News Apple Unleashes New Mac Pro at WWDC

[AndrewFreedman]

Apple unveiled a new Mac Pro at WWDC in an attempt to woo creatives.


Apple Unleashes New Mac Pro at WWDC : Read more

 

[hftvhftv]

Pretty sure this is the most impressive Apple product released.

 

[mihen]

Sweet upgrading from the waste bin to the air purifier.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

Sweet upgrading from the waste bin to the air purifier.

LOL

 

[Jsimenhoff]

There are likely more affordable options, especially if you we're going to build it yourself, but I'm still pretty impressed. I would be lying if I said I didn't want one!

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Imagine what you could build using Zen2 Threadripper with $6000 - $8000 USD ...

I like how they're bragging about the 1400w power supply and the "massive heatsink", lol, I don't think apple owners will understand, so more power to them I guess.

Brand new product launching with 14nm parts inside ... seems like a step in the wrong direction to me, considering they won't refresh this again for another 2-4 years. By then AMD will be on 0nm and 14 nm won't even be remotely relevant.

Edit: holy crap ... optional $5000 monitor and optional $1000 stand for said monitor? So for a fully working new MAC Pro we're looking at minimum $12,000 if you want the monitor and a stand to go with it? And that was the "starting from ..." price. WOW!!!

My dirt cheap Ryzen 1700 mopped the floor with my buddy's last gen MAC Pro. (dual GPUs in the MAC can be useful though) ... I really just don't get the appeal of these things ...

 

[kinggremlin]

There are likely more affordable options, especially if you we're going to build it yourself, but I'm still pretty impressed. I would be lying if I said I didn't want one!

Has there been a product after the return of Steve Jobs in 1997 where you couldn't claim there were cheaper alternatives?

 

[littleleo]

I've always consider Apple for the either very old or young, this is just for the very wealthy.

 

[LordConrad]

So glad Apple decided to throw away the trash can. I believe that was a big reason some professionals moved away from Apple. Now if they could just bring back the SD Card reader in the MacBook Pro...

 

[egmccann]

Imagine what you could build using Zen2 Threadripper with $6000 - $8000 USD ...

I like how they're bragging about the 1400w power supply and the "massive heatsink", lol, I don't think apple owners will understand, so more power to them I guess.
...
Edit: holy crap ... optional $5000 monitor and optional $1000 stand for said monitor? So for a fully working new MAC Pro we're looking at minimum $12,000 if you want the monitor and a stand to go with it? And that was the "starting from ..." price. WOW!!!

My dirt cheap Ryzen 1700 mopped the floor with my buddy's last gen MAC Pro. (dual GPUs in the MAC can be useful though) ... I really just don't get the appeal of these things ...

Mopped the floor doing what? And how was that Mac Pro's heat? No, really, how was it? The two words I've associated with Apple for some time now are "Thermal Throttling." Maybe that's why they're touting the heat sink.

This Pro, design wise, goes in the right direction, I think - back to an actual case, and real (not play contortionist or find-the-fancy-screw) upgradeabilty. It looks like the late G5 (and early Intel?) Mac Pros, to a point. (And I'll admit I like the twist-and-lift case design. Again - USER SERVICEABLE/UPGRADEABLE! No having to carefully pry off screens to get at glorified laptop mainboards! Someone has seen the light!

Pricewise, I think at least the base Pro seems to be reasonable for the components in a workstation. A tad high, yes, and I was admittedly guesstimating parts at Newegg or trying to find equivalents (we'll see about that new interface...) but that plus support... ok. The monitor, I couldn't find anything to compare it with. Some as big, sure, but not at that resolution, so I really can't say if that's "reasonable" (for what seems to be a first release at this resolution) or not. (Hell, I'm still running dual 27" 1920x1080s on my ryzen.) But.. yeah, $1000 for a stand, $200 for a VESA adaptor... eeesh.

 

[egmccann]

Has there been a product after the return of Steve Jobs in 1997 where you couldn't claim there were cheaper alternatives?

Well, the Mac Mini can't even attempt to make that argument any more...

