's not the problem. Like you, I would much prefer a new version of the 7.1 where they just swapped out the Intel Xeon for Apple Silicon and made the necessary adjustments to let macOS pool all available resources for GPU compute work.

Compared to the Trashcan, I think an 8.1 with good possibilities of internal expansion (especially cheap OG disk space), or fast 3rd party raided SSDs makes all the difference.

Considering how responsive my MacBook Pro M1 Max 32-core already is in Blender and DaVinci, I don't think working in those types of software with a M2 Ultra 76-core GPU Mac Pro will be a problem at all.
I have noticed that when it comes to 3D, I'm becoming more interested in realtime viewport performance and responsive realtime viewport rendering, than absolute 'final render times'. I think it's smarter to outsource large projects or animations to render farms anyway (and bill the client).

Of course, that does little to change the fact that the industry is annoyingly reliant on Optix, or that Apple's own (old) MPX modules still outperform the not even announced Mac Pro. Especially when multiplied.

All in all, it's a bit of a more apologetic take on the whole situation, but it is also what I have expected since we first heard about the Apple Silicon transition. Perhaps I was hoping for 128-core or even 256-core GPU at some point, but it was easy to see how impractical that would be to manufacture.

I wonder if they had an Extreme 152-core Mac Pro up and running.

 

[fuchsdh]

The latest update from Gurman.

View attachment 2148345
View attachment 2148346

Talk about a guy who should theoretically have concrete info, just totally hedging his bets.

I don't even get how his 76-core GPU comment is worth making. No duh, we just saw the M2 Max release with half the GPU cores, a 10-year-old looking at patterns can tell you the M2 Ultra is likely to top out at 2x38c.

At this point whatever real scoops Gurman has are drowned out by his hemming and hawing to feel up regular columns even when he has no new info.

I can easily see where you're coming from, that's not the problem. Like you, I would much prefer a new version of the 7.1 where they just swapped out the Intel Xeon for Apple Silicon and made the necessary adjustments to let macOS pool all available resources for GPU compute work.

Compared to the Trashcan, I think an 8.1 with good possibilities of internal expansion (especially cheap OG disk space), or fast 3rd party raided SSDs makes all the difference.

Considering how responsive my MacBook Pro M1 Max 32-core already is in Blender and DaVinci, I don't think working in those types of software with a M2 Ultra 76-core GPU Mac Pro will be a problem at all.
I have noticed that when it comes to 3D, I'm becoming more interested in realtime viewport performance and responsive realtime viewport rendering, than absolute 'final render times'. I think it's smarter to outsource large projects or animations to render farms anyway (and bill the client).

Of course, that does little to change the fact that the industry is annoyingly reliant on Optix, or that Apple's own (old) MPX modules still outperform the not even announced Mac Pro. Especially when multiplied.

All in all, it's a bit of a more apologetic take on the whole situation, but it is also what I have expected since we first heard about the Apple Silicon transition. Perhaps I was hoping for 128-core or even 256-core GPU at some point, but it was easy to see how impractical that would be to manufacture.

I wonder if they had an Extreme 152-core Mac Pro up and running.

This is my expectation as well. Depending on the price, it absolutely will have its role as a more flexible Mac Studio, albeit not as flexible, or as powerful, as I think anyone here particularly wants. But absent clues in the code that suggest that off-package RAM and GPUs are possible, I wouldn't get my hopes up. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

It still seems odd to me Apple would zig in a completely different direction in the late Intel era knowing that these M processors were coming, and then revert entirely, especially when they came out with the Studio and M2 Pro Mac mini which service a massive part of the potential audience for this machine if it's basically just one of those machines but with more slots for cards and internal storage. But who knows what the thinking at top levels is about the future of their desktop lineup.

