New Mac Pro line anytime soon?

[Lionel Riem]

Hey guys,

My good ol' Mac Pro (2006) is starting to suffer from old age and is showing signs of CPU osteoarthritis. Just the other day I lost a bunch of RAM without reason. I think it's time I change computer but the "current" Mac Pro line is quite old now. For that price, I can get a much more faster and recent gear from HP or DELL or DIY. Since most of my workflow is Adobe-based, I think I could handle the switch to PC, but if I can stick with a Mac Pro, I'd prefer that.

Do anyone has any idea about an upcoming refresh of the current Mac Pro line? Or would an iMac do the job today with Thunderbolt and external PCI housing? I'll still need a Red Rocket and an NVidia Quadro. I'm mostly doing Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Thanks for your help!

Lionel

[Jarek Zabczynski]

In the same boat here. If they release a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro it will be between now and WWDC in June. I've also heard speculation of holding off till Ivy Bridge Xeons come out towards the end of the year. Anything is possible I suppose. I hate Windows with a passion. I might have to go Hackintosh if the Mac Pro gets axed though.

[Demetri Zuev]

After this year's NAB I'm really excited about the concept of MacBook Pro paired with external RedRocket enclosure via Thunderbolt.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was 100% sure that I'll get a tower...

[Shane Betts]

The only really reliable knowledge is that all current Mac Pro users want an update. As to whether Apple give a shit, that is still a mystery.

[Josh Beadle]

"Superman no here today"

[Scott Crawley]

Lol


The only really reliable knowledge is that all current Mac Pro users want an update. As to whether Apple give a shit, that is still a mystery.

[Scott Crawley]

If it were possible to stuff more RAM in a laptop I might be thinking that way also.

There is also a little card that BMD has waiting in the wings that promises to deliver 4k playback in real time for under $600, though I am uncertain, even doubtful that it will handle R3D. The site doesn't mention it specifically. http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklink4k/ Does anyone know the answer to that question?

When folks keep saying there will be no new Mac Pro my mind keeps wandering over to the BMD page for this card. They announced it ages ago it seems, but still have not released it. What are they waiting for, new Mac hardware that it was designed to work with perhaps?


After this year's NAB I'm really excited about the concept of MacBook Pro paired with external RedRocket enclosure via Thunderbolt.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was 100% sure that I'll get a tower...

Edit: I guess it is only reasonable to presume that R3D is not supported by the card. It is editing software centric and doesn't appear to concern itself with camera codecs.

[Scott Brown]

I'm wondering if the Ivy Bridge Xeons are worth the wait and the massive price differential - the newly released Ivy Bridge i7 CPU's are certainly fast and now include USB3 & Thunderbolt support. Interestingly, the benchmarks for Ivy Bridge CPU's are not as impressive as I'd hoped and on average we're looking at about a 10% performance increase over Sandy Bridge.

I think we're almost at the stage where "standard" desktop and laptop computers are powerful and capable enough to handle virtually whatever we throw at them, perhaps making the concept of the Mac Pro redundant.

Scott

[Scott Crawley]

I think we're almost at the stage where "standard" desktop and laptop computers are powerful and capable enough to handle virtually whatever we throw at them, perhaps making the concept of the Mac Pro redundant.

Nah, that won't happen. We will likely be throwing more at them before they are capable. The next crop of machines may be able to handle 4k just in time for Red to give us 6k, and so on...

Even if computers manage to exceed the current demand for horsepower, we will very quickly make use of it and then demand more. It's in our nature. Will the cycle ever end?

[Lionel Riem]

I think we're almost at the stage where "standard" desktop and laptop computers are powerful and capable enough to handle virtually whatever we throw at them, perhaps making the concept of the Mac Pro redundant.

I agree. But I can't help but wonder how an iMac with full options would cope with 5K R3D footage in After Effects, even with a Red Rocket connected through Thunderbolt. The added CPU-power of a dual Xeon must count for something, right?

[Bob Gundu]

What... another macpro rumour thread???

[Scott Crawley]

Don't look at me this time Bob. ;-)

[Matt Gerard]

My thought has always been, if your current equipment is keeping you from earning money, then it needs to be replaced. If you are wasting time troubleshooting and fixing, then replace it. How soon would you be able to get the money back from the purchase by being more productive? In computer-land, there is always something new around the corner. Unfortunately with apple, you just never know where the corner is and how far away it is. The macpro is ripe for an update, and if you buy a nicely loaded current model, chances are 2 weeks later that corner will come up and smack you in the mouth. But if you don't purchase one now, either they will wait until end of year to update (in which case you are left hanging and indecisive) or EOL the the ol' goat.

If you do decided to purchase a current model, its not like it will become instantly useless the moment (if) the new towers come out. It will still be a good box with loads of horsepower. You do take some risks of being left out of some new tech (Thunderbolt, etc), but you are still using your old box and earning money with that, aren't you?

Now for the switch to winbloze, that's a different story. I don't hate it as much as I used to, now that they have successfully mimicked a bunch of OSX's key features. Mainly stability. In the end, you get the same result, its just learning where all the buttons are. Its the person using the box that makes a good end result, not the box itself. I have often thought of building my own hackintosh tower, I drool over the specs that I've read about with the latest processors out there, scads of RAM and more GPU choices than I can fathom. But, simply, I don't have the time. I need to work during the day to earn the income, and my after work hours are dedicated to my family. So, I buy prebuilt. It limits me a bit, yes, but I still get the work done.

My advice- if you are frustrated with your current system, buy a new one. Should be able to get a good loaded box from a 3rd party at a good deal, since the model lineup is a bit dated. If the new boxes come out soon after? Toss out an audible "Aww shucks" and get back to work. If your workflow isn't hampered by the age of your workstation, wait. I still have PPC towers in my office that are up and running, doing (menial) necessary tasks for my office, and not one hardware problem. The only time I've seen hardware issues with the macpro's is a guy that bought a refurb one, and that one was cursed from the start. He should have burned it in the box. The thing was possessed with evil. I think someone must have tried to load Windows 2000 on it and it permanently addled its CPU.

So, that's my .02, take it or leave it. Also, this- take a look at the upper end hardware from HP. Its nice, expandable and current. When outfitted nicely, they are nearly the same price as a macpro, so you won't save any money, but you might find that the windows environment isn't as nauseating as most apple fans make it out to be. From a technical standpoint, you'll hit a learning curve, but might be worth it. There was a great article at creativecow.com about a total Mac devotee that made the jump, and hasn't looked back.

Matt

[Mark Toia]

After this year's NAB I'm really excited about the concept of MacBook Pro paired with external RedRocket enclosure via Thunderbolt.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was 100% sure that I'll get a tower...

who, what , when , where..???? tell me more.

[Bob Gundu]

Mark, where have you been :)

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?77204-mLOGICs-mLINK-R-thunderbolt-expansion-chassis-for-Red-Rocket



who, what , when , where..???? tell me more.

[Wil Klassen]

Hey guys,
...
Do anyone has any idea about an upcoming refresh of the current Mac Pro line?
...
Lionel

Lionel, this site will help you :) http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

[Thomas Koch]

I just spoke with a guy who knows a guy at apple. No more mac pros. Period.

I'm not 100% convinced, but this guy was. I think there is hope. It doesn't matter much, though as I'll make a Hackintosh if I have to.

[Scott Crawley]

I just spoke with a guy who knows a guy at apple. No more mac pros. Period.

I'm not 100% convinced, but this guy was. I think there is hope. It doesn't matter much, though as I'll make a Hackintosh if I have to.

Haha, and I once talked to a guy who once knew a guy who's sister dated a big fat guy who picked a lump of lint out of his belly button. He said "That will never happen again." His statement was of equal value I think.

[Brian Merlen]

as much as i want a new mac pro to come out, truthfully a mobile thunderbolt rocket and an r6 isn't a bad set up, and i might get one if they do EOL the mac pro

[Joe Walker]

I'm in the same boat, I've got an outdated Mac Pro 1,1. I've take it as far as she'll push. I've been eyeing this for a potential replacement: http://www.ebay.com/itm/320855782790?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_1592wt_1322. If that falls through, I'll just snatch up a new MacBook Pro and hang in there and until Apple either announces a new Mac Pro or that they've discontinued it. If it's been discontinued, I'm going with a BOXX machine. I think that's about as reasonable a plan as one can stand by under the present circumstances.

[Jason Diamond]

I saw JMR Silver Stor (http://www.jmr.com/en/products/13/silverstor-desktoprackmount-workstation/) at NAB and I have to say the machines are extremely impressive. Especially the inbuilt 8bay RAID. There's also a 5.25" slot under that for an in-built LTO if need be.

