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Author Topic: New Mac Pro insights?  (Read 2416 times)

BernardLanguillier

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New Mac Pro insights?
« on: January 22, 2019, 03:46:21 pm »

I has been 1.5 years+ since Apple announced their intent to come up with a new modular Mac Pro.

Any insider info regarding a possible timing for announcement?

Cheers,
Bernard

faberryman

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2019, 04:05:45 pm »

I has been 1.5 years+ since Apple announced their intent to come up with a new modular Mac Pro. Any insider info regarding a possible timing for announcement?
No insider information. I haven't read anything on the Mac sites other than sometime in 2019.
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Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2019, 01:44:52 am »

I gave up on mac pros such a long time ago... To slow, to inflexible, way to expensive for what they are...

However, back to topic, not before summer 2019  would me my guess.
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Christopher Hauser
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2019, 02:44:55 am »

I gave up on mac pros such a long time ago... To slow, to inflexible, way to expensive for what they are...

However, back to topic, not before summer 2019  would me my guess.

Yes, that would be my guess as well.

As a side comment, the pricing of the Mac pro should be compared to pro level workstations. If you look at typical references on Windows, such as the HP Z8, price can easily go to 30,000 - 40,000 US$ without even speaking about the highest possible configurations.

Cheers,
Bernard


Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2019, 02:49:48 am »

True, but one could argue that the choice is much wider and as it is now, the workstation support with photo applications is just not very good.

You don’t gain much by spending money on expensive Xeon CPUs and certainly nothing by spending even more money on workstation graphic cards.


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Christopher Hauser
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2019, 02:53:36 am »

True, but one could argue that the choice is much wider and as it is now, the workstation support with photo applications is just not very good.

You don’t gain much by spending money on expensive Xeon CPUs and certainly nothing by spending even more money on workstation graphic cards.

Well, I am not sure I totally agree with the point about GPU.

If you compare the performance of C1 Pro vs LR on raw exports or PTGUI - C1 Pro and PTgui doing a very efficient use of GPU - it is clear that fast GPU can have a very high value for computationnally intensive tasks.

Cheers,
Bernard

Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2019, 03:01:09 am »

Ok wrong choice of word. I agree with you, what I wanted to say Consumer "Gaming" Cards offer much better performance compared to very expensive professional graphic cards. C1 is amazing in using even two graphic cards.

Take a look at the
RTX2080Ti - from 1100EUR
same chip (yes more Memory, but that's certainly not the bottleneck with C1 and PTGui)
Quadro RTX 8000 - from 6000EUR

No I can go further, my two RTX2070 costed me around 1100 and are in C1 way faster.

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Christopher Hauser
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2019, 03:10:37 am »

Indeed, fair point.

But today in the Apple ecosystem, there is simply no machine allowing you to install a discrete GPU of choice.

I understand it is one good reason to move away from Mac, but within the Mac ecosystem, the hope of a modular Mac Pro is mostly on the GPU side. Be it gaming cards or pro Quadro like cards.

cheers,
Bernard

Joe Towner

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2019, 11:40:30 am »

Nothing more than https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/mac-pro/ off hand.  I'd love 2 PCIe4/5 16x slots with spacing for a double height card (takes 2 slots).  Add in 4 M.2 NVMe slots, 8 TB3 ports and 8 RAM slots.  I was originally thinking of a mix of TB3 and USB-C 3.1gen2 ports, but I think having 2 standards with the same jack would cause issues.

I think that having user upgradeable components is critical to the pro market, something that Apple may have come around to.  Increase the price on the main unit, and adjust the price down on the upgrade/additions.  AppleCare +++ should be an option, or just JointVenture and be done.

As to discrete GPU's we now have that with eGPU's over TB3.
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faberryman

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2019, 11:43:55 am »

As to discrete GPU's we now have that with eGPU's over TB3.
More boxes and cables and power supplies.
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davidgp

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New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2019, 06:54:05 am »

Nothing more than https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/mac-pro/ off hand.  I'd love 2 PCIe4/5 16x slots with spacing for a double height card (takes 2 slots).  Add in 4 M.2 NVMe slots, 8 TB3 ports and 8 RAM slots.  I was originally thinking of a mix of TB3 and USB-C 3.1gen2 ports, but I think having 2 standards with the same jack would cause issues.

I doubt you will see PCIe 5.0... 4.0 is still rolling out, at least in AMD side... they plan to add support in new GPU and new processors based on the Zen2 architecture this year.

Intel did not comment anything about their new Sunny Cove architecture... but that does not mean they will not release this year... but if Apple is waiting for this... probably it will mean something to be released by Q3 the soonest...

But yes, doubling pcie bandwith will free bottlenecks like the ones for new ssds that looks like the bottleneck is the PCIe 4x lanes...


