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The new Mac Pro

FYI, an introduction to the new Mac Pro is on the Apple Store website right now.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), 6-core 32 GB 5870 27 inch LED ACD

Posted on Jun 10, 2013 12:21 PM

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462 replies

Jun 10, 2013 1:02 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

This new Mac Pro is total failure for me 😟

A pro machine is expandable with serveral hard drives and multiple GPUs

How will you do that with this machine. hook on 4 drives with a load of cables?

GPU rendering with multiple graphic cards might not even be possible...

and if yes.. when? at what price?

This seems to be a better iMac, sure good for a lot uf users,

but if you want work on high end machines...

MacOS seems to be a dead end now.

Jun 10, 2013 1:57 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

Can I be the first to chime in that I've been waiting for years to upgrade my 1,1 MP, and I'm feeling very optimistic about this new direction? More actual details are necessary before I come to any final conclusion, but actual experience with the machine will trump any sort of speculation this far ahead of even a release date.


Cautiously very optimistic.

Jun 10, 2013 2:26 PM in response to P.Rex

I like my Mac Pro for being very silent.


The "demo" showed four DIMMs, with what we have seen with past configurations, 16GB DIMMs - sure, but 64GB RAM only? doesn't cut it or make sense. User upgradeable parts? user access to memory? Proprietary.


The GTX 680 support from EVGA is now a slap in the face with a AMD only box.


Yes people woudl come here asking "can I hook up a TB display" or wanting to use TB storage. Now those are your only real avenue unless you think USB3 will get you a disk drive or three and that is all you use and need. Having a bunch of external boxes? and each box with fan and added noise?

Jun 10, 2013 2:28 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

With the introduction of 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports the expansion of drives becomes even more dynamic than the 4 in the old MP's.

Note this is Thunderbolt 2! Agreed 3rd party hardware companys like WD, SeaGate, LaCie etc will have to be on board as well, but this is an Intel joint venture with Apple. It will become standard as USB then FireWire did.

Those external drives can be disconnected if not needed saving power. Saving power does seem to be a big thing for the boffins at Cupertino.

With the beauty of remote operation, as others of said, you are also saving power with screens if just using the raw power. You also have the luxury of connecting multiple 4k screens if the project requires it. Very versatile I'd say and very portable.

I wonder how much they weigh and whether you can stack them on top of each other making an Apple Mac Pro super turbine?

Jun 10, 2013 3:20 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

I'm thoroughly disapointed. Its like we are going backwards. back to the days of SGI boxes where they dictacte what the system comes with and you live with it. Look where that got SGI! If I wanted a preselected setup I would just buy an iMac or a Macbook Pro and not a Mac Pro. We didn't need a black, love-stick sized Mac Pro computer. We just needed the old Mac Pro's gizzards upgraded. Thats All! Primarily we asked for PCI 3, USB 3, and Thunderbolt, most of everything else we could have lived with, even the old box was still fine. These people went the whole makeover mile with it and completely went the wrong way. AMD graphics cards thoroughly disapointing. Cuda is an integral part of how most video professionals work, but I guess just like final cut, they think they know better insted of actually asking the consumer what they want. We are the ones who pay for it so how about finding out if we actually want it???? I use Resolve, Smoke, After Effects and Premiere. All of which supports Cuda for what I can tell you renders way faster than any AMD card I've ever been subject to. Having to use external PCI is also a serious fail. I can't even go into how much of a fail that is. Just...... fail. What we are subject to here is a decor piece for Darth Vader and now were told its good for us. No Apple, if you wish to take a trip to the Dark side, do it on your own and don't ask us to PAY for the trip. If I saw Schille today I would have said to him, "Yes, you can still innovate, but that doesn't mean its good just because its different or new. At the end of the day, is this a Mac Pro for us or for you?"

Jun 10, 2013 4:03 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

The current Mac Pro 5,1 has six SATA connections inside the box, four drive bays and two DVD bays.


The new cylindrical Mac Pro has six chainable Thunderbolt connectors and a built in Flash Boot-Drive.


It seems clear that they intend you to hook up your ThunderBolt Drive/RAID enclosure early on. So the machine is not really a cylinder -- it's a cylindrical CPU box and a rectangular drives-box (unless they decide to issue an Apple cylindrical Drives enclosure).


