Apple Releases New MPX Graphics Cards (Mac Pro 2019)

[jasonvp]

Summary

Apple released three new MPX graphics cards for the 2019 Mac Pro today, based on AMD's Big Navi.  The Radeon Pro W6800X, W6800X Duo, and W6900X.

 

Quotes

Quote

The three new options are based on the AMD Radeon Pro W6000-Series GPU. There’ll be a Radeon Pro W6800X MPX Module, a Radeon Pro W6800X Duo MPX Module, and finally a Radeon Pro W6900X MPX Module. They support Infinity Fabric Link, so that up to four GPUs – or two Duo modules – to connect at up to 84 GB/s per link, in each direction.

 

My thoughts

Most of us in the Mac Pro world expected this release at some point.  But to say they're a bit on the 'spensive side would be like saying the sun is only a little warm.  Good grief.  On the Apple Store, they're listed:

• W6800X - $2800
• W6800X Duo- $5000
• W6900X - $6000

The only really appealing upgrade for my own Mac Pro would be to increase the hardware encoding performance.  The "old" hardware encoder in my Vega II is barely capable of 4K/60 HEVC.  Meaning a 20 minute HEVC video takes about: 20 minutes to encode.  It'll be interesting to see if the Navi encoders are any faster.

 

Sources

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2329624530355/new-mac-pro-mpx-modules-add-potent-amd-radeon-w6000-gpus

https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/accessories/mac-components?page=1&f=graphiccard&fh=4c25%2B45f3

[Shykoh]

If you shelled out for a Mac Pro these prices are to be expected. It never was a bang for your buck workstation. 

[Radium_Angel]

And given Apple has swapped to their own bespoke silicon, I'm wondering if this is even a wise expenditure of money, given it is technically an orphaned platform right now.

[Hunter259]

7 minutes ago, Shykoh said:

If you shelled out for a Mac Pro these prices are to be expected. It never was a bang for your buck workstation. 

Not an excuse for these absurd levels of price increases for what are essentially vram doubling and custom I/O. Don't even see ECC support on the VRAM.

[Shykoh]

7 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

Not an excuse for these absurd levels of price increases for what are essentially vram doubling and custom I/O.

We are talking about the Mac with the $700 wheels here... 

 

Edit: Mac not PC

[leadeater]

36 minutes ago, Shykoh said:

If you shelled out for a Mac Pro these prices are to be expected. It never was a bang for your buck workstation. 

No way, those prices are just horrible. I can get Nvidia A40 for $5500 NZD (3800 USD), A40 is a high end datacenter compute GPU with 48GB ECC VRAM and full GA102 die.

[Shykoh]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No way, those prices are just horrible.

Not defending them just saying idk what you were expecting. They have their market and are exploiting it. 

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

Not an excuse for these absurd levels of price increases for what are essentially vram doubling and custom I/O. Don't even see ECC support on the VRAM.

Depends if you're comparing to the `consumer` or the `pro` range. The AMD W6800 will set you back $5k making the Pro W6800X from apple a good price. Historic the `Pro` versions from apple (even when using the windows drivers) have had the full feature set that is unlocked on the AMD pro range as well. 

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Shykoh said:

Not defending them just saying idk what you were expecting. They have their market and are exploiting it. 

Doesn't really change the issue, it's not expected just because someone got a Mac Pro. Yea the Mac Pro is costly but it actually has costly parts in it like expensive Xeon CPUs, a very expensive motherboard design. Sure there is cost wastage like the chassis but that has no impact on the cost of a PCIe expansion card that Apple doesn't even make.

 

I expect price competitive, that means around the same, as market competing options. I know you can't use Nvidia with Mac OS but that doesn't change that these GPUs are competing in the same market.

[mecarry30]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Doesn't really change the issue, it's not expected just because someone got a Mac Pro. Yea the Mac Pro is costly but it actually has costly parts in it like expensive Xeon CPUs, a very expensive motherboard design. Sure there is cost wastage like the chassis but that has no impact on the cost of a PCIe expansion card that Apple doesn't even make.

 

I expect price competitive, that means around the same, as market competing options. I know you can't use Nvidia with Mac OS but that doesn't change that these GPUs are competing in the same market.

The prices they listed are in line with the MSRP of the standalone cards. While there is a small amount of markup - about $200-$300 - the prices are in line with what it costs otherwise.

And for the dual Duo modules, you are essentially getting 4 of the same GPU in 2 PCIe expansion card slots.

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, mecarry30 said:

The prices they listed are in line with the MSRP of the standalone cards

Well only sort of, the W6900X is Apple exclusive, but also list price isn't really what most people actually pay. You can buy retail and you'll pay these higher prices but that's just simply not how the majority are purchased. 