Who knew that 2019 was going to feel like the high-water mark of the Mac—new computer models had more third-party upgradability than previous models, you could stick eGPUs off whichever Mac you wanted, Windows support was simple and fairly uncomplicated. The Apple Silicon models since are for most people absolutely much better machines, but it feels a shame we lost so much in the process.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I can easily see where you're coming from, that's not the problem. Like you, I would much prefer a new version of the 7.1 where they just swapped out the Intel Xeon for Apple Silicon and made the necessary adjustments to let macOS pool all available resources for GPU compute work.

Compared to the Trashcan, I think an 8.1 with good possibilities of internal expansion (especially cheap OG disk space), or fast 3rd party raided SSDs makes all the difference.

Considering how responsive my MacBook Pro M1 Max 32-core already is in Blender and DaVinci, I don't think working in those types of software with a M2 Ultra 76-core GPU Mac Pro will be a problem at all.
I have noticed that when it comes to 3D, I'm becoming more interested in realtime viewport performance and responsive realtime viewport rendering, than absolute 'final render times'. I think it's smarter to outsource large projects or animations to render farms anyway (and bill the client).

Of course, that does little to change the fact that the industry is annoyingly reliant on Optix, or that Apple's own (old) MPX modules still outperform the not even announced Mac Pro. Especially when multiplied.

All in all, it's a bit of a more apologetic take on the whole situation, but it is also what I have expected since we first heard about the Apple Silicon transition. Perhaps I was hoping for 128-core or even 256-core GPU at some point, but it was easy to see how impractical that would be to manufacture.

I wonder if they had an Extreme 152-core Mac Pro up and running.

Smarter to outsource!?! Seriously? Again, you’re rehashing the proven failed “it works for some” trashcan arguments. Recall all the apologies ‘that Pixar loves the trashcan because all their render farms do all the “real” work’. Yea, proven and admitted-by-apple loser machine despite all-apologies hand waving “look at the silly monkey“ Chewbacca defense real-work-is-Pixar-render-farm flag waving.

How about this. Take a video card. Plug it in. Write a driver for it. It’s not that difficult. Bonus, it doesn’t require an apology tour.

Loser dead-parrot machine.

The next Mac Pro could lack this vital feature for pro users | Digital Trends

Modularity is a key aspect of the Mac Pro, but a new leak claims the next version of Apple’s powerful computer could be much less modular than its predecessor.

www.digitaltrends.com

 

[mode11]

Perhaps the 7,1 was an over-reaction to the criticisms of the 6,1 - people complained about no expansion so they made a machine with massive expansion. Plus the off-the-shelf Xeon chipset made this perfectly feasible (albeit with lashings of PLX switches). It seems incredible, but perhaps they didn't consider that this would make a rod for their backs when it came time to replace it with an AS machine.

The Mx is just a beefed-up A-series, the chip that powers Apple's core product. The Mx is great for the iPad, Mac mini, Air, iMac 24. They make a second, further beefed-up M-chip, the Max, which through binning is also available in cut-down form (Pro) or doubled up (Ultra). This is for their higher end laptops and SFF desktops. Neither the M2 or M2 Max has significant PCIe lanes, though, beyond the Thunderbolt ports - which would still need to exist on a Mac Pro. Unless there's a new, third level of chip, it's hard to see how the new MP could even accommodate PCIe storage.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Perhaps the 7,1 was an over-reaction to the criticisms of the 6,1 - people complained about no expansion so they made a machine with massive expansion. Plus the off-the-shelf Xeon chipset made this perfectly feasible (albeit with lashings of PLX switches). It seems incredible, but perhaps they didn't consider that this would make a rod for their backs when it came time to replace it with an AS machine.

