MP 7,1 POLL: The NEW Cheese Grater Mac Pro (nCMP). Hot or Not?

[LK LAW]

Not quite. SSDs were saturating the SATAIII bandwidth available. SSDs now connect through an NVME slot that take over 2-3 SATA ports and combine that bandwidth. PCIe SSDs bypass that altogether. It's why the Corsair PCIe4 SSD can outperform the fastest Samsung NVME. Ironically, some boards with NVME SSDs will shutdown PCIe lanes and not ports.

That's what I said?
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I think the real problem with getting AMD is that they do not support thunderbolt and apple is all in on thunderbolt. Which means they are left with Intel's laggy chip designs. And Intel Xeon chipsets are stuck on PCI3. At this rate, it might be 2 years before Intel gets a PCI5 chipset out for Xeons, and then there is a decent chance apple will lag a year behind that (assuming they even update the nCMP regularly--an unknown right now). So my guess is, it could be as bad as 3 years to get PCI5 on a mac pro.

Hope I'm wrong. Please someone convince me I'm wrong.

From the apple site:
Each MPX bay provides:

x16 gen 3 bandwidth for graphics

x8 gen 3 bandwidth for Thunderbolt

DisplayPort video routing

Up to 500W power for an MPX Module

Alternatively, each MPX bay can support:

One full-length, double-wide x16 gen 3 slot and one full-length, double-wide x8 gen 3 slot (MPX bay 1)

Or two full-length, double-wide x16 gen 3 slots (MPX bay 2)

Up to 300W auxiliary power via two 8-pin connectors
==========
We'll have to wait till intel supports newer PCIe gens which could take a while

 

[0388631]

I think the real problem with getting AMD is that they do not support thunderbolt and apple is all in on thunderbolt. Which means they are left with Intel's laggy chip designs. And Intel Xeon chipsets are stuck on PCI3. At this rate, it might be 2 years before Intel gets a PCI5 chipset out for Xeons, and then there is a decent chance apple will lag a year behind that (assuming they even update the nCMP regularly--an unknown right now). So my guess is, it could be as bad as 3 years to get PCI5 on a mac pro.

Hope I'm wrong. Please someone convince me I'm wrong.

AMD developed their own TB3. USB 4 is faster than TB3, but it doesn't carry everything TB3 does for Apple. TB3 is free for companies to use. But AMD didn't want to play because it meant giving Intel the microcode for their processors for Intel to sign off on to make sure it would play nice. That's a huge red flag. Intel may not show it, but Ryzen is hurting them, but they can bleed money for a decade without going under.

That said, Xeon will get PCIe 4 with Sapphire Rapids (Xeon) in a year or two. Realistically, no one will be doing PCIe 5 for several years. The time lines seem close only because PCIe 4 had some complications that over extended its initial deployment period. I'd expect PCIe 5 to come about in 2025-2026.
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That's what I said?

No.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

It's ugly as sin, but if I needed that to get work done. Then no question about purchasing one. But since I have 0 need for that kind of power that's extreme overkill. The monitor on the other hand is disappointedly expensive AF. $1K for the stand. Yikes.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Thanks for clarifying that @LK LAW

So seems pretty much PCI 3 with some interesting "module" options. So seems like "now" is the time to get this machine, and it may indeed be a 3 year wait for PCI5. At which point, we may be using custom Apple CPUs!
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It's ugly as sin, but if I needed that to get work done. Then no question about purchasing one. But since I have 0 need for that kind of power that's extreme overkill. The monitor on the other hand is disappointedly expensive AF. $1K for the stand. Yikes.

I'm totally ignoring the monitor. It's between 6200 or $7000 for the matte option with the Vesa mount or stand. I'm waiting for 8k displays. Right now you could get a samsung 65" 8K TV and use that. It's basically like having 2 32" side by side (but taller). So one 8k display will have over 30megapixels, plenty. Those will come down in price greatly in a year or so. I think that's a better value.

 

[richpjr]

The specs are fantastic, but it really is pretty fugly.

