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

[Krevnik]

Not coming. Out right now. That's the difference. They're bringing a musket to a machine gun fight.

Generally, the biggest benefit to 4.0 in the next handful of years are going to be in systems where lanes are limited, not where lanes are plentiful. Unless you are looking to put 12 NVME drives in a RAID and cost is no issue...

Once we have more things that can saturate x8/x16 links on a 4.0 bus beyond NVME storage, it will start to matter more on a system like this, day to day.

I also wonder how 5.0 will play into adoption of 4.0, if it can keep to the timetable. 4.0 can wind up feeling transitional itself, which is weird, and generally depresses investment in an updated standard when it happens.

 

[goMac]

No USB4, so get ready to buy some dongles and/or cards.

Well that's a fib. USB4 is Thunderbolt 3. Same connector and everything.

Even if it was a problem (and all signs are that it's not), all the I/O is on an upgradable card in the Mac Pro.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Please can you show us what workflow will benefit from PCIe4 over 3 in a typical creative workstation usage?
What PCIe4 periferal will outperform PCIe3 counterparts by a significant margin right now?
Also show us where you can buy a creative workstation with PCIe4(not a server, you know... Epyc are not intended for WS, and not a Zen2 desktop since CPU that lack support for large amount of RAM, many PCIe lanes etc don't match WS requirements neither).

Ah so now your shifting gears to the "it doesnt really matter that when they ship it will be a dated machine". Mhmmm.

How about a PCI4 SSD that does 8G/sec:

Samsung Launches PM1733 PCIe 4.0 SSD: Up To 8 GB/s and 30TB

The Samsung PM1733 boasts sequential and random reads up to 8 GB/s and 1,500,000 IOPS, respectively.

www.tomshardware.com

That doesnt include new NVMe PCIe 4 raid cards that will do a lot better:

GIGABYTE Shows PCIe 4.0 x16 Four-Way M.2 PCIe Add-In Card

www.anandtech.com

Thanks for playing.
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Generally, the biggest benefit to 4.0 in the next handful of years are going to be in systems where lanes are limited, not where lanes are plentiful. Unless you are looking to put 12 NVME drives in a RAID and cost is no issue...

Once we have more things that can saturate x8/x16 links on a 4.0 bus beyond NVME storage, it will start to matter more on a system like this, day to day.

I also wonder how 5.0 will play into adoption of 4.0, if it can keep to the timetable. 4.0 can wind up feeling transitional itself, which is weird, and generally depresses investment in an updated standard when it happens.

Yea, I'd say the folks willing to drop $15k on a machine are often the 4k, 6k, 8k video folks that want a screaming fast SSD subsystem for video work. Or just want the fastest screaming machine possible.

Again, we're past the admission that apple will be shipping a DATED AS HECK machine on day 1 to arguing why extra speed and bandwidth isn't important. Mhmmm. Yea. No apologies there....

As for 5.0. Legit good question in that I could see the end of year bringing a leap frog to 5.0. Will be interesting to see. We went for like 10 years of stagnation with pcie3 to rapid fire bus doubling in 2.5 year stretch. Interesting times.

 

[fuchsdh]

Yea, I'd say the folks willing to drop $15k on a machine are often the 4k, 6k, 8k video folks that want a screaming fast SSD subsystem for video work. Or just want the fastest screaming machine possible.

Again, we're past the admission that apple will be shipping a DATED AS HECK machine on day 1 to arguing why extra speed and bandwidth isn't important. Mhmmm. Yea. No apologies there....

Strange how HP and Dell aren't apologizing for their "dated as heck" machines. Almost like it's not the huge deal people are making it to be.

 

[ssgbryan]

Really? The No True Scotsman fallacy?

You need to let the vendors that are making EYPC based workstations that they don't know what they are doing. They appear to disagree with you. Might I recommend that you visit Velocity Micro and take a look at the ProMagix™ HD150 Epyc Workstation. See what you could get for the same $6,000.

If you are working 3D, why on earth are you staying with Apple?

