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

[barmann]

iMacs have outperformed Pro Macs for years at this point. If you don’t see the point of what you’re getting for the extra money, you’re not the target market.

Given all the people complaining about price and saying it’s overpriced, I’d say that’s most of the people in this thread

Utter nonsense .
If you don't see the point of that statement, you might not appreciate Apple's understanding of specific target markets - or lack thereof .

 

[ssgbryan]

Good grief..

You people complain for what ? NINE years and finally when Apple delivers all you do is complain about price.

It would have been a great price in 2016 - however, AMD fundamentally changed the CPU market in 2017.

 

[barmann]

Good grief..

You people complain for what ? NINE years and finally when Apple delivers all you do is complain about price.

Jury is still out on what exactly Apple has delivered .
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Take a close look at the video cards.

Proprietary connector to power anything over 75 watts.

Hmm, is that the thing that looks like a module which might need to be bought seperately ?

 

[CWallace]

So looks like Intel might be making special-model Cascade Lake Xeon SP CPUs for Apple based on the 28-core having a 4.4GHz Turbo speed and 66.5MB of (L3?) cache compared to the 4.6GHz TB and 38.5MB of cache leaked for the retail-model W-3275.

 

[ssgbryan]

No, I mean you get faster performance for less with i7 and i9 processors, but those are only options if you don’t care about sustained workloads, ECC RAM, expandability, and thermals in the Mac’s case.

Xeon workstations are expensive.

Fortunately, AMD workstations aren't quite so expensive - they also use ECC ram and have more PCIe lanes to boot.

 

[AdamSeen]

Take a close look at the video cards.

Proprietary connector to power anything over 75 watts.

Yes, that is very concerning. You won't be able to put your own graphics cards in without a mod

Edit: seems it is possible to put in a custom GPU: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/waiting-for-mac-pro-7-1.1975126/page-525#post-27418711

 

[wallysb01]

Folks complaining about the price really need to peruse HP and Dell's pages - lower-spec hardware for thousands more at the low-end and at the upper end, you are paying $6000 just for the CPU or video card.

$6K for the 8-core CPU, no. $6K for a 20+ core, yes.

The platform looks very advanced, e.g. 8-PCIe slots, 12 DIMMs, etc, but wow. Base configuration should be higher, or the upgrade prices need to not be the typical apple standard gouging. This 8-core is very near the bottom end processor for the 3000 series. Likely the 3223 or 3225. The 2123 was $300, 2125 was $450. Kind of nuts for the processor to cost <10% of the system...

 

[filmak]

Proprietary connector to power

This was the only sure thing.

 

[zephonic]

Take a close look at the video cards.

Proprietary connector to power anything over 75 watts.

To encourage NVIDIA to make special Mac cards at 200% markup?

 

[wallysb01]

I feel that at $5999 it should at the very least match the spec of the base iMac Pro. So 1TB SSD, and equivalent GPU.

To me it’s unpalatable.

The Pro Stand at $999 beggars belief...

The 8 core processor wasn't the absolute bottom of the barrel of the Xeon W spectrum back then either. This 8 core will be. It should be a 12+ core and >256GB SSD.

 

[fokmik]

$6K for the 8-core CPU, no. $6K for a 20+ core, yes.

The platform looks very advanced, e.g. 8-PCIe slots, 12 DIMMs, etc, but wow. Base configuration should be higher, or the upgrade prices need to not be the typical apple standard gouging. This 8-core is very near the bottom end processor for the 3000 series. Likely the 3223 or 3225. The 2123 was $300, 2125 was $450. Kind of nuts for the processor to cost <10% of the system...

Please, dont take only the cpu (that is 890$ on the market that 8C xeon) gpu etc...only the thermal solution for the inside is around 400$

 

[mattspace]

Take a close look at the video cards.

Proprietary connector to power anything over 75 watts.

Alternatively, each MPX bay can support:
One full-length, double-wide x16 gen 3 slot and one full-length, double-wide x8 gen 3 slot (MPX bay 1)
Or two full-length, double-wide x16 gen 3 slots (MPX bay 2)
Up to 300W auxiliary power via two 8-pin connectors

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/

That reads to me like each MPX bay gets dual 8-pin connectors, so theoretically you could put dual >doublewide 2080TIs in there, if the drivers allowed it, and you were prepared to sacrifice the X8 slots

I'm going to bet that the 2 x 8 pin connectors, are built into a narrow card that slots into the (unused) second slot towards the front, inline with the MPX cards' PCI slot, which provides power to the MPX format card.

