The fanatics are the ones who think you can stick a GPU in a Thunderbolt box, or stuff like RAM.
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Who thinks new Mac Pro on Monday? Poll
- Thread starter td2243
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The fanatics are the ones who think you can stick a GPU in a Thunderbolt box, or stuff like RAM.
So what if Apple makes a modular Mac Pro (whatever that means) that has 2 slots for graphics cards? Is that enough to make everyone happy?
Then just solder 16GM ram as standard, and have like 4 open slots. Take out the optical drive, a few HDD slots and BAM! You just saved a ton of space!
For laptops and integrated systems (iMac, Mac Mini)? No. I think Thunderbolt is a wonderful invention. I use it every day with my laptop for docking purposes.
For a desktop tower? Yes. As I have mentioned umpteen times before (and been called all kinds of things for pointing it out), I already have Display Port on my Mac Pro, and I already have PCI-e slots that dwarf Thunderbolt's capabilities.
By "fanatic", I was more or less referring to the folks who believe Thunderbolt is an end-all solution for all expansion purposes. They believe that because the port is new and shiny, everyone must have it and everyone must use it. Because they went out and bought a bunch of Thunderbolt stuff (knowing damned well it wouldn't work on the Mac Pro), they now believe that they are entitled to make demands of Apple that Apple should produce such a workstation. You will see all kinds of insane justification for using Thunderbolt, but in the end, it's all ******** when you have PCI-e.
No thanks.
I like my 64GB of RAM. It is very handy when dealing with large 3D scenes. I also appreciate the fact that it is removable, since I've dealt with bad sticks before. Something about throwing out the entire motherboard because a single bit in a few billion went bad just doesn't seem sane.
-SC
But how does soldering on RAM and having open slots save space? Either you can get RAM in and out yourself or you can't. You aren't going to save space by having 1/2 the RAM soldered and the other half not. The getting rid of ODDs and maybe a 3.5 HDD slot or two (possibly replaced by a 2.5 slot or two) are the only real ways to keep it anything like a mac pro and save space.
I'm not saying they should solder I'm just guessing to save space if that's the goal. 4 ram slots certainly take up a lot of space compared to soldered. It's not insignificant. I don't think it's a terrible idea. If its 100% soldered though I'd be upset.
Why would Apple ever solder RAM? It's not like the new Mac Pro will be the size of an iPad.
I think a minimum of 3 PCI slots are necessary for a Mac Pro (one two slots high). I'd like to see 4, or more even, but 3 is the minimum. Obviously not everyone needs that many, but there's bound to be enough people using 3, and it's not like they really increase the price to have another slot.
So you like thunderbolt for portable but not for desktop? I guess that's fine, but it's a waste to buy, say a nice AJA thunderbolt card, and have to get a separate PCIe for your desktop.
That's cool if you can use 64GB but you have to realize you're the minority. I'm not advocating FOR soldered ram, just being devils advocate. I know RAM can go bad, but I'm not sure I'd lose sleep over a bit going bad. As long as they included an option to add more.
Even if Apple slightly cripples their new Mac Pro, it's still probably going to be faster overall than a 2010 model or something. A PC might end up being better for you as a 3D artist, but I think Apple can maintain somewhat of a Pro user base without catering to super high end Pro work like 3D.
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Like I said I'm not advocating, but they soldered it for retina MBP. So it's a possibility. You're right about 2 slots high, I didn't think about that. Maybe 3 could work. I'm just trying to visualize worst case scenario for Apple making a compact machine and crippling our upgrade capabilities. Which I don't think they're going to do. I think we'll still have a true Pro tower.
It makes sense in a laptop because of the space savings. Laptops are usually limited by the vertical space since they need to be as thin as possible (at least that's the current trend). That's why it makes sense to move to soldered RAM because normal SODIMMs can easily add a centimeter or two as they need to be changeable and you need two to achieve more than 8GB. Fundamentally this is no different from the reasoning why CPU and GPU are also soldered - sockets and MXM slots exist but those always require more space than soldered chips.
However, the difference in Mac Pro is that it's a tower. A tower is not limited by vertical space because even the CPU cooler alone is taller than any DIMM. Using DIMMs actually gives you more horizontal space, which is more important in a desktop - imagine how much space e.g. 64GB of RAM would take when put on a single-sided PCB.
It saves height in the notebook. When you aren't constrained by height, it actually takes up more space. Now it's entirely possible that a future spec could demand soldered rather than socketed memory, but I have yet to see anyone show where it was an improvement on the rmbp beyond being a height saving measure.
And then again, a Mac Pro is made for the minority who NEEDS a ton of RAM, dual CPUs for whatever reason.
If you can live with soldered RAM and thunderbolt as your only way of expanding, get an iMac. They're pretty fast as well.
The Mac Pro was made for the pro's, and Tim Cook announced something for the Pro's this year - and therefore I guess we'll see something for the small minority again.
Why don't people like you just buy an iMac? They're perfect for you.
Just because you don't need a high-end Apple product, you don't need to say Apple shouldn't produce one.
The Mac Pro case we have today is just as big as most PC ones are. Why would you want to make it smaller? I really don't care about its size, fits perfectly under my desk. And if you make cases smaller, remember that you have other disadvanteges as well, for example ess airflow inside the case -> Either higher temps or louder because of faster fans
Furthermore, concerning RAM: I don't know how much you actually know about PCs, but: If one of the billions of bits in a stick of RAM goes bad, the whole stick doesen't work properly anymore, which results and freezes, crashes and KPs. Things that you just don't want on your workstation.
