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Will there be a new Mac Pro in 2015?

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I submit to you that you will not see a new Mac Pro anytime soon for the same reason that you won't see a really powerful Mac mini, a 17in MacBook Pro, an enthusiast-oriented Xmac/midi or an updated ACD using the current standard def iMac display and offering USB3 ports.

The observable truth is that Apple just does not care about that stuff anymore. It has become a rich telephone company that sells great mid-level computers, fashion accessories and ghetto headphones.

I just replaced a 2012 mini with an HP Z230, 3.6GHz desktop i7, four RAM slots with two filled, PCI, PCIe 2 and PCIe 3 card slots, a reasonable amount of internal storage space and a three-year parts & labor warranty all for the price of a nicer i7 mini. Between my previous PC and the new one were two MacBook Pros, four minis and two Mac Pros. I just can't see the Apple magic anymore.

BTW B&H sells genuine HP items like RAM, GPUs and fans. The prices are stupid reasonable. I am really impressed. That said I still love my 2012 3.46GHx six-core Mac Pro even if the Z230 is a bit more powerful at times.
 
scottsjack said:
I submit to you that you will not see a new Mac Pro anytime soon for the same reason that you won't see a really powerful Mac mini, a 17in MacBook Pro, an enthusiast-oriented Xmac/midi or an updated ACD using the current standard def iMac display and offering USB3 ports.
Click to expand...

There are a number of things I want to see from Apple that I'm disappointed to not have yet but...

Professionals are humans too. We need to get work done, but we also want to look good, feel good, and fit technology in with the rest of our life. In high-end hardware, I believe this is the balance Apple tries to hit.

The Mac Pro has always had long release cycles.

The 17" MacBook Pro (and I want this more than anything in the world) probably didn't have retina displays available, and a non-retina model made no sense with it's high end price. I think/hope the winds are blowing that we'll see a 16" model in the future.

Xmac, how many people here actually owned one of those?

Mac Display, Apple is really strung up by slow progress of video interconnects and chipset support.

The world isn't collapsing on Apple enthusiasts, but man, I really hope that Apple steps up and helps drive things forward here instead of letting Intel define their future. I want a Haswell-EP Mac Pro with Apple Retina Displays, like, yesterday.
 
scottsjack said:
The observable truth is that Apple just does not care about that stuff anymore. It has become a rich telephone company that sells great mid-level computers, fashion accessories and ghetto headphones.
Click to expand...

Right on the money !

The only one I would argue with is the "ghetto headphones". My gym in Hollywood always has 3 or 4 people wandering about wearing them. Not sure if they have any music playing, but they sure look cool !
 
JDHiro said:
There are a number of things I want to see from Apple that I'm disappointed to not have yet but...

Professionals are humans too. We need to get work done, but we also want to look good, feel good, and fit technology in with the rest of our life. In high-end hardware, I believe this is the balance Apple tries to hit.

The Mac Pro has always had long release cycles.

The 17" MacBook Pro (and I want this more than anything in the world) probably didn't have retina displays available, and a non-retina model made no sense with it's high end price. I think/hope the winds are blowing that we'll see a 16" model in the future.

Xmac, how many people here actually owned one of those?

Mac Display, Apple is really strung up by slow progress of video interconnects and chipset support.

The world isn't collapsing on Apple enthusiasts, but man, I really hope that Apple steps up and helps drive things forward here instead of letting Intel define their future. I want a Haswell-EP Mac Pro with Apple Retina Displays, like, yesterday.
Click to expand...

You make some good points. A few additional points need to be added however;

That "Apple is really strung up by slow progress of video interconnects and chipset support" is simply ridiculous. The current ACD is essentially an iMac screen in an iMac case with enough of a power supply and electronics to port USB2, audio, Ethernet and Thunderbolt back through TB1 to the host computer.

Do you really think that Apple's engineers would have needed more than a few months to make that happen with TB2 and USB3 three years ago? Even at the too-high USA price of $999 they would have sold a ton of them, probably even one to me.

Additionally no one has every owned an Xmac because the often wished for and occasionally rumored Xmac has never been produced. Many certainly would have purchased one if the architecture was enthusiast-oriented and the prices reasonable. I myself would have preferred an Xmac to either a mini or a Mac Pro.

Finally I have a theory that Apple purposefully avoids producing a full line of Macs and picking up huge market share because of the legal troubles Microsoft had in both the USA and Europe. Apple's locked-down garden makes Microsofts anti-trust shenanigans look like Karl Marx's ideal commune full of happy, smiling peasants each do their part according to their abilities.

