Apple Updates its Mac lineup: External GPU support, Kaby lake and a new iMac Pro

[PCGuy_5960]

14 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

10Gbe ethernet?

Quad TB3 ports? 

 

I think you're missing something  

I suppose you can remove the 22 core CPU and use an 18 core or a 16 core instead and get a thunderbolt card and a 10GBe card

[79wjd]

A bit of good news, iFixit did a teardown on the 21.5" 4k model and it uses a standard LGA1151 CPU and non-soldered SO-DIMMs. So you can upgrade both the CPU and the RAM along with the 2.5" drive and the wireless card. Unfortunately, however, if you buy the HDD-only model then you can't add an M.2 SSD and you will be limited to a single SATA drive.

 

 

[Punkrocker]

I'm quite happy with my Intel 6900k Windows system I built for roughly 2000 Euro, including 64 gigabytes, a Geforce GTX 1080 and plenty of SSD space (M2 included), oh yeah it got Thunderbolt 3 as well.

[mynameisjuan]

4 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

A bit of good news, iFixit did a teardown on the 21.5" 4k model and it uses a standard LGA1151 CPU and non-soldered SO-DIMMs. So you can upgrade both the CPU and the RAM

 

Was not expecting that honestly.

[Drak3]

2 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

A bit of good news, iFixit did a teardown on the 21.5" 4k model and it uses a standard LGA1151 CPU and non-soldered SO-DIMMs. So you can upgrade both the CPU and the RAM along with the 2.5" drive and the wireless card

 

2 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Was not expecting that honestly.

Might want to hold off on the celebration until a few people try different LGA1151 CPUs and some RAM kits. OSX might not allow users to just replace them, it might have a hardware wilhitelist or require some tweaking to get alt. hardware to work correctly.

[mynameisjuan]

12 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

 

Might want to hold off on the celebration until a few people try different LGA1151 CPUs and some RAM kits. OSX might not allow users to just replace them, it might have a hardware wilhitelist or require some tweaking to get alt. hardware to work correctly.

Oh based on my previous comments I am still very skeptical. If this does turn out to be true and is able to be upgraded that is one hell of a change apple did.

[79wjd]

44 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

 

Might want to hold off on the celebration until a few people try different LGA1151 CPUs and some RAM kits. OSX might not allow users to just replace them, it might have a hardware wilhitelist or require some tweaking to get alt. hardware to work correctly.

I'd be surprised if that was the case, although it's possible. It's also no indication of how the iMac Pro, or any other iMac for that matter, will be. 

[Djole123]

On 6/5/2017 at 1:03 PM, Kierax said:

Sigh, Apple, Apple Apple... why isn't the Apple logo bloody RGB!.

It was in the 80s and 90s...

(sigh)

[Tieox]

46 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

It was in the 80s and 90s...

(sigh)

Now have it lit by LEDs on the back of all laptops or iMacs.

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Now have it lit by LEDs on the back of all laptops or iMacs.

It's not lit on the newest MB/MBPs.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'd be surprised if that was the case, although it's possible. It's also no indication of how the iMac Pro, or any other iMac for that matter, will be. 

I wouldn't. Supposedly, there were older Mac models that used standard CPU sockets and DIMM/SODIMM slots, but required a software tool to validate hardware changes.

[patrick3027]

On 07/06/2017 at 8:07 PM, Paragon_X said:

I have that one (non touch 256gb) at the time i bought it there were 2 options. the new slim 16 macbook pro and the 2015 chasis macbook pro which retired the model with the HDD. and now the new retired the old chasis but they kept the 128gb size.

It just feels weird that the lowest end MacBook Pro has less storage than the lowest end MacBook. 

[79wjd]

32 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

I wouldn't. Supposedly, there were older Mac models that used standard CPU sockets and DIMM/SODIMM slots, but required a software tool to validate hardware changes.

Do you know which models? I don't remember that. 

9 minutes ago, patrick3027 said:

It just feels weird that the lowest end MacBook Pro has less storage than the lowest end MacBook. 

