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

deconstruct60 said:
Vast majority of folks yelping about two socket really want > 12 cores and more than four DIMM slots. ...
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The E5-x6xx v2 CPUs in the MP6,1 support eight to twelve DIMMs - it's a "form over function" issue, not a Xeon issue.

The current E5-26xx v4 Xeons support up to 22 cores - the 12 core limit is due to Apple engineering laziness and mistakes, not a Xeon issue.
 
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One of the advantages of two sockets is that you can often get higher speeds for the same number of total cores, if you spread those cores over two CPUs instead of one.

For example with the Mac Pro 2013 you can pick 12 cores at 2.7GHz for the most number of cores, or 6 cores at 3.7GHz for the fastest frequency. But it is an either/or scenario because there is only one socket.

If you had two sockets, you could get two 6-core CPUs at 3.7GHz, giving you both the 12 cores and the higher clock speed.
 
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I would highly suggest watching the recent AMD presentation of EPYC server chips and their architecture.

1S can get very close or even beat 2S configs, with the right architecture. I still think there is room for EPYC chips in the mMP, especially if they cost less than Intel.
 
Some of those crying for 2 socket system, where those that purchased a minimal MP confifuration and then DIY upgrade to 2 CPU getting 12 cores at 8 core single socket cost... (at the same time doing DIY GPU upgrades from base single GPU to dual gaming GPU).

I think Apple has those user in cross hairs and not to give them a dream gift with the mMP, which either with intel or amd unlikely will be a 2S system.

Apple dont see cheapo's needs as Formal User Needs.
 
Mago said:
Some of those crying for 2 socket system, where those that purchased a minimal MP confifuration and then DIY upgrade to 2 CPU getting 12 cores at 8 core single socket cost... (at the same time doing DIY GPU upgrades from base single GPU to dual gaming GPU).

I think Apple has those user in cross hairs and not to give them a dream gift with the mMP, which either with intel or amd unlikely will be a 2S system.

Apple dont see cheapo's needs as Formal User Needs.
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You are right for damning Apple for that arrogant, elitist business model.

Market share is never important for consumer products.

(Really, is a </sarcasm> tag necessary here? Really?)
 
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AidenShaw said:
The E5-x6xx v2 CPUs in the MP6,1 support eight to twelve DIMMs - it's a "form over function" issue, not a Xeon issue.

The current E5-26xx v4 Xeons support up to 22 cores - the 12 core limit is due to Apple engineering laziness and mistakes, not a Xeon issue.
Click to expand...

There is also issue of having anything over 128gb of memory.
 
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Not gonna lie, V, I'm 70% of the way to skipping Apple for my next workstation and building a custom PC. Seems like you can build a raging PC for $2000 USD. For another $500 USD, I could have two Samsung 960 Pro M.2 flash drives instead of one.

The things I have to decide is:

Do I want to go through the hassle of switching my software from Mac to Windows? This one is kind of tough to get past in my (closed) mind. LOL

Do I want the simplicity of "plug and play"? Because really, that's what it would be if I bought the 2013 Mac Pro, and more or less what it would be if I bought a new iMac or the new Modular Mac Pro. Is that worth the extra money? This is tough one to get over as well. LOL

Do I want to wait another year or two for the Modular Mac Pro? It's predicted to be here in 2018, possibly even 2019. I can't.

Do I want a moderately faster machine (new *cough-cough* 2013 mac) compared to my 4,1 Mac Pro, if I upgraded today? Or do I want a machine that's significantly faster than my current mac Pro with 2016 and 2017 sourced parts? Components have come a LONG way in those 3-4 years since the 2013 Mac Pro was released.

Do I want to continue to wait 8 or 9 years for an all new system - considering Apple drags their feet with their desktop updates.

Do I want to continue to work in a "closed system"? Or do I want to be able to update every single component in a custom built PC? ...or have Apple completely switch connectivity in one fell swoop (2016 MacBook Pro), rendering your current external hardware fairly useless unless you buy a bunch of dongles, adapters or finicky hubs.

I'm inclined to wait and see what Apple does with their new iMacs (hopefully being announced at the WWDC) and Mac Pros (hopefully previewed in September). To me that'll be telling how far Apple is willing to go to close the PC performance gap - and if they're willing to open up the possibility of user upgrades in terms of memory, storage, graphics cards and CPU. Considering Apple has had a few years to figure out their new desktops, if they drop the ball on this round, I'm pretty sure I'm out. If they wow me with their new iMac (and maybe modular Mac Pro) announcement, I'll definitely stay with Apple this round. ...just wondering how long Apple will keep it's interest in desktop workstations - seems more and more like it's withering away to nothing.
 
