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Roykor

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2013
292
315
for Photoshop as example, Adobe says it

My understanding of this dual gpu support is that 1 gpu is doing all the normal stuff, and the other gpu is rendering the video. Not the dual gpu power you would like to see when you invest such a bunch of money. I can't find it at the moment.. but Adobe state themselves that dual GPU can even hurt the performance in Photoshop.

Also, there are through the whole Adobe suite all kind of Cuda stuff too. A single GTX 1070 / 1080 will do the job perfectly. With M2 SSD's on your side you will be fine. And animators who render a lot, can not benefit from Xeons at the moment with the weird small form factor. Dual Xeons is where the fun starts, not with a single one. Again you need to hop over to the 'other side' like Dell or HP.

Why would Apple care anyway.. if they have Final Cut Pro. Their own stuff.
 

Roykor

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2013
292
315
Maybe they'd like to sell computers to "the rest of us"....

For sure, there will be other reasons to go for a Mac Pro. Like the small form factor if there is not a lot of space. I am looking through the glasses of my branche, the graphic sector. It made Apple THE machine to work with if you are into content creation. We all know that Apple is making their money with other products now and Mac Books and iMacs are more moving to consumers. The configuration of 6.1 is simply not interesting (through the glasses of content creation). Unless you work with Final Cut Pro. Their own suit.

I simply dont get it why they turned their back on such a big crowd who are / where Apple minded.

From my perspective with their pro line, Apple swingt and missed because of the very limited choices. Only one Xeon, only SLI choice, only ATI choice, only outside extension which is again expensive.

If Apple doenst come with an update soon, I might even think Apple is abandoning this Pro machine and come up with something els, or even shut this part down.
 
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Roykor

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2013
292
315
Yeah, I don't see the benefit of having a Xeon unless you have more than one.

Of-course, thats the fun of Xeons. Having 2 multi cores in your system. They have ruled out so many users with their small form factor design and less options coming with that. I dont need an iMac, and i would like a other configuration than the Mac Pro. So, there i am.. I made the choice to move over to an PC very soon. :(
 

Zarniwoop

macrumors 65816
Aug 12, 2009
1,038
760
West coast, Finland
The extra 150W in next nMP is sufficient to power up three 24" and smaller displays, or one 27" and one 24" displays. This could be Apples goal. The old TB display could be upgraded too to use or supply power through USB-c.

Display lineup.:
- 27" TB2 1440p display with both tb2 and usb-c connectors up to DP1.2a, can power laptops, Mac Mini and iDevices with USB-c or TB2, for $799
- Retina 5k 27" TB3/USB-c/DP1.3 adaptive sync for $1299. eGPU model later when os support is ready.
- Pro Cinema display, 4k, 24", HDR, Dolby Vision, (maybe oled, but then more expensive), TB3/USB-c/DP1.3 adaptive sync for $1499
[doublepost=1465385027][/doublepost]Zen and Kaby Lake both postponed to 2017?

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20160607PD202.html
 
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Mago

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
2,789
912
Beyond the Thunderdome
The extra 150W in next nMP is sufficient to power up
I Think most of this extra Watts are to power Macbooks on Target-Display mode slave to a Mac Pro (TB3 power delivery is 100W), and to provide a bit more extra headroom for GPU, I just checked and the W8100 (D710) use mere 180W on load, re-arranged for a MP tc w/o ECC and 10% lower clock easy could fit under 150W TDP exactly as they did with the W9000 and D700.
Display lineup.:

A Sure bet is the 5K retina TB3 Display, and I think it will arrive ASAP as the MP or the new rMBP/Mac nano.

Time ago I read somewhere Apple ordered 24" 4K Panels, in case being true this could target an entry level USB-C Retina Display (but also could mean the 27" TB3rD will be ridiculous expensive).

