I'm going to bet on Nvidia returning, once the new Catalina driver architecture has settled, as theoretically Catalina means cMPs won't be available to compete with the 2019, or eGPU options.
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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
- Thread starter Mago
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I'm going to bet on Nvidia returning, once the new Catalina driver architecture has settled, as theoretically Catalina means cMPs won't be available to compete with the 2019, or eGPU options.
lol what?
i just bought a new MBP.. considerably more than $2.7k... still waiting on delivery.. what am i not getting with it that i probably thought i was?
Only if Apple gets to peak under NVIDIA’s skirt, doesn’t have to reciprocate, is guaranteed that OpenML gets equal treatment to CUDA and Metal optimized performance none of which I ever see happening. But stranger things have happened, so I digress.
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You can use a spare from an older MacBook Pro if you have one. I bought Apple’s “white label” version from MacSales for $6.79 - https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/PWRCBLMSA/
I tried living without it, but the reach from dining room table to outlet was just too far.
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ha, wow.. yeah, i use that cord.. it’s been permanently attached to my power bricks since my 2003 PowerBook..
my current laptop is being repurposed but it still needs the extension cord in its new position.. so i guess i might as well order this thing now
Apple Power Adapter Extension Cable (for MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VU31O7Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_9RVcDbK9417FQ
i definitely assumed it was included with this new computer though.
——
edit— nvrmnd, your link is better.. thanks!
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Nope...not since the 2016 MacBook Pro was released.
Say it with me...PROFIT MAXIMIZATION!!!
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I don't think the new driver architecture on Catalina supports GPU drivers.
They're user space drivers which usually isn't suitable for GPU drivers.
may be wrong, but the impression I had was that all hardware drivers are going into userspace. Either way, Catalina still provides a cutoff that could nudge the cMPs out of facilities.
The fact is Apple is already losing customers because the Mac Pro is overpriced, and not just lower class riffraff like me, a video editor... but businesses... like my employer, a video production department for a major university...
Me: a loyal Apple customer for the better part of 20 years... Mac Mini, iMac, iMac Pro not powerful/expandable enough for my needs... waited years for the Mac Pro... told the Mac Pro "isn't for me"... well, okey dokey, I guess.
I just bought my first PC since I was 10. As a result, I now have little to no incentive to remain in the Apple ecosystem. I was considering a HomePod... won't work with my PC, so that's out. I assumed my next phone would be an iPhone, but without a Mac with Photos, iCloud, and Photostream, I'm seriously considering a Galaxy or Pixel. I kind of wanted an Apple watch, but without a Mac or iPhone... can I even use it?
I don't know, but more importantly, I don't care anymore because this whole episode of unnecessary and completely uncalled for snobbery has really put me off of the entire brand and I think I'm actually ready to move on.
My Employer: Major university, huge budget, small but successful and growing department, 10+ video editors, using tcMPs in need of upgrade.
When my coworkers and managers heard the pricing for the nMP, they laughed and then cried right along with me, and after a very brief discussion, decided it simply wouldn't make financial sense to pay basically double what we paid for our current batch of computers, just to upgrade them to current specs.
That's just my office. Outside my office are multiple computer labs around campus with 20-30 tcMPs each, all in need of upgrade. I can pretty much guarantee there will be several hundred PCs being purchased in the next few months to replace them.
Apple might not care too much about the $6k they're not getting from me, but they probably will care about the millions they won't be getting from my employer, or the additional millions they won't be getting from other big-budget business that simply aren't dumb enough to buy a computer that costs twice what it should. Or the potential billions they won't be getting from people who desperately begged Apple to give them a reason to stay in their ecosystem and will now be filling their digital life with other hardware and services.
Me: a loyal Apple customer for the better part of 20 years... Mac Mini, iMac, iMac Pro not powerful/expandable enough for my needs... waited years for the Mac Pro... told the Mac Pro "isn't for me"... well, okey dokey, I guess.
I just bought my first PC since I was 10. As a result, I now have little to no incentive to remain in the Apple ecosystem. I was considering a HomePod... won't work with my PC, so that's out. I assumed my next phone would be an iPhone, but without a Mac with Photos, iCloud, and Photostream, I'm seriously considering a Galaxy or Pixel. I kind of wanted an Apple watch, but without a Mac or iPhone... can I even use it?
I don't know, but more importantly, I don't care anymore because this whole episode of unnecessary and completely uncalled for snobbery has really put me off of the entire brand and I think I'm actually ready to move on.
My Employer: Major university, huge budget, small but successful and growing department, 10+ video editors, using tcMPs in need of upgrade.