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scoobs69 said:
I'm 70% of the way to skipping Apple for my next workstation and building a custom PC. Seems like you can build a raging PC for $2000 USD. For another $500 USD, I could have two Samsung 960 Pro M.2 flash drives instead of one.
..........
Click to expand...
You didn't mention the Hackintosh as being a possible alternative.
Take a look at this video "Is a $70 Hackintosh Any Good?":
Or, for a bigger budget & current 2017 hardware: read some of the "Kabylake build" forum posts on tonymacx86.com.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...cpus-200-series-motherboards-in-macos.219877/
As soon as Intel Kabylake CPU's are integrated into refreshed iMac's, the install process on a Hackintosh will become even easier.
Intel Skylake CPU's are already officially supported.
 
scoobs69 said:
I'm inclined to wait and see what Apple does with their new iMacs (hopefully being announced at the WWDC)
Click to expand...

Not sure why hopeful. If just look at buyer's guide here at macrumors. https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac
April 16 and April 6 stories about Fall. Didn't make much sense until that April 20th story showed up about Intel rolling Coffeelake forward to August. Apple picking that up in October would be well within their track record.

Throw on top looks like Apple is scrambling to refresh laptops at WWDC. Given they don't seem able to walk and chew gum at the same time..... Fall iMacs all the more likely.



and Mac Pros (hopefully previewed in September).
Click to expand...

I wouldn't hold my breath on them doing a "sneak peak" preview on this. It doesn't sound like they had a new design completely nailed down a couple of months ago at this point. They aren't going to have anything done by September if that was the actual state. September is iPhone month anyway. So no. Something at the now typical Mac/iPad Fall event. I'd doubt it. ( In June 2012 Apple basically said the Mac Pro wasn't dead. it was not until June 2013 that got a sneak peak..... which lasted another almost 6 months to ship. Apple was mostly done with the design in June 2013 and still took 6 months to get out the door (partially due to components). The current redesign effort isn't even baked yet. )

Furthermore, they explicitly said there would be nothing to ship in 2017. There isn't much justification to show Oct 2017 is not shipping until March-June 2018. Maybe if they are going to slide into August 2018 then WWDC 2018 would be time for a "it isn't dead" demo. However, they already pushed out of this year.

If the iMacs are aligned up with the CannonLake (Gen 8) release then Apple would have 6 core iMacs to talk about in Oct 2018. Why would they 'step' on that with a message about a can't buy Mac Pro? There were some somewhat explicit talk in that Apple "pow wow" about going after some of the lower edge of the Mac Pro market with iMacs. Gen 8 being pulled up in time to tackle Ryzen 5-6 ... that all lines up. The iMac will have to be stepping up into some of that workload to cover competing elements from Windows PC space.

If they wow me with their new iMac (and maybe modular Mac Pro) announcement, I'll definitely stay with Apple this round. ...just wondering how long Apple will keep it's interest in desktop workstations - seems more and more like it's withering away to nothing.
Click to expand...

There is little evidence at all that Apple has 3 concurrent desktop design teams: mini , iMac , MacPro. It looks like they have maybe 3 teams for the whole Mac Product space. 2 in laptops and one in desktop. I think Apple is leaning toward a 'wow' with a revised Mac Pro ( not tech porn benchmark wow, but whole package) and that is exactly why they won't slap something together quickly with off the shelf parts from a quick shopping trip to Sunnyvale Frys as design guidance. It probably will be at least about 12 months after their April 2017 "pow wow".
 
Dec, the TB3 iMacs should have been launched past october (as for KGI) but delayed to 1H'17 so notwithstanding there is no rumor about its likely to see it ar WWDC or at Apple Campus inaugural eve, TBv3 in apple ecosystem needs desperately the iMac.

About the Mac Pro, a sneak peek at WWDC its possible (and convenient) if they choose an more traditional design around the Skylake-W, even with custom GPUs, Apple needs to send a solid signals to pros, and a revised Macbook Pro is not enough even if loaded with mobile xeon (no sense since the MBP cant withstand very long runs unless a radical thermal/psu redesign).
 
What about a high-speed South Bridge, thus to allow upgrade (or custom configurations...slurp!) of I/O ports?
That's what I would call "modular". It would work also for the CPU socket.
 