I don't care on the original TB2 Cinema Display since I saw LG's 34" ultra wide Thunderbolt display, it outclassed it by long and its much cheaper.
 

mattspace

macrumors 68040
Jun 5, 2013
3,344
2,975
Australia
Time ago I read somewhere Apple ordered 24" 4K Panels, in case being true this could target an entry level USB-C Retina Display (but also could mean the 27" TB3rD will be ridiculous expensive).

I have a sneaking suspicion the 5k display will be a LOT cheaper than people are expecting - cheap enough that getting it and a new computer to drive it will represent good value vs trying to find an alternative large format screen to stick with an old computer. When the first iPads came out it was a LOT cheaper than the zeitgeist had expected - wouldn't surprise me, given it'll ONLY work with new machines (driving sales), if they brought it out at a similar, or lower price than the old TB display. Given they've got economies of scale from the 5k iMac, that I'm willing to bet dwarf Dell's 5k screen sales.

On the other hand... an expensive "Apple Pro Display" in 27"5k and "Apple Retina Display" in 24"4k does make a good sounding pair of models...
 

H2SO4

macrumors 603
Nov 4, 2008
5,839
7,112
I have a sneaking suspicion the 5k display will be a LOT cheaper than people are expecting - cheap enough that getting it and a new computer to drive it will represent good value vs trying to find an alternative large format screen to stick with an old computer. When the first iPads came out it was a LOT cheaper than the zeitgeist had expected - wouldn't surprise me, given it'll ONLY work with new machines (driving sales), if they brought it out at a similar, or lower price than the old TB display. Given they've got economies of scale from the 5k iMac, that I'm willing to bet dwarf Dell's 5k screen sales.

On the other hand... an expensive "Apple Pro Display" in 27"5k and "Apple Retina Display" in 24"4k does make a good sounding pair of models...
Half an iMac so maybe half the price?
(£1449.00/2).
 

fuchsdh

macrumors 68020
Jun 19, 2014
2,028
1,831
for Photoshop as example, Adobe says it


My understanding of this dual gpu support is that 1 gpu is doing all the normal stuff, and the other gpu is rendering the video. Not the dual gpu power you would like to see when you invest such a bunch of money. I can't find it at the moment.. but Adobe state themselves that dual GPU can even hurt the performance in Photoshop.

Also, there are through the whole Adobe suite all kind of Cuda stuff too. A single GTX 1070 / 1080 will do the job perfectly. With M2 SSD's on your side you will be fine. And animators who render a lot, can not benefit from Xeons at the moment with the weird small form factor. Dual Xeons is where the fun starts, not with a single one. Again you need to hop over to the 'other side' like Dell or HP.

Why would Apple care anyway.. if they have Final Cut Pro. Their own stuff.

CUDA has been deprecated in a lot of Adobe's offerings; the only thing I know that requires CUDA is the no-longer-supported raytracing in After Effects. Everything else you can do with OpenCL.

As for dual Xeons, when it comes to my After Effects work all those processors have meant jack ****. The program is horribly unoptimized and multithreaded rendering is often slower than just single-processor rendering. Maybe that's finally going to change but Adobe's been saying "performance is coming" with AE for three years and we're still not there.
 

koyoot

macrumors 603
Jun 5, 2012
5,939
1,853
TBD: 21.5 Inch, 4K retina display 4096x2304 pixels, HDR - 999$
27 inch, 5K retina display, 5120x2880 pixels, HDR - 1999$.

Mac Pro:
Dual FirePro G300: Polaris 10 with more than 5.8 TFLOPs of compute power FP32 each.
Dual FirePro G500: Vega 10 Pro with 3584 GCN cores, 96 ROPS, and 8 GB of HBM2 and 1/4th DP ratio.
Dual FirePro G700: Vega 10 XT with 4096 GCN cores, 96 ROPS, 16 GB of HBM2 and 1/4th DP ratio.

