The GPU in the nmp are already using 5 years old technology, and they are still asking full price for them...
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The "I'm Waiting for a New Mac Pro Tower" Thread
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The GPU in the nmp are already using 5 years old technology, and they are still asking full price for them...
Be careful what you ask for!
For the enormous box that it was in, the cMP was rather limited. Too much space was designed for cooling the nuclear fires of the PowerPC CPUs, and everything else was compromised.
Ask for a better tower, not "return" of the old tower.
For example, the MP5,1's PCIe support is:
- PCIe 2.0 x16 (used by GPU)
- PCIe 2.0 x16
- PCIe 2.0 x4 (bandwidth for x4 slots shared)
- PCIe 2.0 x4
- PCIe 3.0 x4 (x16 mechanical)
- PCIe 3.0 x16
- PCIe 2.0 x4 (x16 mechanical)
- PCIe 3.0 x16
- PCI 32-bit
- PCIe 3.0 x16 (only active with dual processors)
- PCIe 3.0 x16 (only active with dual processors)
- 16 DIMM slots for up to 512 GiB RAM (256 GiB with one processor)
- Dual optical bays
- One 5.25" full size, SATA 3
- One slimline (laptop) SATA 3
- 8 internal drives
- NVMe SSD drives
What’s the x16 mechanical bit mean?Be careful what you ask for!
- PCIe 3.0 x4 (x16 mechanical)
- PCIe 3.0 x16
- PCIe 2.0 x4 (x16 mechanical)
It means that the slot on the motherboard is physically the size of an x16 slot, but only 4 signal lanes (x4) are present.
Typical higher performance (10 GbE, disk controllers, NVMe drives, ....) cards will be x4, x8 or even x16.
PCIe cards are supposed to work with fewer lanes than the card has, so that if you put an x16 card into a slot with only 4 lanes - it should run but possibly slower.
The two x4 slots on the MP5,1 are physically x16.
There's no such thing as a "full size slot" in the PCIe lexicon.I said the same with fewer words
I can cross over my C1 and adobe programs to PC
I can see many also would end up having to maybe buy new programs ?
for sure time and money spent learning new programs and productivity comes into play in $$ decisions
over 5 years 1K a year is really a drop in the bucket for many business expenses overall
some of us and I do speak for me and the tech lovers who just love tech and love macs but our love for macs wont outweigh what we know we can do (switch without to much hassle) and stay more current
I also do weigh tech into things
if I can save 15 minutes a day or say just over 60 hours a year at $75 per hour billable
would a PC be a better choice because of a faster machine ?
but flip that around to some who might loose that time do to new interface and lets just say that time is over 1 year to learn is it worth it for them ?
for sure we each have our own decisions to make and sadly Apple is IMHO loosing some of its base and not gaining and the question is do they even care at this point ?
I can see many also would end up having to maybe buy new programs ?
for sure time and money spent learning new programs and productivity comes into play in $$ decisions
over 5 years 1K a year is really a drop in the bucket for many business expenses overall
some of us and I do speak for me and the tech lovers who just love tech and love macs but our love for macs wont outweigh what we know we can do (switch without to much hassle) and stay more current
I also do weigh tech into things
if I can save 15 minutes a day or say just over 60 hours a year at $75 per hour billable
would a PC be a better choice because of a faster machine ?
but flip that around to some who might loose that time do to new interface and lets just say that time is over 1 year to learn is it worth it for them ?
for sure we each have our own decisions to make and sadly Apple is IMHO loosing some of its base and not gaining and the question is do they even care at this point ?
Of course there is... It's the biggest one of the lot and common joe understand that, not the techy mumbo jumbo.There's no such thing as a "full size slot" in the PCIe lexicon.
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Only because Apple doesn't make any effort to make it anything but a niche market. If the company would invest a bit more time and effort on it I'm sure they could grow their slice of that market.
Be careful what you ask for!
For the enormous box that it was in, the cMP was rather limited.
Indeed, but still a better box than the cylinder.
Apple doesn't care about the MacPro. It's drop in the ocean to them. They want to make a car. Great.
But I'd bet a proper MacPro would still sell by the thousands every month worldwide so a big business by many standards. Apple need to simply badge engineer a generic big Xeon workstation, perhaps give it a slab-of-aluminium facade, and let those who want that buy it. All it needs to be is effectively an 'official hackintosh', nothing more. No huge R&D spend. Easy.
