MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[Since1987]

So maybe Apple is working on an all-new design and it's just taking time to prepare that design for mass production. Or they intend to kill it when they announce a new "iMac Pro" with a six/eight-core i7 and workstation class GPUs.

No, just NO. Trucks need a Xeon. Maya @ 4K needs a Xeon ( if not two ). Offering something less powerful than the current MacPro is a slap in the face. And based on recent and current decisions by Apple, that's what i'm expecting. They have been falsely and arbitrarily re-defining what a Pro needs for years now.

An i7 iMac Pro will be as "Pro" as a 2016 Macbook "Pro", or Final Cut "Pro" X. If they try to pull that ( bleep ), it's 100% OVER for power users. Full Defection. Then Cook and Ive can finally stop making computers, then they can focus their attention on important matters. Like making stuff thinner.

 

[goMac]

No reason Apple would lock them into one GPU provider (and Intel). It's not in their interests.

No reason why Apple couldn't use Nvidia in the MacPro7,1. As an example, a mobile GTX 1070 has a TDP of 115w; the current 450w PSU could easily power two of these, a Xeon and whatever else. And that's not factoring in advances in SFX PSUs in the last 4 years.

You assume it's a technical issue holding them back... I agree that the GTX 1070 technically would be a decent choice for a Mac Pro upgrade, and it has been on the market for a while. But those are technical concerns, not business ones.

I would note that Apple has not shipped a single Mac with Nvidia for a while and there have been no Pascal drivers released. I'd also suggest that if you are waiting for Apple to switch back to Nvidia you'll be disappointed for the foreseeable future.

 

[koyoot]

We'll likely see the iMac announced at the March event with the new iPad Pros as the CPUs and GPUs should be ready by then. Worst case it will be like the 5K iMac launch in 2014 where they announced it in October, but did not start shipping until December due to parts shortages.

As for Mac Pro, I am inclined to agree with Jim Dalrymple that there is something "wrong" with the current design that has extended the replacement period so long. Perhaps it cannot cool the latest GPUs and CPUs without running the fans at a speed that makes the machine too loud? Perhaps it is too expensive to manufacture so even at the prices they're charging, margins are slim? (We have heard rumors Apple is considering moving Mac Pro production from the US to China). So maybe Apple is working on an all-new design and it's just taking time to prepare that design for mass production. Or they intend to kill it when they announce a new "iMac Pro" with a six/eight-core i7 and workstation class GPUs.

One of design principles at Apple is that... EVERYTHING is part of the design. Product is the end result of the design. Ive even was overlooking some of parts of manufacturing design on some of the products(where they could control the manufacturing).

If they discuss the possibility of moving the MP production to china, we can expect one of two things.
1. MP will be updated, and that will be last version of current design.
2. MP will not be updated, and will be replaced with another design. The thing is: we will wait another few years for it.

 

[Jack Burton]

6,1 mac pro has a solution: Bizon box.

That cost, tho.

And we need Nvidia drivers or later gen cards.

 

[Aldaris]

At least in the stores they've swapped out the Thunderbolt Display for the LG 5k at the Mac Pro.

When I was last in the Apple Store at Fashion Place (Murray Utah, south of salt lake it still had an Thunderbolt Display). I was mainly talking about their promotional images online. Haven't seen a "updated" pairing.

 

[PortableLover]

Speaking of mac pro soghtings, last time i saw the mp in a apple store only a TB display was connected with no mouse or keyboard attached.

 

[Draeconis]

You assume it's a technical issue holding them back... I agree that the GTX 1070 technically would be a decent choice for a Mac Pro upgrade, and it has been on the market for a while. But those are technical concerns, not business ones.

I would note that Apple has not shipped a single Mac with Nvidia for a while and there have been no Pascal drivers released. I'd also suggest that if you are waiting for Apple to switch back to Nvidia you'll be disappointed for the foreseeable future.

I was showing that it's possible. Wasn't suggesting the reason they haven't is technical, quite the opposite.

No Pascal drivers because there are no current Macs shipping with them.. not sure why you made that point. Current drivers support up to 7xx series officials because there are Macs with those GPUs in. Maxwell support is confusing. Lack of Pascal is unsurprising, but those drivers do exist internally at Nvidia, no doubt about that.