Top offering for CPU: 18 core. 6, 8, 12, 18 core CPUs available.
Base model: 6 cores, 16 GB of RAM, Dual G300, and 512 GB SSD NVMe for 2999$.
Mid-Range model: 6 cores, Dual G500, 512 GB SSD, 32 GB of RAM for 3999$.
RAM tops at 256 GB from Apple.
SSD - 2 TB max, with lower price tiers, for the rest.

My predictions ;).
 
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beaker7

Cancelled
Mar 16, 2009
920
5,010
CUDA has been deprecated in a lot of Adobe's offerings; the only thing I know that requires CUDA is the no-longer-supported raytracing in After Effects. Everything else you can do with OpenCL.

As for dual Xeons, when it comes to my After Effects work all those processors have meant jack ****. The program is horribly unoptimized and multithreaded rendering is often slower than just single-processor rendering. Maybe that's finally going to change but Adobe's been saying "performance is coming" with AE for three years and we're still not there.

I don't think the word "deprecated" means what you think it means. Adobe has added OpenCL support for most operations, but the CUDA ones are far from deprecated and perform far better most of the time. It remains to be seen how much effort they continue with supporting OpenCL though given Apple's nonexistent support of it on their platform.

AE is no performance champion but if you're not seeing multithreading advantages its either your footage codec or a plugin. Quicktime is the typical culprit. Switching to modern codecs or sequence file formats should give you a boost. I am on a 20 core machine and regularly see 95%+ CPU usage during AE renders.
 

mattspace

macrumors 68040
Jun 5, 2013
3,344
2,975
Australia
Half an iMac so maybe half the price?
(£1449.00/2).

No I'm thinking they hit the current TB Display pricepoint, which is already a premium priced product, the more I think about it. That's often Apple's style - keep the prices the same but "radically" (cough though not always) up the specs. Look at iPhones, iPads, and laptops, even iMacs, retina wasn't a HUGE premium on prices, more presented as "this is the expected generation over generation progress. Last time it was LED backlight, this time it's retina resolution.

They also have this thing about really undercutting the pricing of what other players offer. Now, often it turns out to be smoke & mirrors, vis radeons called FirePros to look like they were putting several thousand worth of cards into a machine that cost not much more than that. But it's an archetype they like to come back to. What they don't like doing is introducing a MUCH better product, for a monstrously over the odds premium - hence the 5k iMac selling for roughly the price of the Dell 5k display only. Start from iMac, pull the perceived value of CPU, RAM, WIFI, Bluetooth, all the cpu cooling systems etc. I'd bet it's also about an inch thick at the thickest, none of that fat bulge at the back, and maybe see the return of VESA mounting.

the really terrifying idea is that eGPU devices are made a standardised and supported device, but they're via an MF-i style programme that expressly prohibits display output on the device, so theyre just like an external hard drive, but for gpu compute, rather than storage capacity.
 

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
I'm only not so sure the nMP will start at 6 cores, I don't see Apple letting go of that chunk of money.
But I'm hoping the TB3D will not have a huge premium over the current model, if any.
If they could keep the price of the iMac 5K as it is, I hope they don't go overboard with the display/dock.
With no 1600 announced yet, I don't see nMP being mentioned next week.
I guess no hardware indeed, with Kaby Lake also being delayed - if it was ever going in to the new rMBPs.
 

Zarniwoop

macrumors 65816
Aug 12, 2009
1,038
760
West coast, Finland
TBD: 21.5 Inch, 4K retina display 4096x2304 pixels, HDR - 999$
27 inch, 5K retina display, 5120x2880 pixels, HDR - 1999$.

I excluded those monitor options, because USB-c has capacity after power and TB3/2/USB 3 data just for one DP 1.3 line. And HDR uses it fully with standard 4k/60p. No higher resolutions. That's why I put the Cinema Pro display there as the only HDR option for now. 27" 5k and 4K retina display 4096x2304 pixels is possible without HDR.

