The New Mac Pro…

[nicklmg]

 

[KING OF THE DIRTY DANS]

The New Mac Pro is a good cheese grater. And that will come in handy, since you will be eating Government cheese after dropping 10K USD...

[xnamkcor]

Looks like Linus ate too many Cheesy Poofs.

Who did the cheese color grating grading?

 

PS: Linus, you can get a VESA stand for 1-20 CAD if you buy an old LCD that uses VESA for its stock stand from a thrift store.

Edited June 5, 2019 by xnamkcor

[Guest]

I’d take a look at Marques’ video explaining the price, more so of the display. It’s not marketed towards consumers, and is pretty competitive. But definitely for a consumer it’s just not feasible for a Mac Pro. I think they really wan to promote the iMac for the average consumer.

[Belgarathian]

Go for the 2x Vega Pro II Duo with whatever CPU has the 6 channel memory.... That way you'll get the following videos:

• Pro Display XDR Review
• How to upgrade a 2019 Mac Pro
• Mac Pro balls-to-the-wall review
• Gaming on a 2019 Mac Pro
• "We overloaded the 2019 Mac Pro" while editing 3-4 8k video streams and mixing 1000 channels of audio
• New Radeon Pro Vega II Duo review (maybe)
• Mac Pro process flow video editing/photo/rendering feat Taran
  • Potential for an in-depth review of using the Mac Pro for 1-2 months as the sole editing station for one of your crew using Logic & Final Cut.

Gotta maximise the payback if you're going to drop ~$35k USD.

 

I dare you to play Minecraft on 6 Pro Display XDR

 

Side note: there is a rack mountable option, which is the first time that Apple has played in this space since they discontinued the 2011 Xserve platform... Super excited to see the potential for MacOS and Mac Pro as a server.

[poochyena]

18 minutes ago, floofer said:

I’d take a look at Marques’ video explaining the price, more so of the display. It’s not marketed towards consumers, and is pretty competitive. But definitely for a consumer it’s just not feasible for a Mac Pro. I think they really wan to promote the iMac for the average consumer.

The display itself is the only sensibly priced thing. Must be why they are charging so much for the stand.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, poochyena said:

The display itself is the only sensibly priced thing. Must be why they are charging so much for the stand.

As Marques said, it’s marketed towards people who would invest in $40,000 displays and often have custom VESA mounts anyway, so what they should have priced it as 6k, or 5k without the stand, presented it as more of a discount without it.

[poochyena]

8 minutes ago, floofer said:

As Marques said, it’s marketed towards people who would invest in $40,000 displays and often have custom VESA mounts anyway, so what they should have priced it as 6k, or 5k without the stand, presented it as more of a discount without it.

but thats still $1k for the stand. What they really should have done is priced it for $6,000, and for special clients that buy in bulk and don't need the stand, just remove the stand and give them the discount as part of their bulk order discount.

[Belgarathian]

1 minute ago, poochyena said:

but thats still $1k for the stand. What they really should have done is priced it for $6,000, and for special clients that buy in bulk and don't need the stand, just remove the stand and give them the discount as part of their bulk order discount.

Or you know, just bundle the bloody VESA mount and have the stand as an optional $999.

[Kibelok]

Great video.

The monitor is, like people said, very well priced for what you get. The stand will probably be the least purchased thing since very few people use it.

But now the Mac Pro itself, THAT is a lot of money. The below 16-core version should NOT exist and it should've come with Epyc CPUs, it shouldn't be more than $30k for a full spec.

I guess Apple is indeed just not caring about pricing the Mac Pro at all.

[Streetguru]

Hope the first video is upgrading the mac pro, hopefully it save a few mac users some money

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, poochyena said:

but thats still $1k for the stand. What they really should have done is priced it for $6,000, and for special clients that buy in bulk and don't need the stand, just remove the stand and give them the discount as part of their bulk order discount.

Yeah but who tf is going to buy this in bulk? Now that is a small market!

