Mac pro and XDR display orders available now + unboxing

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

They don't have a middle ground

? Of course they do. The iMac, and the Mac Mini are great middle ground computers for those who want performance but don't want the best of the best. The Mac Mini + an eGPU is a fantastic Prosumer setup. 

[TechyBen]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

? Of course they do. The iMac, and the Mac Mini are great middle ground computers for those who want performance but don't want the best of the best. The Mac Mini + an eGPU is a fantastic Prosumer setup. 

Sorry, I keep forgetting the iMac is not just a glorified display. XD (No serviceable/upgradable parts and thermally questionable).

 

Quote

Mini + an eGPU is a fantastic Prosumer setup. 

Ok. Now you are just as crazy as I am.

 

[Blademaster91]

19 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Sorry, I keep forgetting the iMac is not just a glorified display. XD (No serviceable/upgradable parts and thermally questionable).

Well it's not like the Mac Pro is exactly serviceable by the user, or even IT staff, unless you can get parts from Apple which is difficult enough with an iMac, Linus went through a lot to get his iMac Pro fixed.

And Snazzy Labs built a Ryzen hackintosh for $4,000 that wipes the floor with the $8,000 Mac Pro, professionals want an easily serviceable desktop not a fancy looking cheese grater.

 

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

? Of course they do. The iMac, and the Mac Mini are great middle ground computers for those who want performance but don't want the best of the best. The Mac Mini + an eGPU is a fantastic Prosumer setup. 

They do have levels, and there are fewer of them than in PC space.  It didn’t used to be so much this way, but once upon a time Mac users dropped to nearly zero and it built back up again in a more granulated way.  I happen to fall between the grains atm.  I want more raw gpu power than can be offered by an iMac Pro, but I can’t justify the 10 grand or more it would take to get the kind of Mac Pro that would do what I want.  My whole system could be built atm for maybe $700-900.  To get the performance level I use out of a Mac I’d need a pretty high end iMac Pro in the 3-4K range.  And even that wouldn’t give me the GPU performance I got.  I’m not saying it’s not worth it for those things.  It would give me a ton of other things as well.  They’re things I don’t want though.

 

What I am most desiring to see out of Apple atm is a cheapo plastic version of the Mac Pro that doesn’t come with any video cards. Just one of those cooler shrouds I can put a card into.  It can be plastic too.  Maybe paper even.  Aluminum fins inside, but the outer shell only needs to hold air.  I can worry about the CPU myself too.  And the CPU cooler.  Make the PSU space atx and I’m good without that too.  Make the mobo atx and leave off the case even.

 

 I’d pay a grand for a mobo, a case, some fans, a gpu cooler shroud.  Oh, and a copy of OSX.  That’s the diamond.

 

This mini+ eGPU Almost works for me.  Not enough bandwidth for the gpu though.

[DrMacintosh]

12 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This mini+ eGPU Almost works for me.  Not enough bandwidth for the gpu though.

The performance bottleneck is an inherently limitation of the TB interface. However, I feel we are not likely to see a consumer grade Mac tower anytime soon. I think Apple believes that most consumers are better off with an iMac than going back to the days of the PowerMac stand alone towers. 

 

I'm not convinced that Apple is interested in making the Mac become market share-competitive with PCs, rather they would prefer to focus on their high margin, low (relatively) volume strategy. This unfortunately means that it doesn't make much $ sense to give consumers a cheapo tower with PCIe slots and DIMM slots so they can be upgraded.  

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The performance bottleneck is an inherently limitation of the TB interface. However, I feel we are not likely to see a consumer grade Mac tower anytime soon. I think Apple believes that most consumers are better off with an iMac than going back to the days of the PowerMac stand alone towers. 

 

I'm not convinced that Apple is interested in making the Mac become market share-competitive with PCs, rather they would prefer to focus on their high margin, low (relatively) volume strategy. This unfortunately means that it doesn't make much $ sense to give consumers a cheapo tower with PCIe slots and DIMM slots so they can be upgraded.  

Fair.  I’d love to see even an m.2 slot I could stick an eGPU cable into though. 4 lanes of Pcie 4.0 would be enough.

[DrMacintosh]

25 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

4 lanes of Pcie 4.0 would be enough.

That's the same bottleneck as TB3 though. 

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That's the same bottleneck as TB3 though. 

It’s a wider one.  I thought TB 3 was 2 lanes of 1.0

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That's the same bottleneck as TB3 though. 

I was thinking about this one in the shower (I was cold) a Mac mini with 2 m.2 2880 ports.  1 for an nvme, one for an eGPU.  Give it a 6/12 processor like an 8700, and it should still wax a ps5 running boot camp games.  Better with native stuff.  Unless that TB3 is really as fast as you say.  Then you don’t need anything except a TB3 eGPU.

