MP 7,1 The Next and Final Intel Mac Pro

[strangerthanlight]

I hope the next (and final) Intel Mac Pro will be equipped with Sapphire Rapids and skip Ice Lake. If Intel enters Sapphire Rapids volume production in 2022 Q2 with no further delays, that would mean a late 2022 Intel Mac Pro which may come out together with a cheaper M1 Supreme/M1 Max Quad mini Mac Pro.

Up to 56 core with 64GB onboard HBM2 memory, support up to 4TB DDR5 Ram (can’t imagine what Apple would charge for these but the nice thing about modular Mac Pro is you can find it elsewhere for much cheaper prices), future-proof PCIe 5 support and potentially up to 30x in AI performance (thought still can’t beat GPUs probably).

Granite Rapids (part of the eagle stream platform) will likely be using the same LGA4677 socket as the Sapphire Rapids which means the 2022 Mac Pro can easily upgrade CPU along the roadmap if needed.

Nice to have will be PCIe 4 based MPX 6900X Duo and Afterburner II with new ProRes encoder and decoder, faster SSDs (like the one used in M1 Pro MacBook pro), and maybe throw in higher rated PSU to incorporate the new Intel chips and this modular machine will be hard to beat. No need to change the form factor at all.

 

[bsbeamer]

Apple is likely devoting ZERO resources to developing another Intel version of Mac Pro. If you keep the chassis of the MP7,1 theoretically could "just" redesign logic board for new sockets, but even that is not where they have explicitly stated they're heading in the near term future. Selling the existing Intel models is likely what they meant by continuing to support and offer Intel-based machines.

 

[strangerthanlight]

Apple is likely devoting ZERO resources to developing another Intel version of Mac Pro. If you keep the chassis of the MP7,1 theoretically could "just" redesign logic board for new sockets, but even that is not where they have explicitly stated they're heading in the near term future. Selling the existing Intel models is likely what they meant by continuing to support and offer Intel-based machines.

I really don’t see myself buying a closed system that is not upgradable in the future. That’s why iMac Pro failed. Apple can easily satisfy some of the prosumers with a beefed up Mac mini. For Pro machine we do need it to be modular. I think Apple learned from their mistakes from the Mac Pro 6,1 and made an amazing Mac Pro in 2019, I hope they continue to keep the Mac Pro expandable. I really don’t care if the size is halved or not. The current Mac Pro thermo design is unparalleled.

 

[theluggage]

I hope the next (and final) Intel Mac Pro will be equipped with Sapphire Rapids and skip Ice Lake.

Sounds like a triumph of optimism over experience:

2010 Mac pro tower - got a minor update in 2012 which was widely derided, actually discontinued in Europe shortly afterwards because Apple couldn't fit a plastic fan guard to meet a new regulation that had been in the pipeline for years, not replaced until late 2013.

2013 Trashcan - never updated, not replaced until late 2019 (unless you count the iMac Pro as the replacement, speaking of which...)

2017 iMac Pro - maybe got some new GPU options? No CPU update & dropped without replacement in 2021.

2019 Intel Mac Pro? Maybe history won't repeat itself except, oh, wait, Apple have already announced its future obsolescence as part of the switch to Apple Silicon...

I'm sure there will be a replacement "Mac Pro" but the way Apple Silicon is shaping up so far it's looking like it will rely on multiple "max" chips and be a somewhat radical change from the Intel system. May you live in interesting times.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

This video compares the test results, which are quite brutal.

MacBook Pro hits the Mac Pro hard

 

[Soba]

I really don’t see myself buying a closed system that is not upgradable in the future. That’s why iMac Pro failed. Apple can easily satisfy some of the prosumers with a beefed up Mac mini. For Pro machine we do need it to be modular. I think Apple learned from their mistakes from the Mac Pro 6,1 and made an amazing Mac Pro in 2019, I hope they continue to keep the Mac Pro expandable. I really don’t care if the size is halved or not. The current Mac Pro thermo design is unparalleled.

It is extremely unlikely there will be another Intel Mac Pro. Six months ago, I thought the opposite.

I will say, I don't think Intel helped themselves here by publicly blasting Apple in their advertising. Apple is not even a direct competitor and Intel is essentially trashing a specific customer's application while they are still a customer. Apple has demonstrated in the past that they're very prickly about their partners' behavior—in some cases canceling products or features in response to product pre-announcements that stole Apple's thunder.

Even if Apple had been considering an updated Intel Mac Pro at some point, I'd be pretty shocked if they reward Intel with more business now even if it made technical sense for them to do so (and I'm not sure it does).

 

[strangerthanlight]

All valid points. Interesting times indeed.

 

[colinconn]

I can only ever look at my Mac Pro and realize I have a blazingly fast machine that is going to last me 10 years. I may upgrade the GPU for games but that's about it.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Apple has some specific customers they build the 7,1 for. If those customers want a new version Apple will build it. I think they probably will make one more version as the Apple Silicon version still won't offer what those specific customers want/need. Apple themselves uses the 7,1 for a lot of things. They're probably designing Apple Silicon chips on it.