[power666]

A couple of corrections from the video:

 

The trash can Mac Pro is actually a six year old design:  it was announced at WWDC 2013 but first shipped in December 2013.  Given that Apple is announcing this system at WWDC 2019 and shipping later, the 6 year mark is apt. 

 

Apple has mentioned the 8 pin PCIe power connectors but no normal headers have been spotted on the motherboard shots I've seen.  Either Apple has hidden them very well or they're using some proprietary connector.  Apple has not mentioned either way if the system will include such cables or if they'll be a separate accessory.

 

The Xeon W's used in this Mac Pro are not yet available on the PC side and they are all LGA 3647.  For those keeping track, this maybe the fourth iteration of LGA 3647 (Xeon Phi, Xeon Scalable, Xeon Scalable with FPGA and now this) which bring 64 PCIe lane support but no UPI interfaces to other sockets.  Unknown if how interoperable this socket is with existing LGA 3647 parts or if anything else in the future will use it at all.

 

Speaking of costs, you are omitting the dual 10 Gbit NIC though that may or may not be included in a workstation motherboard.  I would argue that the video card is more equivalent to the workstation Radeon Pro WX7100 which does cost a bit more.  The boot camp drivers have enabled several of the workstation only features on the trash can Mac Pro's graphics cards so there is merit there.  Still Apple is over charging versus DIY but they are not out of line from similar single socket systems from Dell/HPLenovo.  A statement made in the video also applies to the builds from Dell/HP/Lenovo as well:  they do offer different component selection that does permit a lower entry level price.  Yeah, the 1.7 Ghz hexacore entry level Xeon-SP you can get for an entry level Windows workstation is going to save you several thousand versus a 3.5 Ghz, 8 core Xeon-SP.

 

Now for my own comments on the system:  about time.  

 

Apple again when into a different direction with their design.  The most interesting aspect in my opinion is that to conserve system volume, they put the DIMM slots and SSDs on the back of the motherboard.  I would have moved the CPU to the other side as well to reduce the overall system height even further at the cost of making it wider.  Using the specialty video cards that are 'passive' rings of a server-like build where the high pressure fans at the front of the chassis are responsible the air flow there.  Apple has a good track record of keeping these quiet but sometimes ventures into form over function.  Ever put your hand on top of the new Mac Mini while under load?  

 

I do think Apple made a mistake by not leveraging Epyc as that would have provided for more memory support  (and no memory capacity premium either) and more PCIe lanes.  There does appear to be a PCIe switch on the motherboard.   A far lesser mistake here is that they are not leveraging any of the Xeon Scalable chips with an on package FPGA like he Xeon Gold 6138P.  Intel had far more plans here at 10 nm but we all know how that roadmap has played out.  Instead we get an external FPGA on a PCIe card which is fine given the niche instead of being inside the CPU socket which is fine for now.  I hope the pricing for the LGA 3647 Xeon W's are not outrageous now that Intel has competition.

 

The GPU selection is very interesting.  Good to see Infinity Fabric leveraged at last on the GPU side of things.  Very curious to see how this system performs with 1, 2 and 4 GPUs tied together.  While insane for this purpose, I am curious about gaming when topped out, especially at resolutions beyond 4K.  Frame rates shouldn't be bad but frame time is the thing to really watch.

 

SSD pricing is poor and capacity is lacking.  For a proprietary solution, there is little advantage to going this route.  There are a couple of SATA ports for spinning rust if capacity is warranted and the PCIe slots can be adapted to M.2 for more commodity storage.  There is really not incentive to go with Apple's storage options unless they force booting from it.

 

The optional wheels are going to be nice.  I like wheels.  See the Lian Li PC343.