 

[0388631]

I think before anyone purchases this in the fall, they should take a hard look at a competitor product and see if they can come up with a similar build for less. This means Windows, obviously. The bulk of the cost of said machine is the processor. The Vega II Duo GPU is second. Though I don't believe AMD Pro cards are better than the latest Quadros, especially the Quadro 8000. Most editing software outside Apple's realm performs well on Intel + NVidia combos.

DDR4 ECC and in general, regular DDR4 is as cheap as it's been in years. No idea why Apple continues to charge high rates.


I can't pull up the HP site now, but I'm certain they offer a 56 core system with a lot of goodies for under $28K.

 

[crjackson2134]

I wonder if Apple will think it makes sense to have a display model of these set up in each of their stores.

I sure hope so... I want to drive it around a bit before buying...

 

[CocoaNut]

I also like this new Mac Pro. Looks like it's going to be over $15K all maxed out, but I still think they will sell quite well.

Also, I think it should be called the "Alien Mac Pro" aMP. Look at the top row below the handle! (and on each side)

 

[TobiasT]

Also, I think it should be called the "Alien Mac Pro" aMP. Look at the top row below the handle! (and on each side)
View attachment 840466

That's a good gone. MP 6.1 was also called "Darth Vader" because of the Thermal Core:

 

[LK LAW]

I think before anyone purchases this in the fall, they should take a hard look at a competitor product and see if they can come up with a similar build for less. This means Windows, obviously. The bulk of the cost of said machine is the processor. The Vega II Duo GPU is second. Though I don't believe AMD Pro cards are better than the latest Quadros, especially the Quadro 8000. Most editing software outside Apple's realm performs well on Intel + NVidia combos.

DDR4 ECC and in general, regular DDR4 is as cheap as it's been in years. No idea why Apple continues to charge high rates.


I can't pull up the HP site now, but I'm certain they offer a 56 core system with a lot of goodies for under $28K.

I think a large selling point will be that Apple render card.
If I recall correctly they did something similar with the G3, and it took the market by storm...

 

[Umbongo]

So I think the monitor is totally over priced. I'd complain about the SSD but you can get a 15TB NVMe SSD for under 2800 and a PCI card to run 4 NVMe blades for around 400bux. So I'll just spec the smallest apple SSD and basically ignore it. Ram from 3rd party. Not clear if the CPU is soldered in, but let's assume so. So that means you just have to commit to the number of cores.

The CPU prices are too expensive to solder them to the part with the most points of failure.

 

[AlexMaximus]

I am super happy, finally! I think this is what the Pro industry needs, - a new powerful cheese-grater...

Congratulation Apple! This is a great design with power in mind. I am really surprised about this, really really great!
Expensive but exceptional!

 

[mrxak]

I can just imagine how the meeting went at Apple HQ.

Tim: Come on, Jony, the pros are really angry that it's been almost 2000 days since the last Mac Pro, and they all hated the last one anyway. They just want a new Mac. Please make a new Mac tower?

Jony: I'm way too busy shaving nanometers off our laptops, and my team still hasn't found the perfect spheroid to model our Watch corners off of. Why should I care about the Mac Pro?

Tim: Well, we keep getting bad press about ignoring our pros and you know how the investors get when there's anything negative in the press about us.

Jony: Fine, I'll make a new Mac Pro. I had an idea for a pyra-

Tim: No! No no no no! Not a pyramid, Jony, the pros want a big rectangular thing, and the engineers say that's a lot easier to put components in, anyway, when everything is nice and has 90 degree angles. Remember that old Mac Pro we used to sell ten years ago? Help me out here Phil.

Phil: Uh, right. Our marketing research guys say that all the pros just want, and I quote "another cheese grater", endquote. Also something with a lot of what I'm told are called "slots".

Tim: Right, and until you design a new Mac Pro that makes our high end users happy, I'm afraid I'm going to take away your micrometer, and any machines you have in the R&D lab for making chamfered edges on things.