The Mx is just a beefed-up A-series, the chip that powers Apple's core product. The Mx is great for the iPad, Mac mini, Air, iMac 24. They make a second, further beefed-up M-chip, the Max, which through binning is also available in cut-down form (Pro) or doubled up (Ultra). This is for their higher end laptops and SFF desktops. Neither the M2 or M2 Max has significant PCIe lanes, though, beyond the Thunderbolt ports - which would still need to exist on a Pro. Unless there's a new, third level of chip, it's hard to see how the new MP could even accommodate PCIe storage.

in an dual or more chip they can take the pci-e for TB from the added chips and use it for pcie right?
or at the very least let you use the added storage ports? (but apple may force you to wipe the system, have it be raid 0 only, and make you buy the chips from apple)

 

[mode11]

in an dual or more chip they can take the pci-e for TB from the added chips and use it for pcie right?
or at the very least let you use the added storage ports? (but apple may force you to wipe the system, have it be raid 0 only, and make you buy the chips from apple)

Good point. I guess the Ultra chip has unused TB expansion vs. the Max version in the Studio. That would mean MPs would all need to be Ultras, but that seems reasonable / expected in any case.

I guess users could be in a situation where the limited available PCIe expansion could be used for either SSDs or capture cards etc., and if you need the lanes for the latter, you have no choice but to pay Apple up front for their OEM NAND modules. Ouch if you need 8TB.

You could use TB storage, but that's a bit messy / expensive when you've paid for a tower. It would also seem dreadfully limited compared to a PC. TB4 is only 4x PCIe 3.0 channels, so depending on how many TB ports are currently going spare on the Ultra, that's still not very much internal PCIe expansion.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Perhaps the 7,1 was an over-reaction to the criticisms of the 6,1 - people complained about no expansion so they made a machine with massive expansion. Plus the off-the-shelf Xeon chipset made this perfectly feasible (albeit with lashings of PLX switches). It seems incredible, but perhaps they didn't consider that this would make a rod for their backs when it came time to replace it with an AS machine.

The Mx is just a beefed-up A-series, the chip that powers Apple's core product. The Mx is great for the iPad, Mac mini, Air, iMac 24. They make a second, further beefed-up M-chip, the Max, which through binning is also available in cut-down form (Pro) or doubled up (Ultra). This is for their higher end laptops and SFF desktops. Neither the M2 or M2 Max has significant PCIe lanes, though, beyond the Thunderbolt ports - which would still need to exist on a Mac Pro. Unless there's a new, third level of chip, it's hard to see how the new MP could even accommodate PCIe storage.

It’s not an over reaction. Built in storage is gimped by the awful T2 not-an-Ssd socket. It has way less internal expansion possibilities and apple didn’t even make a bracket for mass storage common form factor options that are still highly prevalent today (both 3.5 and 2.5” form factors).

So, yea, they didn’t “over do it”. We have 7 slots instead of 4, but in most other ways, it’s less flexible. But storage on slots is evolving to be more the norm so the transition makes sense. You took away my 6 storage bays, so you gave me 3 more slots to compensate for storage. And the ogre T2 management cluster-f as an unwanted bonus.

Anyway, with the above, we can conclude….

Let’s see…Hmm a long history of tower power macs and Mac pros that people cling to with love, all well received, and then a dead parrot trashcan machine requiring ann admitted apology tour…. Conclusion, let’s try more of the trashcan again. Um, no.

 

[innerproduct]

This just cannot be a true rumour. Take sober look at the situation: Apple has since the announcement of the mp2019 invested heavily in 3D infrastructure. By promoting Octane since day 1 and also Redshift as well as helping the Blender guys writing a complete metal backend.

Current 2019 MacPro can be bought today and can be stacked with of the shelf radeon 6900xt that is roughly twice as fast as a single m1 ultra. And you can easily have two + an add a simpler display GPU. ...And add TB3 eGPUS to top of that!
If you have the money you can also outfit that mofo with dual 6800 duos giving it both real good GPU power but also great 32 GB buffers and less noisy running.

Would Apple really be replacing that with a single m2max, that performs at best (I am really trying here) as a single of those 6800 duos?
So people who use Mac for 3D with maxed out MP2019 will have nothing to upgrade too?

