MP 7,1 So...Who Ordered a New Mac Pro?

[Derek Morton]

Apple doesn't do board swaps. With the shipping and labor they'd rather just sell a new machine. Cause with the cost of the board (which is nearly the whole machine anyway) it's not going to be much cheaper. At least not so much cheaper it's going to make a tangible difference to Apple or the user.

Apple doesn't do board swaps now, but they used to.

I upgraded my SE to an SE/30 via an Apple purchased upgrade package, there was also a IIci to Quadra 700 upgrade package available - and perhaps others. These days Apple is myopically focused on looking forward and doesn't bother looking in the rearview mirror.

 

[Derek Morton]

I outlined some more modern alternatives to the R4i in this post in another thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2023-mac-pro-merged.2391616/page-16?post=32236584#post-32236584

For the folks with a sunk cost in the R4i , I'm sympathetic on why they would want to continue. But the headwinds upon the product are very high at this point. SSD prices in 2023 are just not what they were in 2017.

This new Sonnet product with 8 m.2 SSD slots if you throw 'somewhat dated' , PCI-e v3 4TB drives at it has same raw capacity of the R4i (32TB) at about the exact same price point.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m2-8x4-pcie-card/overview.html

(e.g., RAID 1+0 pair two 4's for a '4' and than stripe 4 '4''s for 16TB ). Much less noise . One slot width. One 6-pin AUX cable. Apple is probably a bigger fan of that than of the R4i at this point.

If there are 8 or more E-cores then one E-core could just run the software RAID subsystem all the time with negligible impact on the rest of the system. (probably with enough spare time for other background tasks also).

R4i was likely looked on at Apple as a transitional tool/crutch like Rosetta. Add another 3-4 years and then ask folks would give up on HDDs again ( and see how many more folks they get to take that option).

One big 20TB HDD (with NAND metadata) is still hard to beat , $/TB capacity wise, as an internal Time Machine backup target though.

Western Digital Red Pro 20TB HDD Review: OptiNAND on a Platter

WD’s own approach to high-capacity NAS HDDs

www.tomshardware.com

( Even there though ... NAND consuming some of the data is still coming.)

So J2i is still alive.

I have just finished installing and setting up my 2019 Mac Pro (RM) with two of the Promise R4i MPX units. Outfitted with 24TB Seagate Exos drives I have 144TB of RAID-50 storage which can saturate a 10Gb Ethernet line (read and write). It was a bit of a gamble since I was not able to find confirmation two R4i units would work, and the drives are not on the supported list, but I am very happy with the results.

For me, the R4i is very much alive!

 

[avro707]

The 7,1 will be supported for at least 3 more years which takes care of PCIe slot needs.

If only that was the case, but you couldn't have known that back at the time that Apple would drop the MPX modules so fast.

If your MPX dies you might be lucky to get a replacement from Apple (they have some as parts) but if anyone wants to upgrade, forget it.

We've asked Apple for support on the newer AMD GPUs but they don't care and won't do anything.

I will update my 7.1 to 28 core when needed and add more Ram when needed, but will not buy into the closed in Mac eco system of the Mac pro 8.1 with just storage upgrade's available. And who's to say there wont be a TB-5 PCIe card available for the Mac pro 7.1 when its released. but i expect apple will block that like the 7900xtx update they could provide if they wanted to for existing Mac pro 7.1 owners who would like a 7900xtx.

Only way for that newer GPU support would be for a heap of 7,1 owners to get together and get the legal eagles to put a case to Apple, and for the 7,1 owners to not be deterred by the naysayer Silicon supporters. Apple likes to play the same "we are bigger than you" game that Google does when they want to ignore customers.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^IMO, it's better to put the case to AMD. Remember back when Nvdia was writing Mac GPU drivers for their cards in the Macintosh❓ When Apple updated the MacOS, Nvidia would update the drivers to work with it. That worked very well until the brouhaha between Nvidia and Apple. AMD could write drivers for late model cards just as Nvidia did.

Lou

 

[mattspace]

^^^^IMO, it's better to put the case to AMD. Remember back when Nvdia was writing Mac GPU drivers for their cards in the Macintosh❓ When Apple updated the MacOS, Nvidia would update the drivers to work with it. That worked very well until the brouhaha between Nvidia and Apple. AMD could write drivers for late model cards just as Nvidia did.

Apple would still need to notarise the drivers, which is what they refused to do for Nvidia. Why would they do it for AMD?

 

[avro707]

^^^^IMO, it's better to put the case to AMD.

AMD says it is Apple's problem. I can cut and paste their reply. My suspicion is you will get the same response if you did similar.

Apple still controls what goes into their operating system. And they have decided there will be no futher support for anything other than ancient GPUs even though high end Mac systems will support newer GPUs. That's obviously to force people to buy $12,000 iPads with PCI slots, but it might just have the opposite effect of making people move to PCs and the pro customer base dries up.