Jony: What! That's no fair!

Tim: Please, Jony, please. It's just embarrassing talking about nothing but emojis at WWDC. Work with us a little here. Pretend I'm Steve for a moment and have the power to curb your worst impulses.

Jony: Fine! They want a cheese grater with slots? I'll give them a cheese grater with slots. I'll give them the best bloody cheese grater they've ever seen, with twice as many slots as they've ever had before!

 

[idealtracks]

it looks great. If the price were half, I'd consider one! They are nuts at $6k imo. And the $1k stand has got to be a joke. I'll definitely buy the tower though--in about 6 years on Ebay.

 

[Ploki]

Here’s what I’m worried about. This will be replacing an 8 core Mac Pro Late 2008 model with 2TB of SSD storage, upgraded video card, lots of RAM. The limitation for me today has not been hardware as much as that Apple cut me off from OS updates last year. I think I’ve gotten good mileage for my money up to now. The machine still yawns except during my largest Logic projects, but now that the entry price is $5k, And this new machine is so powerful, I can imagine sitting in this place in 2030 but worse. A machine that’s still considered Uber powerful, that I paid twice as much for, but Apple decides to cut me off of OS updates. Anyone have any reassuring words?

just get a Mac Mini, it will run circles around your 8-core. (i had one, 2008 8-core)

This thing is an absolute overkill for audio.

 

[mrxak]

In all seriousness though, even though it looks absurd, it's a lot better than I expected. I wish they'd ditch this whole Thunderbolt through GPU thing, which has really hurt Macs across the board for years, but at least there's some hope, now. It's a large enough box that thermal issues probably won't restrict future models, and it actually has PCI slots. I really wish they weren't doing this MPX thing, but I get it.

It would be really nice if they would sell a a stripped down version with no proprietary GPUs at all, or the option for a normal GPU. That would no doubt cut down on the base model price dramatically.

I'm sure I won't be buying the new Mac Pro, my recently built Hackintosh is quite good for my needs, and I'm kind of transitioning over to Linux which seems a lot safer in the long run. That said, I'll be watching closely to see if Apple starts updating the Mac Pro regularly again, and who knows, maybe I'll pick up a used one at some point down the line, if not this model, maybe another later. It's nice to know that there is still a PCI slotted Mac out there, though, which means drivers for cards, and a healthy Hackintosh community.

 

[0388631]

I think a large selling point will be that Apple render card.
If I recall correctly they did something similar with the G3, and it took the market by storm...

Yeah, and for a native, Mac only format. On the PC/Linux side, you have the same issue with RED and their Red Rocket X which is another ASIC card that allows you to watch and edit video like the Mac Pro. It costs about $7,000. Though the base Mac Pro doesn't have that card. Who knows how much that will cost. ASICs tend to be really good at task specific things. And they cost a lot. You won't get any gritty details of any card.

Edit: I don't believe any competitor cards exist for open platform use.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Jony Ive was clearly on vacation when they designed this thing and the monitor.

They should have had him up there to say "Can't innovate anymore, my ass!" again. He would have been right this time.

 

[AidenShaw]

Jony Ive was clearly on vacation when they designed this thing and the monitor.

Thank goodness. Jony should take more vacations.
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SSDs now connect through an NVME slot that take over 2-3 SATA ports and combine that bandwidth.

Not true. NVMe drives connect directly to PCIe - no merging of SATA ports.

 

[0388631]

Thank goodness. Jony should take more vacations.
[doublepost=1559603382][/doublepost]
Not true. NVMe drives connect directly to PCIe - no merging of SATA ports.

When did that start? As in chipset generation. I can hook up an NVME and it'll shut down SATA ports 1-3 out of 8 on my mobo. My PCI lanes aren't interrupted.

Edit: This is board dependent it seems. I've got a ASUS board from 2014.

Edit 2: What idiot ever came up with this schema?

 

[phoenix-mac-user]

I love the new Pro. I have been lurking (and the occasional post) here for a couple years now and this is what people have been asking for.

