Well, if the iMac Pro is too slow for you and was already in the category of what‘s affordable for your business, then I guess the cheesegrater 2.0 should be the perfect solution for not too much of a higher price point. May I ask what it is you‘re trying to do with the iMac pro that forces it to throttle so badly?
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MP 7,1 Mac Pro... did they shoot themselves in the foot?
- Thread starter Alaska_guy
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I own an iMac and I love it. I have an eGPU with a Vega 64 that I use for GPU rendering. Octane and Redshift, two CUDA based render engines that are big in commercial mograph work, are coming to Mac by the end of this year and I'm excited for that. But it seems like this stuff is always just 6 months away, and product announcements are always about another delay.
I would rather have the latest iMac hardware (core i9 9900k) in a tower with proper cooling and at least room for two double wide GPUs, and Nvidia drivers.
I LOVE Mac OS.
But I think Apple stumbled by shooting for a niche of a niche. It's perfect for those few people. I would love power, but I cannot justify that price tag and the promise of hardware support down the line.
I called it in another thread - the new Mac Pro is for Final Cut people working with insane resolutions. That display is for high end movie work. It will excel at those workflows.
Apple built a machine with custom form factor GPU modules instead of standard stuff. Passively cooled GPUs? We'll see how that does when someone hammers it with GPU rendering for a day. And we will see if it gets updated. The trash can Mac Pro had easily serviceable custom parts that got zero updates. Based on that alone I would be scared to invest in another Mac system at that cost.
If Apple just announced nVidia support for eGPUs, I would have been ecstatic.
I'm confused by Apple. They went all out. But who can trust them given their moves in the "pro" space in the past 10 years?
I guess I'll just wait and see. I'm on the fence for now, lured to stay in the ecosystem by Apple's amazing AR kit updates. The real time masking of people is impressive stuff.
I would rather have the latest iMac hardware (core i9 9900k) in a tower with proper cooling and at least room for two double wide GPUs, and Nvidia drivers.
I LOVE Mac OS.
But I think Apple stumbled by shooting for a niche of a niche. It's perfect for those few people. I would love power, but I cannot justify that price tag and the promise of hardware support down the line.
I called it in another thread - the new Mac Pro is for Final Cut people working with insane resolutions. That display is for high end movie work. It will excel at those workflows.
Apple built a machine with custom form factor GPU modules instead of standard stuff. Passively cooled GPUs? We'll see how that does when someone hammers it with GPU rendering for a day. And we will see if it gets updated. The trash can Mac Pro had easily serviceable custom parts that got zero updates. Based on that alone I would be scared to invest in another Mac system at that cost.
If Apple just announced nVidia support for eGPUs, I would have been ecstatic.
I'm confused by Apple. They went all out. But who can trust them given their moves in the "pro" space in the past 10 years?
I guess I'll just wait and see. I'm on the fence for now, lured to stay in the ecosystem by Apple's amazing AR kit updates. The real time masking of people is impressive stuff.
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Today at the agency where I‘m currently editing, the IT guys started discussing the new Mac Pro and they will definitely get several (through leasing). And this is not even a high end agency. So I‘m positively optimistic about the spread of this machine! 
Passively cooled GPUs are very common for Tesla and other high end GPUs.
However, they're typically in computer labs, not deskside, so the noise from the case fans is not an issue.
It will be interesting to see if Apple's low noise goal will affect the need to push case air through the GPU and out the back.
They aren't technically passively cooled. A more correct adjective to put on it is that this cooling system is an embedded cooling system. They are actively cooled in the embedded context they are designed for. The will not be actively cooled outside of that embedded context. The cooling system comes in parts.
But to assert "passive" is well beyond inaccurate when the fans are sitting directly in front on the 'input' vents to the module. Also you can't install them anywhere else but an inch or so from these fans. Gobs of air is being blown over these module(s). MPX bay 1 is centered on the fan. MPX bay 2 is slightly off center. ( The 4 GPU configuration is probably going to be a bit of a stretch).
The fan being screwed directly onto the card gets in the way of cooling. the movement of air causes the cooling. Not the physical plastic shroud around the fan.
The physical design is not where they could have blow it. The real problem would pop up of the feedback control mechanism is lame or sloppy. There isn't gong to be a local, somewhat autonomic feedback of "it is hot, more fan" purely local to the GPU.
the MPX Bay 1 with one Pro Vega GPU probably easy do just fine. That is a bigger fan blowing at it than could mount on the card. The air isn't taking 90 "left turns" to get through the heat exchanger.