________


As for the Memory, we can get 16GB on a DIMM today. At the rate these things change, that should double this year and quadruple by next summer, so maybe 3*64GB or 4*64GB pretty soon. Not too shabby.


It does seem a little complicated to have to add a ThunderBolt PCIe card-cage box to add peripherals beyond what you can get in the Belkin ThunderBolt stuntbox. Such as other graphics cards or unusual PCIe peripherals. But at least it can be done.

Jun 10, 2013 4:53 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

Old, slow, PCI peripherals desirable in a world of blistering speed?


My associates and I have all flavors of the current Mac Pro, 8 and 12 core machines with all manners of graphics cards and peripherals. It is very expensive to be very fast on generally very loud RAID arrays on the current Mac Pro.


I edit and grade 1080 and some 2K material, but 4K, the future, is relatively pointless on the current Mac Pros due to obvious limitations and the need for massive budgets to get some speed into the I/O, not to mention the sluggish architecture of these leviathans. I have multiple graphics cards in my machine for GPU performance, for example... but... These old Mac Pros are dinosaurs.


First, the new Mac Pro essentially doubles all the specs of the current Mac Pro, some specs way more than double. This will be welcome. Much faster Thunderbolt means cheap, fast enough RAIDS for 4K will be in the offing. Then, there are lots of next generation Thunderbolt ports, maybe Infiniband will have real competition if things get clever.


Second, this new Mac Pro seems complete slanted to providing 4K editorial facilities, which means a 4K Retina Display Monitor will appear with the machine when it hits the market. I suspect either 27 or 30 inch, but that is just a guess. And it won't be around five grand, like the cheapest of the small Sony 4K TVs currently revealing inadequacies (classic red/blue fringing) in the digital cinematography of "After Earth," which is part of the 4K demo at my local Fry's. Apple always keeps the Mac Pro pricing within certain bounds.


Finally, my edit desk will easily hold about 24 of these new Mac Pros, and if Thunderbolt 2 joins the ranks of Infiniband, things could get interesting. Unix underpinnings in OS X may finally have better purpose.


But, I ramble... and look forward to potential amazement. Now if only the new 4K display was also SMPTE standards color accurate....

Jun 10, 2013 6:58 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

For the past 5 years I was able to upgrade my Mac Pro in every single way and it was also fun to do those upgrades (thanks to this forum where I got most of the info). I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the same with this new model.

It does look like a trash can and the color must atrack lots of dust but I guess we can always paint the case 🙂.

Jun 10, 2013 7:25 PM in response to Marcos_G

I am not a professional user, but I bought my trusty old Mac Pro 1.1 years ago on the basis that it would be "future proof" because I could upgrade all the bits.

In practice, this hasn't worked out. The only part I have managed to "upgrade" is the graphics card. Sure, I slotted some extra drives in, but when it comes to the guts, e.g. the CPU, there's nothing I can do, which is why I'm still on SL and other old software. I have asked about that here and been advised that it's not possible. If anyone knows different, please let me know.


As to the new Mac Pro... I am over the moon! Fantastic! Have you seen how small it is? I know I won't be able to afford one, but oh, how I want one! It is gorgeous. 🙂


The real reason I'm so happy.... Apple have not dumped the Mac Pro. They have not decided to go full on into the "consumer electronics business" only. They're sticking by their roots. That alone is cause for celebration. Ya....hooo!

Jun 10, 2013 8:33 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

I'm really confused as to why you guys released a workstation without buit in PCIe support? What about those users who need higher end graphics solutions than you offer? You could fit double wide PCIe graphics cards in the old MP, but now you'll have to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on top of the machine to get something that should have been built in? And it won't be nearly as fast..... Workstation users, and I believe I speak for a good portion of them, don't give a **** about the size, they give a **** about power and expandability. Why sacrifice usable size? You're definitely not winning over any workstation users with this, and you'll be hard pressed to keep the ones you have. Sure, I think the new Mac Pro is cool and it has a revolutionary design, but at the expense of so much power and ability to expand that it's not funny. The aesthetic design of the tower is the last consideration for a workstation.

The new Mac Pro

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