A press release launch on Thursday, followed by an hands on demo the next day, then making it part of the QA on Saturday would seem a very Apple thing to do (ie dragging out the media access and keeping it in the headlines for as long as possible), if they aren't giving it any more stage time given it was announced earlier this year anyway. Same could be done for the iMac Pro and 16" MacBook Pro too. That statement on the FCPX creative summit page does put a plural on "surprise"....
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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
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A press release launch on Thursday, followed by an hands on demo the next day, then making it part of the QA on Saturday would seem a very Apple thing to do (ie dragging out the media access and keeping it in the headlines for as long as possible), if they aren't giving it any more stage time given it was announced earlier this year anyway. Same could be done for the iMac Pro and 16" MacBook Pro too. That statement on the FCPX creative summit page does put a plural on "surprise"....
I think a minor iMac Pro upgrade is possible, but it seems like 16" MacBook Pro has been punted to next year.
Maybe they could demo a MacBook Pro upgrade at a FCPX conference, but that seems really unlikely that's where a debut would happen.
Agree, order of likelyhood is Mac Pro > iMac Pro >>> MacBook Pro. But given the plural what other options could their be? Multiple Mac Pro models to look at, the XDR display, iPad Pros? Got to think the majority of the second (or third, etc) items' probability lies with the iMac Pro or MacBook Pro.
I would guess Mac Pro, XDR Display, third party software and hardware for Mac Pro.
That would be heavily 3rd party focused given that the Mac Pro and the XDR aren't exactly surprises and supposedly these surprises are coming from the "apple product team". But we know Apple overstates things, so you could be right.
Yes program says Friday 1pm-6pm. So we'll know what's up by then, if not earlier.
I'm guessing that there won't be any public announcements tied directly to that time slot. It's a demo, not a keynote. But still good timing to put any announcements around, and another demo of the Mac Pro isn't nothing. By that time, Apple might have reps ready to disclose more details. Might get some more firm answers on third party video cards, NVMe, Boot Camp, etc...
Right, if anything new is there, I'd expect a press release before hand. Fingers crossed for Thursday or Friday morning.
For whomever think they're getting answers from this event, good luck. Several visits like this in the past have been at the visitor center or terrace. Limited (if any) interaction with people who could actually speak or answer MP7,1 questions.
There's a better chance you'd have an MP7,1 product person at the panel discussion on Saturday. There is likely an NDA/embargo in effect for public disclosure unless it's intended for public release ahead of time.
There's a better chance you'd have an MP7,1 product person at the panel discussion on Saturday. There is likely an NDA/embargo in effect for public disclosure unless it's intended for public release ahead of time.
Or about 50% less, if you are willing to give up OSX. Of course, at 50% less, you would be stuck with 64 cores (or more, if you go with a dual CPU motherboard), but I am sure you could learn to deal with having all that extra horsepower.....
HPC Leadership Where it Matters — Real-World Performance
Conventional wisdom typically suggests that “more is better”; more time, more money, more horsepower while driving on the autobahn…
Were you able to ascertain which T3 port the XDR was attached to on the Mac Pro machine? Is there a preference for this? I'm having difficulty seeing this on apple.com specs.
The XDR can be attached to any TB3 port. Including the top mounted if that’s how you want to roll.
As long as you have a MPX GPU video will be routed to all ports.
I don’t know what the max number of 6k displays is though.
This is exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you! There is no benefit to routing directly into one of the Vega II Duo's T3 ports.
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From Apple:
Powerful I/O at hand.
Mac Pro has extremely high-performance I/O, and lots of it. It begins with four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB-A ports, and two 10Gb Ethernet ports. And with every MPX Module you add you get more capability. Connect up to 12 4K displays or up to six Pro Display XDRs from Apple and see your work with over 120 million pixels. It’s now easy to expand at will.
I member the garbage can could supposedly run a pile of high res displays, too. Lotta disappointment down that road.
A MPX GPU doesn't guarantee it. The Vega II 'Solo' doesn't. From Mac Pro's specs page .
"... Two DisplayPort connections routed to system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports ..."
The 580X and Duo both provision Four DisplayPort streams. Two of the default system TBv3 ports are going to get left out if only have the Solo version of the card. Also it is unclear if MPX Bay 2 can help out in this situation (i.e., whether can provision from the default system TBv3 ports from the second bay as a 'backup'. I suspect not ( in part due to additional trace paths and DP switches ) )
For the 'Solo' card it is best to hook directly to the edge ports on the card. For the Duo you have more flexibility, but flexibility isn't automatic with just being MPX.
Depends. The edge ports on the Duo are all probably hooked to the same GPU package. One pair of the TBv3 provisioning system probably are also. However, there is one pair that is coming off the 2nd GPU. If have an app which required the display driver and the computation be done on the same GPU then you may not want to split up multiple monitors. ( and some folks will. So context specific ).
The "Connect up to" implicitly indicates that it depends which GPU solution you have in the system. Not all of them will do it. The 580X doesn't have 4 ports on the edge and the specs indicate only max out at 6 4K displays. The 'Solo' also only 6. The Duo can drive 8 ( 4 edge and 4 system's 4 ports ). So only get another 4 with a second Duo (to get to 12 max ).
Similar with the 6 XDR count. Only path to that is through two Duos. ( that is a bit of ridiculous configuration though for a single user workstation. An upper cap of 4 XDR would be a limitation for almost no one. Either Vega II could do that. Personally, I wouldn't put more than one XDR on a 580X. if folks have "multiple per system" XDR budget then probably can step up on the GPU level too. ).
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We will be using only one XDR display to begin with and one Vega II Duo GPU card. Our question - for this setup is - should be connect the computer TB3 cable directly into that card slot?
It is probably not worth getting fired for releasing that at the moment. Once the number of repair folks have been trained on the new Mac Pro hits peak numbers and the system is generally public that probably will leak.
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With just one it doesn't really matter much. But ""to begin with" suggests that it won't be one for the long term. So starting with one of the Duo edge ports allows flexibility on how to allocate the rest of the TBv3 ports for now. It isn't like it is permanently attached, but most folks don't like significant cable swaps later. (e.g., if need a longer TBv3 cord can just get it now). It could be moved later depending upon speeds/feeds needed on the other other ports with a different set of equipment.
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For video editing, I wonder how a base GPU and afterburner combo would fare against the upgraded GPU options without afterburner.
All depends on the software and codecs being used.
And workload mix. Afterburner is going to "decode" the RAW files but it is somewhat unlikely it is going to layer effects or do much other than general lighting/white balance/exposure adjustments to the whole frame.
If doing quick dailies ingest from video camera recordings for timely reviews then Afterburner probably has a much bigger impact than if mainly trying to remove wires from a harness from the frames. Or heavily layering on special effects.
A cart on location is different from far back-end work.
If Apple adds RAW-to-RAW transformations to Afterburner abilities then straight from camera codecs will matter less. ( they won't get that for free but it is something they could have been working on and still haven't revealed yet. ). That is a broader "ingest" job they could assign to Afterburner that would mean could get by with a 580X in more contexts.
I think there are a few things being conflated. All the TB3 ports will be video enabled, but like most TB3 Macs, there is a limit to how many displays cam be connected at once. With the Solo card, that’s two displays.
I just meant that all the TB3 ports will have active video, but I also said I didn’t know the max display count.