1. I can raid 2 NVMe drives in a RAID 0 and have 9Gb thruput. You will have the joy of paying for that performance when you buy yourself an NVMe, but will be unable to use it. Does this matter? It does to me - with digital vendors making texture sets ever larger (512 x 512 to 8,000 x 8000), these damned things are getting to the point that I have to move stuff on and off spinning rust. I can have that today - even on a low end Ryzen based system - the 7,1 will never have it.

2. Google EYPC workstations yourself - there are a number of them from Boxx to Velocity Micro. Velocity Micro makes both TR and EYPC based workstations. (And they will be building me a system in Jan) They even have a dual CPU socket system (HD 360A). I'd point out that for $6,000 (HD150), I'd get 3 times the cores, 4 times the memory, 4 times the hard drive space, and a current (as opposed to obsolescent) video card. Not only will I retire my 4,1, I'll also retire my render farm.

EYPC chips are designed for anybody that needs lots of cores (128cores/256 threads), ram (2TB total) and/or PCIe lanes (128). All of which are more than a 7,1 will ever have.

The Upcoming TR will start at 24 cores, and will take over the HEDT market like the Ryzen has taken over the low end and mainstream market. Low power Ryzen chips are on the horizon for laptops next year.

And one more thing.......

Why do you think Apple is using consumer level video cards for their "workstation" as opposed to their line of workstation cards?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Strange how HP and Dell aren't apologizing for their "dated as heck" machines. Almost like it's not the huge deal people are making it to be.

Wow way to set the bar real high. These guys are losers to amd based from no name inc Taiwan motherboards, so that also justifies apple being a bunch of losers. Fantastic! Let’s all hold our breath real hard and pretend amd isn’t out performing them to an embarrassing extent. That totally makes things better, rather than demanding better from apple.

 

[danwells]

Apple is absolutely constrained by Intel here - AMD quite literally doesn't matter. The Mac Pro would be extremely lucky to sell a million units per year, and might very well sell as few as 100,000 (Apple sells something on the order of 20 million Macs annually, about 2/3 of them laptops).

The Mac Pro and the top of the iMac line are the only Macs that would see a substantial performance benefit from a like-for-like move to AMD, and the entire laptop line suffers. I'm not arguing that a 2019 Epyc isn't a better processor for the Mac Pro than the current big-socket Xeon W chips - on balance, for most workloads, the Epyc is probably a better choice, with more than twice the cores, even at a somewhat lower per-core throughput. I don't think it's as much of a slam-dunk as ssgbryan and others say it is - or why would the really big workstation vendors like HP and Dell all be mostly or all Intel?

The top iMacs are an even closer case... The Ryzen 9 3900x has 50% more cores than the Core i9-9900k, but each core is between 10-20% slower than the Intel cores. Cores don't scale linearly, so 12 cores are more like 133% of 8 cores than 150%. Still, isn't 133% of the power running 15% slower a better deal overall? Yes, except that so many consumer applications are poorly threaded (or worse yet, single-threaded). Most things you're going to run on a Mac Pro will at least use a whole bunch of cores - typical iMac applications, not so much. The iMac Pro uses processors that are a couple of years old. We'll have to see not only the upcoming Threadrippers but Intel's response to them to see how iMac Pro chips compare - saying "sub a 2019 chip in for a 2016 chip from a competitor" is hardly fair...

In every other desktop Mac, the equivalent Ryzen performs a lot like the Intel chip they're using - sometimes with a more cores at a lower speed tradeoff. There's rarely a disadvantage to AMD on the desktop, but there's no big advantage worthy of the hardware and software redesigns that would be needed, either.

Isn't it still worth it for those high-performance desktops that will benefit, though? The catch is around 14 million MacBooks, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros every year. AMD's laptop line lags well behind Intel's, and I'm sure Apple gets preferential pricing on everything they buy by being all-in on Intel. There are no AMD laptop processors under 10 watts - bye-bye MacBook Air (and MacBook, which is between generations right now)! There are no AMD laptop processors over 4 cores - bye-bye 15" MacBook Pro.