Apple can sell tons of locked-down iPhones and iPads but they would probably get their teeth kicked in if their market share was equal to Microsoft's. You can bet that the control freak Steve Jobs would have left money on the table rather than tangle with European and American anti-trust authorities over virtually everything that Apple does.
 
Stacc said:
No. While skylake should arrive on consumer platforms this fall, skylake won't arrive on Intel's Xeon processors used in the Mac Pro until end of 2016 or 2017.
Click to expand...

So you're thinking the nMP will be updated before then?

With Broadwell? Or a Haswell refresh?
 
scottsjack said:
..... and ghetto headphones. .
Click to expand...


I will take the term “Ghetto Headphones” a few steps further. Dr. Dre probably had these headphones designed to include the missing low end frequency that most headphones lacked. Will the performance of an artist improve when the same sounds are heard as in the control room? Without a doubt! For the non-performer is there a more pleasurable listening experience when:
1. The 808 Bass drum and Moog bass are more pronounced in Hiphop?
2. The voice of a Bass like George London is more pronounced in Opera?
3. The Cellos and Double Bass section of Richard Wagner in a movie sound track Excalibur is more pronounced in classical music?
4. The Baritone Saxophone of Supersax is more pronounced in Bebop?
5. The Tuba is more pronounced in Umpapa music?
6. The guitarron (Bass guitar) is more pronounced in a mariachi band?
7. The Dubstep Bass is more pronounced in Dubstep?
8. The Contra Bassoon in Peter and The Wolf is more pronounced in classical music?
9. The Bass Clarinet as played by Eric Dolphy is more pronounced in Jazz?


But then again I may be mistaken and none of these other types of music benefit by the low end being heard in these “Ghetto Headphones"! :cool:
 
scottsjack said:
I submit to you that you will not see a new Mac Pro anytime soon for the same reason that you won't see a really powerful Mac mini, a 17in MacBook Pro, an enthusiast-oriented Xmac/midi or an updated ACD using the current standard def iMac display and offering USB3 ports.

The observable truth is that Apple just does not care about that stuff anymore. It has become a rich telephone company that sells great mid-level computers, fashion accessories and ghetto headphones.

I just replaced a 2012 mini with an HP Z230, 3.6GHz desktop i7, four RAM slots with two filled, PCI, PCIe 2 and PCIe 3 card slots, a reasonable amount of internal storage space and a three-year parts & labor warranty all for the price of a nicer i7 mini. Between my previous PC and the new one were two MacBook Pros, four minis and two Mac Pros. I just can't see the Apple magic anymore.

BTW B&H sells genuine HP items like RAM, GPUs and fans. The prices are stupid reasonable. I am really impressed. That said I still love my 2012 3.46GHx six-core Mac Pro even if the Z230 is a bit more powerful at times.
Click to expand...

This. The second somebody else makes an OS like the Mac OS I’m gone. I don’t really subscribe to that eco system rubbish either.
I don’t really have to want to learn a new system again but APPL seem to be putting an awful lot of roadblocks in the way of people who use computers in the way that I do.
There is a rumour of a lockdown of 10.11 a la iOS. If they do in fact lock out root access I won't upgrade and that will be the beginning of the end.
 
OS6-OSX said:
I will take the term “Ghetto Headphones” a few steps further. Dr. Dre probably had these headphones designed to include the missing low end frequency that most headphones lacked. Will the performance of an artist improve when the same sounds are heard as in the control room? Without a doubt!
Click to expand...

How low do the frequencies go? What is that doing to your head?
 
H2SO4 said:
There is a rumour of a lockdown of 10.11 a la iOS. If they do in fact lock out root access I won't upgrade and that will be the beginning of the end.
Click to expand...

In 10.11 you can supposedly deactivate 'Rootless'.

However, 10.10. already has KEXT signing, which is already an annoyance for people with manually activated TRIM support, or edited KEXT's for eGPU's. The direction is obvious...
 
Thunderbird said:
So you're thinking the nMP will be updated before then?

With Broadwell? Or a Haswell refresh?
Click to expand...
I would expect a Mac Pro refresh probably sometime this year. Timing wise, its been 2 years from when it was announced, 1.5 since it was released. Upgrade wise, the current Mac pro's processors are a generation old, and could see Haswell. GPUs are soon to be 2 generations old, so we could see AMDs 300 series in it. Last, SSDs have seen some speed increases.