 

[Regulus67]

I have just finished installing and setting up my 2019 Mac Pro (RM) with two of the Promise R4i MPX units. Outfitted with 24TB Seagate Exos drives I have 144TB of RAID-50 storage which can saturate a 10Gb Ethernet line (read and write).

Just a note for anyone considering the Apple M2 Ultra Mac Pro, which this tread was discussing. It does not support the Promise R4i MPX unit, or any MPX cards.
It fits only in the older 7.1 (2019) model. As the OP clearly stated in the first post

 

[generallystupid]

Can I get an answer from someone who upgraded as to the reason why? Anything except having an old system and needing the upgrade.

 

[rondocap]

Can I get an answer from someone who upgraded as to the reason why? Anything except having an old system and needing the upgrade.

I am a big fan of the 2019 Mac Pro, but I wanted Apple silicon. It is just faster for many of the things I do, like normal browsing, and photoshop, etc. Also less wattage.

For Final Cut Pro, it also does pretty well with R3D Raw compared to the W6800X Duo I had in my 28 Core 2019 Mac Pro, I can't really notice a difference.

I don't use more than 64GB of RAM either.

I tried the Mac Studio and MacBook Pro M3 Max, but too few ports and need for external Thunderbolt made them unappealing.

The 2023 M2 Ultra Mac Pro gives me the chassis I love, full of PCIe NVME cards for storage, and the Apple Silicon which feels very snappy.

I am very happy with it overall. I took a while to warm up to it, but it makes a lot of sense for me.

Going back to the 2019 Mac Pro with the 28 Core just felt a bit sluggish in normal tasks, the new CPUs are much more responsive.

 

[generallystupid]

I am a big fan of the 2019 Mac Pro, but I wanted Apple silicon. It is just faster for many of the things I do, like normal browsing, and photoshop, etc. Also less wattage.

For Final Cut Pro, it also does pretty well with R3D Raw compared to the W6800X Duo I had in my 28 Core 2019 Mac Pro, I can't really notice a difference.

I don't use more than 64GB of RAM either.

I tried the Mac Studio and MacBook Pro M3 Max, but too few ports and need for external Thunderbolt made them unappealing.

The 2023 M2 Ultra Mac Pro gives me the chassis I love, full of PCIe NVME cards for storage, and the Apple Silicon which feels very snappy.

I am very happy with it overall. I took a while to warm up to it, but it makes a lot of sense for me.

Going back to the 2019 Mac Pro with the 28 Core just felt a bit sluggish in normal tasks, the new CPUs are much more responsive.

That's actually a very valid response, thank you

 

[mattspace]

Going back to the 2019 Mac Pro with the 28 Core just felt a bit sluggish in normal tasks, the new CPUs are much more responsive.

I'm curious as to what feels sluggish on the Intel machine. There are things that I feel are slower on my 2019 machine than they were on my 4,1 (finder stuff, Quicklook glitchyness), but I put that down to sloppy programming by Apple in newer, bloatedOS versions. I wouldn't presume a processor change would make Apple's developers competent at their job, or their managers apply basic quality standards to their finished work.

 

[rondocap]

I'm curious as to what feels sluggish on the Intel machine. There are things that I feel are slower on my 2019 machine than they were on my 4,1 (finder stuff, Quicklook glitchyness), but I put that down to sloppy programming by Apple in newer, bloatedOS versions. I wouldn't presume a processor change would make Apple's developers competent at their job, or their managers apply basic quality standards to their finished work.

Photoshop for example is faster on the Apple silicon version. Things like freeform to resize the image respond a lot faster.

Also regular desktop use feels faster, like opening software and moving around in general. That makes sense since Apple silicon has better single-core performance than the Intel Xeon chips as well

 

[mattspace]

Photoshop for example is faster on the Apple silicon version. Things like freeform to resize the image respond a lot faster.

Also regular desktop use feels faster, like opening software and moving around in general. That makes sense since Apple silicon has better single-core performance than the Intel Xeon chips as well

I guess that's something I usually don't notice - my system's usual uptime is 30-50 days, and i tend to launch stuff once, and leave it running.

What I do notice is stuff like renaming files, and having the names change, then change back on their own, then change again.

 

[rondocap]

I guess that's something I usually don't notice - my system's usual uptime is 30-50 days, and i tend to launch stuff once, and leave it running.

What I do notice is stuff like renaming files, and having the names change, then change back on their own, then change again.

The restart time and turn on time is also much faster than my 2019 Intel Mac pro was - not to mention a lot less heat.