When my coworkers and managers heard the pricing for the nMP, they laughed and then cried right along with me, and after a very brief discussion, decided it simply wouldn't make financial sense to pay basically double what we paid for our current batch of computers, just to upgrade them to current specs.
That's just my office. Outside my office are multiple computer labs around campus with 20-30 tcMPs each, all in need of upgrade. I can pretty much guarantee there will be several hundred PCs being purchased in the next few months to replace them.
Apple might not care too much about the $6k they're not getting from me, but they probably will care about the millions they won't be getting from my employer, or the additional millions they won't be getting from other big-budget business that simply aren't dumb enough to buy a computer that costs twice what it should. Or the potential billions they won't be getting from people who desperately begged Apple to give them a reason to stay in their ecosystem and will now be filling their digital life with other hardware and services.
Eventually there will be no other drivers but user space ones. They are all getting kicked out of the kernel over time. That is what Apple announced as the path for the new driver architecture. So new architecture GPU drivers won't be required for 10.16 (next iteration ) but things are changing. Either Nvidia is on board with that or they'll basically stay locked out.
Some other drivers only have a year to switch over and 10.15 represents a hard deadline coming. But Nvidia has told Apple "no way, we'll never do that" then there really isn't much motivation for Apple to sign their stuff now because they are on the way out. All of the details aren't 100% locked down for the GPU driver move specifically so Nvidia would need to do a transitionary one, but if not going to make the transition ( in API and how the graphics stack is split up between Apple and 3rd party GPU implementers ) then there is probably small motivation to postpone the inevitable.
Apple scheme isn't quite 100% user space. They run outside the kernel space but are not normal user space aps/processes. Nor do they run at normal user process priority levels. They are granted by narrow access just for certain device addresses. Probably similar to how VMs can be granted 'direct' (very low overhead) access to devices using IOMMU. [ There are a couple of cloud gaming services running games for people out of a VM. It is far more doable now than the limited capabilities of CPUs 10+ years ago. The deep support for SMT and virtualization means CPU have vastly more different transistor budget allocations to address handling and management (e.g., IOMMU support and much bigger address table caching. ) ]
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Good stuff. You don't need Adobe RGB anymore. P3 is just as wide and will show the same coverage is 99.9999% of cases because most images only have several thousand discernible colored pixels. Even the new Eizo monitors are supporting P3.
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Nobody, quote me until the world dies, who relies on Finder based workflows will move to Windows File Explorer. Believe it. I worked with dozens of the top companies earning billions of revenue and when they have networked Macs across many office spaces they will never move to Windows. They will keep some Windows for specific uses. They will keep Mac for the other uses. They won't switch one for the other. If they can't afford a Mac Pro that means they never had a Mac Pro in the first place. They used iMacs and MacBooks in those cases. There's no loss or gain. The status quo remains.
When people post some stupid nonsense that 'OMG these companies can't afford workstation' then I think people need to realize that companies that use workstations of this caliber spend more on their Xmas party than you can imagine. The cost of buying some Mac Pros for them is not an issue. They make plenty of money and will meet their deadlines faster with new workstations that fit into their existing networks and applications.
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Technically, for Catalina only there is no new DriverKit object model for the GPUs to go to at the moment (at least for general developer consumption for beta .). Apple hasn't finalized and released to general developer community the part of the model dealing specifically with GPUs.
So there isn't a intermediate term cutoff/deadline at the moment for something specific to write. But there is probably a commitment that needs to be made at this point to help finish the ground work and work on some bleeding edge research development to aid in the new API's development.
This Mac Pro will sell like hotcakes. The price is irrelevant if you make a living using these.
If you don't make a living with a workstation you don't need to buy a workstation. There is nobody priced out, they buy the Mac that suits them most. If you don't need Xeon you buy i9. If you don't need i9 you buy i7. If you don't need i7 you buy i5.
My takeaway is that you and your department work on Adobe Premiere primarily (or Avid or Davinci Resolve) and that the University IT group has been eager to get rid of the tcMPs anyways, so this now gives them free license. Universities are always looking to cut costs, no matter how well off they are financially...having a "huge budget" means very little when it comes to justifying capital expenditures to the people signing off on the purchase order.
How is a Mac mini, a 2019 iMac or a 2017 iMac Pro not powerful enough for you? How is it not expandable enough for you?
Did you honestly think the 2019 Mac Pro was going to start at $3000.00? Why? Because the last one did? Have you been paying attention to Apple's pricing on a whole raft of equipment over the past few years? Apple moved the prices on the Mac Pro up when they introduced the 6,1 in 2013, people howled back then and that was only $500.