Much of what I said was wishful thinking. I'm Hoping Apple will announce new iMacs at the WWDC - even if they delay the iMac Pro announcement until the fall. I definitely don't need a Xeon iMac, and I could definitely make a 4.2GHz Quad Core work. But if they're going to price the high end 5K iMac at $4,000 I'd expect the Base iMac Pro would pushing $4,500 and going up from there. Yikes.



deconstruct60 said:
Not sure why hopeful. If just look at buyer's guide here at macrumors. https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac
April 16 and April 6 stories about Fall. Didn't make much sense until that April 20th story showed up about Intel rolling Coffeelake forward to August. Apple picking that up in October would be well within their track record.

Throw on top looks like Apple is scrambling to refresh laptops at WWDC. Given they don't seem able to walk and chew gum at the same time..... Fall iMacs all the more likely.





I wouldn't hold my breath on them doing a "sneak peak" preview on this. It doesn't sound like they had a new design completely nailed down a couple of months ago at this point. They aren't going to have anything done by September if that was the actual state. September is iPhone month anyway. So no. Something at the now typical Mac/iPad Fall event. I'd doubt it. ( In June 2012 Apple basically said the Mac Pro wasn't dead. it was not until June 2013 that got a sneak peak..... which lasted another almost 6 months to ship. Apple was mostly done with the design in June 2013 and still took 6 months to get out the door (partially due to components). The current redesign effort isn't even baked yet. )

Furthermore, they explicitly said there would be nothing to ship in 2017. There isn't much justification to show Oct 2017 is not shipping until March-June 2018. Maybe if they are going to slide into August 2018 then WWDC 2018 would be time for a "it isn't dead" demo. However, they already pushed out of this year.

If the iMacs are aligned up with the CannonLake (Gen 8) release then Apple would have 6 core iMacs to talk about in Oct 2018. Why would they 'step' on that with a message about a can't buy Mac Pro? There were some somewhat explicit talk in that Apple "pow wow" about going after some of the lower edge of the Mac Pro market with iMacs. Gen 8 being pulled up in time to tackle Ryzen 5-6 ... that all lines up. The iMac will have to be stepping up into some of that workload to cover competing elements from Windows PC space.



There is little evidence at all that Apple has 3 concurrent desktop design teams: mini , iMac , MacPro. It looks like they have maybe 3 teams for the whole Mac Product space. 2 in laptops and one in desktop. I think Apple is leaning toward a 'wow' with a revised Mac Pro ( not tech porn benchmark wow, but whole package) and that is exactly why they won't slap something together quickly with off the shelf parts from a quick shopping trip to Sunnyvale Frys as design guidance. It probably will be at least about 12 months after their April 2017 "pow wow".
Click to expand...
,
 
balamit said:
There is also issue of having anything over 128gb of memory.
Click to expand...
Which issue is this?

The E5-16xx v2 (4-core and 6-core MP6,1s) support 8 DIMMs and 256 GiB of RAM. The E5-26xx v2 (8-core and 12-core MP6,1s) support 12 DIMMs and 384 GiB of RAM.

The Xeons do not have a "128 GiB issue".
 
vailr said:
You didn't mention the Hackintosh as being a possible alternative.
Take a look at this video "Is a $70 Hackintosh Any Good?":
Or, for a bigger budget & current 2017 hardware: read some of the "Kabylake build" forum posts on tonymacx86.com.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...cpus-200-series-motherboards-in-macos.219877/
As soon as Intel Kabylake CPU's are integrated into refreshed iMac's, the install process on a Hackintosh will become even easier.
Intel Skylake CPU's are already officially supported.
Click to expand...

Is the Hackintosh option really worth it? I've thought of going this route myself. I have no problem tinkering and playing around with tech. I just don't know what I'm doing when it comes to building a computer from scratch. I had a 2011 MBP which I had upgraded the HDD and Ram but that's about it.
 
The big problem I see is that there are so many pessimistic and cynical people out there towards apple that they could release the most awesome thing ever and people would still be disappointment.

I say forget about what they did with the 6,1, they tried guessing the direction the market/industry was going to go and they were wrong. They have admitted it and I think we just have to wait and see.

I am just going to chuck as much modern new parts as I can into my cMP and then wait and see what the new one will be.

For me that is fine. I'm not all concerned about any "cost savings" a PC would give. I can put a 6 core x5690 xeon in my single CPU Mac Pro and be fine as the Adobe apps like single CPU systems and also have little benefit over 6 cores. I can put over 64gb of ram into it which once again is more then the software will potentially use anyway.

Also I can get a USB 3.1 card and any Nvidia GPU will work so not limited there besides the pcie2.0.