Oh and minor gloat... I did prognosticate a while ago that Apple's response would be to put ALL rear i/o onto PCI cards - that there's be no ports that were non-replacable & built into the rear of the machine or on the motherboard.

Think i was also sadly close to the mark on it being as expensive as the iMac Pro, while providing slots instead of a monitor to make up the price. :/

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Base storage is disappointing, but SSD slots look like standard half-length m.2.
Turbo is only 4 GHz on the 8-core which is weird

Looks like it has 2 internal SATA ports, an internal USB port, and an 8-pin PCIe, although I can't tell where internal drives would be mounted, I'm guessing on the other side?

 

[ssgbryan]

Jury is still out on what exactly Apple has delivered .

I stand corrected.

 

[Pressure]

Base model only TurboBoost to 4.0 GHz.

 

[ssgbryan]

Base storage is disappointing, but SSD slots look like standard half-length m.2.
Turbo is only 4 GHz on the 8-core which is weird

Looks like it has 2 internal SATA ports, an internal USB port, and an 8-pin PCIe, although I can't tell where internal drives would be mounted, I'm guessing on the other side?

Up to 4TB storage.


To deliver the fastest possible performance, Mac Pro is built on an all-flash storage architecture. It starts with a 256GB SSD and is configurable to a 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB SSD — all encrypted by the T2 chip.


Reading the notes at the bottom, it's a preproduction Xeon, so that is subject to change.

But Gen 3 PCIe?

Hopefully, they will change that before release.

 

[filmak]

Base storage is disappointing, but SSD slots look like standard half-length m.2.
Turbo is only 4 GHz on the 8-core which is weird

Looks like it has 2 internal SATA ports, an internal USB port, and an 8-pin PCIe, although I can't tell where internal drives would be mounted, I'm guessing on the other side?

There is the T2 inside, securing your data and their proprietary SSDs.

 

[CWallace]

$6K for the 8-core CPU, no. $6K for a 20+ core, yes.

Upgrading to a Xeon Gold 6244 8-Core is $5600 on the HP Z6. And yes, I will spot you the Gold is designed for multi-processor systems (and you can have two in a Z6 - the second will run you almost $6500) whereas the W-3225 is only for single-CPU systems. And that Z6 maxes out at 384GB (a $13,000 upgrade, I might add) and each AMD W9100 is $1750 (if you want to-end nVidia, those go to almost $7500 a piece).

So yes, the Mac Pro is expensive to start and will no doubt be very expensive at the top, but it's not out of line with Tier 1 PC OEMs like HP and Dell.

 

[th0masp]

It truly is a halo product this time around.

The Mac Pro's of old were actually reasonably priced machines when compared to their contemporaries. I imagine this thing with a decent configuration will not be a regular sight at a desk near most folks, ever.

 

[fuchsdh]

Speccing out an HP Z4 with 8 core -W, 32GB of RAM and 256GB PCIe flash comes to... $5859.

 

[Kitewinds]

I’m so grateful for Apple finding its way back to an expandable Mac Pro! Performance looks great, hopefully we can boot into the MS OS too?

Apple seems to have yet to announce a larger display. With these graphics capabilities it would have made sense to pair this platform for high end computer aided work on the Mac with a few inch more.

 

[zephonic]

With all the noise around the Mac Pro, the fact that you can now use USB flash drives with the iPad got a little snowed under. I think that's huge.

 

[wallysb01]

Please, dont take only the cpu (that is 890$ on the market that 8C xeon) gpu etc...only the thermal solution for the inside is around 400$

Dude: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-BX80673W2123-W-2123-3-6GHz-Fclga2066/dp/B0788BSS85

The 8 core for the current generation (21XX) is $1000. This will be Cascade Lake Xeon (32XX). The same number in the series, YY45, is going to be a 16 core this time around...

 

[mattspace]

With all the noise around the Mac Pro, the fact that you can now use USB flash drives with the iPad got a little snowed under. I think that's huge.

I reman to be convinced as to whether that means I can create a directory on the root level of the on-device storage, to move those external storage files into, as opposed to having to make it inside a directly created by an app.

 

[Kitewinds]

With all the noise around the Mac Pro, the fact that you can now use USB flash drives with the iPad got a little snowed under. I think that's huge.

Have been available for a wile with the Leef iBridge tough. Works fine, but the freedom of design in the app-rules makes the file handling crippled generally on the iPad I think.