Sure, might be marketed as "2x the perf" of the old 16 core CPU coupled with a 6800 duo for just 6999$ But that would be insulting to those in the know.
If there was a 4x max chip , "extreme" or whatever, it would at least beat that old sucker marginally. But it would not be a forward looking device. The competition in this field is not some made up bullcrap but the actual reality of thread rippers coupled with nvidia 4000 series. As we all know. Including apple.

 

[mode11]

It’s not an over reaction.

Sorry, I meant in the context of Apple needing to make an AS-based follow-up later. In every other sense, then yes, you can't really have too much expansion, unless it makes the machine absurdly large or expensive.

 

[mode11]

The competition in this field is not some made up bullcrap but the actual reality of thread rippers coupled with nvidia 4000 series. As we all know. Including apple.

It will be interesting to see whether Apple rise to the challenge, or just cede that market, as they've traditionally done with games support (playing, not development) on Macs.

 

[Mac3Duser]

that said, I do not see what would prevent Apple from creating two Macs Pro:
- a mac pro m2 ultra with additional Apple SSD and maybe two or three special cards about which they have said nothing to Gurman
- A Mac Pro Xeon with 5.0 PCIe lanes even more open than 7.1 with replaceable SSD M2 (with Apple Configurator 2 of course) and all the graphic cards available on the market (even NVIDIA) and 2 TB of RAM if possible ...
Yes I know, I get lost ^^

 

[mode11]

Technologically possible of course, but aside from that:

• The fact they don't want to support Intel macOS any longer than strictly necessary.
• They would rather use their own chipsets than buy Intel's.
• The bad PR for AS, from effectively admitting it can't cut it at the high end.
• They hate Nvidia.

 

[chfilm]

you can’t sell a Mac Pro with 76 m2 gpu cores to a pro colorist/3d artist/scientist with big gpu demand. Who is this machine supposed to be for? This is the crowd that needs the extra pci slots for their video cards and ssd raids and stuff.
I still believe there’s gonna be afterburner or mpx style apple gpu upgrade kits, I just don’t see another way.

 

[mode11]

Afterburner was just to bridge the gap when Mac CPUs / GPUs didn't offer native ProRes decoding. Now that Apple has the media engines in all their SoCs, it's no longer required. As with the T2, basically.

Keeping up with the big boys using their own home-spun GPUs is a very big ask. It's not just throwing GPU cores at it, it requires development in new stuff like RT, along with related technologies such as AI denoising. This will share some development costs with GPUs lower down the stack, but there's no need for RT on an iPhone, or most of their laptops.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Time to rage, rage, do not go quietly...

Mac Pro Enthusiasts Raise Concerns Over Upgrade Limitations of Apple Silicon

The new Mac Pro coming later this year is expected to feature the same spacious modular design as the 2019 model, but with fresh concerns over its...

www.macrumors.com

 

[mode11]

Time to rage, rage, do not go quietly...

Mac Pro Enthusiasts Raise Concerns Over Upgrade Limitations of Apple Silicon

The new Mac Pro coming later this year is expected to feature the same spacious modular design as the 2019 model, but with fresh concerns over its...

www.macrumors.com

This rumour seems ridiculous. The best Gurman can come up with regarding filling the case is:

"As for the seemingly large empty space that would remain in the unchanging tower case, Gurman suggests it could accommodate a larger cooling system, which would differentiate it from the Mac Studio by affording significantly faster performance."

This is nonsense. The Studio is already whisper quiet running an Ultra. There is no reason Apple would have left performance on the table, just to save a few Watts from the wall. The Ultra has a comparatively massive copper heatsink - if it needed to sink more heat, it could do. Plus, the Studio form factor was all-new. If it needed to be e.g. an inch taller to accommodate an even bigger heatsink, for greater performance, it would have been.

The single-thread performance of AS is pretty consistent across the range. This is likely for architectural reasons. It's unlikely the clock speed could be significantly increased, even with unlimited cooling.