The only laptop in their current lineup Apple could conceivably replace with an AMD version is the 13" MacBook Pro. Most AMD laptop chips compete with Pentiums and Core i3s in the extreme low end of the market where Apple refuses to go. They have a couple of midrange quad-cores with nice integrated GPUs that would go well in the 13" MBP - but they have nothing above that, and nothing in the low-power "ultrabook" market - it's almost all value-oriented ~15W chips.

 

[jinnyman]

I just cannot trust Apple in professional sector in general due to their inability to quickly utilize a new technology. They seem to spend forever trying to make new generation of technology work in their platform that when their new platform comes out, the next generation of technology is almost out making their new shining machine somewhat obsolete. Their consumer line is doing ok, but look at their professional lineup and their track record.

When are they going to update iMac Pro? If the newer version of intel chip comes out, will they immediately update iMac Pro? or is iMac Pro just temporary attempt at keeping professional users and discontinue as soon as Mac Pro comes out? What about Mac Pro? The 7.1 is not even out yet, but what about its future plan? nVidia coming out? What about AMD? Apple's slow face and secrecy worked ok so far. But that kind of strategy is not going to win over professionals.

Personally Apple's fucusing too much in customizing already generic computer parts. For Apple's level of perfection, I support a certain level of customization. But nowadays, it seems Apple's so fucused on brining out an innovation that they are going too far without merit.

I'm really eager to see the custom price of Mac Pro 7.1 as it will show what Apple's really thinking about their professional line.

 

[sirio76]

How about a PCI4 SSD that does 8G/sec:

Samsung Launches PM1733 PCIe 4.0 SSD: Up To 8 GB/s and 30TB

The Samsung PM1733 boasts sequential and random reads up to 8 GB/s and 1,500,000 IOPS, respectively.

www.tomshardware.com

That doesnt include new NVMe PCIe 4 raid cards that will do a lot better:

GIGABYTE Shows PCIe 4.0 x16 Four-Way M.2 PCIe Add-In Card

www.anandtech.com

Thanks for playing.
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Ridiculous... I will install a PCIe 3 RAID card capable of 14000MB/s, the PCIe 4 equivalent can do 15000MB/s, you really think that in real life you will notice a 7% difference???
You still have failed to answer all the other question(likely because you don’t have a decent answer).
I’ll try to do that for you... EPYC system are not intended for creative workstation usage, IBM Power system are not intended for that neither, that leaves only the Zen2 mainstream CPU, too bad they only have limited PCIe 4 lanes(24) so if you install a 16x RAID card, that leaves space for barely a single GPU(and not at full speed too), of course they are also limited in many other ways compared to a WS class CPU, RAM, core count etc. That will change with next gen TR but we are not quite there yet and still the PCIe 4 benefits will be mostly inexistent for typical usage for years.
Please provide some answer to the question from my other post, because if your only argument is that PCIe 4 is better than 3 just for a 7% difference I see no point in looking into that, I’ll prefer to stay in a 3 ecosystem with plenty of option and plenty of bandwidth for anybody doing creative works.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Ridiculous... I will install a PCIe 3 RAID card capable of 14000MB/s, the PCIe 4 equivalent can do 15000MB/s, you really think that in real life you will notice a 7% difference???
You still have failed to answer all the other question(likely because you don’t have a decent answer).
I’ll try to do that for you... EPYC system are not intended for creative workstation usage, IBM Power system are not intended for that neither, that leaves only the Zen2 mainstream CPU, too bad they only have limited PCIe 4 lanes(24) so if you install a 16x RAID card, that leaves space for barely a single GPU(and not at full speed too), of course they are also limited in many other ways compared to a WS class CPU, RAM, core count etc. That will change with next gen TR but we are not quite there yet and still the PCIe 4 benefits will be mostly inexistent for typical usage for years.
Please provide some answer to the question from my other post, because if your only argument is that PCIe 4 is better than 3 just for a 7% difference I see no point in looking into that, I’ll prefer to stay in a 3 ecosystem with plenty of option and plenty of bandwidth for anybody doing creative works.

Simple, instead of needing 2ncards that can get to 25gb/sec in a raid, you have one. And if you want to double the cards, you get to 50g/sec. you can babble all you like, but double the bandwidth is better.