 

MSRP of the Nvidia A40 I mentioned is $5,800 yet what we actually pay, a quote as of 2 days ago, is $3800. Thing is Apple doesn't discount through hardware vendors like other brands do so the pricing you see here is largely the pricing you will actually pay.

 

So nah the prices are not in line with what the majority are actually paying for the Radeon Pro cards that are not Apple branded, paying MSRP (or more) is not a thing outside of retail purchasing.

[Roswell]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well only sort of, the W6900X is Apple exclusive, but also list price isn't really what most people actually pay. You can buy retail and you'll pay these higher prices but that's just simply not how the majority are purchased. 

 

MSRP of the Nvidia A40 I mentioned is $5,800 yet what we actually pay, a quote as of 2 days ago, is $3800. Thing is Apple doesn't discount through hardware vendors like other brands do so the pricing you see here is largely the pricing you will actually pay.

 

So nah the prices are not in line with what the majority are actually paying for the Radeon Pro cards that are not Apple branded, paying MSRP (or more) is not a thing outside of retail purchasing.

Huh? Apple sells commercially with significant discounts. They also have small/medium business to business pricing.

 

I’m sure you didn’t think that Apple forces commercial clients to buy through their consumer retail channels but I don’t understand the argument you’re making here.

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Huh? Apple sells commercially with significant discounts. They also have small/medium business to business pricing.

Yes, we have a ton of Macs as well, the discounts really are not that good at all.

 

Edit:

Just for comparison we get education pricing and the difference between Apples website and what we pay is around 10%. Discount on the Nvidia GPU, 35%. That sort of discount is not out of line with HPE servers, Huawei switches and APs, HP desktops and laptops etc. ~10% discount is simply not comparable to ~30%.

[captain_to_fire]

Now is not the right time to get an Intel Mac, especially the Mac Pro.

[Roswell]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yes, we have a ton of Macs as well, the discounts really are not that good at all.

 

Edit:

Just for comparison we get education pricing and the difference between Apples website and what we pay is around 10%. Discount on the Nvidia GPU, 35%. That sort of discount is not out of line with HPE servers, Huawei switches and APs, HP desktops and laptops etc. ~10% discount is simply not comparable to ~30%.

Well, that's education pricing, not commercial pricing. Anyone can get education pricing by clicking the box at purchase. They don't even bother to check here if you're in college.

 

That said, this whole issue really isn't an issue. You can plop non Apple GPUs in the Mac Pro just fine. So if there's a better commercial discount elsewhere, go buy those. At the end of the day Apple is posting their consumer prices for these things and said prices are competitive at retail.

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

41 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Now is not the right time to get an Intel Mac, especially the Mac Pro.

I actually disagree with this.

 

Apple is not slated to finish their transition until atleast the end of 2022,assuming more products don't get pushed back, and it's obvious that Apple is going to finish off their transition with a Mac Pro with that monster 40c Jade-4C chip that was rumored earlier this year. But at the end of the day, professionals that are going to be able to justify the price of a Mac Pro in the first place most likely have delicate workflows that would crumble with a switch to Apple Silicon. I'm not even sure all of the Adobe suite has been ported over yet and this it's been over a year since the DTK has been available to developers. Imagine relying on a company like Avid who is notoriously slow at developing software. Pro Tools didn't even get Rosetta 2 compatibility until a month ago, not talk about actual native bare-metal hardware. So for professionals that need to get work done for the coming years, buying an Intel Mac Pro wouldn't be as bad of an idea as buying an Intel Mac mini or Intel MacBook Pro would be.

 

Hell, even Apple believes this. We're due to get one last Intel Mac Pro refresh with Ice Lake because they know that a lot of professionals, especially those who deal with audio, will not be able to hit the ground running on Apple Silicon until maybe as late as 2023 or 2024. 

[leadeater]

56 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Well, that's education pricing, not commercial pricing

Education pricing is better than commercial pricing, also we aren't some pokey school either. We are university with ~35k users and ~150m/year IT budget.

 

And we definitely are not going to buy non Apple parts to put in to our Apple purchases.

[StDragon]

I'm surprised at how cheap those prices are. I was expecting the GPU to be at least 12 grand. What a deal!