I'm not waiting for anything; I already have Pascal running nicely on my 5,1 under Windows 10. But it's all up in the air now for the 7,1. True, it's looking more and more like AMD for the foreseeable future, but bare in mind if Apple have consistent issues with quality they have no qualms swapping suppliers.

After all, the reason Apple went AMD in 2010 was because of massive nvidia GPU failure rates in the 2007-2009 laptop range. And swapped again in 2012 after the AMD 6xxx series suffered the same quality issues. After that, it was probably that the 7xx series had a high power draw, and Maxwell only reduced that a bit.

 

[fastlanephil]

I see MacMall is selling the base Mac Pro for $40.00 over Apple's list price. Everyone else is discounting them so let'st try jacking the price up instead.

 

[pat500000]

That cost, tho.

And we need Nvidia drivers or later gen cards.

just download it. lol. I think there's gtx 970 driver, isn't there?

 

[AidenShaw]

2. MP will not be updated, and will be replaced with another design. The thing is: we will wait another few years for it.

You're making an outlandish assumption that Apple has not yet started on an updated trash can.

It's just as possible that Apple realized that the MP6,1 was a disaster in mid 2014, and they've already spent 2½ years on the replacement.

And "moving manufacturing to China" is an absurd diversion. The current MP6,1 is built in Asian-controlled contract manufacturing facilities. It really doesn't matter much (except to Trump) if the factories are in China, Taiwan or Texas.

FAKE NEWS.

 

[goMac]

No Pascal drivers because there are no current Macs shipping with them.. not sure why you made that point. Current drivers support up to 7xx series officials because there are Macs with those GPUs in. Maxwell support is confusing. Lack of Pascal is unsurprising, but those drivers do exist internally at Nvidia, no doubt about that.

There's no 900 series GPUs "for" Macs, but yet it's there in the downloadable drivers...

Nvidia, like AMD, adds new devices to their drivers well before they ship so they can "pitch" Apple on new GPUs. It's why both the AMD and Nvidia drivers have support for all sorts of stuff that's never shipped, or devices that will ship in the future.

Nvidia isn't updating their drivers with 1000 series support because they also know that there is currently no hope of Apple using their designs. Nvidia never added new devices so MacVidCards could go sell a bunch of GPUs on eBay. They added devices to pitch new GPUs to Apple.

That's why someone got an email from the CEO of Nvidia telling them if they wanted 1000 series drivers they should go ask Apple.

 

[AidenShaw]

The post that you quote admits that "Maxwell support is confusing", which destroys your argument before you even start.

Nvidia has a great history of drivers that support multiple generations of GPUs. Perhaps the universal drivers with Kepler support are pretty good for Maxwell - but not so much for Pascal.

Perhaps when Jen-Hsun said that Nvidia needed help from Apple - it was literally the truth. I'd certainly believe Jen-Hsun before I'd believe any of the four innovating amigos.

 

[singhs.apps]

It's just as possible that Apple realized that the MP6,1 was a disaster in mid 2014, and they've already spent 2½ years on the replacement.

That's the most logical deduction. The fact that it hasn't been updated in 3+ years points towards issues with the product.

I guess if the NMP was a genuinely successful innovation, the rest of the workstation industry would have followed suit by now. That they did not, is telling.

PS: just a vague thought : with some Apple gurus pointing towards Apple bringing in significant revenue via its services business, what's to stop them offering GPU/CPU compute on their own cloud offerings ?

 

[AidenShaw]

PS: just a vague thought : with some Apple gurus pointing towards Apple bringing in significant revenue via its services business, what's to stop them offering GPU/CPU compute via their own cloud offerings ?

Network bandwidth.

That, and the fact that for almost everyone "GPU == CUDA", and the four amigos don't like the green team.

OpenCL didn't lose to CUDA - it was never even a contender. Even before Apple and ATI dropped it.

 

[singhs.apps]

Network bandwidth.

Agreed.

But I suspect that's where the industry is going ... 3-5 years later might be a diff story ( unless MS and Apple are working on next generation OSes )

Edit : I see it as a way Apple might use to wiggle out of the desktop/workstation market. I hope they still see themselves as a hardware company though.

 

[AidenShaw]

Agreed.

But I suspect that's where the industry is going ... 3-5 years later might be a diff story ( unless MS and Apple are working on next generation OSes )

MS has already released Azure - its cloud OS. The cloud is coming, the network bandwidth issue for business is happening, but still too expensive for the home. (I have multiple 1 Gbps links to AWS, but I could buy a very nice car every month for what I pay for bandwidth.)