 

[strangerthanlight]

Apple has some specific customers they build the 7,1 for. If those customers want a new version Apple will build it. I think they probably will make one more version as the Apple Silicon version still won't offer what those specific customers want/need. Apple themselves uses the 7,1 for a lot of things. They're probably designing Apple Silicon chips on it.

Can’t agree more. The Mac Pro 7,1 ticked all the boxes back then. Apple silicon solved some but missed some key feature sets.

 

[avro707]

I can only ever look at my Mac Pro and realize I have a blazingly fast machine that is going to last me 10 years. I may upgrade the GPU for games but that's about it.

Same here. Ultimately I might end up getting a 7,1 refurbished or if there is a lifecycle interval to the 7,1 (to borrow the BMW term for a mid-life update) I'll get that.

I love the classic Mac Pros I have (the two 5,1s) but it's starting to get more tricky to keep them up to the latest OS. 11.6 is working well on my cMPs so that's how those will stay.

A 7,1 would probably tick all the boxes pretty well for me.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Apple is likely devoting ZERO resources to developing another Intel version of Mac Pro. If you keep the chassis of the MP7,1 theoretically could "just" redesign logic board for new sockets, but even that is not where they have explicitly stated they're heading in the near term future. Selling the existing Intel models is likely what they meant by continuing to support and offer Intel-based machines.

If Intel’s next generation were pin-compatible, there MIGHT have been leeway. However, as I understand it, since the motherboard would be a major redesign due to the Intel’s changes, there’s zero chance that Apple would perform that redesign for an Intel chip and then redesign it AGAIN for their own.

 

[Pakaku]

I will say, I don't think Intel helped themselves here by publicly blasting Apple in their advertising. Apple is not even a direct competitor and Intel is essentially trashing a specific customer's application while they are still a customer. Apple has demonstrated in the past that they're very prickly about their partners' behavior—in some cases canceling products or features in response to product pre-announcements that stole Apple's thunder.

Even if Apple had been considering an updated Intel Mac Pro at some point, I'd be pretty shocked if they reward Intel with more business now even if it made technical sense for them to do so (and I'm not sure it does).

It's just marketing, it doesn't really mean anything behind the scenes. Apple does business with Intel and Samsung all the time despite how much they look like they make fun of Apple. Although one thing that does come to mind is when Steve Jobs got pissed off at NVIDIA over something, and that's why we only see AMD graphics in Macs these days

 

[Unregistered 4U]

It's just marketing, it doesn't really mean anything behind the scenes. Apple does business with Intel and Samsung all the time despite how much they look like they make fun of Apple. Although one thing that does come to mind is when Steve Jobs got pissed off at NVIDIA over something, and that's why we only see AMD graphics in Macs these days

Apple does business with Samsung still and will continue to have a need to. Apple no longer does business with Intel, and doesn’t have a need to. That’s a big difference.

 

[mattspace]

It's just marketing, it doesn't really mean anything behind the scenes. Apple does business with Intel and Samsung all the time despite how much they look like they make fun of Apple. Although one thing that does come to mind is when Steve Jobs got pissed off at NVIDIA over something, and that's why we only see AMD graphics in Macs these days

And before that, he got pissed off at ATI/AMD (spoiling the G4 Cube announcement) and we had several years of only Nvidia GPUs as default in Macs.

 

[Pakaku]

Apple does business with Samsung still and will continue to have a need to. Apple no longer does business with Intel, and doesn’t have a need to. That’s a big difference.

Well, they kind of do if their Mac Pros will still be based on Intel... and that's not a market that will shift as quickly as Apple would like

 

[singhs.apps]

So considering that the new Xeon Ws (3xxx) scale up to 38 cores and macOS only supports 64 threads…. How will Apple fit the top of the line CPU in the new intel Mac Pro ?

 

[strangerthanlight]

So considering that the new Xeon Ws (3xxx) scale up to 38 cores and macOS only supports 64 threads…. How will Apple fit the top of the line CPU in the new intel Mac Pro ?

Bootcamp of course I think these limitations would be fixed once the Mac Pro mini is out

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Well, they kind of do if their Mac Pros will still be based on Intel... and that's not a market that will shift as quickly as Apple would like

Their Mac Pros won’t still be based on Intel, so no need to purchase any new chips and once those systems are gone, they’re gone. The Mac Pro is a teeny tiny market, so it will shift 100% as soon as Apple’s sold the last Mac Pro

 

[Unregistered 4U]

So considering that the new Xeon Ws (3xxx) scale up to 38 cores and macOS only supports 64 threads…. How will Apple fit the top of the line CPU in the new intel Mac Pro ?

They won’t. I would imagine if it were possible, that enterprising users might swap out the CPU (I believe it’s socketed). But I don’t think Apple will be shipping a system with… what’s the newest Xenon W? 3365? Another reason why it’s likely to be no other Intel is because, from the day it ships, it would be slower than the Mac Laptops, considerably so, for processing ProRes video.