Timing wise, WWDC is possible, but for it to merit keynote time, it would likely have to be a big update. I only see this happening if they release a 5k external display and update the mac pro to support it. Its questionable whether this is possible, since it may require thunderbolt 3, which may not be ready for production yet. There is also a chance Apple waits for Broadwell, which would be released in early 2016.
 
I think the next gen MP will be released at WWDC if Apple wants to move to OPenCL 2.0 they have to update it, because Pitcairn and Tahiti does not support it.

Only GCN cards with 1.1 version of that architecture supports it. However.

I don't believe we will see any of next gen cards with HBM.

D310 - Tonga or whatever with 2048 GCN cores.
D510 - 2560 GCN cores with 512 Bit memory Bus - Hawaii. 4 GB of VRAM.
D710 - 2816 GCN cores with 512 Bit memory bus - Hawaii. 8 GB of VRAM.

Its not that bad, at all if we will count that they will come from GloFo with updated new memory from Samsung, so possibly they will be much more efficient, with new architecture. Also in one these threads I posted a while ago an excerpt from one post on another site that shown that already Hawaii is capable of running at 50% of nominal power consumption and TDP at 85% of core clock. So 850 MHz with 145W of TDP. So new Memory and new process that is more efficient will possibly end up in Mac Pro, soon.

WWDC is very close now.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20880421/
 
koyoot said:
I think the next gen MP will be released at WWDC if Apple wants to move to OPenCL 2.0 they have to update it, because Pitcairn and Tahiti does not support it.

Only GCN cards with 1.1 version of that architecture supports it. However.

I don't believe we will see any of next gen cards with HBM.

D310 - Tonga or whatever with 2048 GCN cores.
D510 - 2560 GCN cores with 512 Bit memory Bus - Hawaii. 4 GB of VRAM.
D710 - 2816 GCN cores with 512 Bit memory bus - Hawaii. 8 GB of VRAM.

Its not that bad, at all if we will count that they will come from GloFo with updated new memory from Samsung, so possibly they will be much more efficient, with new architecture. Also in one these threads I posted a while ago an excerpt from one post on another site that shown that already Hawaii is capable of running at 50% of nominal power consumption and TDP at 85% of core clock. So 850 MHz with 145W of TDP. So new Memory and new process that is more efficient will possibly end up in Mac Pro, soon.

WWDC is very close now.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20880421/
Click to expand...

Interesting. Hawaii does have a bad reputation for power consumption. Apple can sacrifice the clock speed since they have two of them in there. Did Hawaii ever make it into the mobile lineup? These usually have a TDP around 125 W.

Your predictions on the GPUs are reasonable. I am hoping for Fiji, but with the 4 GB HBM limitation, that might cause problems for some work loads for the Mac Pro. It would be nice to have a Mac Pro thats not a generation behind on the GPUs when it is released.
 
I wouldn't put my money on WWDC, it's around the corner and no word on it yet. For as much as Apple can keep it under wraps something should have already leaked.
I agree with the GPU setup, we talked about this, but it's too bad that no Fiji will come to nMP, if it's so.
Fiji at least in the high end model would be a must, but since both the D500 and D700 share the same GPU, that would almost imply that D510 and D710 would be Fiji based, and only D310 would be maybe Hawaii based or Tonga, but that would be too much of a difference.
But this is something that could have been done already, so why the wait?
I'm thinking that only early next year we'll see the 7,1 nMP or even later with Broadwell-EP.
If it wasn't so far off, SkyLake would be the perfect platform.
Let's wait and see, only a few days to WWDC anyway.

----------

Stacc, don't forget that the 2 of them are not working in tandem, one is compute the other is for output.
Fiji could still be out with 8GB.
 
No, Hawaii was never in mobile. Biggest GCN core built on TSMC node was Tonga from iMac 5K with 2048 GCN cores.

GloFo node promises 20% less power consumption with the same performance, and Samsung memory gives higher clock rates. Thats why Videocardz predicted, had reliable information about next gen GPUs based on hawaii with 8 GB of VRAM clocked at 6000 MHz(384 GB/s). That is huge bandwith.

What I believe is that right now posiibly every desktop AMD GPU made on GloFo nodes will have Tonga technology with different core counts. Also Fiji Xt is just Tongax2. Even nomenclature makes sense. Fiji is Vulcanic Island. And current lineup Pitcairn, Tahiti, Hawaii is Vulcanic Island. Next year with new node there will be completely new lineup of GPUs from AMD.