 

[bit_user]

Pretty sure this is the most impressive Apple product released.

Well, yeah, but unlike the previous Power Mac, this is nothing more than an EATX (I'm guessing) board, in a tower chassis. The CPU and Radeon Pro's are all things you can buy on the open market. Maybe not the dual-GPU version, but perhaps even that will become available, if it's not already.

It's nothing any of us couldn't piece together for probably less than half the price. I mean, I'm all for upgradability, but at least their previous chassis was something that few could ever equal, in terms of its cooling efficiency, compactness, and novelty.

 

[bit_user]

Apple also has a card for video editors called Afterburner with an ASIC that processes 6 billion pixels per second for ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs.

I sincerely hope they had a better reason for this than just as another way to milk customers.

Think about it: 6 billion pixels per second should be nothing, for a 14 TFLOPS GPU with 1 TB/sec of memory bandwidth. That's 2.3k floating point operations and 167 bytes of memory bandwidth per pixel - no way it needs that much. Converting from raw to 4:4:4 RGB or YUV should be a piece of cake. Yes, not as power-efficient as an ASIC, but you could still do it without the GPU breaking much of a sweat.

 

[hftvhftv]

Well, yeah, but unlike the previous Power Mac, this is nothing more than an EATX (I'm guessing) board, in a tower chassis. The CPU and Radeon Pro's are all things you can buy on the open market. Maybe not the dual-GPU version, but perhaps even that will become available, if it's not already.

It's nothing any of us couldn't piece together for probably less than half the price. I mean, I'm all for upgradability, but at least their previous chassis was something that few could ever equal, in terms of its cooling efficiency, compactness, and novelty.

If you look on the website you'd see that it's actually a double-sided board that's much larger than EATX, there's 12 memory slots on the rear (running in 6 channel mode), 8 PCIe slots, support for quad GPUs with 32GB of HBM2 memory each, and all in a case that can be rack mounted or fit on top of your desk. I'd say good luck building that for half the price with all of the features.

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Mopped the floor doing what? And how was that Mac Pro's heat? No, really, how was it? The two words I've associated with Apple for some time now are "Thermal Throttling." Maybe that's why they're touting the heat sink.

Basically any CPU heavy tasks, multi or single threaded. It had a six core Xeon, I have 8 core OCd Ryzen. Don't know if it was throttling, but if it was, that's sad.

This Pro, design wise, goes in the right direction, I think - back to an actual case, and real (not play contortionist or find-the-fancy-screw) upgradeabilty. It looks like the late G5 (and early Intel?) Mac Pros, to a point. (And I'll admit I like the twist-and-lift case design. Again - USER SERVICEABLE/UPGRADEABLE! No having to carefully pry off screens to get at glorified laptop mainboards! Someone has seen the light!

Definitely better than the silly trash can.

Pricewise, I think at least the base Pro seems to be reasonable for the components in a workstation. A tad high, yes, and I was admittedly guesstimating parts at Newegg or trying to find equivalents (we'll see about that new interface...) but that plus support... ok. The monitor, I couldn't find anything to compare it with. Some as big, sure, but not at that resolution, so I really can't say if that's "reasonable" (for what seems to be a first release at this resolution) or not. (Hell, I'm still running dual 27" 1920x1080s on my ryzen.) But.. yeah, $1000 for a stand, $200 for a VESA adaptor... eeesh.

Base price - only need to take out a loan to buy.
Upper end - remortgage your house or sell your car.

When you could build a Threadripper system for a 1/4 the cost that probably performs better ... ouch.

That graphics solution is pretty mind bogglingly insane though ...

But Apple is about how you feel knowing that you have an Apple and only certain people are willing to spend unreasonable amounts more to get less; its a special feeling, knowing that all that wasted money is helping make you are a part of something bigger than yourself.

 

[Gescom]

The monitor, I couldn't find anything to compare it with. Some as big, sure, but not at that resolution, so I really can't say if that's "reasonable" (for what seems to be a first release at this resolution) or not. (Hell, I'm still running dual 27" 1920x1080s on my ryzen.) But.. yeah, $1000 for a stand, $200 for a VESA adaptor... eeesh.

