MP 7,1 The thing I love MOST about the Mac Pro...

[profcutter]

for 2006-2016 time it wouldn't be "out of the ordinary". The increasing bloat of GPU card width has been relatively recent.

Apple's duo 6800 MPX module also doesn't run into the problem either. ( which is part Apple designing for their stuff first ) .

I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not 2006, it’s 2019, and apple should realize that folks are going to be putting high end 3rd party cards in their top of the line machine. I’m not disagreeing with you, in the sense that it seems that the design of the Mac Pro was based on these older assumptions, but I assume ASUS and NVidia and AMD were all designing 3-wide cards at the same time as the Mac Pro was being developed.

 

[Grumply]

I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not 2006, it’s 2019, and apple should realize that folks are going to be putting high end 3rd party cards in their top of the line machine. I’m not disagreeing with you, in the sense that it seems that the design of the Mac Pro was based on these older assumptions, but I assume ASUS and NVidia and AMD were all designing 3-wide cards at the same time as the Mac Pro was being developed.

I don't know if we can really blame them for it, double-wide slots have been the standard for forever. And even when GPU manufacturers started going to taller sizes, it was generally only on over-clocked versions - never the reference cards.

The frustrating thing is that the 7,1's cooling would be totally fine at handling any higher temps that would come from slightly smaller heatsinks on these GPUs.

And if you spend the extra dosh on the workstation versions of these cards - they go back to being 2-slots wide again. But you are paying 2x as much for the workstation cards, and that's a lot of dosh just to gain back two PCIe slots - it's more cost effective to purchase TB3 PCIe expansion boxes, and add your smaller peripherals into those.

I've just abandoned this particular experiment, and just put the smaller Highpoint card back into the x8 slot. I've run some tests, and it doesn't cost me any performance - just the irritating system "warnings" about suboptimal PCIe configuration (that I can't turn off).

 

[mattspace]

do the front fans ramp their speeds based on thermals for standard GPUs, or do they only attempt to actively cool MPX cards?

 

[Grumply]

do the front fans ramp their speeds based on thermals for standard GPUs, or do they only attempt to actively cool MPX cards?

They don't, but then, they don't ramp up on mine even when the CPU is running at 90 degrees (as I found out painfully this afternoon, after not reseting my own custom fan rules after installing Big Sur).

I don't know why the 7,1 refuses to control the fans itself. But fortunately it's not too difficult to sort out with some custom fan rules in iStat Pro.

 

[Rian Gray]

Out of curiosity, how do you get video signals out of current setup? I had issues booting up mine to macOS, (not sure about bootcamp) so ended up reinstalling an MPX card, even though the monitor is directly connected to 3rd party graphics card.

 

[avro707]

The old Mac Pro also quite tidy and neat inside.

Yes, I have to agree, my 5,1 was so easy to work on and upgrade (1x Xeon X5690, 1TB SSD and AMD RX580 8GB). It's fantastic machine and really, really fast. It's beautifully engineered.

Now I also have a 6,1 with a 12 core 2.4ghz, 2x AMD FirePro D700 6GB and 64GB 1866mhz ram. It's also beautiful and very, very powerful but the Xeon E5 2697V2 processor upgrade I'm soon going to give that will be a much more involved process.

On the 5,1 it is dead easy. And the 5,1 still looks great as well. I ran Zwift on it today because of a bug with the Apple TV Zwift app. And the old 2010 machine upgraded runs that smoothly at maximum settings!

It is the best computer I've used.

 

[Spock]

Your pictures really make me wonder what the plans are for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. I am almost positive that the Mac Pro will remain Intel past the two year transition to Apple Silicon.

 

[profcutter]

Your pictures really make me wonder what the plans are for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. I am almost positive that the Mac Pro will remain Intel past the two year transition to Apple Silicon.

Why do the pictures make you think that? I personally think it’s quite hard to tell, since all the timelines seem to have been delayed, and we’re still on the original low end M1. I suppose that means a delayed transition for the Mac Pro is probable.

 

[deconstruct60]

Why do the pictures make you think that? I personally think it’s quite hard to tell, since all the timelines seem to have been delayed, and we’re still on the original low end M1.