They told me they would not only Hackintosh it for me but that they would support it. After seeing what they had running at their booth I definitely believe them. Check em out, I think it's a good option possibly.

I do not work for the company, was just impressed by what I saw and heard.

Jason

[Mark Kern]

So far I am running a new MacBook pro 2.5ghz i7 with 16 gigs of ram and a 7200rpm thunderbolt seagate portable drive. In premier pro, I can play back And edit 3k r3d native files at half resolution smoothly. I anticipate a huge increase with cs6 since the Adobe mercury engine will support OpenCL on my MacBooks ati chipset. Pretty happy with this setup so far.

[Scott Crawley]

Thank you for sharing Mark... And eroding my resolve just a little bit. :-/

[Mark Kern]

Good point.... I should try it in davinci resolve. ;)

[Bob Gundu]

The only person that has openly said that there is no new mac coming is Shane Ross. In fact he mentioned it again today:

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/32800


--------------
Re: Is the Mac Pro Dead?
by Shane Ross on Apr 27, 2012 at 7:29:46 pm

Adobe showed of CS 6 on PCs...and iMacs. Autodesk had Smoke running on an iMac in their booth, and in the AJA booth. AJA, Matrox, Blackmagic, MOTU...all have thunderbolt solutions. Touting them over other offerings.

The clues are everywhere. The MacPro is DOA.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
---------------

[Scott Crawley]

Shane is not the first person to say the Pro is DOA, not that I believe any of it.

What's your point Bob?


The only person that has openly said that there is no new mac coming is Shane Ross. In fact he mentioned it again today:

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/32800


--------------
Re: Is the Mac Pro Dead?
by Shane Ross on Apr 27, 2012 at 7:29:46 pm

Adobe showed of CS 6 on PCs...and iMacs. Autodesk had Smoke running on an iMac in their booth, and in the AJA booth. AJA, Matrox, Blackmagic, MOTU...all have thunderbolt solutions. Touting them over other offerings.

The clues are everywhere. The MacPro is DOA.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
---------------

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Anyone care to comment on this video discussing the viability of some sort of modular MacPro replacement? Specifically, the limitations of Thunderbolt bandwidth around the 2 min mark?
http://vimeo.com/35122338

[Bob Gundu]

Hey man, I'm gunning for a new mac... but Shane has me worried.... that's all.....


Shane is not the first person to say the Pro is DOA, not that I believe any of it.

What's your point Bob?

[Scott Crawley]

Hey man, I'm gunning for a new mac... but Shane has me worried.... that's all.....

What about Kilgore, and Jeff's link? They make you feel any better?

[Jon Thomasberg]

HP z820 & supermicro dual Xeon e5 solutions are looking like feasible successors these days. A new MacPro would be very welcome of course.

<thread derail>
Since about 2007, I have been using and buying mostly Macs and only use Windows when absolutely necessary. That said,....
I know it is somewhat unrealistic at the moment because of the development costs vs. Linux market penetration, but I would like to see more commercial software on Linux. Adobe CS6, Resolve (($30k, ouch!) -- We know the linux ver is more robust, exactly my point. Kudos for at least making it.), Nuke, and RCXPro on Linux -- yummm! If we had that then other than Apple proprietary stuff, like Prores codecs, you would have the stability of Mac OS X and a similar feel and since the OS X kernel (Darwin) is based on BSD anyways. You can easily add only the packages that you need (purpose built), rather than Windows 7 that runs all sorts of extraneous stuff you don't typically need in a edit,color,vfx workstation that uses system resources unnecessarily....Windows 8: as of now, not really feeling it.
</thread derail>

[Rob Anderson]

I believe the true Mac Pro tower successor will be a "modular" system that relies on the existing iMac form factor, connected via Thunderbolt. The additional chassis will include storage bays, processing, additional I/O ports, and PCI-E lanes. The iMac will then function as a monitor with the Thunderbolt monitors available for daisy chaining. This keeps the Mac lineup firmly intact without requiring Apple to continue supporting the dedicated towers.

So in a sense, yes the Mac Pro as we know it is dead, but in another sense, the "professional Mac" configuration will be alive and well.

While you may be a little disappointed in this at first, I think all of us will grow to love the concept of a "pro box" that sits behind any iMac.

[Brian Merlen]

right now none of these thunderbolt boxes provide gpu support though. being able to put a red rocket in is nice, and has been proven, but what about if your working with another format? or what about the fact that all macs use shotty gpus for the most part? i dont see modular providing a viable solution until we can use GPU's in the thunderbolt pci slot boxes AND drivers to run it on OSX. until then all we got is raids and external red rockets, which ain't bad don't get me wrong, but having external gpu's would help.

[Rob Anderson]

right now none of these thunderbolt boxes provide gpu support though. being able to put a red rocket in is nice, and has been proven, but what about if your working with another format? or what about the fact that all macs use shotty gpus for the most part? i dont see modular providing a viable solution until we can use GPU's in the thunderbolt pci slot boxes AND drivers to run it on OSX. until then all we got is raids and external red rockets, which ain't bad don't get me wrong, but having external gpu's would help.
To clarify, what I'm suggesting is Apple designed and sold.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thunderbolt is NOT the answer people want it to be and Apple is not going to try and make it the solution. A Thunderbolt port, if both channels are used, which currently no one device on the chain is allowed to do, is the equivalent to a single PCIe 2.0 X4 slot. Not only that, but the Thunderbolt interface has nearly 40X the latency of the slot itself.

Apple has not abandoned the power user. Even the latest alpha seed of Mountain Lion includes support for new hardware that could only be found in a system like a "Mac Pro", not something that would be crammed into the current iMac profile or a single-CPU design. So if nothing else, we know that Apple is working on new hardware. There have been various prototypes of new pro systems, but Apple is doing an insanely-good job of keeping them under wraps for some reason.

I do think there is a very good chance that the big tower Mac Pro as we know it is EOL. I've said it before on the forums and will say it again here... That design is a decade old and functionally stale. It does not fit Apple's current paradigm or design initiative and it does not fit the needs of most of their users. It's far too big and mostly overkill for the majority of customers and is a terrible offering for the power-user who wants/needs more than an iMac, but doesn't need the dual-CPU monster sucking 1.1KW. Other workstation vendors like Dell and HP are in a similar situation, but they have a larger customer base on the upper tier of workstation offerings. HP has their new Z-series offerings in the Z1, Z420, Z620 and Z820. Their Z620 is the most comparable to the Mac Pro and represents what a new Mac Pro would probably be if Apple were to continue down the same path with the same tower design, updated for the new Xeon platform. I point this out about the Z620 because it is the weakest offering in the line-up and the one seeing the lowest sales. Of the new systems, the iMac-like, but expandable, HP Z1 workstation is outselling the other more powerful models, it satisfies the needs of most customers looking for more CPU cores and robust GPU options without going the route of the power-hungry tower. The next-best seller is the Z820 with the most usable slots and drive bays and some additional CPU, power and GPU options.

Dell has done something similar with their new Precision Line. The T7600 is the flagship model and will outsell the T5600 and T3600 by a huge margin. It is, IMO, the only one truly worth buying. The other two serve little purpose other than to fill in a pricing gap because they have enough customers who will still buy them.

Knowing how Cook and the others atop Apple feel about all this is a total mystery right now. Steve Jobs had no intention of abandoning his professional user base -- although his vision of what he felt the professional offerings should be was quite different than what a lot of us here would envision. In naming Cook as his successor and maintaining the same relative group around him, I believe Jobs did his best to set up Apple with those who shared his vision for the foreseeable future.

I'm positive that Apple will have a new workstation offering in the near future and it should fill that gaping hole in their product offerings that has been there for years now. It's going to fall in-line with the rest of their offerings -- sleek and compact, utilitarian, stripped of meaningless features, and powerful enough to fit the needs of most users. I'm almost positive we will not see this product until later this year when the Ivy Bridge Xeon CPUs arrive, or even early next year if the CPUs see a delay. Now that I've had my hands on the latest and greatest Sandy Bridge E5-2600 Xeon platform, I have to say that it's disappointing to some extent. It does offer two more cores per CPU die, and about 25% increase in GT/s as well as memory bandwidth (if you can actually find the proper RAM right now). But it sucks MORE power, a lot more. And prices have increased 30% over the previous generation. The power-per-watt of the E5 Romley platform is lower than what we have with Westmere (which is in the current 2010 Mac Pro). Ivy Bridge Xeons will change that. With the die shrink to 22nm, the power consumption and heat dissipation requirements will drop significantly. We won't be sucking 400W and displacing 280W worth of heat just to operate two 3GHz 8-core CPUs (at 2.8GHz under full load and core activation).... Intel is not even going to release a Sandy Bridge iteration of the E7 series Xeon as it offers no value in contrast to the previous generation as the E7's are what power 4-way and 8-way CPU configurations. They will go straight to Ivy Bridge 22nm process on that one.