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I thought TB 3 was 2 lanes of 1.0

A correct implementation of TB3 can give an eGPU 4 lanes of 3.0. The latency is was really kills performance, not the 4 lanes. 

[Bombastinator]

18 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That's the same bottleneck as TB3 though. 

Looked it up.  TB3 is 40gb/s. Pcie4 is 16gb/s per lane so 64gb/s

 

so TB3 is 5 lanes of pcie3.0. If only it had 8 a few years ago.

[Guest]

On 12/8/2019 at 9:34 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

They certainly took their time.  I haven't been watching them closely but just assumed on some level that they'd launched months ago, although on the other hand given the lack of information and news, I suppose on some level I also knew that wasn't true.  But hey, it was long enough for someone to copy and start selling a clone of the case for PCs   With any luck, we'll also see a "knockoff" VESA adapter so people will be able to use any stand or arm they want without paying a ridiculous markup.

MKBHD be like “I’ll take two display and the top spec Mac Pro”. With stand. Each. 

[Drak3]

37 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Looked it up.  TB3 is 40gb/s. Pcie4 is 16gb/s per lane so 64gb/s

 

so TB3 is 5 lanes of pcie3.0. If only it had 8 a few years ago.

TB3 only supports 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0.

 

That 40gbps number is the maximum bandwidth a controller can support when combining USB, DisplayPort, and PCIe signalling.

56 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That's the same bottleneck as TB3 though. 

For anything running PCIe over Thunderbolt, bandwidth would double, which would reduce the bottleneck on higher end GPUs like the 1080 and up.

[mr moose]

I've gotta know, will apple ever release a PC that uses the standard parts without locking to specific Models or modules or brands?  

 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I've gotta know, will apple ever release a PC that uses the standard parts without locking to specific Models or modules or brands?  

 

 

 

 

“The” standard?  It use a lot more than it used to.  They don’t write drivers for stuff they don’t sell though so there tend to be weird hoes in what works and what doesn’t.  You could theoretically write a driver for something.  That’s often a huge pita though.  Triply hard for GPUs.  A printer though might be possible.

[yolosnail]

I think I'll be sticking with my 2009 Mac Pro for a little while longer then! It may be 10 years old, but it still just about keeps up with my 6 Core 9750H laptop which is plenty fast for me!

 

When I first got my Mac, I was very much a MacOS hater, everything was in the wrong place and simple features were missing (like the lack of native support for extra buttons on mice!), but after using it 'full time' for about a year now, I'd much rather spend my time in MacOS than Windows. That would be the case if there was software compatibility parity between them, but there isn't, so for now I guess I'll just have to use both!

 

I would say I am still an Apple hater, but what I really hate is the customer base who let Apple get away with everything, and come up with excuses for them. 

 

Objectively, from a purely hardware perspective, the new Mac Pro is waaaaaaaay overpriced, but we all expected that, there's no way that Apple would even consider selling it at anything near it's 'real price'. That would mean they're admitting that it's essentially the same as a PC, and Apple marketing wouldn't allow that, plus their customers wouldn't feel like they have something 'special'.

 

The only coverage for the Mac Pro that I've watched is MKBHD's, I usually like Jonathan's content but just seeing the way he is literally sucking off Apple on Twitter makes me violently sick, and don't even get me started on iJustine! I know Marques is also a bit of an Apple fanboy, but I do trust him enough to at least give a somewhat objective review. 

 

The coverage I'm really looking forward to is Quinn's, I can already tell it's going to be juicy!

 

On a side note, the new Mac Pro is absolutely hideous, I'd much rather have the Trashcan Mac Pro on my desk than the new one! It's just sets my trypophobia right off!

 

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

“The” standard?  It use a lot more than it used to.  They don’t write drivers for stuff they don’t sell though so there tend to be weird hoes in what works and what doesn’t.  You could theoretically write a driver for something.  That’s often a huge pita though.  Triply hard for GPUs.  A printer though might be possible.

The driver issue was a choice by apple, they could let nvidia write the driver.   And whats with the MPX module?  What is wrong with having a standard PCIe slot and using of the shelf GPU's?

[yolosnail]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The driver issue was a choice by apple, they could let nvidia write the driver.   And whats with the MPX module?  What is wrong with having a standard PCIe slot and using of the shelf GPU's?

I believe you still can, I'm sure I saw somewhere that there were regular PCIe power connectors on the motherboard so you can still use regular PCIe Graphics cards assuming you can find a compatible cable.

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

A correct implementation of TB3 can give an eGPU 4 lanes of 3.0. The latency is was really kills performance, not the 4 lanes. 

its the 4 lanes.

if it switched to 4 lanes of gen4 many issues would be fixed.

Testing was done (almost certain LTT did some where they mentioned you got more performance by not looping back the video, it is just bandwidth starved)

 

@yolosnail get a 2010 or 2012 if you need an upgrade. it will get you upto 12 cores that are a lot faster.

