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pl1984

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Oct 31, 2017
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Is this new Mac Pro what everyone wanted? Seems Apple is offering most of what I've seen requested (primarily a return to a tower which offers expansion). A couple of things I noted:
  • No dual processor option.
  • Only two Thunderbolt 3 ports.
IMO neither of these are deal breakers but I thought it interesting to see two TB3 ports when the Mini has four of them.

But my main question is: Why has it taken Apple so long to make this? It doesn't appear to be anything special that couldn't be offered a year or so ago.
 
The dual processor isn't as big of a deal as before, because you can go to 28 cores, if you are limited to Xeons. AMD will go to 64 cores on their upcoming Rome Eypc single cpu, which makes it look worse for Intel.

This thing has a LOT going for it. It s brilliant.

8 slots solves a lot of problems - I could stuff up to 6 WX5100 cards in it and have an incredible render system using the AMD ProRender engine (it would see all 6 cards as 1 unit, along with the CPU and system memory). It would be the answer to my prayers.

The ability to go to 1.5 Tb (if you get the larger Xeons) is very useful.

It will still take a few spinners, which means I only need 1 eSATA card and I am good.

What took so long is the cooling. This thing is going to be very quiet, but cool a LOT of stuff - apparently, Sir Idiot Boy has learned about the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Pity he couldn't have learned it 20 years ago.

The deal breaker isn't the starting price tag - it's what one gets for the price tag.

8 cores in 2019. (Should start at 12 cores)

PCIe 3.0 - which will be superseded by PCIe 4.0 around the time the beast is released. (should be PCIe 4.0)

A 2 year old sub $200 consumer level video card. (Should have the workstation version, the WX5100).

I'm a bit leary on the proprietary connector - the MPX stuff is going to be stupid expensive, because Apple isn't going to sell enough of these boxes to push down the development costs (See: Thunderbolt).
 
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  • Only two Thunderbolt 3 ports.

There are 4 total, 2 on the rear I/O card and 2 thunderbolt ports on the top of the case.

If you upgrade to the Vega II MPX you get a bunch more TB3 ports. However, majority of my thunderbolt peripherals are Sonnet PCIe expansion cases, which I now can get rid.
 
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The deal breaker isn't the starting price tag - it's what one gets for the price tag.

8 cores in 2019. (Should start at 12 cores)

PCIe 3.0 - which will be superseded by PCIe 4.0 around the time the beast is released. (should be PCIe 4.0)

A 2 year old sub $200 consumer level video card. (Should have the workstation version, the WX5100).

I'm a bit leary on the proprietary connector - the MPX stuff is going to be stupid expensive, because Apple isn't going to sell enough of these boxes to push down the development costs (See: Thunderbolt).

I agree for the most part. 12 Cores, 48GB (6x8GB) 2933 DDR4, and a 1TB SSD would justify the entry price.

BTW the Radeon Pro 580X is comparable to the WX 7100. Both have 36 compute units, 2304 stream processors, 5.6-5.7 teraflops single precision, and 8GB GDDR5
 
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