As for what's next from Apple for us Pro users, I can only speculate... What I can say is that I do know people who work at Apple and usually when a new Mac Pro is just around the corner, these people have little hits to throw at me or they show some level of excitement, even can tell me they have "seen it". All that is not happening... There is nothing to report. I know their R&D people are indeed working on things, but that is always the case at Apple, that department doesn't sleep. But there is no chatter or even a faint buzz about a new tower workstation being heard by the people I know.

If I were to make a semi-educated guess as to what their next pro system would be, I will say that it will still be a tower of sorts. But smaller. This time it will be rack-mountable and will have room inside for more HDD or SSD devices, yet targeting 2.5" form factor. Dual CPU capable, most likely targeting Ivy Bridge so they can keep total power requirements well under 1KW even with multiple GPUs. GPU offerings will be more open than in the past, but will center around the upcoming Kepler architecture Quadro GPUs from nVidia and/or the AMD 79XX based FirePro GPUs. Probably 8 memory slots for up to 256GB RAM via 32GB modules. I will guess that we'll still see 4 expansion slots -- all PCIe 3.0 X16 and two of them double-spaced.

The other possibility is they will offer a Pro version of the iMac -- similar to the HP Z1, but with some more elegant design choices. The Z1 is nice, but there's several places HP cut some corners or made a few odd design choices that inhibit its functionality. Such as the proprietary GPU form factor.

[KETCH ROSSi]

Jeff, buddy, you always are a Bible of info when it comes to Computer stuff... Love it!!

Now if Apple did come out with a new Mac Pro Tower... Would love it even more... ;)

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Thunderbolt is NOT the answer people want it to be and Apple is not going to try and make it the solution. A Thunderbolt port, if both channels are used, which currently no one device on the chain is allowed to do, is the equivalent to a single PCIe 2.0 X4 slot. Not only that, but the Thunderbolt interface has nearly 40X the latency of the slot itself.


If I were to make a semi-educated guess as to what their next pro system would be, I will say that it will still be a tower of sorts. But smaller. This time it will be rack-mountable and will have room inside for more HDD or SSD devices, yet targeting 2.5" form factor. Dual CPU capable, most likely targeting Ivy Bridge so they can keep total power requirements well under 1KW even with multiple GPUs. GPU offerings will be more open than in the past, but will center around the upcoming Kepler architecture Quadro GPUs from nVidia and/or the AMD 79XX based FirePro GPUs. Probably 8 memory slots for up to 256GB RAM via 32GB modules. I will guess that we'll still see 4 expansion slots -- all PCIe 3.0 X16 and two of them double-spaced.

Thanks Jeff that's exactly the information I was looking for, and your thoughts are definitely more than "semi-educated" :)

[Blair S. Paulsen]

FWIW Apple likes to make a splash when they roll out a new product/major update. They also seem to have gotten the memo about the value of doing more with less power consumption as seen in several of their recent offerings. Soooo...

I agree with Jeff's forecast that Apple is waiting for Ivy Bridge. Lower power usage and less heat production also makes it easier to move the form factor away from the big tower designs.

Of course the critical question of when remains frustratingly elusive - probably why these threads keep popping up ;-)

Cheers - #19

[Mike Halper]

I think we'll find out what Apple is going to do with all their computer lines at WWDC in June. Seems like the right place for them to announce a new Mac Pro or to kill it off.

I predict the merging of Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. All SSD based, slimmer design, no optical drives (unless you buy the external SuperDrive). They'll call it just MacBook (since the old MacBook has been gone for a while), dropping Air and Pro, and they'll have a range of options in processors from Air performance to Pro 17" performance, though we may not get the 17" size (15 or 16 max?). That's just my own prediction, I know nothing actually.

For the Mac Pro I predict it's gone in the current form-factor. If there's a tower it will be much smaller, with the elimination of the optical drive bays. They could also possibly be like the Mac Mini on steroids with 3 or 4 TB ports, hopefully on separate busses, for expansion. Again, my own prediction. I still know nothing.

But WWDC is the right place and time with developers there, and a significant shake of the line should come with a positive-sounding keynote speech for the share-holders. It would be unusual for Apple to announce something so dramatic with just an Apple Store update and not at an event such as WWDC. And now that they don't attend MacWorld anymore, WWDC is really the only option. I think that's why there's been no word from Apple about any of this and just rumors. It reflects what happened when Apple changed from PowerPC to Intel (which begs the question if Apple could announce a transition to ARM processors too), introduced the MacBook Air the first time, introduced the Mac Mini, introduced the different types of iMacs, etc. etc. Any time there's a significant change with the Mac you have a period of everyone wondering what Apple is coming out with and then the announcement at WWDC (or MacWorld which won't happen now).

[Matt Gottshalk]

So glad I built my monster pc.

Once you are in the app, (adobe, rcx, resolve), the os disappears.

[Rob Anderson]

Thunderbolt is NOT the answer people want it to be and Apple is not going to try and make it the solution. A Thunderbolt port, if both channels are used, which currently no one device on the chain is allowed to do, is the equivalent to a single PCIe 2.0 X4 slot. Not only that, but the Thunderbolt interface has nearly 40X the latency of the slot itself.
If that were true, Apple would be positioning PCI ports on their systems. And they're not. Also, you're talking theoretical throughput. Not actual need for things like Rocket debayering.


Apple has not abandoned the power user. Even the latest alpha seed of Mountain Lion includes support for new hardware that could only be found in a system like a "Mac Pro", not something that would be crammed into the current iMac profile or a single-CPU design. So if nothing else, we know that Apple is working on new hardware. There have been various prototypes of new pro systems, but Apple is doing an insanely-good job of keeping them under wraps for some reason.

This isn't true either. All indications point to Mountain Lion prepped for new lines of iMacs and Macbook Pros, but not a Mac Pro tower. Read here: http://revogirl.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/new-mac-models-found-in-mountain-lion/

Also I think it's pretty clear with Apple's transitions on Final Cut and Logic (new Logic Pro announced in 2009 and still nothing available), combined with the stagnated Mac Pro line, and the killing off of Xserve Blades, further Mountain Lion transitions to iOS-type GUI, etc. Yes, Apple has at minimum neglected the hell out of their "professional" customer.


Knowing how Cook and the others atop Apple feel about all this is a total mystery right now. Steve Jobs had no intention of abandoning his professional user base -- although his vision of what he felt the professional offerings should be was quite different than what a lot of us here would envision. In naming Cook as his successor and maintaining the same relative group around him, I believe Jobs did his best to set up Apple with those who shared his vision for the foreseeable future.
It's not a mystery. See above.



I'm positive that Apple will have a new workstation offering in the near future and it should fill that gaping hole in their product offerings that has been there for years now. It's going to fall in-line with the rest of their offerings -- sleek and compact, utilitarian, stripped of meaningless features, and powerful enough to fit the needs of most users.
You just described the iMac.


The other possibility is they will offer a Pro version of the iMac -- similar to the HP Z1, but with some more elegant design choices. The Z1 is nice, but there's several places HP cut some corners or made a few odd design choices that inhibit its functionality. Such as the proprietary GPU form factor.
My bet, already stated in this thread previously, an expansion module for the iMac.

Yep. All signs point to the iMac.

[Terry VerHaar]

Jeff - good analysis, well articulated; very believable.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Too late. Apple needs to update it's tower asap. I can't wait another year... too bad. I've invested a lot in OSX software - my plan was to stay in Mac OS as a loyal customer, but I cannot wait any longer for a new MacPro. Too bad Apple ****ed up this time. I'm heading for Windows unfortunately. I need a couple of new workstations last week, not in 9 months, and I can't invest in a two year old design with 50% of the performance of modern workstations. I feel trapped by Apple, and I'm severely disappointed at their lack of communication and support of their pro customers... shame.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If that were true, Apple would be positioning PCI ports on their systems. And they're not. Also, you're talking theoretical throughput. Not actual need for things like Rocket debarring.

We don't know what Apple is going to do next... We don't know if they're going to release a new Pro system with expansion slots or not. Hopefully they do and I think they will. But I also think it's going to be a departure from the existing tower design. As for Thunderbolt, there are lots of things it can't do and when I'm talking about throughput, I'm speaking more about actuals than you may realize. I have RAIDs on Mac Pro systems that move more data than Thunderbolt can handle. A Red Rocket can only run at half speed connected to a Thunderbolt port and it has a ton more latency. It works great for playback and some transcode tasks. But if you need 32bit tiff or EXR output at 5K, you can bottleneck that Thunderbolt port pretty easily if the rest of your system is up to snuff for feeding the Rocket and writing the output.