"still on the original M1". Still? that is a bit of an overstatement. M1 was only introduced November 2020. Does AMD and Intei supersede their mainstream laptops offerings in less than 12 months? No. Maybe get a 12 month cycle but of late often longer.

Second the M1 is just one SoC in a line up SoCs' The "larger die" M-series hasn't appeared at all. That is still version 0. Hasn't even gotten to one , so not sure at all why it is late. Intel and AMD typically don't introduce the whole generational lineup in the span of less than 8-10 months either. "Ice Lake" server processors came out in 2021 when Ice Lake laptop processors came out in 2020 ( Apple used ice lake in an early 2020 MBP 13" update ). AMD released Ryzen 5000 (Zen 3 ) mainstream processors in Nov 2020 and the Threadripper variants aren't coming until 2021 ( around Oct-Nov. ).

When Apple flushes out to relatively much wider set of SoC ( going from about 2 -> 4-5 ) the whole line up is less likely to be completely tied to the iPhone annual September change. the large dies ( and/or collection of dies ) are probably going to spread out into different parts of the year precisely to avoid the huge demand bubble that Apple incurs each Summer/Fall on iPhone ramp.

I suppose that means a delayed transition for the Mac Pro is probable.

The tower PPC was last that time. And Intel had a viable workstation CPU product all along the transition time. Apple doesn't.

If Apple made plans in 2018-2019 to do an W-3300 ( ice Lake ) update then more than probable that 2021 wasn't the target year. Apple gave themselves a two year window.

2020 -- low end volume with iPad Pro sized die.
2021 -- a slightly bigger die and rest of higher volume ( upper MBP 13" , MBP 16" , ) and more larger fraction of desktop ( iMac 24 , probable Mini "bigger die" when MBP 16" comes. Maybe 27" )
2022 -- biggest , but lowest volume SoC Mac Pro ( and some bigger screen iMac variant ).


And there is probably not "the Mac Pro". MBP and iMac have two sizes. Indications are that Apple is going to split the Mac Pro for the interim future. A M-series to power the current chassis and multiple top end GPU cards? Probably not. First there is zero software support for the multiple GPUs. No multiple GPU will probably trigger a slot shrink. (e.g., at least one whole MPX box ( two double wides).

Chopping off a large amount of I/O bandwidth and RAM capacity makes it far easier for Apple to hit a "half sized" workstation goal line. Even stick with their soldered on SoC package modus operandi using on the rest of the line up.

 

[profcutter]

I think I could have been more clear with my short quip, I was genuinely interested in why Spock thought the images indicated a delay in release of the Mac Pro.

As far as delays are concerned, I don’t see any reason why the M1 needs to be Replaced at this time, but the higher end machines are languishing in older Intel generations with known flaws. I believe that the newest generations from intel don’t provide much in terms of incentive to redesign platforms, but why is there still only a low end Mac mini with apple silicon? Why only a low end MacBook Pro and air?

The 16 inch should have been upgraded by now, and there’s plenty of evidence that it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but problems related to chip shortage and COVID have pushed back release dates.

 

[Spock]

I think I could have been more clear with my short quip, I was genuinely interested in why Spock thought the images indicated a delay in release of the Mac Pro.

As far as delays are concerned, I don’t see any reason why the M1 needs to be Replaced at this time, but the higher end machines are languishing in older Intel generations with known flaws. I believe that the newest generations from intel don’t provide much in terms of incentive to redesign platforms, but why is there still only a low end Mac mini with apple silicon? Why only a low end MacBook Pro and air?

The 16 inch should have been upgraded by now, and there’s plenty of evidence that it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but problems related to chip shortage and COVID have pushed back release dates.

The pictures made me wonder if Apple Silicon had advanced far enough since the M1 that it can support the needs that users purchasing the Mac Pro have. I don’t think many true pro users would like the limited IO options with the M1.

 

[profcutter]

The pictures made me wonder if Apple Silicon had advanced far enough since the M1 that it can support the needs that users purchasing the Mac Pro have. I don’t think many true pro users would like the limited IO options with the M1.

Yeah, I mean since we haven’t seen anything detailed about the m1x or m2 or whatever it will be called, it’s hard to make a judgement about how apple silicon can replace the intels at this point.