Dell 32" 8k at 3200 EUR.

 

[Gescom]

Base price - only need to take out a loan to buy.
Upper end - remortgage your house or sell your car.

15k EUR is really not that much for any post/vfx "creative" advertising studio. Easily covered within single project expenses.

 

[joeblowsmynose]

15k EUR is really not that much for any post/vfx "creative" advertising studio. Easily covered within single project expenses.

I get that, I'm sure some companies could spend $50,000 for it. But when you could literally spend half and get the same thing without the apple logo ... (I guess that Pro Duo card is a Mac exclusive for now though - that sets this system apart a little.)

 

[AlistairAB]

The Dell 8k monitor has no HDR support, or local dimming. The Apple monitor is a generation ahead of that monitor in features and quality.

I'm upset that Apple doesn't provide a cheaper option (In Canada the base model is $9000 after taxes). But I also don't think you can buy anything like it for that price. It has a $400 power supply, a $400 case, a $1000+ motherboard.

I WANT a Ryzen 12 core, 700 watt system using consumer parts for half the price. But the server grade components Apple is using, they cost about that much, $6000 or so for a computer.

 

[Jsimenhoff]

Has there been a product after the return of Steve Jobs in 1997 where you couldn't claim there were cheaper alternatives?

No, there hasn't. To me Apple has always positioned itself as a company for the haves, versus for the have nots. Recent iPhone releases and arguably some recent Macbook models have gone against the current in this regard, but for the most part Apple is a "luxury" brand.

 

[bit_user]

If you look on the website you'd see that it's actually a double-sided board that's much larger than EATX, there's 12 memory slots on the rear (running in 6 channel mode), 8 PCIe slots, support for quad GPUs with 32GB of HBM2 memory each, and all in a case that can be rack mounted or fit on top of your desk. I'd say good luck building that for half the price with all of the features.

Alright, it's on!

Here's a EATX board with support for the latest Cascade Lake CPUs, 12 DIMM slots and 7 PCIe slots. Selling on Newegg for $500.

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11SPA-TF.cfm

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

You'll have no problem finding rack-mountable EATX enclosures, such as this sub-$100, tower chassis:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811123130

Quad-GPU support is just from using dual-GPU cards. Since AMD has a habit of making dual GPU cards with their top-end GPU, I don't believe this is an apple-exclusive product. Their website says it's "Available on Mac Pro Workstations", but doesn't say it's exclusive to Mac Pro's.

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstations-radeon-pro-vega-ii

Really, about the only thing I see that you're getting with the Apple board is the auxiliary power routed through the motherboard, an extra PCIe slot, and an Apple-designed case. If that's worth it to you, then go ahead and buy the Mac. However, I suspect people buying them will be those using Mac-exclusive software or rich, coddled Mac-heads who are too intimidated to learn Linux.

I'd have rather seen them go with Threadripper or EPYC and support 6 GPUs, personally. The issue was probably that AMD's 7 nm just wasn't ready in time. Maybe for the next gen...

 

[bit_user]

15k EUR is really not that much for any post/vfx "creative" advertising studio. Easily covered within single project expenses.

I get a little sick that there are some jobs where employers still spend serious amounts on the workstations for their employees. I remember the days of $100k+ CAD workstations and such. Last time I saw something like that was in 2001, when a contractor was brought in to do layout for a chip we were building, and they bought him a dedicated, top-of-the-line Sun workstation.

A lot of employers are getting really cheap about PCs, with some even forcing their people to use VMs in the cloud.

 

[bit_user]

The Dell 8k monitor has no HDR support, or local dimming. The Apple monitor is a generation ahead of that monitor in features and quality.

Yeah, credit where it's due: Apple is usually a generation ahead, in monitor tech.

I'm upset that Apple doesn't provide a cheaper option

Really? It's Apple, after all. The cheaper option is a Mac mini (or a PowerBook).