This isn't true either. All indications point to Mountain Lion prepped for new lines of iMacs and Macbook Pros, but not a Mac Pro tower. Read here: http://revogirl.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/new-mac-models-found-in-mountain-lion/

Also I think it's pretty clear with Apple's transitions on Final Cut and Logic (new Logic Pro announced in 2009 and still nothing available), combined with the stagnated Mac Pro line, and the killing off of Xserve Blades, further Mountain Lion transitions to iOS-type GUI, etc. Yes, Apple has at minimum neglected the hell out of their "professional" customer.

I agree on the FCPX and Logic aspect of that. As for the blog entry, it's two months old and talking about the Macworld developer preview release of Mountain Lion. Which is 4 alpha versions behind current alpha-access developer seeds. Some of the info was already there in that build, but a lot more has shown up since. There is support now for high-power GPUs like GTX680/Kepler and the ATI 79XX series. It even goes as far as listing the GTX680 by name in a couple config files. These are models that are not destined for a system based on mobile processors or an iMac form factor. They consume 70 to 100 watts more power over an above what the PCIe slot provides. And are intended to run in a PCIe 3.0 X16 slot which, latency aside, is still over 8 times faster than what dual channels on a Thunderbolt port could provide or 18X faster than what a single Thunderbolt device is allowed to wrangle at this time.

Not only that, but there is mostly complete support now in the latest seed for the C6xx series chipsets, which are the primary chipsets for the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Xeon platform.

This stuff wouldn't be there if Apple wasn't at least exploring potential products or developing another Mac Pro.


You just described the iMac.

No. I didn't.


My bet, already stated in this thread previously, an expansion module for the iMac.

Yep. All signs point to the iMac.

While I think the iMac is going to play a huge role in this capacity, I don't think it's going to be the official solution from Apple. They would be shooting themselves in the foot and could potentially lose a number of key software developers that drive hardware sales on the high end and DCC on the Mac platform. As cool as it is that we can run software like Nuke, AutoCAD, Smoke, etc.. on an iMac or Macbook Pro, those of us running such apps in a serious capacity are not going to do that. It's cute that they have AutoCAD installed and useable on an iMac, even an Macbook Air, when you go to the Apple store, but it runs like shit.... Ar at least it does compared to a decent desktop PC or Xeon-based workstation, Mac Pro, etc..

So, there is a real possibility that a new "Mac Pro" could be much in-line with the iMac. But I don't think it will be the same system. At this stage in the game, I don't think Apple can really pull the plug on a lot of their software partners by making the top of the line workstation one based on mobile CPUs. And yet, maybe I'm over-analyzing. Desktop and mobile CPUs are on a convergence course and the gap continues to narrow. Once Intel / AMD reach the 18 nanometer process for CPUs, we'll be looking at 24 to 32 cores on a chip and a single CPU line that targets both mobile and desktop applications.

Apple is a forward-thinking company and often too much so in an overly-obvious way. As great as the 6 and 8 core Xeon CPUs are at multiprocessor tasks, rendering, that sort of thing, they still fall short compared to the cheaper and faster clocked desktop, even the mobile i7 quad-core CPU in the current iMac, when it comes to many single-threaded or even small multi-threaded tasks that fit within the confines of those smaller CPUs. Eventually these lines are going to blur, CPU choices will become easier, etc... Apple knows this, and they have a habit of pushing forward with ideas like that, even if it's a few years premature.



Too late. Apple needs to update it's tower asap. I can't wait another year... too bad. I've invested a lot in OSX software - my plan was to stay in Mac OS as a loyal customer, but I cannot wait any longer for a new MacPro. Too bad Apple ****ed up this time. I'm heading for Windows unfortunately. I need a couple of new workstations last week, not in 9 months, and I can't invest in a two year old design with 50% of the performance of modern workstations. I feel trapped by Apple, and I'm severely disappointed at their lack of communication and support of their pro customers... shame.

This attitude confuses me somewhat... Just what were you expecting Apple to update their Mac Pro tower to be? There were no new chipsets, CPUs, etc.. for them to put in a new tower. Intel finally shipped the new Xeon platform 30 days ago. HP started shipping their new Xeon workstations last week and are facing delays. I'm waiting on one that was supposed to ship the 19th, then it was supposed to ship the 26th. Now I'm being told it *should* ship by the 1st. Dell has a great looking new Xeon workstation line-up and they have yet to even start taking orders (pre-orders start on the 1st, shipping begins by the end of May).

Seriously, all the FUD and doom and gloom over Apple not releasing a new Mac Pro is mostly unfounded. The only upgrade they could have potentially made would have been to incorporate a Thunderbolt port. But they weren't going to re-design the logic board to accommodate that since it would be a redesign of a soon to be EOL platform and would require the sacrifice of one of the X4 PCIe slots in order to attach the TB header to the PCIe bus.

On that note, Apple has not f****d up.... yet... They have yet to show their cards. But part of me does fear that they may just choose to fold.

As for iOS elements making their way into OSX, so what? Eventually the two OS's will merge, that's pretty obvious. Look at what Microsoft is doing with Windows... Same thing. In fact, Microsoft has already leaped ahead of Apple in this convergence race with Windows 8, Metro and Windows On ARM. I don't see where iOS and OSX converging serves as any statement to supporting (or not supporting) the Pro user. So far, all the iOS additions into OSX have been pretty well implemented and darn useful if you give them a chance. That's my take on that. The multi-touch trackpad is insanely useful on my Mac Pro running OSX 10.7.3.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

iOS elements in OSX are mostly great, I've made no complaints. What I complain about is the lack of a decent expandable OSX computer and the lack of an Xeon E5 Mac Pro announcement...

[Rob Anderson]

There is support now for high-power GPUs like GTX680/Kepler and the ATI 79XX series. It even goes as far as listing the GTX680 by name in a couple config files.
Jeff, where are you sourcing this?


At this stage in the game, I don't think Apple can really pull the plug on a lot of their software partners by making the top of the line workstation one based on mobile CPUs. And yet, maybe I'm over-analyzing. Desktop and mobile CPUs are on a convergence course and the gap continues to narrow. Once Intel / AMD reach the 18 nanometer process for CPUs, we'll be looking at 24 to 32 cores on a chip and a single CPU line that targets both mobile and desktop applications.
You're all over the map man. :)



As for iOS elements making their way into OSX, so what? Eventually the two OS's will merge, that's pretty obvious. Look at what Microsoft is doing with Windows... Same thing. In fact, Microsoft has already leaped ahead of Apple in this convergence race with Windows 8, Metro and Windows On ARM. I don't see where iOS and OSX converging serves as any statement to supporting (or not supporting) the Pro user. So far, all the iOS additions into OSX have been pretty well implemented and darn useful if you give them a chance. That's my take on that. The multi-touch trackpad is insanely useful on my Mac Pro running OSX 10.7.3.
I disagree. The Magic Pad is pretty damn near worthless on my tower Pro's and iMac's. The convergence of iOS and OS X is clearly the reason for the neglect the Apple professional customer is currently facing. The reason people in our field are irate about this is because in a lot of ways, it was the enthusiasm of the "professionals" and the artists that keep Apple's heart beating. 10-years ago, it was the crazy ones driving around with Apple bumper stickers. Now it's kids crying on Twitter about not getting a new iPhone for Christmas. Double-down on that feeling with the investment many have made in software, peripheral, and workflow.

Yes, it is very easy right now to look at what's available in the PC "professional" marketplace and realize the grass is now greener on the other side and Apple won't even pay the courtesy of at least providing a forward marker for where things are headed.

Imagine if 5-8 years down the line, RED decided it was far more profitable to make consumer-friendly point and shoot cameras. Updates to their professional core begin slipping and then become seemingly abandoned. They suddenly dropped a quarter of the features from REDCINE in favor of a more "comfortable" approach for the home movie crowd. Etc etc. That's the status many are in with Apple and it's frustrating from a business perspective (investment, growth, acquisition), from a personal and creative avenue (workflow, codec), and from even a purely fan approach (is Apple really just for the humbled masses now?). Everyone in the segment is pissed about it (Logic guys, IT that pushed Xserves, editors, gamers, post-fx guys, etc) and you can add my name to the same list. Performance on my $10k decked Pros sucks compared to a quarter-price PC build right now and the most official rumbling we get is "Apple is thinking if the revenues are even worthwhile." Yep, it's a lame situation.

All of this is also why I stake my bet on Apple deciding to build an iMac Pro module-thing.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Yes, it is very easy right now to look at what's available in the PC "professional" marketplace and realize the grass is now greener on the other side and Apple won't even pay the courtesy of at least providing a forward marker for where things are headed.