...unless you work in a "mixed economy" of Mac Pros, laptops and iMacs and want to be able to buy hardware that works across them all and can quickly be swapped between machines. Last time I visited a pro video outfit they were using external hard drives the way people used to use floppy discs. It also lets you connect to a laptop or iMac in 'target disc mode'.
The current Pro has, what, 4 PCIe slots, 4x3.5" bays and 2 x 5.25"/Optical bays? That takes up a lot of space, many extra connectors, cables, PCBs etc. that you have to sell to everybody whether they needed all of it or not. Thunderbolt peripherals can replace all of that with the exception of 1 or 2 full-width PCIe slots for the handful of applications that need more than Thunderbolt (mainly high-end GPUs).
To precise that: You don't sell the extra cables, PCBs, bays and whatever comes with it, you only sell a connector and a bit of space for it. If you don't have a GPU with two power connectors, you don't have a cable lying around, just a free connector which is 1cm^2 of space. If you have a powerful GPU, you'll be glad yoi've got the second power connector.
Thundbolt is nice, but it can't replace PCIe and all hard-drive bays. To come close to that, you'll need a ton of Thunderbolt ports, which then leads to developping a unique chipset in cooperation with Intel because Intels normal chipsets simply can't handle more than 1 or 2 Thunderbolt ports.
As I said above: If you don't need all that space and expansion options, a Mac Pro is not for you. Get an iMac or a Mini.
It's been so long since the Mac Pro has received any attention from Apple that I won't predict any new release until the evidence is overwhelming.
I just hope Apple doesn't mess it up. It's the Mac Pro. Don't make it just a top end headless iMac. As Siracusa said in his Accidental Tech Podcast this week, whatever it ends up being, it had better be the fastest Mac made by a wide margin.
I just hope Apple doesn't mess it up. It's the Mac Pro. Don't make it just a top end headless iMac. As Siracusa said in his Accidental Tech Podcast this week, whatever it ends up being, it had better be the fastest Mac made by a wide margin.
I stand corrected, it's actually just difficult to upgrade.
Sorry for confusion, but that wasn't my main point anyway
iOS isn't the primarily match/mismatch here.
It is a developers conference. These are the people who develop applications for both OS X and iOS. This is NOT the venue for Apple to soak up any time at all promoting their applications that are directly competitive with their developers. Money (and user time ) spent on Apple's apps is money/time not spent in developer apps. To some extent Apple and the developers are in competition with one another. This is a point that Apple is extremely likely to go out of its way to not emphasize during the conference.
All the focus is going to be on the opposite thing that is also happening. That Apple and the developers are in cooperation delivering a wide spectrum of very good apps for users. It is the cooperative, partnership aspects that will be the focus.
Unless Apple is offering up all the basic functionality of Logic X as a library anybody can use, it is not going to get "center stage" treatment at WWDC .
Some hardware may get some stage time if it demonstrates the improved aspects of OS X and/or iOS. Otherwise it too isn't going to get stage time. ( for example Mac Pro last year..... not even a press release. let alone stage time. There was nothing about 10.8 that you needed a Mac Pro to demonstrate the feature. Contrast that with needed a Retina display MBP to demo the new hiDPI capabiliities.... or at least highlight the "new to the broad public" features. There was some hiDPI stuff switched off in 10.7 )
That is exactly opposite of the truth. Soldering blows away lots of horizontal (relative to the logic board orientation) space. It is only a relatively small change in vertical height being traded for a relatively very large increase in horizontal space.
For laptops trying to limbo to ever lower heights that is a reasonable trade off. They have horizontal constraints they cannot shrink below anyway so it is a sensible. (i.e., the screen and/or keyboard require a fixed amount of horizontal space cannot shrink below. Thinner doesn't matter so much to them. )
For desktop that aren't going to even come within several inches of that kind of "thin" it is an extremely dubious trade-off. It doesn't decrease volume at all. In fact could even be a boost. It also caps the amount of RAM. ( the MBP 13" is stuck at 8GB prmarily because it does run out of horizontal space to put the RAM).
Sorry but it is a terrible idea. It is completely lacking in understanding the trade-off that soldering individual RAM chips has. That is why Apple hasn't used it in any of the other desktops. It doesn't even accomplish anything significant unless sub-inch thinness is goal #1. For desktops that is probably never going to happen.
An extremely more effective change toward that goal would be to exchange "big" or bigger things for "small"/"Smaller" things. For example,
2 5.25" bays --> 3-4 2.5" bays. , 2 2.5" and 2 3.5" (transverse mounted) , etc.
Or
dumping bays that are empty. Toss them and re-purpose the volume for other stuff or for shrinkage.
Or
use cooler components that require smaller fans and some combination of the above.
Or (specifically in the RAM space )
Use just one rank of DIMM slots. Oh wait, Apple already has done that with current Mac Pro.
There are 4 memory controllers on the Xeon E5 so less than 4 DIMM slots makes very little common sense.
Saving space could be a goal but trying to shrink back to mini size..... really can't be. Apple has a mini in the product line up. They don't need another one.