Yes I'm lacking thunderbolt but that is a small price to pay.
 
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William Payne said:
I say forget about what they did with the 6,1, they tried guessing the direction the market/industry was going to go and they were wrong. They have admitted it and I think we just have to wait and see..
Click to expand...
We’ll see how much they admitted when the new one comes out. If we end up with a new proprietary, restrictive, over priced and unsupported mess, they didn't think they were really wrong at all.
 
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H2SO4 said:
We’ll see how much they admitted when the new one comes out. If we end up with a new proprietary, restrictive, over priced and unsupported mess, they didn't think they were really wrong at all.
Click to expand...

While they did use the term modular I'm gonna guess we see some kind of tower unit next.
 
William Payne said:
The big problem I see is that there are so many pessimistic and cynical people out there towards apple that they could release the most awesome thing ever and people would still be disappointment.

I say forget about what they did with the 6,1, they tried guessing the direction the market/industry was going to go and they were wrong. They have admitted it and I think we just have to wait and see.

I am just going to chuck as much modern new parts as I can into my cMP and then wait and see what the new one will be.

For me that is fine. I'm not all concerned about any "cost savings" a PC would give. I can put a 6 core x5690 xeon in my single CPU Mac Pro and be fine as the Adobe apps like single CPU systems and also have little benefit over 6 cores. I can put over 64gb of ram into it which once again is more then the software will potentially use anyway.

Also I can get a USB 3.1 card and any Nvidia GPU will work so not limited there besides the pcie2.0.

Yes I'm lacking thunderbolt but that is a small price to pay.
Click to expand...


Apple has kind of brought the pessimism and cynicism on themselves. Mac Pro 3,1-5,1 users were waiting several years for a new Mac Pro with nothing in sight. Then in 2013, they bring out the black cylinder version of the Mac Pro, with zero internal expansion in terms of storage and PCIe. They also gave us one drive/storage slot, as Apple has been pushing for external storage across their entire line-up. With the Mac Pro 6,1, would have been wildly satisfied with two PCIe flash drives.

Apple now admitting fault of the design, which they likely new about at least a two years ago, said they're "just starting" the design and engineering of the Mac Pro. Egads, that should have been started in 2015.

People have been waiting for a significant upgrade to the iMac as well. The 2015 iMac was a bump of an update from the 2014. This general iMac design has been around for rather long time, with incremental speed bumps, and they continue to strip away user upgrades. And again, we're now waiting on two years since the last bump - which could push to two and half years when the new ones will be released.

The 2016 MacBook Pro is incredibly disappointing on so many levels, including stripping out the connectivity options, lack of RAM support/option, weak graphics card when compared to other "pro/workstation" laptops. If Apple offered a 32GB Ram version of their 15" MacBook Pro, left the USB 3 SD card slot in, I'd have been far less disappointed. But the fact Apple solders their memory on to their laptops, then, if it's a possibility to configure any of their machines with more RAM, it's ridiculously overpriced.

Apple has always tended to do what they want to do, and rather than listen to their pro users. For general customers, great. Go nuts and go crazy. With the Pro users, at least listen to what our needs are.

So yes. The pessimism and cynicism are rather warranted, as it's slowly been building up over the past few years.

As for me, I've been a lifelong Apple user. I've run the gamut on Apple computers: Apple IIe, Mac IIci, Quadra 700 and 950, PowerMac 7100, 7200, 7300, 8100, 8500, 8600, 9600, Original blue iMac, first chrome and white iMac, Blue 4 handle G3, graphite G4, Quicksilver G4, 24" White iMac, my current 2009 quad core Mac Pro workstation - Aluminum G4 laptop, White G4 Laptop, 2013 13" i7 MacBook Air (still use it), 2015 15" MacBook Pro retina (took bath, no longer works, saved the flash drive).

I don't want to spend any more money on upgrades that'll give me moderate performance boosts for my 2009 Mac Pro, when I can put that money towards a new faster computer? If that comes as a new MacBook Pro that will allow users to upgrade their own memory to 32 or 64GB of RAM - fabulous. I'll happily dive right in and figure out the connectivity. If Apple announces a new iMac that doesn't cost $5,000 for the top of the line machine - money is an issue for some of us - Stupendous. I'll happily dive in. :D

I'm seriously hoping they knock the modular Mac Pro out of the water, then continue to update it regularly like they did with the aluminum tower Mac Pros from 1,1 to the start of the 5,1.

Until Apple proves itself, and to me, they have to, I'll remain....skeptical. ;)
 
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