The whole Macbook lineup is strange. It needs to be like $200 cheaper in its current state and it should come with a $300 cheaper model with 128gb considering the price of the MBP. 

[mrchow19910319]

Spoiler

Here's something to balance out the apple hate train... 

Same spec machine on lenovo's website that will cost you more than 7k. And apple's entry level imac pro is 5k.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, mrchow19910319 said:

  Hide contents

 

Here's something to balance out the apple hate train... 

Same spec machine on lenovo's website that will cost you more than 7k. And apple's entry level imac pro is 5k.

"Same spec," except for the GPU. It's a Quadro that went for $2,000 on release, and still goes for $1,750 to $1,900. The chances of the entry tier iMac Pro's VEGA costing half that much is slim.

The mainboard is also a big discrepancy, as dual socket boards see a price increase if you want the same quality.

We also don't know the extent of the thermal throttling this thing sees. It can have all the high end hardware for less than every alternative, but if every alternative offers cheaper machines that are significantly weaker on paper, and outperform this (or even perform the same), then dumping that money on meaningless specs on paper is still wasteful.

Then there is again, the fact that we don't know Skylake-EP pricing. If it follows the trend of X99 -> X299, then the lower end Xeons will see a price drop. One that again, spells the same conclusion: the iMac Pro is overpriced.

 

[kasugatei]

8 hours ago, Drak3 said:

"Same spec," except for the GPU. It's a Quadro that went for $2,000 on release, and still goes for $1,750 to $1,900. The chances of the entry tier iMac Pro's VEGA costing half that much is slim.

iMac Pro will not have Vega but instead Pro Vega. So, we are talking about professional grade Vega chip. Let's then take the closest existing card from AMD - S9300 X2. Why that one? It is the only HBM pro grade card from AMD. The price for that thing is ~$6000 but let's say it would cost around $2000-$3000 if it were single GPU board instead of dual accelerator board. And not to mention that Apple's version will have custom PCB layout which further increases the price since ALL pro grade VGA manufacturers use reference designs and manufacturers don't need to invest in R&D of those boards.

 

8 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Then there is again, the fact that we don't know Skylake-EP pricing. If it follows the trend of X99 -> X299, then the lower end Xeons will see a price drop. One that again, spells the same conclusion: the iMac Pro is overpriced.

You need to understand that new iMac Pros and other Macs are already in production. That means that Apple had to buy CPUs some time ago. If they started production just after announcement, they would NEVER be on time. Take that into consideration because that is how things work in mass production.   

[Valentyn]

15 hours ago, Drak3 said:

 

Might want to hold off on the celebration until a few people try different LGA1151 CPUs and some RAM kits. OSX might not allow users to just replace them, it might have a hardware wilhitelist or require some tweaking to get alt. hardware to work correctly.

Possibly, but with the older Mac Pros, and iMacs you could do it and many did.

Was not uncommon for people to spec out their systems, and get the cheapest CPU and then replace it.

[Drak3]

7 hours ago, Niksa said:

You need to understand that new iMac Pros and other Macs are already in production. That means that Apple had to buy CPUs some time ago. If they started production just after announcement, they would NEVER be on time. Take that into consideration because that is how things work in mass production.

Irrelevant. My point has NOTHING to do with Apple's production schedule. It has everything to do with the end price of components, and we're able to build systems with more horses and similar quality peripherals for less. Only short coming is the 5K display, there are only 2 aftermarket options: Dell's $2,000 offering and LG's $1,300 5K Ultrafine (which doesn't support 5K in any non Apple system yet). Should the components Apple's using be CHEAPER than the analogous components we're using, we don't have to make a single compromise to fit a 5K monitor into our builds.