 

[sirio76]

Why don't you just answer my previous question?

 

[H2SO4]

Apple is absolutely constrained by Intel here - AMD quite literally doesn't matter. The Mac Pro would be extremely lucky to sell a million units per year, and might very well sell as few as 100,000 (Apple sells something on the order of 20 million Macs annually, about 2/3 of them laptops).

Apple are not at all constrained by Intel. I find it funny that people blame it on others.
Guess what, if I can't run the 100m in 10 seconds I don't blame it on Nike for not producing the right pair of running spikes, or on my local supermarket for not selling a big enough range of nutritional foods.
Remember Apple have desktop class processors, (Tim said it himself), in the iDevice range and those same devices have SOCs and graphics processors that out class the competition by leagues.

They are constrained by themselves.........

 

[AlexMaximus]

I can only comment on my Mac Pro 5.1 experience. This workstation works flawlessly now for a full decade now. What better quality can a workstation have? Be my guest and present me the amortization over 10 years.
In my opinion, it is completely unimportant if the 7.1 has the latest greatest PCI 5.o or whatever. What counts for me is a new Mac Pro that lasts another 10 years, - period. And this is only possible thanks to a design that is upgradable and believe it or not - This Forum here.
Without the Pixlas Mod and many other great "unofficial" enhancements, this workstation would have been not what it is today.
It's you guys, it's us - it is this forum why the 5.1 Tower was as great as it is. I absolutely will not buy some No-Name China Plastic Box with some slightly better tech, - not in my house. The new 7.1 will be an absolute Super Machine without a doubt, PCI 4.0 or not.
The only question remains, - since I am yet not PRO enough, - would be a new iMac Pro / iMac in 2020 better suited for my needs?.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Why don't you just answer my previous question?

Because your premise and reasoning are flawed. 7% is not what you get. Full on raid you get 2x the bandwidth. It’s really that simple.

If only those that go to pains here to apologize for apple, put in half the energy to criticize them, maybe they would do better. I hear all the same lame apologies for how great the trash can Mac was. All those apologies just helped drive away more pros. Same will happen now, plus many enthusiasts.

But by all means, please continue to lecture us how less bandwidth and cores and higher nanometer architecture is really the way to go...

 

[Coyote2006]

I can only comment on my Mac Pro 5.1 experience. This workstation works flawlessly now for a full decade now. What better quality can a workstation have? Be my guest and present me the amortization over 10 years.
In my opinion, it is completely unimportant if the 7.1 has the latest greatest PCI 5.o or whatever. What counts for me is a new Mac Pro that lasts another 10 years, - period. And this is only possible thanks to a design that is upgradable and believe it or not - This Forum here.
Without the Pixlas Mod and many other great "unofficial" enhancements, this workstation would have been not what it is today.
It's you guys, it's us - it is this forum why the 5.1 Tower was as great as it is. I absolutely will not buy some No-Name China Plastic Box with some slightly better tech, - not in my house. The new 7.1 will be an absolute Super Machine without a doubt, PCI 4.0 or not.
The only question remains, - since I am yet not PRO enough, - would be a new iMac Pro / iMac in 2020 better suited for my needs?.

Got the same thoughts. The MacPro would be an investment for the next 10 years (Apple knows that, that's one reason why the price is so high). Would the iMacPro an alternative? Yes and no. Yes because of the monitor and it's speed, no because of the price and the lack of upgradability. A "Mac" with an Apple 5K Monitor would be perfect for me. Mac for $4000, monitor for $2500 and I'd order it right now.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Really? The No True Scotsman fallacy?

You need to let the vendors that are making EYPC based workstations that they don't know what they are doing. They appear to disagree with you. Might I recommend that you visit Velocity Micro and take a look at the ProMagix™ HD150 Epyc Workstation. See what you could get for the same $6,000.

If you are working 3D, why on earth are you staying with Apple?