Exactly, they have become so arrogant they don't even care to give us a polite clue... I guess the frustration at some of the high-end software companies must be intense.

[Scott Crawley]

The fact that Apple fails to make an official statement to dispell every wild rumor that comes along hardly equates to arrogance. Get a grip.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

The fact that Apple fails to make an official statement to dispell every wild rumor that comes along hardly equates to arrogance. Get a grip.

Why so rude? Several mac magazines have written about Apple possibly abandoning the Mac Pro, citing Apple management. The Xeon E5 is here, but still no news about an update to the only and two year old expandable OSX computer.

[Mike Halper]

Apple management has never stated they're dropping the Mac Pro. It's all rumors and speculation and no one knows what Apple is going to do. This is nothing new. Apple is very very secretive, and it's always the way Apple has been for over a decade now.

And Apple has done nothing to abandon pros. They made a huge screw-up with FCPX, but everything they've done since then has been to add features that only pros have a use for. The features they announced for later this year are features that really only pros have a use for and have ask for, and now Apple it going to provide those features.

Video and media professionals aren't Apple's only professional customers. There's enterprise industries that also use Apple products and Apple has been working to gain those customers for years, and isn't all of a sudden going to reverse that. They've just started to get branches of the government to switch to iPads, iPhones, AND Mac OS X. They need enterprise class hardware for that, and without the Xserve anymore they need to redesign the Mac Pro to serve all "professional" industries, not just video pros.

Again, this is nothing new. There's always been a small gap in product releases when Apple makes a big product transition... OS9 to OSX, G4 to G5, G5 to Intel, even the iPhone 4s had a long delay compared to normal before Apple released it (October instead of June), and most of the rumors prior to the iPhone 4s release were dead wrong on what it was going to be.

[Scott Crawley]

Why so rude?

Why so thin skinned? I'm abrasive sometimes. It happens after I get trampled by a herd of Chicken Littles. Sorry.

[Carter Cammack]

Ivy Bridge CPUs are out, available for order as of today. Maybe this was the holdup.
Curious what GPU they will offer in their PRO line, if there is one. They've always gone with ATI/AMD in the past.
Everyone seems to want the Quadro, but they're getting stale now, and due for an upgrade also.

[Steve Sherrick]

Jeff, I agree with you on a lot of points but the one thing I do question with Apple right now is their ultra secretive policies when it comes to professional level tools. I'm not saying they have to do what RED used to do and announce things way in advance when it's just in the idea stage, I'm speaking about giving professionals who use their systems more of a heads up. FCP X was misplayed, no matter how much PR repair has gone on. I speak to many people who decided to jump ship and felt like Apple went too far in their approach. By not addressing the Mac Pro status up until now, they have once again left people questioning what their next move is. From a PR standpoint, could they not come out and say enough to give their loyal customers some peace of mind. For example, a simple statement to the effect of: "We are not killing the Mac Pro, but we are designing a new professional Mac from the ground up and we feel our professional customers will be very happy when it is revealed." This statement tells us nothing in terms of specs but it allows the collective professional community to breathe a sigh of relief. Same thing could have happened with FCP X. "We are introducing FCP X which we consider a monumental advance in editing software but we acknowledge that for some there will need to be a transition phase and therefore we will continue to support FCP 7 until we feel that transition is happening smoothly. For our customers who are new to editing, we believe you will jump right in and love what we have done".

Apple is on top of the mountain but there is some fog up there. If they are not sure about what they are going to do with Mac Pro (which I don't believe) then that was resolved a while back in my opinion because they have to be in a position right now where they are moving forward with it or have scrapped it. So, rather than leaving people hanging, I do think they need to address this soon. There are too many options for people these days. If they get frustrated enough, they will drop Apple just like many have done with the NLE situation. Apple can have their cake and eat it too by giving people just enough information to keep them loyal.

If this approach continues, I fear Apple will become irrelevant in certain sectors of the professional market. I guess we'll see how they play their hand. If I was running Apple, i'd want to control the whole content game, from creation to distribution, from professionals to consumers. But who knows, maybe their numbers don't support that theory.

Anyway, I'm still an Apple guy but I have to admit, even I'm getting antsy. :-)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Ivy Bridge CPUs are out, available for order as of today. Maybe this was the holdup.
Curious what GPU they will offer in their PRO line, if there is one. They've always gone with ATI/AMD in the past.
Everyone seems to want the Quadro, but they're getting stale now, and due for an upgrade also.

The Ivy Bridge CPUs that just released are those targeted for the low-to-mid range desktop systems, quad-core, small cache. Intel's Sandy Bridge Xeon E5 series shipped on March 30th, so it's new. For the first time in 2 years, we're now seeing new Xeon workstation offerings from HP, Dell, etc.. Unfortunately we don't know where Apple stands on this issue and there's a lot of wild speculation and bogus rumors out there.

@Steve, while I do agree to some extent with the secrecy concerns. This is Apple. I don't see them changing this policy. Look what HP did. They were Jonny On The Spot on March 30th, announcing the new Z-series workstation line-up using the E5 CPUs. Then about 2 weeks later, they started taking orders with systems set to start shipping on the 19th. Only a few have trickled out due to unknown issues. This is HP and they can't get the parts to fulfill system orders and ship product. Dell only announced their systems a week ago and are not yet taking orders. Those are supposed to start shipping by the end of May and they have already stated that quantities will be limited. Doesn't surprise me that, assuming Apple has a system to offer, that they wouldn't say anything just yet.

[Steve Sherrick]

The Ivy Bridge CPUs that just released are those targeted for the low-to-mid range desktop systems, quad-core, small cache. Intel's Sandy Bridge Xeon E5 series shipped on March 30th, so it's new. For the first time in 2 years, we're now seeing new Xeon workstation offerings from HP, Dell, etc.. Unfortunately we don't know where Apple stands on this issue and there's a lot of wild speculation and bogus rumors out there.

@Steve, while I do agree to some extent with the secrecy concerns. This is Apple. I don't see them changing this policy. Look what HP did. They were Jonny On The Spot on March 30th, announcing the new Z-series workstation line-up using the E5 CPUs. Then about 2 weeks later, they started taking orders with systems set to start shipping on the 19th. Only a few have trickled out due to unknown issues. This is HP and they can't get the parts to fulfill system orders and ship product. Dell only announced their systems a week ago and are not yet taking orders. Those are supposed to start shipping by the end of May and they have already stated that quantities will be limited. Doesn't surprise me that, assuming Apple has a system to offer, that they wouldn't say anything just yet.
The thing is, I'm not expecting Apple to announce specs or delivery dates. That's never been in their DNA, even before they exploded in recent years. A simple statement saying they are still in the game is all that's needed. Everything else can be left to secrecy. I know they like to announce product and have it shipping quickly. But they shouldn't screw people over on this one. Give them some heads up. Have one of their journalist buddies make the announcement if they want to. Short, sweet, and not too revealing. Job done, move on to the real work. :-)

[Clay Glendenning]

Tremendous thanks for your input here Jeff. I think the collective professional Mac users are really exhausted of the whole affair. Your insight is extremely helpful, especially regarding the reality of Thunderbolt. I've been researching Thunderbolt, as its real capability was a deciding factor in how I am going to effectively expand a company, and it is really difficult to wade through the BS. I was impressed at NAB, but after further reflection, it just isn't the jack of all trades I hoped for. No fault there on anyone, and I think it will benefit a softer professional market.

I'll keep a Mac around, and to be honest the non-professional line like the MacBook air and new iPad are quality products I use for business and am pleased with. However, the 2008 Mac Pro I am currently typing this message with is going to retire. I'll either sell it or re-purpose it for freelancers. Most of the important upgrades were intended to work well in a PC transition, which I recognized might be needed a few years ago. I may make a Hackintosh compatible PC build, and I'll keep my costs offset/low. I really hope Apple comes out swinging again for professionals and blows my mind.

[Mike Halper]

Ivy Bridge CPUs are out, available for order as of today. Maybe this was the holdup.
Curious what GPU they will offer in their PRO line, if there is one. They've always gone with ATI/AMD in the past.
Everyone seems to want the Quadro, but they're getting stale now, and due for an upgrade also.

Not always. Recently yes, but in the past Nvidia was at least an option and in some models was the default. It's been a while though.

[Subhadip Sen]

Unfortunately, Intel has made a right mess of Sandy Bridge-EP and even till date are struggling to satisfy promised supply. SB-EP was supposed to release in Q4 2011 but was delayed by 6 months due to chipset woes and yield issues. The first instance of the die released as Sandy Bridge-E or Core i7 39xx with 2 cores disabled. SB-EP is far and away the largest die Intel has ever produced for this market - clocking in at 435 mm2. Compare this to Bloomfield and Gulftown which were ~240 and ~260 respectively. It is so large that it can almost be passed off for an EX chip (i.e. Xeon E7). Thanks to the delays, 3 of Intel's largest fabs have already transitioned to 22nm powering Ivy Bridge, which has several times the volume. 32nm is well on its way out and pushing out massive 435 mm2 dies on a dying process is a pretty major issue. Hence, there simply is not enough supply. Intel are struggling to meet demand.