Using R3D raw in FCP it feels good too, not much difference for what I do vs the W6800X Duo I had.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Microsoft word recently had some updates and the beginning of the end is happening for intel. Just regular scrolling is very choppy and slow on my 2019 while it flies on my ancient M1max. I don’t think this is purposeful, but rather neglect or lack of care over remaining intel users. I fear this will only get worse as more software shops will not give a fig about optimizing for intel.

 

[mattspace]

Microsoft word recently had some updates and the beginning of the end is happening for intel. Just regular scrolling is very choppy and slow on my 2019 while it flies on my ancient M1max. I don’t think this is purposeful, but rather neglect or lack of care over remaining intel users. I fear this will only get worse as more software shops will not give a fig about optimizing for intel.

I think that'll last for about a minute and a half, before everyone cans their Mac apps entirely, and just ships iPad apps to Mac users - the way Apple did with Books.app

 

[flowrider]

Microsoft word recently had some updates and the beginning of the end is happening for intel. Just regular scrolling is very choppy and slow on my 2019 while it flies on my ancient M1max. I don’t think this is purposeful, but rather neglect or lack of care over remaining intel users. I fear this will only get worse as more software shops will not give a fig about optimizing for intel.

Really🫡 I have no such issues on my 7,1 2019 NcMP.

Lou

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Really🫡 I have no such issues on my 7,1 2019 NcMP.

Lou

I'm glad to hear it. Maybe it's just my particular set up. Im still on 14.6.1

 

[choreo]

I was one of the fortunate ones that saved up for months to buy a new 2019 Mac Pro the first half of 2020, only to receive mine a couple weeks before Apple declared that my major purchase (most expensive machine I ever purchased) was to be rendered obsolete! I should have just returned it then, but I thought surely I was not the only one sucker punched by this situation. You may remember this all happened at the same time as the Pandemic hit - business revenue dropped drastically and everyone was stressed to the max - tough time to say the least! The Mac Pro was supposed to be the flagship at the time (they even gifted one to President Trump) followed by an announcement that they were phasing out Intel support.

At the very least they should be offering new or even legacy MPX modules at a discount as "reparations"! I have had nothing but trouble with my w5700x GPU since day one (at least that is the prime suspect of sporadic Kernal Panics), but I can't justify sinking any more money into the 7,1 at this point and I already have doubled the price of the machine in RAM, PCI cards, etc. that I cannot move even to a new Mac Pro - what a mess!

 

[flowrider]

I'm glad to hear it. Maybe it's just my particular set up. Im still on 14.6.1

I never ran OS14.6 or later. I switched to Sequoia at the release of the first developer beta. But when I did run Sonoma, I never had an issue with MSWord.

Lou

 

[avro707]

I was one of the fortunate ones that saved up for months to buy a new 2019 Mac Pro the first half of 2020, only to receive mine a couple weeks before Apple declared that my major purchase (most expensive machine I ever purchased) was to be rendered obsolete!

They were still selling them new in 2022 with no M2 Mac Pro on sale at all and not announced either.

And no warning at all that MPX modules and SSDs would suddenly all vanish with no ability to buy them.

What should happen is open up MacOS to allow AMD to do drivers for the newer 7000 series GPUs (including the 48GB W7900 Radeon Pro). Or for that matter Nvidia 4090 RTX or newer and to heck with the historical bad blood between the warring parties.

That would make a lot of people happy, aside from those who don't like the Intel Macs who rant endlessly on forums against them. Alternatively, we just avoid using MacOS and run our machines only on Windows. I have Windows 11 Pro for Workstations on one Mac Pro here and it is very stable.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So I'm a total beaten housewife, and misery loves company:

Apple Mac Pro Wheels Kit

Put your Mac Pro on wheels with the Mac Pro Wheels Kit. The custom-designed stainless steel and rubber wheels make it easy to move your Mac Pro around, whether sliding it out from under your desk or across your studio.

www.amazon.com

Lowest price ever $419 (40% off--that ive seen at least) on the Mac Pro wheels. I think this should work for the 2023 (and maybe the 2025?) mac pro as well?

 

[Boil]

So I'm a total beaten housewife, and misery loves company:

Apple Mac Pro Wheels Kit

Put your Mac Pro on wheels with the Mac Pro Wheels Kit. The custom-designed stainless steel and rubber wheels make it easy to move your Mac Pro around, whether sliding it out from under your desk or across your studio.

www.amazon.com

Lowest price ever $419 (40% off--that ive seen at least) on the Mac Pro wheels. I think this should work for the 2023 (and maybe the 2025?) mac pro as well?

Nah, Apple will change the ID of the sockets where the wheels mount... ;^p

 

[macguru9999]

No one has bought a new Mac Pro .... almost nobody. Maybe they are waiting for the M4

 

[Harry Haller]

No one has bought a new Mac Pro .... almost nobody. Maybe they are waiting for the M4

If there was some guidance from Apple about the future of the Mac Pro…