Of course this problem can be avoided with eGPU.
[doublepost=1465401966][/doublepost]My prediction for next OS X release is:
- It's all about Async computing, Metal v2 and what it makes possible. Finally proper way to utilize both GPUs and more than enough of power for todays VR needs. Plus Siri and some new API's like UiKit to deal the problem of dozens of opened tabs in Safari/other browser..

And nMP v2 release at WWDC would come with two firsts: Broadwell-EP 1600 series and Polaris introduced to the great audience. "First in the industry." AMD on platform explaining something about async computing and Polaris. Available soon.
 
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ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
Zarni, I hope you are right but I find it each day more unlikely a WWDC announcement. But there's hope.
Now it's MBA and rMBP that are rumored to be announced.
 

pat500000

Suspended
Jun 3, 2015
8,523
7,515
For sure, there will be other reasons to go for a Mac Pro. Like the small form factor if there is not a lot of space. I am looking through the glasses of my branche, the graphic sector. It made Apple THE machine to work with if you are into content creation. We all know that Apple is making their money with other products now and Mac Books and iMacs are more moving to consumers. The configuration of 6.1 is simply not interesting (through the glasses of content creation). Unless you work with Final Cut Pro. Their own suit.

I simply dont get it why they turned their back on such a big crowd who are / where Apple minded.

From my perspective with their pro line, Apple swingt and missed because of the very limited choices. Only one Xeon, only SLI choice, only ATI choice, only outside extension which is again expensive.

If Apple doenst come with an update soon, I might even think Apple is abandoning this Pro machine and come up with something els, or even shut this part down.
Even though some MR members stated they will release it, Tim and his weridos more unlikely To announce nMP. I was hoping for few leaks...but I guess not.
 

AdamSeen

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2013
350
423
TBD: 21.5 Inch, 4K retina display 4096x2304 pixels, HDR - 999$
27 inch, 5K retina display, 5120x2880 pixels, HDR - 1999$.

Mac Pro:
Dual FirePro G300: Polaris 10 with more than 5.8 TFLOPs of compute power FP32 each.
Dual FirePro G500: Vega 10 Pro with 3584 GCN cores, 96 ROPS, and 8 GB of HBM2 and 1/4th DP ratio.
Dual FirePro G700: Vega 10 XT with 4096 GCN cores, 96 ROPS, 16 GB of HBM2 and 1/4th DP ratio.

Top offering for CPU: 18 core. 6, 8, 12, 18 core CPUs available.
Base model: 6 cores, 16 GB of RAM, Dual G300, and 512 GB SSD NVMe for 2999$.
Mid-Range model: 6 cores, Dual G500, 512 GB SSD, 32 GB of RAM for 3999$.
RAM tops at 256 GB from Apple.
SSD - 2 TB max, with lower price tiers, for the rest.

My predictions ;).

Looks like a good set of predictions Koyoot.

As Vega currently isn't ready, Apple would be unlikely to show off a computer before AMD have got their production dates confirmed. Unfortunately I don't think there will be WWDC announcements for the Mac Pro. There's still a lot that could go wrong with AMDs schedules - I hope I'm wrong.
 

Zarniwoop

macrumors 65816
Aug 12, 2009
1,038
760
West coast, Finland
I believe Apple is doing everything they can to get nMP v2 out as soon as possible. The key components have not been available before, but now the moment is arriving. If OS X 10.12 is all about async computing and Metal v2 and VR, but there is no hardware available, how can the OS beta testers do anything? By releasing eGPU for developers? Or by a display adapter change program?

Apple has to release hardware for developers for OS X 10.12. Apple has been AMDs' biggest customer in Prosumer sector... Polaris could be Apple first -product. Hence the quietness from AMDs' side.

Apple could release Vega for nMP early next year as a third option. Now they go with Polaris Pro/GDDR5 4GB and Polaris XT/GDDR5X 8GB.

New displays could be nMP/rMBP bundle only in the beginning. Except the TB2 1440p display update.
 
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deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
The extra 150W in next nMP is sufficient to power up three 24" and smaller displays, or one 27" and one 24" displays. This could be Apples goal.