Edit : I see it as a way Apple might want to use to wiggle out of the desktop/workstation market. I hope they still see themselves as a hardware company though.

Angela and Tim see Apple as a fashion accessory market. Get used to it. Get excited about the new spring line of emojis.

 

[Stacc]

I guess if the NMP was a genuinely successful innovation, the rest of the workstation industry would have followed suit by now. That they did not, is telling.

Apple is under different constraints. They wanted the mac pro to fit into the rest of the thunderbolt ecosystem it had created. That meant giving up commodity parts like GPUs with PCIe.

PS: just a vague thought : with some Apple gurus pointing towards Apple bringing in significant revenue via its services business, what's to stop them offering GPU/CPU compute via their own cloud offerings ?

Probably the biggest reason is Apple would rather you spend money on expensive Macs and iPhones with GPUs in them.

Network bandwidth.

That, and the fact that for almost everyone "GPU == CUDA", and the four amigos don't like the green team.

OpenCL didn't lose to CUDA - it was never even a contender. Even before Apple and ATI dropped it.

Sure, but there probably won't be Nvidia GPUs in a significant portion of Apple's products anytime soon (think iphone/ipad/macbook/13" MacBook pro. Why diverge development of GPU compute such that some algorithms work on only a small subset of its products.

My hope is that Apple shows some support for external GPUs. Then Nvidia can bring its GPUs to the mac even if they are just through an external option. It also seems like a nice option for MacBook pro users if they want enhanced GPU capabilities and a nice docking station.

 

[singhs.apps]

Probably the biggest reason is Apple would rather you spend money on expensive Macs and iPhones with GPUs in them.

Which is why we are expecting a MP refresh. Apple is a hardware company. Hardware is in their DNA. Physical products.

 

[Aldaris]

Which is why we are expecting a MP refresh. Apple is a hardware company. Hardware is in their DNA. Physical products.

Preach it on!

 

[NY Guitarist]

...I'm going to take today's Logic Pro X 10.3 update as a sign that Apple still cares for the "pros". New Mac Pro in 2017!

My take, after an admittedly quick glance at the article, was this was mostly about emoji bar compatibility?

 

[OS6-OSX]

That's it! The new Mac Pro will be an emoji!
OK, I'm ducking for cover now...

No need for cover.

 

[Draeconis]

Actually, thinking about this, it actually makes sense why Apple have done things the way they have, to a degree.

They want to run everything through Thunderbolt, which in laptops and the iMac makes sense, but with the Mac Pro, it's not so simple. If they had a regular form factor, they still couldn't use regular GPUs as (to the best of my knowledge) you can't pass video back through PCIe and back out through the Thunderbolt bus. To that end, you couldn't use off-the-shelf GPUs like they did with the 4xxx and 5xxx series with the 2009/2010/2012 Mac Pro.

So when they wanted to make a new Mac Pro with the 2013 model, they needed to include Thunderbolt to match their other products. Since they're Apple, it should work in the same way, so it needed to support video too, so they needed to create bespoke GPUs that could be connected to TB switches for the TB2 ports. To that end, if they had to go to that length, why not look at updating the design. Makes sense to a degree.

Perhaps they needed a different PCIe pin-out to support the display outputs going to TB switches, but that's wandering into an area I'm not familiar with. It's a shame that they didn't go with something like MXM, but perhaps it wasn't technically possible for them to.

Sorry if other people have figured all this out already, but it just came to me

 

[G-News]

Yes you actually can pass the picture back through tb, but not currently in OS X.

Apple needs to add full eGPU support asap and they'll have a lot less bitching going on from pros and gamers alike.

Next fix cuda and openGL support and bring it up to date.

 

[andyyau]

I posted here previously that my MacPro 1,1 died because of the display card.
Today I purchased a refurbished Sapphire HD 7970 and my MacPro is alive again and it supports Metal.

My MacPro have been upgraded many times with SSD, DRAM, CPU, display card
from XT1900X, Apple 4870, PC R5 230 and now 7950.

And it never has any problem like MacPro 6,1. lol

I am still waiting MacPro 7,1. Hope my old Mac can last until we see the new Mac.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Oho...
http://wccftech.com/tim-cook-turned-apple-boring-operations-company/