If Apple put the equivalent of an ITX motherboard in the existing case, with most of the PCIe slots blocked off with a blanking plate, it will be an absolute joke. Especially if PCIe GPUs are unsupported, it would offer next to no benefit over a Studio and sink like a stone in the market. Whilst I'm not confident of Apple's commitment to an expandable Mac Pro, that level of incompetence is unthinkable.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

This rumour seems ridiculous. The best Gurman can come up with regarding filling the case is:

"As for the seemingly large empty space that would remain in the unchanging tower case, Gurman suggests it could accommodate a larger cooling system, which would differentiate it from the Mac Studio by affording significantly faster performance."

This is nonsense. The Studio is already whisper quiet running an Ultra. There is no reason Apple would have left performance on the table, just to save a few Watts from the wall. The Ultra has a comparatively massive copper heatsink - if it needed to sink more heat, it could do. Plus, the Studio form factor was all-new. If it needed to be e.g. an inch taller to accommodate an even bigger heatsink, for greater performance, it would have been.

The single-thread performance of AS is pretty consistent across the range. This is likely for architectural reasons. It's unlikely the clock speed could be significantly increased, even with unlimited cooling.

If Apple put the equivalent of an ITX motherboard in the existing case, with most of the PCIe slots blocked off with a blanking plate, it will be an absolute joke. Especially if PCIe GPUs are unsupported, it would offer next to no benefit over a Studio and sink like a stone in the market. Whilst I'm not confident of Apple's commitment to an expandable Mac Pro, that level of incompetence is unthinkable.

I agree. Plus the M2 is running cooler already. It's fab'd at an approximate 4nm process, so should run cooler as is. Even if they want to overclock it a bit in the Mac Pro, it just doesnt need that big a cooler. Unless they do some extreme overclocking.

Something not adding up. Hopefully he's wrong and we'll be pleasantly surprised. That said, Im trying to fortify myself for disappointment. :/

 

[mode11]

Something not adding up. Hopefully he's wrong and we'll be pleasantly surprised. That said, Im trying to fortify myself for disappointment. :/

Pretty much this.

 

[mikas]

I'm sorry to join you guys with this..

 

[mikas]

I really hate windows, to say it mildly..

 

[mikas]

I mean they are killing the Mac Pro as it is.

 

[mikas]

The best thing to happen, is no news at all. That would be they'd think it all over again. And not kill the upgradeability as it is today.

 

[chfilm]

Afterburner was just to bridge the gap when Mac CPUs / GPUs didn't offer native ProRes decoding. Now that Apple has the media engines in all their SoCs, it's no longer required. As with the T2, basically.

Keeping up with the big boys using their own home-spun GPUs is a very big ask. It's not just throwing GPU cores at it, it requires development in new stuff like RT, along with related technologies such as AI denoising. This will share some development costs with GPUs lower down the stack, but there's no need for RT on an iPhone, or most of their laptops.

I'm not saying it's gonna have another afterburner, I'm saying it's gonna have to have some sort of apple fabricated gpu extension card or something. Like really, they are gonna leave the bottom two MPX slots just empty? Cmon it would be the biggest joke since the 20th anniversary mac. No No No I believe they will figure out a way to add in more gpu cores somehow. About the CPU, it would also be some kind of letdown if there's just an m2 ultra in there, but ok, fine, me personally I don't need more. GPU on the other hand...
I know guys that have two 6800 Duos in their machines and STILL want more. Those are the ones that are gonna buy the new machine, but only if it tops that, and I think Apple knows this, otherwise the mac pro would have already been released.

 

[mikas]

I'd love to have upgradable RAM, GPU and CPU.

It's not gonna happen. I believe any of this is not gonna happen with Apple.

All I am going to hope anymore, is Storage of M.2 upgrades inside the case (1 pcs or HEY maybe 2x), and a far far shot of for eGPU AMD 79xx. No nVidia of course for sure, now WHY would we want what . It's of no use for anyone for sure, not in a computer user crowd anyway.. What was it again, nnvidiaa.