 

[bsbeamer]

Future Apple Silicon Macs Will Reportedly Use 3nm Chips With Up to 40 Cores

The Information's Wayne Ma today shared alleged details about future Apple silicon chips that will succeed the first-generation M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, which are manufactured based on Apple chipmaking partner TSMC's 5nm process. The report claims that Apple and TSMC plan to manufacture...

forums.macrumors.com

Meanwhile, the report says the next Mac Pro will use a variant of the M1 Max chip with at least two dies, as part of the first generation of Apple silicon chips.

 

[singhs.apps]

Bootcamp of course I think these limitations would be fixed once the Mac Pro mini is out

That would be the only way the 38 core Xeon w would make sense in a Mac Pro. Else performance is left on table thanks to the limitations of the OS.
However, as others are surmising, if Apple won’t be making new intel Mac pros…the 64 thread issue is moot.

Also I hope they will keep expansion options reasonably viable in the AS Mac Pro.

 

[singhs.apps]

They won’t. I would imagine if it were possible, that enterprising users might swap out the CPU (I believe it’s socketed). But I don’t think Apple will be shipping a system with… what’s the newest Xenon W? 3365? Another reason why it’s likely to be no other Intel is because, from the day it ships, it would be slower than the Mac Laptops, considerably so, for processing ProRes video.

Looking at the benchmarks of M1 max and Intel’s own claim vis a vis the XeonW 3xxxs…I am expecting the quad M1 Mac to outperform the latest top of the line Workstation chips from Intel.

Plugging the 4 TB memory capacity may be tough though.

 

[The Other One]

So, I have a 2019 Mac Pro (specs in my signature I think), and I got seriously caught up in the M1 Max hype. I ended up ordering a 16" with 64GB and 2TB, figuring if it was as blazingly fast as everyone says, it could easily replace my Mac Pro, which I'd just sell.

The new MBP arrived two days ago. I was finally able to do some comparison testing using my own After Effects and Premiere Pro files today — actual projects I'm working on myself. The results between the two machines were disappointing.

To complete a timeline playback of a 30-second composition in After Effects took 2m28s on the Mac Pro... and over 6m on the M1 Max MBP. To render that same composition to ProRes took 33sec on the Mac Pro and 5m54s on the M1 Max. Granted, this was a composition that used Element 3D, which is a fairly old plugin. So I have to assume it just REALLY doesn't get along well with Apple silicon.

To re-encode that from ProRes to h.264 took 9 seconds on the Mac Pro and 12 seconds on the M1 Max.

I then tried another project, this time Premiere Pro. Nothing fancy, just a minute-long video for social. Timeline playback was real-time for both, but export time had the same disparity as the re-encode: 9 seconds for Mac Pro, 12 seconds for M1 Max.

Somehow, I thought that since I was using the Adobe apps that were specifically for Apple silicon, that they would just blow the regular Intel version out of the water. Naive and overly optimistic, I suppose.

I'm pretty bummed. You can pore over all the benchmarks in the world, but until you can try it out with files/projects you personally use in your day to day, I guess they're pretty meaningless. I was so hyped about the MacBook Pro, but I'm kinda thinking I should just return it and sit tight for an Apple silicon Mac Pro.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

So, I have a 2019 Mac Pro (specs in my signature I think), and I got seriously caught up in the M1 Max hype. I ended up ordering a 16" with 64GB and 2TB, figuring if it was as blazingly fast as everyone says, it could easily replace my Mac Pro, which I'd just sell.

The new MBP arrived two days ago. I was finally able to do some comparison testing using my own After Effects and Premiere Pro files today — actual projects I'm working on myself. The results between the two machines were disappointing.

To complete a timeline playback of a 30-second composition in After Effects took 2m28s on the Mac Pro... and over 6m on the M1 Max MBP. To render that same composition to ProRes took 33sec on the Mac Pro and 5m54s on the M1 Max. Granted, this was a composition that used Element 3D, which is a fairly old plugin. So I have to assume it just REALLY doesn't get along well with Apple silicon.

To re-encode that from ProRes to h.264 took 9 seconds on the Mac Pro and 12 seconds on the M1 Max.

I then tried another project, this time Premiere Pro. Nothing fancy, just a minute-long video for social. Timeline playback was real-time for both, but export time had the same disparity as the re-encode: 9 seconds for Mac Pro, 12 seconds for M1 Max.

Somehow, I thought that since I was using the Adobe apps that were specifically for Apple silicon, that they would just blow the regular Intel version out of the water. Naive and overly optimistic, I suppose.

I'm pretty bummed. You can pore over all the benchmarks in the world, but until you can try it out with files/projects you personally use in your day to day, I guess they're pretty meaningless. I was so hyped about the MacBook Pro, but I'm kinda thinking I should just return it and sit tight for an Apple silicon Mac Pro.

It's really interesting, but I saw the test of this Japanese self-media worker again, and the result is different from yours.

The MBP is faster than his Mac Pro in editing, closing proxy, and even outputting, which is really interesting (with Adobe).

【禁断の検証！】M1 Maxチップ搭載の新型MacBook Proは、Mac Proに勝てるのか！ / MacBook Pro (2021) vs Mac Pro (2019)

However, as far as I can see, MBP has not hit the Mac Pro hard, but considering the price difference and performance, I think MBP's results will definitely affect the next generation of Mac Pro, after all, this is really the trend.