(In Canada the base model is $9000 after taxes). But I also don't think you can buy anything like it for that price. It has a $400 power supply, a $400 case, a $1000+ motherboard.

Uhhh... please clarify. You're saying you can't buy anything like their base config, for $9000 CAD?

Okay, I'm not up on Canadian pricing, but see my above post about the motherboard & case. Now, let's say you go for a really nice case and factor in the exchange rate - you're still going to be under $2k on the case + mobo + PSU + cooler.

Add in the base CPU, which is clearly a Xeon W-3223. As the US tray price is reportedly $750, let's round that up to $1k for reseller markup + taxes.

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_w/w-3223


The base memory config is 4x 8 GB ECC RDIMMs. I'm going with Newegg as the seller and a reputable brand, because I've read some bad things about NEMIX. So, $260 for four of these:

https://www.newegg.com/crucial-8gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/0RN-0005-006T0?Item=0RN-0005-006T0


Then, a good 256 GB SSD ($333 US):

https://www.newegg.com/samsung-950-pro-256gb/p/N82E16820147466


And Radeon RX 580's are easy to find for under $200, US.

https://www.newegg.com/powercolor-radeon-rx-580-axrx-580-8gbd5-3dhdv2-oc/p/N82E16814131720


Let's round up memory + SSD + GPU to another $1k for taxes and exchange rate. That brings a rather conservative estimate to $4k CAD. Probably could be closer to $3.5k or even less.

I WANT a Ryzen 12 core, 700 watt system using consumer parts for half the price. But the server grade components Apple is using, they cost about that much, $6000 or so for a computer.

All of the above parts should be "server-grade", except for the GPU. Well, neither is the SSD, exactly, but it's probably comparable to what Apple is using. If you wanted better, you could actually swap in an Optane 900P for less money!

https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-900p-series-280gb/p/N82E16820167437?Item=N82E16820167437

If you manage to spend $4500 CAD on a Ryzen 12-core, then I guess you'd have gone for a Titan RTX and maxed out every other component. I don't see any other way to spend so much on a desktop Ryzen-based system. If you feel like it, post up your specs & the final price, when you build it.

 

[hftvhftv]

Alright, it's on!

Here's a EATX board with support for the latest Cascade Lake CPUs, 12 DIMM slots and 7 PCIe slots. Selling on Newegg for $500.

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11SPA-TF.cfm

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

You'll have no problem finding rack-mountable EATX enclosures, such as this sub-$100, tower chassis:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811123130

Quad-GPU support is just from using dual-GPU cards. Since AMD has a habit of making dual GPU cards with their top-end GPU, I don't believe this is an apple-exclusive product. Their website says it's "Available on Mac Pro Workstations", but doesn't say it's exclusive to Mac Pro's.

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstations-radeon-pro-vega-ii

Really, about the only thing I see that you're getting with the Apple board is the auxiliary power routed through the motherboard, an extra PCIe slot, and an Apple-designed case. If that's worth it to you, then go ahead and buy the Mac. However, I suspect people buying them will be those using Mac-exclusive software or rich, coddled Mac-heads who are too intimidated to learn Linux.

I'd have rather seen them go with Threadripper or EPYC and support 6 GPUs, personally. The issue was probably that AMD's 7 nm just wasn't ready in time. Maybe for the next gen...

That motherboard doesn't support Thunderbolt 3, nor does it support the Xeon W-3175X. You're also missing a 1400W power supply that isn't a hair-dryer server model.

 

[bit_user]

That motherboard doesn't support Thunderbolt 3,

The Vega Pro II graphics cards have Thunderbold 3 connectors on them.

nor does it support the Xeon W-3175X.

Eh, I'm sure you can find one that does. Apparently, that board only goes up to 205 W, while the W-3175X is rated at 255 W.

However, only those opting for the max configuration of the Mac Pro are even using that capability. The point of my exercise was to show how overpriced even their base config was.

You're also missing a 1400W power supply that isn't a hair-dryer server model.

Not sure what's your point, here. Just get an EATX case that fits a normal PSU and find a good 1.4 kW model that you like. Why do you assume server PSU?