All the fans cranked all the way up more something like 200- 300 CFM ( a decent fraction of a reasonable office sized room of air per minute. I forget which pod/video cast where some Apple person quoted the number. It was a substantive amount. ). Apple has left the "noise" tech spec off the current version of that page on their website. Under normal conditions and under desk it is low ( heard a quote of 10db. Which is lower than the iMac Pro or Mac Pro 2013 .. under the desk helps. ), but if go crazy up near 1.4K high, it probably isn't going to be whisper quiet anymore. [ and there is a backside blower that will probably be noisy too when it kicks in full gear. ]
"Loaded to the max and run hard" state being noisy probably helped motivate the rack mount chassis. In a data center context it won't matter much.
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It think they changed it to "as long as don't put 'crazy' stuff in there' it will be OK. ( e.g, overall system pulling < 650W ).
The config they were talking about with 5-6 HDX cards. That will probably be relatively low noise. They trying to pitch this to some narrow subset of the audio crowd.
I was not aware of passively cooled high end GPUs, thanks. That is weird to me. I'm so used to fans going high whenever I do anything taxing!
It is not passively cooled, it uses chassis intake fans to push air through GPU heat sink. Teslas are made like that, they're supposed to do just compute while sitting inside a rack mounted server. Definitely not quiet, it is done for space constrains, to maximize number of cards - you can stack them up right next to each other without compromising air flow. Apple seems to adopt this but using large fans and large GPU modules (4 wide vs Tesla 2 wide) to keep it quiet.
EDIT - I kind of repeated what the posters above said, didn't read the older posts before responding.
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Apple has a long memory. I know from personal experience working for a major retailer that once you have a problem with or make a problem for Apple, there is no going back and the only way you will ever have Apple is through distributors and even that can be iffy, since they don't want to lose their Apple connection, which can happen if Apple objects. We were told Apple would reconsider us if we stopped carrying anything from third parties, we did, Apple still refused to supply us, we went back to the distributors. Apple is an elephant.
[doublepost=1560271574][/doublepost]Apple didn't shoot themselves in the foot, but they may have gone a bridge too far. Here's what I see is the modus operandi for Tim: make the grand gesture. When they are bringing new products to market, they have to make a splash, so that means the fastest, the biggest, the newest, the most of everything and nothing like what anyone else has, or at least try to.
If you happen to be an Apple user that likes what they have, I have a 5S and except for the black bars, I am perfectly happy with the overall size because it fits comfortably in the front pocket of most men's pants, you are going to be disappointed. Yes, the iPhone X is a beautiful piece of technology, but if it stabs me in the groin when I sit down with it in my front pocket, then I have to say that it is not the phone for me.
I have both a Mac Mini and Mac Pro, 5,1. Well, my Mac Pro is now EOLed, unless I want to do some hacks to make it usable with Catalina. The reason that I have the Mac Pro is the flexibility it offers me for storage, I have a number of eSATA external drives, back from when that was the thing and they still work fine, but in order to continue with the current operating system what do I do? As beautiful as the Mac Pro 7,1 is, it is really just a continuation of the Mac Pro 5,1, but intentionally made to serve a very limited class of users because it is now the biggest and baddest desktop out there, and total overkill for what I need.
Do I get a high end Mac Mini? I might have to, but I'd have to get other peripherals because the Mac Mini doesn't have the flexibility of my old Mac Pro 5,1, and I'm not even sure that I need the processing power anyway because Apple software doesn't maximize use of various cores, so if I can't do tasks in the background that do use multiple cores and expect to watch a movie as well. I know I can't do it on a Mini, I burned one out because it doesn't cool as well as it needs to under heavy load.
Apple didn't have to target the Mac Pro to the niche that it did, it could have made an even more flexible machine, but that wouldn't be consistent with what they've been doing for a number of years. Look at the Mac Pro 6,1. It was a beautifully engineered machine and a total dead end. Why? Because Apple didn't really ask its users what they wanted and design something that could accommodate a variety of uses as the Mac Pro 5,1 did. I see the same we know best kind of design across their whole product line.
In a way they do know, these products continue to be beautifully designed and engineered. On the other hand, they all seem to leave a few more members of their user base behind every time. Was there a need for the 6,1 form factor to follow the 5,1? I can expect a few people to say yes, but most will say no, the 5,1 worked, what didn't work was Apple's failure to keep up with new processors and GPUs. Do all iPhones have to be so big? Why can't Apple create a flexible desktop that isn't geared solely to the high end professional user? I understand that Tim Cook is following Steve Jobs mantra that you can't be all things to all people and need to keep a reasonably tight product line, but I'd say that it's too tight now, and that you can appeal to almost everyone with just a few small tweaks.. Too bad Apple doesn't agree with me.