There is little to no rational reason why this would be Apple's goal. Discrete, desktop displays are largely immobile under normal usage. This means they are more than quite capable and conducive to be plugged into the wall for power. Running the power to the Mac Pro and then to monitor does what significant function? A whole lot of nothing.

In fact, this is quite the opposite from Apple's previous display docking stations. They are the power distributors that are plugged into the wall. If this is the next generation display docking station(s) then it also needs to be plugged into the wall. Taking the power distribution functionality from them makes them quite useless to the vast majority of Apple's Mac product line up ( laptops, etc. )

Apple is extremely unlikely to get in to the Mac Pro only display business. Apple is not in the display business. Haven't been since around 2010. That is six years ago. Not coming back any more than Apple label printers are coming back. Apple has been in the display docking station market since 2010. But a docking station has a plug that goes into the wall.


Any power distribution bump the MacPro got should be into more needy bus powered drives and I/O add-on (e.g., analog digital converters , digital signal converters/generators , etc. ). Sneaker-net and/or used also in sharing with mobile system set ups.

If anything, Apple would be looking for a "docking station display" to actually offload some (or all ) of those power hungry bus powered devices off of the Mac Pro's limited power supply. That would allow a larger power budget to go to internal computations as opposed to powering "other vendor's stuff".


Display lineup.:
- 27" TB2 1440p display with both tb2 and usb-c connectors up to DP1.2a, can power laptops, Mac Mini and iDevices with USB-c or TB2, for $799

Power laptops means the display has its own direct supply to power. If aimed at the newer Macs then they won't have TB2. ( so why). If trying to include older ones then largely need MagSafe. ( three headed hydra doesn't fit the Apple profile).

Bump the current TB docking station display to TB2 and drop the price to $699-799 ? Yeah that would be productive. Long overdue, but better late than never.



- Retina 5k 27" TB3/USB-c/DP1.3 adaptive sync for $1299. eGPU model later.

A GPU ( + fan(s) ) is an even bigger power budget besides the panel and backlights. Again power socket directly from wall is far more likely.



- Pro Cinema display, 4k, 24", HDR, Dolby Vision, (maybe oled, but then more expensive), TB3/USB-c/DP1.3 adaptive sync for $1499

Eh? They are making a TV monitor or a computer monitor? The former is extremely doubtful ( has been and will likely remain a "3rd party opportunity" ). The latter DP1.3 doesn't make sense because the vast majority of Mac line up isn't going to get DP1.3 for another iteration ( Intel GPU with DP 1.3 is more likely 2017 products timeline ).

[doublepost=1465385027][/doublepost]Zen and Kaby Lake both postponed to 2017?

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20160607PD202.html

The bulk of Kaby Lake was going to come in 2017 anyway.

Not sure how AMD is going to clear much inventory with more time when one of the primary reasons they have large inventories is because their products aren't competitive enough. They aren't going to get more competitive just sitting around getting older.

Again the broad spectrum of Zen wasn't due until 2017 anyway.
 

Zarniwoop

macrumors 65816
Aug 12, 2009
1,038
760
West coast, Finland
There is little to no rational reason why this would be Apple's goal. Discrete, desktop displays are largely immobile under normal usage. This means they are more than quite capable and conducive to be plugged into the wall for power. Running the power to the Mac Pro and then to monitor does what significant function? A whole lot of nothing.

I was talking basically about the Pro display.

There are benefits; first, one cord less. Or two or three, depending how many displays you have. Apple could try to draw our attention from the problem, that nMP can create a jungle in the back of the computer. It will look better on an advertisement videos. Apple likes that.

Second they could market is as a Pro feature, that this will prevent ELECTRICAL SYSTEM GROUNDING ISSUES, what could happen if the devices were about to be plugged in on a different grid or UPS. This is a studio system anyway, right?

Third, the display wouldn't have any PSU. Making it the thinnest ever. And no external PSU either hanging around. Apple would like that.