Back to the Mac Pro, much of the blame lies with Intel. As to when a new Mac Pro will ship, that's a different can of worms... I understand the need for secrecy.

I have always believed that it is never wise sitting and waiting around for "the next best thing" in the tech world when you have to get your work done. The only exception is when a product has been announced, shipping within 30 days and you have an upcoming project weeks after that that will benefit from the upgrade. Go for the best solution out there today, one that will let you get your work done as efficiently as possible. In my opinion, speaking from a purely rational perspective, being dictated by a walled garden - any walled garden - is simply not the best option for productivity, and I have learned this the hard way. Sure, Mac Pro may be "good enough", but there are far more powerful and/or cost effective solutions outside the walled garden which guarantee a timely upgrade path. Always has been and always will be. Particularly now that graphics cards are essential for our work. It will help you get your work done faster, save you money and finally lead to a better product. Of course, your emotional needs must be satisfied first - if you are deeply unhappy without an Apple product, then your work simply won't be worthwhile. On the other hand, if you feel you have no emotional connection to your tools, go ahead and check out the options, choice is always a good thing.

[L. Langer]

Not always. Recently yes, but in the past Nvidia was at least an option and in some models was the default. It's been a while though.

It will probably be AMD given that they and Apple are spooning closely together with OpenCL development, which is what both companies are backing and investing in, but they may go both ways since Nvidia supports OpenCL too. Even current Intel GPUs can run OpenCL well, so who knows what Apple will put across their product lines.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

After doing some more research, I agree with Jeff. A new expandable Xeon-based Mac will probably arrive in the late summer/early autumn, maybe earlier, with the "Ivy Bridge"-based Xeon's. In the mean time I'll buy a second hand 2010 Westmere based Mac Pro, or maybe 2009 Nehalm version. In some bench-mark tests the 2009 dual 2.93 ghz quad-core MacPro seems to have the upper edge (on all models minus the 12 core).

Thoughts?

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Puntervold is a happy camper. 8 core 2.4 ghz westmere: 2 800 USD.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

See, I'm not as crazy as people think. :P

The '09 Mac Pro is a great system. I have found the Nehalem units to be totally stable and problem free for the most part. Certainly more reliable than the '08 model I owned three '08 Mac Pro systems and two of them died and were subsequently replaced under AppleCare with newer models. I'm usually not a fan of the whole extended warranty thing, but have found it invaluable on the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro systems.

And yes, the 8-core 2.93GHz holds its own just fine against the current 2010 tower. The only real advantage the 2010 Westmere systems have is the extra memory speed (1333MHz vs 1066MHz), otherwise it's the same logic board and everything. Yeah, there are the extra CPU cores on the 6-core / 12-core models, but they come at a price. You can install Nehalem CPUs into an '09 tower if you want to upgrade, but there's a flag in the system ROM somewhere that you can't change, which identifies the system for what it's intended to be - a 4,1 Mac Pro. Either way, the CPUs work just fine and you gain the extra memory bandwidth as the memory controller is on the CPU and both systems use the same EFI. Upgrading the CPUs just causes the system to mis-report (says Unknown Intel). Admittedly I don't know if there are other issues with it as I've only dabbled a bit, but it's still literally the same logic board. If there are any issues or limitations, they're strictly ROM and/or EFI based.


@ L. Langer -- OpenCL is where it's all headed. CUDA is great and has the technical edge in many ways, but the gap is closing. OpenCL is to GPU computing what OpenGL is to 3D graphics -- an open standard. With OpenCL, no one is locked into one manufacturer and that has been a huge sticking point with workstations here, both Mac and PC. The new ATI 7900 series GPUs have a lot to offer and look great on paper. But they're not a serious purchase consideration for a lot of us because several apps are reliant on nVidia's CUDA. This is finally changing, which we all knew it would, but it's one of those things that didn't have to be this way...

On the flip-side of the coin, nVidia originally offered up CUDA to be the open standard. The rest of the industry pretty much said "thanks, but no thanks" and then fell behind in their wait for OpenCL to come to fruition.


@ Subhadip -- Pretty much agree with everything there you said about Intel's fabs and supplies, emotional attachment, etc.. I think Intel's supply issues right now are mostly getting C600 chipsets out to board manufacturers. It's the motherboards that are in short supply... I can buy E5-2600 CPUs everywhere -- they must have stockpiled them ahead of release since they were not the holdup, but rather the C600 series chips. In addition to that, third-parties are having issues getting the PC3-12800 RDIMMs to market, especially the CAS-10 and faster ones at 8GB and larger sizes. I finally just received some from Micron to put on one of my SuperMicro boards. But I ordered 256GB worth of 8GB modules. They sent me 8 DIMMs so far, so I guess I'll start with 64GB.

The emotional attachment to one platform is understandable. People have to be comfortable with their tools in order to be productive. Personally, I'm very comfortable with both Windows and OSX, so regularly work with both and if Apple pulls up short on a new Pro offering, well, then I guess I won't be buying a whole lot more in terms of Apple systems. I do prefer OSX over Windows for many reasons, primarily my fondness of days spent in SGI Irix and other unix derivative platforms. Coming from the world of SGI, Sun and DEC/Alpha, the walled-garden of Apple doesn't bother me so much. But Windows is still where it's at for the most power and freedom. You still have to build some walls though, to continue with the metaphor... Windows still requires a lot more attention to threat and pest control, virus, worms, malware and spyware.

And I totally agree that waiting around for the next best thing is rarely a good idea. I've always approached system purchases with the same perspective. If I don't need it right now, I don't buy it. When I do need it, I buy the best I can budget for. I try not to make any purchase of rapidly-evolving equipment (like a PC) unless I know I can earn a complete ROI within 12 months. I might stretch that to 18 in extreme circumstances. So on that note, I'm not so sure I sympathize with those who feel they've made a massive investment in one specific platform. All things come to an end at some point and we can't always predict or attempt to know when that might be. Between the HP Z820 inbound and the two other E5 workstations I'm building, I think that does it for me until something better comes along. I'm satisfying a need for a couple new workstations and a client is floating the bill for my Z820 (other peoples' money, yay!!). Beyond that, the whole SB-E5 platform is just not that special.

The PC world may be free and open, but it's also an example of overzealous backward-compatibility and legacy support taken to fanatical levels. As big and powerful as these new Xeon workstations are, they're still starved for PCIe expansion space. Even if they have the slots, it's near impossible to use them all. And then HP and Dell both go and put a legacy 32bit 33MHz PCI slot in there. At least they both positioned it so a dual-width GPU can cover it up. Sure, I understand. Gotta keep the corporate purchase lists satisfied and the oddball business that just can't buy a new system unless they can install some 15 year old interface card for some abstract device... But really, come on. In the top of the line, flagship workstation, is this really necessary?

[FrankMcPartland]

Apple's latest Lion update continues preparations for Retina display Macs:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/10/apples_latest_lion_update_continues_preparations_f or_retina_display_macs.html

[Jeff Kilgroe]

AppleInsider is scraping the bottom of the barrel today. lol... That is some OOOOOOLLLD news. Retina sized icons for just about ever included app and feature in OSX have been there for several developer seeds now.

My bet is the Macbook Air will get the retina displays first. Followed by the Macbook Pro, then iMac... Mac Pro is coming I'm sure, but I still think it will be when Ivy Bridge Xeon CPUs ship. FWIW, I still think the next Mac Pro will be much smaller. The HP Z820 is a good bit smaller than a Mac Pro and holds more drives, more slots, etc..

[Chris Jordan]

Jeff, I agree with you on a lot of points but the one thing I do question with Apple right now is their ultra secretive policies when it comes to professional level tools. I'm not saying they have to do what RED used to do and announce things way in advance when it's just in the idea stage, I'm speaking about giving professionals who use their systems more of a heads up. FCP X was misplayed, no matter how much PR repair has gone on. I speak to many people who decided to jump ship and felt like Apple went too far in their approach. By not addressing the Mac Pro status up until now, they have once again left people questioning what their next move is. From a PR standpoint, could they not come out and say enough to give their loyal customers some peace of mind. For example, a simple statement to the effect of: "We are not killing the Mac Pro, but we are designing a new professional Mac from the ground up and we feel our professional customers will be very happy when it is revealed." This statement tells us nothing in terms of specs but it allows the collective professional community to breathe a sigh of relief. Same thing could have happened with FCP X. "We are introducing FCP X which we consider a monumental advance in editing software but we acknowledge that for some there will need to be a transition phase and therefore we will continue to support FCP 7 until we feel that transition is happening smoothly. For our customers who are new to editing, we believe you will jump right in and love what we have done".