 

[deconstruct60]

I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not 2006, it’s 2019, and apple should realize that folks are going to be putting high end 3rd party cards in their top of the line machine. I’m not disagreeing with you, in the sense that it seems that the design of the Mac Pro was based on these older assumptions, but I assume ASUS and NVidia and AMD were all designing 3-wide cards at the same time as the Mac Pro was being developed.

For the Workstation and Server market? Generally there were not doing 3-wide cards.

Nvidia has a semicustom workstation box with 4 cards in it. They are all double width and water cooled. The water cooling allows them to ballon squeeze the extra bulk required to another part of the enclosure ( the top to blow it up and out).

ASUS just introduced a new ATX motherborard for creatives.

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3 wide spacing there for non slot blocking? Nope.

Standards like ATX and EATX are also fixed in size. If given a fixed amount of space if the board maker tries to increase the space between slots then will likely have to trade something off. (e.g., give up a slot ). Slot numbers sell on most enthusiasts groups more than "better spacing".


The biggest Dell box 7920

Dell Precision 7920 Tower Owner's Manual | Dell US

The block of 3 slots on the top provisioned by the second CPU. Two x16 there but if stick in a 2.5-3 wide card blow away the other x16 slot. Similar issue on the bottom if put in a 2.5-3 wide card. You have just lost space for two more x16 SSD cards and a Declink card.


HP Z8 description:

"... Up to 2x NVIDIA RTX™ A6000 or 1x AMD Radeon™ Pro WX9100 "
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Z Workstation Desktops PCs

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The two A6000 is enabled in part because actually are just dual width cards. similar board spacing issue with two Xeon sockets . but trying to stick to E-ATX sized form factor.



If AMD and Nvidia were pointing Apple at 350-400W cards (which the next gen seem to be heading for full steam) then it isn't surprising Apple is on path to dumping them.

The current design probably could support some water cooling if there was better routing from the Slot 1 and Slot 3 to the "empty void" where the 3.5" HDD drive bracket could be screwed in. If screwed in a custom radiator there with push-me , pull-you fans then could dump at least a card's worth there. ( high ingest temps from CPU cast off so limited. )

The other minor change to current baseline design would be some ability to provision U.2 to the optional add-in-drive bay. A PCI-e header along side or substitute for SATA header.

Another problem flying under the radar on the now older Mac Pro 2019 and its PCI-e v3 backbone data infrstructure is that PCI-e v4 (and up) don't travel as well when increase distances. So there is some tension to pull the GPU slots closer ( or have to augment with additional board complexity with re-drivers. )

For the consumer off the shelf space things are drifting toward just one big ( perhaps too big) GPU. Fewer doubles configurations ( AMD and Nvidia demphasising SLI/Crossfire in the mainstream) . And also fewer SSD add-in-cards. (mainstream boards having 2-4 M.2 slots. Workstations picking up U.2 provisioned bays. )


A PCI-e v4 x8 SSD add in card would cover the same bandwidth space as a x16 PCI-e v3 card in a future system. The baseline design that Apple has here will work when scale it up with better core backhaul. The full size MPX modules do some slot covering. But the MP 2019 board also has slots 6 and 7 as an offset in most circumstances.

The baseline standards for the PCI-e add-in-card standards and approach just really were not meant for 400w entities. It is a track that will run into more and more problems over time if there is dogmatic fixation with "do it with 80's and 90's tech". Can knock Apple's MP 2019 baseline design but Dell , HP , Lenovo , etc probably aren't going to 3 width spacing over time either over next 2-3 years .

 

[profcutter]

Interesting. So it’s the 3-wide cards that are the anomalies. Seems like a problematic choice to go 3-wide if no mobos can accommodate them.

 

[joelypolly]

Interesting. So it’s the 3-wide cards that are the anomalies. Seems like a problematic choice to go 3-wide if no mobos can accommodate them.

Thats why on a standard ATX more you usually can only fit something like 6 to 7 one-wide cards which means on average you can fit 2 maybe 3 two-wide cards. The benefits that ATX motherboards have is that the last slot can fit as wide a card as will fit in your case.