Based on how much the base iMac Pro started at when it was previewed at WWDC 2017, anyone thinking Apple was going to start the Mac Pro under $5000 has simply not been paying attention. Call it snobbery, call it inflation, call it thievery, it is what it is. They built the Pro machine that users asked for with a commensurate cost and now everyone wants Apple to build another Mac Pro, but built to their "cost" instead of "Apple's" quality. I am sure Apple made a calculated move here to keep from being pulled down into the endless pit of desires and endless expectations that is the Desktop PC Tower Hell.
What is a Finder based workflow?
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I disagree with this. Just because one don't need a high end workstation doesn't mean they don't need a workstation.
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How do I install PCIe cards internally into any of the above mentioned Macs?
This is such a nonsense angle to approach things. People want machines with uncompromised, upgradable GPUs, and without built-in screens, that are in the same thousand dollars as is available to Windows users. How does something that simple become so difficult to understand, or so offensive to people's sensibilities?
"I want a pickup truck."
"OK, here's a Mercedes UNIMOG."
"I don't need a 10 foot high military vehicle, just a pickup truck."
"OK, here's an ordinary sedan, with a trailer that has 500lbs of concrete cast into it."
"What? I just want a pickup truck."
"What's wrong with you? Why cant you just use the half-full-of-concrete trailer and sedan?"
"It doesn't have enough load space, and the concrete will make towing performance suck."
"Then buy the UNIMOG!"
"I don't need a freaking UNIMOG!"
"Then you mustn't be very serious about carrying loads, and therefore the sedan and concrete-filled trailer should be good enough."
"I. Just. Want. A. Pickup. Truck."
Which ones do you really need? Everyone talks about needing to install a PCIe card, and how the iMac Pro or the MacBook Pro isn't powerful enough, but I don't hear anyone disclosing what cards they really need to install. Needs, not wants. Not desires to prolong the life of their 5,1 Mac Pro doesn't have USB 3 or SATA III or an NVMe drive or a 10GbE connection.
I get it...if you have an Avid HDX card or a Fibre Channel card you probably need a Mac Pro with PCIe slots. Chances are if you really need one of those your budget for your workstation is more than $2500, at least it should be.
External PCIe enclosures exist, people use them. 90% of people don't need a computer with any PCIe slots. Apple just gave that other 10% a gigantic Swiss Army Knife. Now the bargaining begins, "I only need 3 slots, why did Apple give us 8?" "No, I only really need one slot..." For what? The answer I keep coming up with is so that people can swap in an Nvidia GPU, which isn't even supported. No 2019 Mac Pro is going to run High Sierra, so that you can put in a 1080Ti..that won't stop people from trying to do it. Why? Do you really need an Nvidia GPU? Is your workflow CUDA-based? Or do you just want to play games? Because honestly, this is what this keeps coming back to for a lot of people here. They don't like Apple telling them its AMD or bust. No one wants to admit it, because you all are PROS, but unless you are going to BootCamp your Mac Pro to run Adobe Premiere on a CUDA GPU, what do you need NVIDIA to do that AMD cannot do? AI? Machine Learning? You don't need a Mac to do that, and you should be buying an Nvidia GPU and a Windows box. If you do need a Mac for that, you don't need an Nvidia GPU, because you should be doing CoreML, right? Oh my...no, just a side of Apex Legends or Doom Eternal.
The second highest item (or first) wasn't NVIDIA GPUs and Apple didn't give that even a 5 second thought in the WWDC Preview. It's over...but sure, let's keep pretending that you absolutely must have PCIe slots or else your computer is useless.
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Yes, but all pickup trucks have gotten much more expensive over time, even the base model 1500 Work Truck. Apple figured out that pickup trucks don't make as much money for them as SUVs and CUVs and like all smart car manufacturers, moved their production over to those as that is what the vast majority of new owners wanted. Not a 2500-2500HD pickup truck. But a CUV, capable for 90% of most everyone's needs.
Then a relatively small group demanded and demanded a pickup truck and Apple said, there are too many 1500s and 2500s out there in the market and we don't want to get lost, besides, our focus groups said that most people wanted a 6500(HD) with a choice of engines from gas to diesel to get them to switch and it really needed to stand out on the road. Apple obliged and gave the 1500 and 2500HD owners a choice. Buy a very capable CUV or pony up for the 6500 because the 1500-2500HD market is just not worth it to fight it out with manufacturers willing to take a loss to get a sale, because they don't sell a metric crap ton of electric scooters and for every potential 1500 or 2500HD sale they could sell 3 or 4 electric scooters and easily make way more money.
Upgradeable GPUs is still gonna get you AMD...NVIDIA's days not the Mac are done.
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Dude, pickup trucks are some of the cheapest vehicles in most markets. The fact there are luxury variants is irrelevant, since their primary function, carrying a load in a utility tray, is available in their cheapest forms.