Apple is on top of the mountain but there is some fog up there. If they are not sure about what they are going to do with Mac Pro (which I don't believe) then that was resolved a while back in my opinion because they have to be in a position right now where they are moving forward with it or have scrapped it. So, rather than leaving people hanging, I do think they need to address this soon. There are too many options for people these days. If they get frustrated enough, they will drop Apple just like many have done with the NLE situation. Apple can have their cake and eat it too by giving people just enough information to keep them loyal.

If this approach continues, I fear Apple will become irrelevant in certain sectors of the professional market. I guess we'll see how they play their hand. If I was running Apple, i'd want to control the whole content game, from creation to distribution, from professionals to consumers. But who knows, maybe their numbers don't support that theory.

Anyway, I'm still an Apple guy but I have to admit, even I'm getting antsy. :-)

Exactly what I am about to do... I love my apple system, but stale is the word. What are they thinking keeping it secret or just plain ignoring us? I hate all the crap you deal with, when owning aP/C but $ and power come at a cost, and to me the cost of dealing with those bugs is sounding more and more appealing daily.

[Dmitry Burenok]

In a year or two Apple will abandon of making desktops like MAC PRO. Laptops and iMac will be there for a while. 5 Years maybe. Maybe less. So many other opportunities - TV's (not just set-tops like appletv but real one), remotes, house automation, cellphones and tablets, eventually - kitchen appliances, why not :)

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

FWIW - In November of 2010, after a loooong silence on FCP (this is before the FCP X launch) I looked into my crystal ball and decided to leave behind FCP and the apple tower world. I needed a new computer and a client was offering a free copy of the Creative Suite Master Collection.

After 11 years of FCP and Apple, I jumped.

I built a computer for less than $2k that was superior to a $3400 Mac Pro tower, plus it had Mercury Playback Engine awesomeness.

I hate windows, the only thing good is that there are a lot of cheap old games I can play that I couldn't before, but despite Windows being buggy and counter-intuitive, I haven't regretted my decision once. DIY Windows machine is currently the way to go if you need a tower today. IMHO

Jeff

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

DIY Windows machine is currently the way to go if you need a tower today.

Today? I did that yesterday - I suited me fine back then, but after moving to OSX a couple of years ago, I'm not moving back. New Mac Pro's will come in the late summer/early autumn, in the mean time I bought a second-hand 8 core 2010 MacPro for cheap...

Apple hardware has always been lagging behind at times. Remember pre G5 and pre Intel?

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Apple hardware has always been lagging behind at times. Remember pre G5 and pre Intel?

I remember a spec bump and new stuff every 6 months or so...

[Mark Toia]

I've just had a twin SSD driven / RAMMED to the MAX 17inch Mac book pro made up for me today...

So bloody quick in all areas... screen and work images pushed through a BLACK MAGIC box via thunderbolt then out to a HDMI 10bit AMP splitter to 4 monitors + a 2k pojector (lossless) also including 2x27inche Mac LED's... All out of the same port.

I'm starting to doubt the need of a tower soon.

Food for thought.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

If you only do video... but if you do VFX and unbiased rendering, a computer can never be powerful enough...

[Stephen Townsend]

If you live in a world of gigantic optimism you could tell yourself that the potential new release of the MacPro line is Apple's best kept secret to date and is going to be beyond what any of us have imagined so it's going to wipe the floor so badly with any current PC that the huge market of non-creatives and non-style-hunters are going to move over to them... You never know! If not I can see a lot of people leaving Mac in a similar fashion to how people have left Final Cut but their appeal to the 'trendy-public' will keep plenty of cash rolling for them not to care I imagine.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you only do video... but if you do VFX and unbiased rendering, a computer can never be powerful enough...

Yet another argument against a Mac Pro tower... As great as dual-Xeon systems are and the Mac Pro is a solid workstation amongst mid-range Xeon offerings, if all you care about is raw power, you would be looking at 4-way and 8-way systems and other options like multiple low-cost render nodes in a simple farm or perhaps in a cluster. If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the VFX / CGI world moving forward they need to either come up with some seriously bigger and more scalable offerings. Or they need to streamline the current Mac Pro into something more reasonable. The current design is a decade old and inefficient. Just got a HP Z820 yesterday and it's more compact than the Mac Pro with a lot more room inside, even after the ability to install an optical drive and 7 3.5" HDDs internally, 16 DIMMs, dual liquid-cooled CPUs and 7 expansion slots.

For serious VFX / 3D / animation work, the Mac Pro (and similar PC workstations) are somewhat of a mismatch these days unless you're a one-man-band trying to do everything on one box. I think we'll see another Mac Pro, but it's going to be sleeker, more compact, probably more modular to fit both the low to mid range workstation needs as well as fill that gaping hole that currently exists between the iMac and Mac Pro as we know it.

I think it will happen and I think it will be a great product. But it's not where people are going to look if they want the most CPU horsepower.

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

Obviously, like everyone, I just wish Apple would announce there plans, even if they don't know them A simple "we are working on it" or "Nothing new ever again".

Adobe specifically is really doing some interesting moves with cost, features and speed. They really seem to be listening to what we say as well as thinking of new things on their own. With adobe being platform agnostic...

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Jeff, I mostly agree. But every time the MacPro has been updated, it's been a very good choice as a VFX/3D-workstation, even for Windows users... Lets see what Apple brings us next...

I agree that cluster would be ideal, but I just bought myself a second hand Mac Pro 8 core, added 64 GB ram and a nVidia GTX 580 card for a total below 3500 USD. Not the worst investment, as an interim workstation.

But I plan to add up to 5 render nodes in a cluster, for cheap. They will mostly be used for Maxwell Rendering. Could you give me a suggestion on a cost effective alternative? Rack-mounting is a plus.

Best regards,
Jon M. Puntervold

[Andrew clemson]

I think, unfortunately the higher end user is fast becoming an even smaller share of the overall market than it currently is. This means, as stated before that Apple is more than likely to focus on low to mid-range machines.

In terms of thunderbolt, its enabling me to backup and playback in a much more streamlined kit than I could before, and size and power draw are a big deal for me when Im quite often working out of the back of a 4X4. Id say its super useful, especially in situations like Mark suggested above, which is similar to what I'm doing, although with the AJA ioXT substituted for the BMD box. (has the throughput option) and the T-tap is even smaller!

If the Rocket housings from magma, sonnet or m-link don't work well enough for the occasions when I need transcodes ASAP, then Ill head back to a tower but my MBP setup is suiting 90% of my jobs, and I'm kind of hoping that at worst I will get away with 2 X MBPs..... (would love if somehow I could share a R4 or R6 between two MBPs)

Im definitely not as smart as most of you guys when it comes to this stuff, but in my work scenarios the form factor, power consumption and unified cabling trumps horsepower....

peace.

[Ben McCarthy]

Jeff, I mostly agree. But every time the MacPro has been updated, it's been a very good choice as a VFX/3D-workstation, even for Windows users... Lets see what Apple brings us next...

I agree that cluster would be ideal, but I just bought myself a second hand Mac Pro 8 core, added 64 GB ram and a nVidia GTX 580 card for a total below 3500 USD. Not the worst investment, as an interim workstation.

But I plan to add up to 5 render nodes in a cluster, for cheap. They will mostly be used for Maxwell Rendering. Could you give me a suggestion on a cost effective alternative? Rack-mounting is a plus.

Best regards,
Jon M. Puntervold

Youll need as seperate power supply for the gtx 580 to run It in a macpro

570 is probably the better option

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

Yeah, VFX / 3D workstations are a different beast. I think that is something people (not you, you differentiated) sometimes confuse. I think that there are a few tiers to consider when buying a computer:

The level where you have to convert everything to a different codec to render

The level where R3D's just work in real time without compromise, often with basic effects / color correction but final exports and renders take time ( though faster than it used to be if you line up MPE and Nvidia cards )

The level where you get real time-ish renders / playback even with heavy effects, and just overall faster renders

The prices being sub $1000, sub $2000, and over $4000 respectively. (those numbers are just ballparks, they are for DIY computer builders so someone buying a prebuilt system will pay a lot more, and the numbers don't include software)

For me, I am an editor and color corrector, and my $2000 does everything someone like me needs. I hope Apple is going to step up and offer something exciting, but it really was a one-two KO with the massive dissapointment of FCPX and the huge delays and lack of flexibility with MacPros. ...