Also for Apple would be best to wait, after this update, for Skylake and next gen AMD GPUs.


Manuel. Remember when Apple shown new Mac Pro? NOTHING got out because it was built in Apple factory in USA. That is why they can keep secret up to the limit.

Also, waiting would be logical for new process(28nm) from GloFo.
 
If AMD can get more performance out of Hawaii by making it with GloFo, that would make some of the Fiji rumors with it being priced at >$700 make sense. If new Hawaii can compete with Nvidia cards < $700, this would allow Fiji to compete against the Titan X and allow AMD to try and not be seen as the bargain brand.

Another factor favoring a new Mac Pro at WWDC would be announcing new graphics libraries that could better use the 2 cards. Either adopting something like Vulkan or Apple coming up with an OS X version of metal. Probably would be released with 10.11.

Regarding leaks, not much was leaked about the Mac Pro last time around. Also, they could announce something and not ship it for a month or two, reducing the potential for rumors.
 
The problem is, we don't know how long Intel will produce Ivy Bridge EP CPUs, and chipsets for them. Haswell needs new Socket, new chipset, and already is over half a year old. Ivy Bridge EP are 2 years old.

Intel should be soon shutting down production lines of them...

Edit. Stacc: ChipHell was hell of a lot correct with their leaks of Cards. First leak was a GPU that was 20% faster than GTX980 and was using 8% more power than it. As of right now, 290X is 5-10% slower than GTX980, at higher resolutions. Would new node bring 30% more performance with new technology?

Its possible. But I would not put my hopes that high up...

P.S. I forgot. Fiji XT should be around 850$ a piece... It has been confirmed on Zauba.
 
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Synchro3 said:
In 10.11 you can supposedly deactivate 'Rootless'.

However, 10.10. already has KEXT signing, which is already an annoyance for people with manually activated TRIM support, or edited KEXT's for eGPU's. The direction is obvious...
Click to expand...

I’ve found my way around Apple restrictions in the past but sooner or later they will become far too much hassle. I’ve not yet seen a beta of the new OS yet so here’s hoping…..
 
ManuelGomes said:
....
Just fresh, news of SkyLake on Fud:
....

We're stuck till 2017.
Click to expand...

"Stuck" is more your notion that somehow Xeon E5 v5 is absolutely necessary for TB v3. It is highly likely not in the Xeon E5 space (desktops pragmatically yes). And also that TB v3 is absolutely necessary for a new Mac Pro. Not really. it would be a 'nice to have if available' but absolutely critical.... not really.

"Can't upgrade until Intel CPU 2+ iterations" forward isn't new on these forums. It is just the new flavor of why could not upgrade to Xeon E5 v3 (Haswell). "Have to wait till v4 (Broadwell)" is now turning into "Have to wait till v5 (Skylake )". (As Broadwell gets closer have to kick the can into the future by going to v n+1 past the current marker. )


Apple simply doesn't want to do yearly updates. What cycle length they are looking for is debatable, but "around 12-18 months" is strongly not indicated.
 
ManuelGomes said:
Just fresh, news of SkyLake on Fud:

http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37844-intel-leaks-purley-details
Click to expand...

P.S. The 2017 for Xeon E5 v5 isn't really new news. The interesting tidbit on that slide deck is far more so that the one socket solution is targeted to get its own chipset. 1S ( Basin Falls ) is not the same "Platform" as 2S (Purley ). A divergence between X5 1xxx v5 and X5 2xxxx v5 is coming at skylake. That Basin Falls is in the planning stages means probably not in the first three quarters of 2017 and could slide into 2018 if there are glitches.


It makes some sense since workstations don't need Omni Path (and may not step up to 10GbE). Especially the Core i7 x9xx variants that are based on the same base design.

Probably yet another contributing reason why Apple dropped 2 socket solutions.

Other major new nugget is that it appears they punted on PCIe v4 on the CPU package. The consolation prize is 8 more PCIe v3 lanes to 48. Enough to split and drive two x4 PCIe v3 SSDs.
 
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Synchro3 said:
Intel Skylake could be released in August - September, but no Xeons in 2015:
Click to expand...

Xeons are right there on the chart. Xeon E3 which are based on the desktop/laptop mainstream design variant. The server/workstation variant Xeon E5 (and up) for v5 (Sylake) aren't due in 2016 either. v4 isn't going to arrive until around 2016, no way v5 is coming inside the same year.
 
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