Fourth, it would make pluging it to other systems other than nMP v2 difficult. If the Pro display is first of its kind, for instance OLED HDR, all the industry would secretly covet it.. but there's a catch, it comes with nMP v2 only. You could buy a similar Pro display from Sony for $7000. Apple would put the display price down, but it needs nMP v2.

And you said that Apple is not in display business... all iToys and laptops and iMacs have a display. They have a lot of display knowledge in the house. The rumors say that 27" 5k display was originally planned for nMP, but there wasn't a tech to connect it without double cording or some properitary cable and connector. So instead they chose iMac and internal MST/pairing and special chip to guide the flow.

Now we have first GPUs with DP1.3 and HDMI 2.0a. Time for new innovation for a display market. Show me all the DP 1.3 displays in the market at the moment!
 
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deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
A Sure bet is the 5K retina TB3 Display, and I think it will arrive ASAP as the MP or the new rMBP/Mac nano.

Time ago I read somewhere Apple ordered 24" 4K Panels, in case being true this could target an entry level USB-C Retina Display (but also could mean the 27" TB3rD will be ridiculous expensive).

Apple's track record so far has been to use the "docking display" as a way to sell more panels that are used in the iMac. (i.e., lower component costs on both products ). Unless there is some 24" 4K iMac coming, a 24" for only a display would be highly doubtful.

A 5K TBv3 docking station display needs a Mac with TB3 to drive it. So far is dragging their feet on TBv3. Whether TBv3 support is intertwined wtih eGPU support only in OS X 10.12 or what is unclear.

I'm not sure 5K is a sure bet because folks can use 5K monitors now with a couple of Macs. So it is a space already being filled by 3rd parties. It is not absolutely necessary for Apple to fill it.

I don't care on the original TB2 Cinema Display since I saw LG's 34" ultra wide Thunderbolt display, it outclassed it by long and its much cheaper.

Again 3rd parties stepping up and filling the ecosystem needs with products........ why does Apple absolutely have to fill the space? The host, central Mac systems? Yes. The peripherals space isn't so clear. Back at the Mac Pro 2013 launch Apple "had to" do a 4K display because "4K is the future and everyone has to have one" mania was is fully flight on these forums. MP 2013 shipped with alongside a Sharp monitor. Apple isn't in the display business. Hasn't been for 6+ years.
[doublepost=1465406730][/doublepost]
....
A Sure bet is the 5K retina TB3 Display, and I think it will arrive ASAP as the MP or the new rMBP/Mac nano.

Time ago I read somewhere Apple ordered 24" 4K Panels, in case being true this could target an entry level USB-C Retina Display (but also could mean the 27" TB3rD will be ridiculous expensive).

Apple's track record so far has been to use the "docking display" as a way to sell more panels that are used in the iMac. (i.e., lower component costs on both products ). Unless there is some 24" 4K iMac coming, a 24" for only a display would be highly doubtful.

A 5K TBv3 docking station display needs a Mac with TB3 to drive it. So far is dragging their feet on TBv3. Whether TBv3 support is intertwined wtih eGPU support only in OS X 10.12 or what is unclear.

I'm not sure 5K is a sure bet because folks can use 5K monitors now with a couple of Macs. So it is a space already being filled by 3rd parties. It is not absolutely necessary for Apple to fill it.

I don't care on the original TB2 Cinema Display since I saw LG's 34" ultra wide Thunderbolt display, it outclassed it by long and its much cheaper.

Again 3rd parties stepping up and filling the ecosystem needs with products........ why does Apple absolutely have to fill the space? The host, central Mac systems? Yes. The peripherals space isn't so clear. Back at the Mac Pro 2013 launch Apple "had to" do a 4K display because "4K is the future and everyone has to have one" mania was is fully flight on these forums. MP 2013 shipped with alongside a Sharp monitor. Apple isn't in the display business. Hasn't been for 6+ years.
 
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