I guess some people have to complain though.

Apple should just give it away for free apparently.

I had a 2009 cheese grater that I recently upgraded to the higher end Mini. I don't think I can justify 6K for the amount of editing I do nowadays and I suspect a lot of people complaining about this machine aren't people who would use it for it's real purpose.

For the first time in a while, Apple has a really complete line of computers. If you a "prosumer" you are probably best getting a Mini like me and adding a eGPU. If you are a PRO, this is the computer for you and I doubt you will think twice about paying 6k for it.

 

[0388631]

I love the new Pro. I have been lurking (and the occasional post) here for a couple years now and this is what people have been asking for.

I guess some people have to complain though.

Apple should just give it away for free apparently.

I had a 2009 cheese grater that I recently upgraded to the higher end Mini. I don't think I can justify 6K for the amount of editing I do nowadays and I suspect a lot of people complaining about this machine aren't people who would use it for it's real purpose.

For the first time in a while, Apple has a really complete line of computers. If you a "prosumer" you are probably best getting a Mini like me and adding a eGPU. If you are a PRO, this is the computer for you and I doubt you will think twice about paying 6k for it.

Amen. I think someone on this board had a near heart attack after Aidan ordered a dozen or two Quadro cards for his work. If you need the performance for mission critical work, why whinge?

 

[AidenShaw]

and I doubt you will think twice about paying 6k for it.

I suspect that most systems will be far above the entry-level $6K price. I've spent $60K just for memory upgrades....

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Agreed. Ill probably upgrade the CPU to the limit. Minimum ram. Minimum of their stupid T2 tied SSD. Their special video card seems interesting. 2 Vegas slapped together, and giving you 4 thunderbolt ports, while taking up 2 double wide slots (with no wires since it can feed 550watts via the interesting PCI package they have)...well if the price is right, that could be interesting. Or. I might just take the basic card and wait to upgrade it.

My guess is the 28core chip upgrade will be around $3k around current upgrading pricing. so that brings it up to 9k. I'll get a 3rd part 15tb NVMe SSD an PCI card for around 3200bux. So all told around 12000-13000. No monitor, will use my current monitors. Certainly not cheap, but that's a pretty hugely powerful setup. I think most of these will go out at 10k+.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I can just imagine how the meeting went at Apple HQ.

Tim: Come on, Jony, the pros are really angry that it's been almost 2000 days since the last Mac Pro, and they all hated the last one anyway. They just want a new Mac. Please make a new Mac tower?

Jony: I'm way too busy shaving nanometers off our laptops, and my team still hasn't found the perfect spheroid to model our Watch corners off of. Why should I care about the Mac Pro?

Tim: Well, we keep getting bad press about ignoring our pros and you know how the investors get when there's anything negative in the press about us.

Jony: Fine, I'll make a new Mac Pro. I had an idea for a pyra-

Tim: No! No no no no! Not a pyramid, Jony, the pros want a big rectangular thing, and the engineers say that's a lot easier to put components in, anyway, when everything is nice and has 90 degree angles. Remember that old Mac Pro we used to sell ten years ago? Help me out here Phil.

Phil: Uh, right. Our marketing research guys say that all the pros just want, and I quote "another cheese grater", endquote. Also something with a lot of what I'm told are called "slots".

Tim: Right, and until you design a new Mac Pro that makes our high end users happy, I'm afraid I'm going to take away your micrometer, and any machines you have in the R&D lab for making chamfered edges on things.

Jony: What! That's no fair!

Tim: Please, Jony, please. It's just embarrassing talking about nothing but emojis at WWDC. Work with us a little here. Pretend I'm Steve for a moment and have the power to curb your worst impulses.

Jony: Fine! They want a cheese grater with slots? I'll give them a cheese grater with slots. I'll give them the best bloody cheese grater they've ever seen, with twice as many slots as they've ever had before!

Haha. I think they even made it look more like a cheese grater on purpose to throw it in our faces vindictively.