I don't see why you can't get your head around a simple idea that people want the security of being able to upgrade their graphics - the part of systems which become obsolete the fastest, at a different pace to their overall system, without having to choose a secondrate option, like eGPU.
Third party drivers are getting kicked out. That's why Nvidia doesn't have downloadable drivers any more. GPU drivers won't be part of DriverKit, and third party drivers must be under DriverKit.
Logically there is no path for Nvidia.
Apple will continue to ship bundled drivers in kernel space. The only way Nvidia gets back in is if Apple bundles the drivers with the OS like they used to.
The big reason people use a Mac is the Finder. It's the front and center part of the user experience and it has indispensable features, especially across a network of semi-detached users.
It's the main reason user surveys always show these results...
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ctivity-creativity-and-collaboration.2186667/
But unless you're new to this I shouldn't need to say that.
It's a valid question but are you asking it for no good reason except for internet win points or do you really use PCIe cards? If so which ones? For pro use? Then buy the Mac Pro, business expense it, it's a deduction. The cost breakdown per day or per month or per year isn't that much if you really are a professional user who will profit from towers and PCIe cards.
If you're on a tighter budget, a hobbyist, or semi-pro user then connecting PCIe devices to all-in-one Macs is easy. There are TB3 expansion boxes with dual PCIe slots for a video capture card and an audio card, etc
Technically you don't have to tell to the kernel it has a GPU connected to use it as compute accelerator, nVidia may define it's GPU as another high bandwidth peripheral and nip/tuck the libraries to handle it, as drawback being out the kernel has some performance penality and the GPU isn't usable to display anything neither is available for STD gpgpu as opencl or metal only Cuda .
But I believe money is money and both Apple and nVidia knows they are losing money not enabling Cuda GPUs for ML, they will find a way for these drivers to come alive as soon as the ncgMP arrives it's customers, and it will be know soon.
Why does it have to be a need? Why can't it be a want? As to the question this has been answered so many times I can't believe it's still being asked: GPUs.
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This doesn't answer the question.
Yes, I really do use PCIe cards. In my previous system I upgraded the built in graphics and installed a USB 3 card. In my current system I added a PCIe NVRAM SSD (Z-Turbo drive) am thinking of upgrading the current GPU (located on a PCIe card) with something more capable. I had also considered adding a Thunderbolt card. My current system also has a 1TB 7,200 RPM hard disk in addition to the 1TB Z-Turbo drive. It also has a media card reader and an internal optical drive. All things I can't install inside a Mac Mini, iMac, or iMac Pro.
Is this a professional configuration? Certainly not. But, because HP offers a reasonable priced desktop workstation, I have everything I need in one nice, compact box.
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You have no clue as to what you are talking about. Try doing 3d art (rendering) on any Mac other than a Mac Pro. I killed my MacBook Pro doing renders.
I've had CPUs pegged at 100% for 12 - 13 hours per render. You can try that on a consumer grade CPU if you want to, but I prefer the better binned parts myself.
Please...there are no cheap trucks anymore...a decently-equipped Toyota Tacoma SR5 with 4x4 and a 5ft bed is $35K. My dad has a 2007 GMC Sierra 1500 SLE with a 5.3L V-8 and 4 wheel drive that he bought for $32,000.00 ($39,523.80 in 2019 money). The equivalent 2019 GMC 1500 SLE is $44,055.00 and I'm going easy to not overestimate the cost differential. But on every level, trucks have simply gone out of sight price-wise. Luxury variants, of which Apple should be compared, are completely ridiculous, but still sell.
Still think trucks are cheap, just go try and buy a Toyota HiLux down in Australia and say that to the locals with a straight face. Holy crap!!!
I can get my head around why people want to upgrade their GPU just fine, thank you very much! Here's the thing, Apple designed and built that computer...Apple built (over-built) the worst case scenario computer in terms of expandability, because I am sure that's what their customers were telling them they wanted/needed. So, yeah, you got a UNIMOG...a giant Swiss Army Knife...the Work Champ XL. And you can equip it with a small gas engine that doesn't go very fast, but gets great mileage or you can equip it with a giant high displacement Turbo Diese that burns rubberl, but the chassis is still the same. Why? Because it just doesn't make sense to build 2-3 different UNIMOGs in this day and age, when most of your business is either CUVs or electric scooters and that's what 90% of your customers want from you anyways.
Hopefully, the eGPU will be able to move to an x8 on PCIe 3.0 or even to PCIe 4.0 and the term second rate will get you an odd glance. I'm sure that there will still be those that look down upon them, but I could care less.