Sure it might cannibalise high end iMac sales but so what? I don't think the Mac in general is that big a priority for Apple and the MacBookPro has been allowed to fall behind the best PC laptops.
But I'd bet a proper MacPro would still sell by the thousands every month worldwide so a big business by many standards. Apple need to simply badge engineer a generic big Xeon workstation, perhaps give it a slab-of-aluminium facade, and let those who want that buy it. All it needs to be is effectively an 'official hackintosh', nothing more. No huge R&D spend. Easy.
Sure it might cannibalise high end iMac sales but so what? I don't think the Mac in general is that big a priority for Apple and the MacBookPro has been allowed to fall behind the best PC laptops.
excuse me, have you seen a single apple product, since the returning of SJ back to apple, that has been lowered in price, within its 1 year product life cycle?
why is the amount of people is so little to see what is happening here.
where do you think is the huge profit of apple coming from.
while production becomes more cheap over a course of a year, apple DOES NOT give the savings on to us.
99% of other companies do that.
that is truly THE ridiculous thing about apple. and customers do continue to purchase apple products, while they should stop doing so after 6 months past the day of availability.
people still buying nMPs at those prices are clearly out of there mind or do have to much money at hand.
good for apple i guess
That is hardly Apple's fault... if Nvidia or AMD want to they can surely make cards.....they are replaceable!
As you noted "third party" .....
Well they did design the cylinder model, right?
Apple don't like nvidia...last time I checked Apple didn't want nvidia. Probably something to do with core discrete GPU business. (Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.)
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To be fair 6,1 is good but with fcpx...and office app.
Yes but nobody is stopping 3rd party making video card for it.... and it is not Apple's fault if Nvidia doesn't make the card for it or AMD / ATI for that matter, it might be that the MP sold very low quantity and AMD / Nvidia do not see a business case for them....but that is speculation as we don't know how many unit were sold.
Beats me. I wouldn't know the reason why their aren't any 3rd party GPU and that case..no it wouldn't be apple's fault. Did Apple even talk to those CEOs and say "I want you to make GPU for 6,1."
Who knows. However, (correct me if I'm wrong) I believe there was internal political problem that may led to not producing 3rd party GPU?. Referring to nvidia.
If they had gone with MXM form factor it would have been simple to upgrade cards.
They choose an absurd layout with no future because they wanted the result they achieved. When 7,1 launches with new GPUs that can't go in 6,1 the 6,1 prices will plummet like a paralyzed falcon. Everyone will "have to have" those new Polaris Wet Thud Z1000s. Apple will sell lots of 7,1s to the folks who can't stand being left behind. And 6,1s will go to the kids to use for Facebook on the old TV in the playroom.
They choose an absurd layout with no future because they wanted the result they achieved. When 7,1 launches with new GPUs that can't go in 6,1 the 6,1 prices will plummet like a paralyzed falcon. Everyone will "have to have" those new Polaris Wet Thud Z1000s. Apple will sell lots of 7,1s to the folks who can't stand being left behind. And 6,1s will go to the kids to use for Facebook on the old TV in the playroom.
I would step into that world with a lower cost MP 6,1.
I don't think prices would plummet, as there are business people that would welcome a lower priced MP and will keep prices just below newer MP 7,1.
We'll soon find out by the end of this year.
For myself, I will be transitioning from Mac Minis to an all MP environment.
But is the performance significantly below that of alternatives?
The high end Intel processors in the nMP have kind of hit a wall performance-wise, such that there's not a compelling reason to update those.
I don't know what's going on in the non-gaming GPU world, so I won't even try to speculate there.
Most everything else expansion-wise can be done with an external TB rack.
For those who absolutely need a PCIe interface, I get it, but the nMP does an awful lot of what people would normally need cards for.
That being said, my MacPro 5,1 is getting long in the tooth but I'm not silly enough to take the nMP plunge until there's a compelling reason, and at present there's not (for me); if I had to replace it I'd get a 5K iMac and try to shuffle around peripherals as best I could.
The GPU's firmware in 6,1 is embedded into main EFI of the system not in the GPU... so how can a third party build a video card? How or where are they going to inject GPU's firmware?
and who is to blame for this?