1. I can raid 2 NVMe drives in a RAID 0 and have 9Gb thruput. You will have the joy of paying for that performance when you buy yourself an NVMe, but will be unable to use it. Does this matter? It does to me - with digital vendors making texture sets ever larger (512 x 512 to 8,000 x 8000), these damned things are getting to the point that I have to move stuff on and off spinning rust. I can have that today - even on a low end Ryzen based system - the 7,1 will never have it.

2. Google EYPC workstations yourself - there are a number of them from Boxx to Velocity Micro. Velocity Micro makes both TR and EYPC based workstations. (And they will be building me a system in Jan) They even have a dual CPU socket system (HD 360A). I'd point out that for $6,000 (HD150), I'd get 3 times the cores, 4 times the memory, 4 times the hard drive space, and a current (as opposed to obsolescent) video card. Not only will I retire my 4,1, I'll also retire my render farm.

EYPC chips are designed for anybody that needs lots of cores (128cores/256 threads), ram (2TB total) and/or PCIe lanes (128). All of which are more than a 7,1 will ever have.

The Upcoming TR will start at 24 cores, and will take over the HEDT market like the Ryzen has taken over the low end and mainstream market. Low power Ryzen chips are on the horizon for laptops next year.

And one more thing.......

Why do you think Apple is using consumer level video cards for their "workstation" as opposed to their line of workstation cards?

I've been seeing a lot of chatter about EPYC in this thread (at least I think that's what you meant and just had a few typos, right? googling EYPC doesn't return anything relevant) so I went to that vendor to check it out. Trying to get something similar in the base config comes out quite a bit cheaper (I got about $3500 vs $6000, it's not a perfect comparison since not every option that the Mac Pro ships with is available on that machine, i.e. no 10GbE) but when I configure for my likely config (getting as close as I can because again not every option exists on that workstation) I get about $11,500 versus what I'm expecting will be around $13,500 (possibly less, obviously Apple hasn't released BTO pricing but based upon public component pricing of equivalent hardware and "Apple tax" we see on other models, I think I'm close). We'll see what it ultimately comes down to but if I'm paying up to $2000 for MacOS on my high performance workstation I'm OK with that.

Incidentally, if you were licensing Windows server for that 24 core processor you'd need two licenses (which retail for just under $1k each), so you're right into that $2k range I'm willing to pay for MacOS. If you go with a 128 core processor now you need eight licenses (although maybe you can get fewer with DataCenter edition? I don't follow Windows licensing that closely).

 

[majus]

In another 10 days it will be FOUR MONTHS since the Mac Pro announcement. Why is it such a problem to at least issue a price list and take pre-orders? Utterly ridiculous!

 

[Coyote2006]

In another 10 days it will be FOUR MONTHS since the Mac Pro announcement. Why is it such a problem to at least issue a price list and take pre-orders? Utterly ridiculous!

Thanks to Donald Trump maybe? On the 15th of October the additional taxes will be active (or not). We'll be able to order the Macs on the 16th ...

 

[ManuelGomes]

So, today is Fall already.
Why are we still waiting for mMP?
Maybe they didn't mean the northern hemisphere?!

 

[ManuelGomes]

If the Mini is not enough, the Pro is overkill, Apple is rumored (not really) to launch today (Fall, that should give it away) the Mac (period). Revamped nMP Late 2013, the Mac 2019 comes with Xeon-W 8-12 core, 4ch 256GB mem limit (not to mess with the mMP) and a couple of Vegas (or even the available Navis).
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And a 5K Retina display, of course, to go with it

 

[bsbeamer]

Apparently it's going to be made in Texas, but that also means manufacturing is not (yet) really underway. Would pencil in December 2019 for first orders, but likely 2020 for most.