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kers

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2019, 07:46:54 am »

But yes, doubling pcie bandwith will free bottlenecks like the ones for new ssds that looks like the bottleneck is the PCIe 4x lanes...
http://dgpfotografia.com

Since the latest PCIe memory needs a PCIe 3.0  4x slot - and we have PCIe3.0 -16x slots on board, you could use 4 as a raid0 on one slot.
That means to current standards 8TB of space and extremely fast memory.  A samsung 2TB is doing solo already 2500Mb/sec read write .
(Your CPU has to support all these PCIe lanes; in the light of this memory development you better have enough of those)


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davidgp

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2019, 08:16:36 am »

Since the latest PCIe memory needs a PCIe 3.0  4x slot - and we have PCIe3.0 -16x slots on board, you could use 4 as a raid0 on one slot.
That means to current standards 8TB of space and extremely fast memory.  A samsung 2TB is doing solo already 2500Mb/sec read write .
(Your CPU has to support all these PCIe lanes; in the light of this memory development you better have enough of those)

But you need the physical lanes. An Intel Xeon processor for an iMac has 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes. If you use two graphic cards in 16x, you already are wasting 32, that leaves you 16 lanes for TB3 (each one requires 4x lanes), PCIe SSD (each one 4x lanes) a 10 GBit port, another 4x lanes. Of course those are the lanes directed connected to the processor, the chipset provides more, but they are bottlenecked by the connection between the processor and the chipset, that it is 4x PCIe 3.0 connection, shared with all your USB, SATA and other ports... And to put PCIe SSD on RAID (like iMac Pro is doing), you really want those lines directly connected to the processor.

So, PCI 4.0 is quite interesting, since it is like multiplying by 2 the number of physical lines available in any processor.

P.D.: Yes, AMD Threadripper processors can have more physical lines, but Apple does not use AMD for CPUs.

kers

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2019, 10:34:28 am »

...
So, PCI 4.0 is quite interesting, since it is like multiplying by 2 the number of physical lines available in any processor.
...
Yes indeed, PCIe connections will become more and more important... leaving SATA for backup/archive disks.
Probably Apple wants to put some new technology in the machine - thats why we are waiting already 6 years ;) since their last cylinder option. I already stept on to a Hackintosh i9 ; for me a good decision.
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Pieter Kers
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davidgp

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2019, 10:56:11 am »

Yes indeed, PCIe connections will become more and more important... leaving SATA for backup/archive disks.
Probably Apple wants to put some new technology in the machine - thats why we are waiting already 6 years ;) since their last cylinder option. I already stept on to a Hackintosh i9 ; for me a good decision.

Yes, I did the same... not that I need a Mac Pro or a iMac Pro, but for less money than a good Mac Mini + eGPU I got an i9-9900k + Raedon 580 and 32 GB of RAM. Enough for my Lightroom, Photoshop and Final Cut X needs.

kers

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2019, 11:04:37 am »

Yes, I did the same... not that I need a Mac Pro or a iMac Pro, but for less money than a good Mac Mini + eGPU I got an i9-9900k + Raedon 580 and 32 GB of RAM. Enough for my Lightroom, Photoshop and Final Cut X needs.
Ok but i read 9900k 16 PCI-lanes.. is that enough for you? that why i went for a 9700x...
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davidgp

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2019, 11:27:00 am »

Ok but i read 9900k 16 PCI-lanes.. is that enough for you? that why i went for a 9700x...

Yes it has, for me it is ok... going with something x299 it will mean to look for a 10 cores processor or higher (8 cores version of x299 I don't think will have better performance than the i9-9900k)... that will be probably be an investment that I will not recover.

So, I apologize to the original poster if he thinks I'm going to off-topic, let me know and I will stop.

So, what I have right now it is an i9-9900k processor, connected directly to its PCI by 16x there is a AMD Readon RX580 with 8GB. The rest of devices are conected to the 24 PCIe lanes that the Z390 chipset offers. The problem with those lines are connected to the processor via a DMI 3.0 bus (something propietary of Intel) that basically has the bandwith of the PCIe 3.0 4x bus. To those lanes I have connected a Samsung EVO 970 SSD and maybe in the future I will add a second SSD MVNe SSD there. In the future, if I externalize all my 3.5 HDD Drives (I have 4 right now connected directly via a SATA bus to my motherboard) to a NAS, I will buy a 10GBe network card.

So, my needs, I basically use Lightroom, very minimal work in Photoshop and Final Cut X, this last one it is really the reason I upgraded to this from my 2015 Macbook Pro. I just do light video editing, basically cutting 4k h264 video from my Sonys with very light color correcting. The only thing I'm thinking to change right now... it is to return the RX580 and buy a Vega 56, specially after seeing they had a price drop here in Europe this month and also seeing how much Final Cut X makes use of the GPU to render and encode h264 video. It is maxing GPU processor and memory each time I export or render the timeline after I do a small color correcting in Final Cut X.

Would I benefit not having my SSD bottlenecked by other components while editing video? Probably... but seeing the usage I think that will be minimal.

I think this system will serve me ok for the next 3 to 4 years... that it is a margin that I think Apple will give in the hypothetical case that right now they decide to go nuclear and switch to ARM based architecture or say that from version 10.X of Mac OS they will only support Macs with their T2 or equivalent chip (by margin, time they will at least support "old" Mac hardware they were selling right now without the T2 chip... I think the only Macs that don't have it are Mac Pros and normal iMacs).

« Last Edit: January 28, 2019, 11:30:28 am by davidgp »
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #17 on: January 28, 2019, 10:06:58 pm »

Interesting discussion.

Anybody else thinking that Apple could go full AMD for CPU and GPU?

Cheers,
Bernard

Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2019, 01:46:53 am »

I don’t think so. While I see huge potential in AMDs new products in many applications intel is currently faster, especially adobe products.

This doesn’t mean the CPU in general are faster, but that’s how it is with current optimization.


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Christopher Hauser
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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: New Mac Pro insights?
« Reply #19 on: January 29, 2019, 04:45:12 am »

The likelihood of Apple using AMD CPUs is zero. It's far more likely to abandon x86 for their own aarch64 implementation (though they would start with a laptop and the Mac Pro would be the last model to make switch).
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