 

The XDR display is going to be nice and I look forward to seeing one.  I have experience using a Barco reference display for medical imaging that can attain an even higher brightness so I'll be a good comparison.  The Barco unit was ~$38K a few years back and likely hasn't dropped in price due to its certification as a FDA medical device.   Apple is nickel and diming a bit here by not including the stand as the 'base' model and then offer a VESA mount model for slightly less.  Yeah, displays like these often get custom mounts but also plenty of them don't.  These reeks of being cheap on a $5000 product.

 

 

 

 

[Belgarathian]

2 hours ago, floofer said:

Yeah but who tf is going to buy this in bulk? Now that is a small market!

Literally most corporates... 

[Belgarathian]

1 hour ago, power666 said:

-snip-

I'd suggest that Apple went with Intel for Thunderbolt. 

 

Not sure if it's on-chip or a separate chipset with the new processors, but if it's on-chip that would explain everything.

[SkyHound0202]

When you install a better cooling system system on other machines, they will try to boost the processor to a higher frequency thanks to the increased headroom.

 

Apple, on the other hand, will try to lower the fan speed to stay quiet and maintain the base clock.

 

Curious how Apple is going to cool a power hungry CPU and GPU(s) with only passive cooler.

[Video Beagle]

3 hours ago, Kibelok said:

I guess Apple is indeed just not caring about pricing the Mac Pro at all.

Yeah.. cuz that's Tim Cook's reputation as an businessman.

[7850OC]

only $6,000 ?

 

just... shut up!!! and take my money!!! 

 

[mkU1tra762]

It should be called the Mac Industrial. Their Pro lineup was originally for small businesses or independent content creators exe. home recording studios, wedding photographers/videographers, graphic designers. People that would pay more because this is how they made their money. This product is for companies like Pixar and Lucasfilm. That's fine but I wish they had a $1.5k 5k monitor and a $2.5k - $3k desktop. I guess they are just assuming that those people will just get iMac and they may be right. Still would like them to make cheaper display. Pretty much an iMac screen by itself that can plug into a MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt 3.

[Radium_Angel]

This isn't a computer.

It's a status symbol for people who want to show off.

[TechyBen]

Everyone: Well, Silicon graphics and Cray now got bought out and no longer exist.

Apple: Releases "NEW!!!" $50k supercomputers.

[Drak3]

29 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

This isn't a computer.

It's a status symbol for people who want to show off.

It's a proper workstation for enterprise use cases, hence the hardware choices.

 

And making these types of workstations aesthetically appealing (so basically not this Cheese grater) can help employee moral and client perceptions.

[LackOfGravitas]

9 hours ago, power666 said:

The Xeon W's used in this Mac Pro are not yet available on the PC side and they are all LGA 3647.  For those keeping track, this maybe the fourth iteration of LGA 3647 (Xeon Phi, Xeon Scalable, Xeon Scalable with FPGA and now this) which bring 64 PCIe lane support but no UPI interfaces to other sockets.  Unknown if how interoperable this socket is with existing LGA 3647 parts or if anything else in the future will use it at all.

Small addition to this: the closest CPU Intel sells that matches the Mac Pro spec is the Xeon Gold 6144 ( only supports 48 PCI-E lanes, though). The clue is that Apple's specs list 24.75 MB L3 cache, which the Xeon Gold 6144 matches, while the Xeon W-2145 listed by Linus only has 11 MB L3 cache.

 

That CPU is also ~$3,000 in price, i.e. ~$1,800 higher than the one listed in the video, bringing the "self-build" price up to $4,960 (instead of ~$3,160 as in the video), meaning the "Apple tax" is actually down to around $1K.

 

The machine is a lot "less" overpriced for the parts than people say - it's just a questionable base configuration as they picked one of Intel's most overpriced Xeon chips as baseline. And the price for the stand is still silly, of course.

[poochyena]

10 hours ago, floofer said:

Yeah but who tf is going to buy this in bulk? Now that is a small market!

wel... its made for large companies, not consumers. i image most orders would be bulk, not single orders.

[williamcll]

Maybe linus can convince Mrs Su to give him a regular VegaVII Duo.