 

Spoiler

/sarcasm

 

[captain_to_fire]

15 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

-snip-

• Apple no longer allows custom graphics card drivers so forget about that MPX module alternative by buying Radeon 6800 XT.
• Apple Silicon Mac Pro refresh is on the horizon.
• No upgrade path for the existing Mac Pros as Xeon Ice Lake will use a different socket.
• Since Apple is in complete control of GPU drivers, it is a shitty version compared to the Windows counterpart using Open CL (Geekbench 5 using 5700 XT on Windows using Open CL vs Mac Pro 5700 XT using Metal)
• Consistent crashing https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252474888 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/poll-2019-mac-pro-having-suspected-issues-with-w5700x-gpu.2249672/

Basically Apple is putting their focus on the Apple Silicon version of the Mac Pro. Apple knows that it's a niche SKU that's why Intel MacBook Pro's seem to have better driver support.

[mecarry30]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Well only sort of, the W6900X is Apple exclusive, but also list price isn't really what most people actually pay. You can buy retail and you'll pay these higher prices but that's just simply not how the majority are purchased. 

 

MSRP of the Nvidia A40 I mentioned is $5,800 yet what we actually pay, a quote as of 2 days ago, is $3800. Thing is Apple doesn't discount through hardware vendors like other brands do so the pricing you see here is largely the pricing you will actually pay.

 

So nah the prices are not in line with what the majority are actually paying for the Radeon Pro cards that are not Apple branded, paying MSRP (or more) is not a thing outside of retail purchasing.

Comparing with some listings I found on eBay the prices seem pretty reasonable. Given that the Duo model costs 5k and the price in the market is~$2200. While that is $600 less than Apple's pricing, in these high proportions the companies don't typically care about such small differences.

Link: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=radeon+pro+w6800&_sacat=0

[leadeater]

50 minutes ago, mecarry30 said:

Comparing with some listings I found on eBay the prices seem pretty reasonable. Given that the Duo model costs 5k and the price in the market is~$2200. While that is $600 less than Apple's pricing, in these high proportions the companies don't typically care about such small differences.

Not sure what you mean by "high proportions the companies don't care"? Who, the ones buying? Yea they absolutely do. We have a procurement department the oversees all quoting and enforces company policies which are very strict. Like for example we have to get 3 quotes from different suppliers and regardless of existing relationships and added benefits we HAVE to go with the cheapest quote.

 

It's actually really annoying as there is always other costs in projects that aren't captured in quotes, nature of the beast, but the companies you already work with tend to do a better job at capturing more of these things so their quotes are naturally more than others.

 

Bureaucracy can be a right pain sometimes, even when I understand why it's there and what it's for. 

 

Similarly ebay isn't a good indicator of pricing through procurement channels. Nvidia A40 on ebay is $6000 USD and our price is $3800, Nvidia A100 on ebay is ~$12000 and our price is $8200.

 

I just spent the last 2 odd months getting prices for HPC GPU compute servers from multiple different IT vendors comparing different hardware vendor options and battling directly with HPE to get the best pricing possible, because Supermicro was way cheaper. Quite a lot of time is dedicated to getting the best pricing possible and we push our IT vendors to put on very small margins as we do know the actual supply cost in many cases (can't disclose that info however, but very low).

[GDRRiley]

4 hours ago, Roswell said:

Huh? Apple sells commercially with significant discounts. They also have small/medium business to business pricing.

 

I’m sure you didn’t think that Apple forces commercial clients to buy through their consumer retail channels but I don’t understand the argument you’re making here.

no they don't, its not anything meaningful maybe it will hit 15% vs the 20-40% off MSRP you'd expect buying volume and thats not even getting to custom SKUs which could be 10% of retail cost for an equivalent chip. (big cloud providers almost always run them)

I know my work has about a thousand macs and buys 10-15,000 server nodes at a time.
no way at MSRP would NERSC be getting 6200 A100 and 7500 EPYC chips, 2PB of ram, 35PB of flash with a support contract for 146 million

[Roswell]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Education pricing is better than commercial pricing, also we aren't some pokey school either. We are university with ~35k users and ~150m/year IT budget.

 

And we definitely are not going to buy non Apple parts to put in to our Apple purchases.

Well regardless, at the end of the day I don’t think you can criticize Apple for selling competitively priced Apple branded cards at retail. That would be like criticizing EVGA for not providing deep enough business discounts on their cards beyond retail. 
 

I’m pretty sure all of the card makers don’t have B2B as a significant part of their strategy.

 

Also putting in non Apple Card’s is also officially supported. It’s not going to void anything unless there’s some weird language about it in their support contract.

 

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I’m pretty sure all of the card makers don’t have B2B as a significant part of their strategy.

for GeForce no, but quadros yes

[Roswell]

8 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

for GeForce no, but quadros yes

Yeah I was talking about their business products.

 

What I’m getting to is that criticizing a retail product’s pricing (which is competitive in the market) based on assumptions of volume B2B discounts compared against a different product altogether without providing any data on which OEMs provide which level of discounts… is really getting deep, deep into the weeds to say Apple sucks.