7 hours ago, Niksa said:

iMac Pro will not have Vega but instead Pro Vega. So, we are talking about professional grade Vega chip. Let's then take the closest existing card from AMD - S9300 X2. Why that one? It is the only HBM pro grade card from AMD. The price for that thing is ~$6000 but let's say it would cost around $2000-$3000 if it were single GPU board instead of dual accelerator board. And not to mention that Apple's version will have custom PCB layout which further increases the price since ALL pro grade VGA manufacturers use reference designs and manufacturers don't need to invest in R&D of those boards.

Realistically, that's not happening. Not unless AMD wants to piss away what little marketshare they have left. As it stands, their Polaris ProDuo, the current flagship they offer, is $1,000, and isn't gaining much traction. Their next step up, the WX7100 is $620, a little over double the cost of the RX480/580 that it shares the actual GPU with. The Fiji ProDuo was their most expensive card prior, and saw AMD dropping the price to ~$1,200, and it outperforms everything AMD currently has when VRAM isn't an issue, and VRAM with AMD's HBM implementation then didn't become an issue as near as often as one would think.

Current;y, VEGA is set to have the high end right in the 1080-1080Ti performance range. AMD won't price their RX cards higher than that, and they definitely won't price WX/Pro versions astronomically higher than the RX. So, why should anyone expect that the VEGA GPU that Apple ships in their base iMac Pro, cost more than $1,000? If anything, current product gets a price cut, and AMD tries to do to Nvidia via Vega what they're doing to Intel via Ryzen.

[jaypro]

Since the new iMac 27 has thunderbolt 3, can it be used as an external 5k monitor after the parts become obsolete?  Or is it still locked into the computer behind it as the last 5k model?

[79wjd]

25 minutes ago, jaypro said:

Since the new iMac 27 has thunderbolt 3, can it be used as an external 5k monitor after the parts become obsolete?  Or is it still locked into the computer behind it as the last 5k model?

It isn't known for certain about the iMac Pro specifically, but historically it hasn't been possible -- so if Apple hasn't changed anything then the base case scenario is an external GPU.

[NumLock21]

Watched about 70% of the entire streamed and from what I've seen so far, 99% of the audience at the event, have absolutely no clue, about the updated hardware Apple was talking about. Only time they got genuinely excited was the introduction of iOS and Apple Pay.

 

They have a new iPAD Pro at 10.5" with a 120Hz display and Valve's SteamVR

[SeraphicWings]

9 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Watched about 70% of the entire streamed and from what I've seen so far, 99% of the audience at the event, have absolutely no clue, about the updated hardware Apple was talking about. Only time they got genuinely excited was the introduction of iOS and Apple Pay.

 

They have a new iPAD Pro at 10.5" with a 120Hz display and Valve's SteamVR

That almost sounds like people don't give a shit about WWDC unless it is about iOS lol

[kasugatei]

19 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Irrelevant. My point has NOTHING to do with Apple's production schedule. It has everything to do with the end price of components, and we're able to build systems with more horses and similar quality peripherals for less.

That is true BUT you are mixing two completely different worlds there. You have pre-built systems from companies like HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple etc. and DIY builds. Try to compare prices of ANY prebuilt system with DIY build with same specs and DIY will always be cheaper. That is the fact. However, big organisations will always buy lots of pre-build systems and the reason is support. Those systems are much cheaper in the long run and anybody who has experience with enterprises will confirm you the same thing. 

[randomhkkid]

On 2017-6-10 at 5:47 AM, NumLock21 said:

Watched about 70% of the entire streamed and from what I've seen so far, 99% of the audience at the event, have absolutely no clue, about the updated hardware Apple was talking about. Only time they got genuinely excited was the introduction of iOS and Apple Pay.

 

They have a new iPAD Pro at 10.5" with a 120Hz display and Valve's SteamVR

 

On 2017-6-10 at 5:57 AM, SeraphicWings said:

That almost sounds like people don't give a shit about WWDC unless it is about iOS lol

It is a developer conference and the vast majority of developers are iOS developers so it kinda makes sense. Plus Apple historically de-emphasises specs in favour of the 'experience' so the numbers may mean little when compared to exciting new APIs.