[GDRRiley]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The driver issue was a choice by apple, they could let nvidia write the driver.   And whats with the MPX module?  What is wrong with having a standard PCIe slot and using of the shelf GPU's?

MPX is all about having no cable runs.

It is a standard PCIE slot and you can buy cables to put in your own GPU

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HMUJ2ZM/A/belkin-aux-power-cable-kit-for-mac-pro?fnode=969bec3515758cce5edcd51df690c6e227339d276ca0c39b4300889c48b54972bf99352e8f30795b90520f463a09fbd8aae997af8e6c5b4540977e9638cad9c2d80fa78e6ee366c795d8ef2381490b06f8b0a6547c86a6029ced530070a8095382f652d567628c487214a51a29bf559d

so you could run dual 5700XT or RX 590s or Vega 64, maybe vega VII (I don't know about drivers)

[yolosnail]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

its the 4 lanes.

if it switched to 4 lanes of gen4 many issues would be fixed.

Testing was done (almost certain LTT did some where they mentioned you got more performance by not looping back the video, it is just bandwidth starved)

 

@yolosnail get a 2010 or 2012 if you need an upgrade. it will get you upto 12 cores that are a lot faster.

I've already updated the firmware to that of the 2010 Mac Pro so it's compatible with the dual 6 core Westmere chips, I'm just waiting for some to come up on ebay! 

Including upgrading the RAM to 16GB, I think I'm only into it about £50 as I bought it from a music studio that thought it was broken, turned out it just needed 9 years of dust removed from the heatsinks! My original intention for it was building a PC in the case, but turns out I really like MacOS!

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I believe you still can, I'm sure I saw somewhere that there were regular PCIe power connectors on the motherboard so you can still use regular PCIe Graphics cards assuming you can find a compatible cable.

It has 8 PCIe connectors and 300watts PCIe power connectors.  But the apple website says the first 4 slots are taken up by the MPX modules which leaves only 3 single width slots. 

 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408

 

But more to the point why even have the MPX modules and not just standard cards?   Are they really that hell bent on preventing people from not buying parts from them and having their own unique parts.

[Commodus]

5 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

Objectively, from a purely hardware perspective, the new Mac Pro is waaaaaaaay overpriced, but we all expected that, there's no way that Apple would even consider selling it at anything near it's 'real price'. That would mean they're admitting that it's essentially the same as a PC, and Apple marketing wouldn't allow that, plus their customers wouldn't feel like they have something 'special'.

I'd disagree with this. Not to rehash my earlier points, but now that we know what CPUs Apple is using and all, it's actually pretty reasonable if you're comparing like-for-like components.  Many of the complaints seem to be not that the system is actually overpriced, but that there's no lower-cost option aimed vaguely at the mainstream.  Sorry, folks, but Apple isn't going to make a Threadripper gaming rig... you're gonna have to deal with that.

[yolosnail]

Just now, mr moose said:

It has 8 PCIe connectors and 300watts PCIe power connectors.  But the apple website says the first 4 slots are taken up by the MPX modules which leaves only 3 single width slots. 

 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408

 

But more to the point why even have the MPX modules and not just standard cards?   Are they really that hell bent on preventing people from not buying parts from them and having their own unique parts.

Basically you got it spot on there!

 

I think the main reason they have cards like that is for airflow, they don't have dedicated fans, just massive heatsinks so they can be cooled 'passively' by the 3 fans on the front. a bit like a server, and the MPX slot (if that's what it's called, I lack the care to look it up!) means it's 'easier' to upgrade as the typical Apple user probably wouldn't know how to plug in a cable!

 

If it was me buying it, I would buy the base model and add my own GPUs so I wouldn't have to deal with the MPX cards

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

It has 8 PCIe connectors and 300watts PCIe power connectors.  But the apple website says the first 4 slots are taken up by the MPX modules which leaves only 3 single width slots. 

 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408

 

But more to the point why even have the MPX modules and not just standard cards?   Are they really that hell bent on preventing people from not buying parts from them and having their own unique parts.

Thats if you have 2 MPX modules and you don't have to keep them.

It is built like a server GPU, no fans

 

You full can buy and put in whatever PCIE devices you can get drivers for.

3 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I've already updated the firmware to that of the 2010 Mac Pro so it's compatible with the dual 6 core Westmere chips, I'm just waiting for some to come up on ebay! 

Including upgrading the RAM to 16GB, I think I'm only into it about £50 as I bought it from a music studio that thought it was broken, turned out it just needed 9 years of dust removed from the heatsinks! My original intention for it was building a PC in the case, but turns out I really like MacOS!

sorry though you said 2009.

2010 machines. Man i've worked on a lot of them at my old high school. New GPUs, HDD to SSDs, cleaning, and instaling misc PCIE cards.

Man if I found that kind of a deal I'd keep (really upgrade and then pass it off to my GF to edit on)