Apple Says New Mac Pro Will Be Manufactured in Texas After Receiving Tariff Exemptions

Apple today announced that its next-generation Mac Pro will be manufactured in Texas, with production slated to begin soon at the same Austin...

www.macrumors.com

 

[ssgbryan]

I've been seeing a lot of chatter about EPYC in this thread (at least I think that's what you meant and just had a few typos, right? googling EYPC doesn't return anything relevant) so I went to that vendor to check it out. Trying to get something similar in the base config comes out quite a bit cheaper (I got about $3500 vs $6000, it's not a perfect comparison since not every option that the Mac Pro ships with is available on that machine, i.e. no 10GbE) but when I configure for my likely config (getting as close as I can because again not every option exists on that workstation) I get about $11,500 versus what I'm expecting will be around $13,500 (possibly less, obviously Apple hasn't released BTO pricing but based upon public component pricing of equivalent hardware and "Apple tax" we see on other models, I think I'm close). We'll see what it ultimately comes down to but if I'm paying up to $2000 for MacOS on my high performance workstation I'm OK with that.

Incidentally, if you were licensing Windows server for that 24 core processor you'd need two licenses (which retail for just under $1k each), so you're right into that $2k range I'm willing to pay for MacOS. If you go with a 128 core processor now you need eight licenses (although maybe you can get fewer with DataCenter edition? I don't follow Windows licensing that closely).

If you need something that isn't in the drop down, just call the 1-800 number and ask. Personally, I can't see paying $2K for the Apple Tax. OSX isn't any better than Windows 10 AFA reliability, and being trapped with a bunch of EoL tech on day 1 doesn't really appeal to me. I was a gear head long before I jumped platforms to OSX, I don't have a problem jumping to a new one - especially one that will allow me to use modern hardware and software selection that is orders of magnitude more than what is available on OSX.

Incidentally, if I was licensing Windows server, I'd have server software as opposed to the sad remnants of OSX server. You get what you pay for.

 

[sirio76]

Then jump to Windows and leave this forum, what you are waiting for? And what are you trying to achieve posting everyday about stuff you are not interested in?

 

[deconstruct60]

Apparently it's going to be made in Texas, but that also means manufacturing is not (yet) really underway. Would pencil in December 2019 for first orders, but likely 2020 for most.
....

How does Texas necessitates manufacturing has not started?

If in the same building as old Mac Pro do you think there are so overwhelmed by production load can't handle getting new Mac Pros out the door? Probably not. If the old Mac Pro factory isn't making anything then there is little to no blockage on starting up a new line. In fact, probably would be highly motivated to do so since that part of the building is burning money.

It isn't all going to be made in Texas.

"... The new Mac Pro will include components designed, developed and manufactured by more than a dozen American companies for distribution to US customers. Manufacturers and suppliers across Arizona, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vermont, ..."

Apple’s new Mac Pro to be made in Texas

As part of its commitment to US economic growth, Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas.

www.apple.com

It is going to be assembled in Texas not all made in Texas.

Unless Apple is being ridicules scrooge McDuck penny pinchers, they could start shipping in parts without waivers. The far more likely logistical screw up is Apple industrial design and engineering process rather than Texas being the final assembly point. Haven't finalized designs and ramped production on time then there would be a problem. The lateness of the Mac Pro is 98+ % all Apple. The major chips and small scale components of the Mac Pro have all been shipping for a while now. Apple was yapping about new Mac Pro in April 2017 ... They'd had two whole years to get their act together. (and failed to get it done by April 2019 ). That is not the Austin factory workers fault in the slightest.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

If you need something that isn't in the drop down, just call the 1-800 number and ask. Personally, I can't see paying $2K for the Apple Tax. OSX isn't any better than Windows 10 AFA reliability, and being trapped with a bunch of EoL tech on day 1 doesn't really appeal to me. I was a gear head long before I jumped platforms to OSX, I don't have a problem jumping to a new one - especially one that will allow me to use modern hardware and software selection that is orders of magnitude more than what is available on OSX.

Incidentally, if I was licensing Windows server, I'd have server software as opposed to the sad remnants of OSX server. You get what you pay for.

Windows 10 won't support the amount of RAM we've been talking about for BTO configs, you'll need to run Windows Server Standard (or Data Center). Those are licensed by core count (in increments of 16) so you'd need between 2 and 8 licenses for the core counts you were talking about. At about $1000 per license that's between $2000 and $8000 in Windows tax on the EPYC based system. It's fine if you want to overpay for a system to have EPYC though, that's your prerogative.