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Youll need as seperate power supply for the gtx 580 to run It in a macpro

570 is probably the better option

Damn. I already bought the gtx 580. What kind of power supply is needed?

[Ben McCarthy]

You can install one of these inside the DVD sled

http://www.fspgroupusa.com/boosterx-5/p/417.html

The other problem in the Macpro drops the nvidia cards down to PCIe 1.1 spec rather than 2.0 because of lack of EFI, there's ways of desoldering the bios chip and adding an EFI instead thus turning it into a "mac card" cable of running at full spec.

OSX 10.7.4 breaks support for these cards and you'll have to modify some key texts for them to work properly.

Theres a guy on eBay called MacVideoCards, who's on the Macrumours forums, he's the only one that I've seen offering the EFI solution, you can send in your card and have it modified for under $200.

My plan is to wait for the new Macpro, hopefully there an option for the GTX670 in there and buy the Mac version.

But the MacVideoCards solution seems to be the most effective unless you've got the time and know how to desoldering everything yourself.

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

The GTX 580 should work without an extra power supply, and with OSX 10.7.3 it works without any workarounds or hacks. nVidia will probably come with 10.7.4 drivers for the GTX 5xx..

[Ben McCarthy]

From what I've read there's not enough power, you'd have to down clock it.

Works without any work arounds or hacks but at PCIe 1.1 speeds.

But I'm only quoting what I've read, hopefully it works ok

[FrankMcPartland]

Gizmodo: Report: New MacBook Pros Will Be Retina Display, USB 3.0 Monster Machines

http://gizmodo.com/5910010/report-new-macbook-pros-will-be-retina-display-usb-30-monster-machines

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The PCIe downgrade to 1.1 speeds is NOT true. Not sure where you read that. Plenty of PCIe cards out there don't have an EFI firmware on them and there's no downgrading of their status because of that. Not having Mac EFI support on the video card only means that you can't do tasks outside the OS before specific drivers load -- like Option-Boot to choose which drive partition to start from or to run the OSX installer, etc..

The GTX580 does indeed draw more power than what is spec'd in the Mac Pro power profile. However it does work, just be aware that you could overdraw and cook your logic board or overload your PSU if you have the system fully loaded up otherwise. If it's a stock GTX580, you should be fine. A more hopped-up version like the SuperClocked cards or the EVGA Classified Ultra model is probably too much. I have a couple of those here and my try one just for grins when I get a chance.

Stick with OSX 10.7.3 and the current drivers from nVidia.com. 10.7.4 will break those drivers, we'll have to wait for an update from nVidia before updating the OS. Be sure to install the drivers first, then power down and install the GTX card.

[Ben McCarthy]

The PCIe downgrade to 1.1 speeds is NOT true. Not sure where you read that. Plenty of PCIe cards out there don't have an EFI firmware on them and there's no downgrading of their status because of that.

If you could confirm you can run GPU-Z on bootcamp? Not sure if the Bus Interface comes up in System Profiler.

[Ben McCarthy]

Btw nvidia had updated the drivers for 10.7.4

Though no GTX 670-690 drivers yet.

It looks like Nvidia is serious about Apple finally

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-270.00.00f06-driver.html

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you could confirm you can run GPU-Z on bootcamp? Not sure if the Bus Interface comes up in System Profiler.

No point in running CPU-Z or booting to Windows if we're trying to determine operability within OSX...

Link speed is shown in Profiler -- 2.5GT/s for PCIe 1.x and 5GT/s for PCIe 2.0.


Not that I really have time to do it, but I'm as curious as anyone else on this one. I've got an EVGA GTX580 Classified Ultra (45MHz Overclock) sitting here just begging me to try it in a Mac Pro. I'll do that here shortly. :)


One thing that these other GPUs do, and this is a driver issue, is the nVidia drivers (unless the update the other day fixes it for 10.7.4), is cap their RAM usage at 2GB. I don't know if that's global or just for CUDA, but there is a cap...

[Will Keir]

Can anyone confirm the GTX 580 actually works on Mac Pros without workarounds or hacks?


The GTX 580 should work without an extra power supply, and with OSX 10.7.3 it works without any workarounds or hacks. nVidia will probably come with 10.7.4 drivers for the GTX 5xx..

[Will Keir]

I've got an EVGA GTX580 Classified Ultra (45MHz Overclock) sitting here just begging me to try it in a Mac Pro. I'll do that here shortly. :)


I look forward to that test Jeff. Looks like my GTX 285 mac edition is starting to go out on me and I'll need a replacement. Not sure if I should go for another 285 or the 580. This is a computer that runs boot camp.

[Grant H]

Can anyone confirm the GTX 580 actually works on Mac Pros without workarounds or hacks?

With 10.7.3 it'll run just fine with no flashing, hacking or editing.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I spoke too soon on my GTX580 CLASSIFIED ULTRA test... I forgot it REQUIRES one 6-pin and *two* 8-pin power connectors. I went ahead and installed it and tried to power it with what I could come up with, but the system wouldn't come up / post at all. For a brief moment, I had visions of trying to adapt another power connector for the card from the 4 drive bays. And while I have PhD in redneck engineering and jury rigging, I still lacked enough of the necessary connectors and began to question whether this was really a good way to spend my afternoon.

Here's a pic of the card just before I slotted it into an otherwise card-free '09 Mac Pro. And a close-up of the connectors. Yes, all are indeed required. A stock GTX580 requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin and a simple 6 to 8 pin adapter on one of the onboard PCIe power connectors will do the trick. Just be aware that it does over-draw that connector a bit the way it's distributed through the logic board.

[Matt Ryan]

I spoke too soon on my GTX580 CLASSIFIED ULTRA test... I forgot it REQUIRES one 6-pin and *two* 8-pin power connectors. I went ahead and installed it and tried to power it with what I could come up with, but the system wouldn't come up / post at all. For a brief moment, I had visions of trying to adapt another power connector for the card from the 4 drive bays. And while I have PhD in redneck engineering and jury rigging, I still lacked enough of the necessary connectors and began to question whether this was really a good way to spend my afternoon.

Here's a pic of the card just before I slotted it into an otherwise card-free '09 Mac Pro. And a close-up of the connectors. Yes, all are indeed required. A stock GTX580 requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin and a simple 6 to 8 pin adapter on one of the onboard PCIe power connectors will do the trick. Just be aware that it does over-draw that connector a bit the way it's distributed through the logic board.

Hey Jeff,
Does the GTX560 work in a mac pro? It uses 2 6 pin power connectors and I'm looking to upgrade from the GTX470 for my Mac Pro

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hey Jeff,
Does the GTX560 work in a mac pro? It uses 2 6 pin power connectors and I'm looking to upgrade from the GTX470 for my Mac Pro

560 should work just fine, with the same caveats mentioned above for non-mac cards or same restrictions you currently have with the 470 card. Although the 560 really has nothing to offer over a 470 in terms of compute power for CUDA or overall OpenGL performance. Advantage to the 560 would be if you're a gamer running bootcamp and want to capitalize on newer shader and fx features.

[Matt Ryan]

560 should work just fine, with the same caveats mentioned above for non-mac cards or same restrictions you currently have with the 470 card. Although the 560 really has nothing to offer over a 470 in terms of compute power for CUDA or overall OpenGL performance. Advantage to the 560 would be if you're a gamer running bootcamp and want to capitalize on newer shader and fx features.

what budget friendly cuda card would you recommend as an upgrade to my 470?

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Jeff, this is the card I'm awaiting for my 8-core MacPro 5.1: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=03G-P3-1584-AR&family=GeForce 500 Series Family

I guess it's pretty standard version - that should run without extra power, or what do you think?

[Ben McCarthy]

No point in running CPU-Z or booting to Windows if we're trying to determine operability within OSX...

Link speed is shown in Profiler -- 2.5GT/s for PCIe 1.x and 5GT/s for PCIe 2.0.


Not that I really have time to do it, but I'm as curious as anyone else on this one. I've got an EVGA GTX580 Classified Ultra (45MHz Overclock) sitting here just begging me to try it in a Mac Pro. I'll do that here shortly. :)


One thing that these other GPUs do, and this is a driver issue, is the nVidia drivers (unless the update the other day fixes it for 10.7.4), is cap their RAM usage at 2GB. I don't know if that's global or just for CUDA, but there is a cap...

I think you'll find it only is 2.5GT/s for both Windows and Mac.

A lot of people run dual configs on MacPros.

Also I find it strange that you say it will work but haven't even tested it???

Getting my info from multiple posters who have actually installed the card on their MacPros.

Good luck to everyone but I think you'll are going to be a little annoyed that it doesn't run at full speed, will most likely need a separate power supply like I said.

The Nvidia GTX570 is the best fit for the MacPro an all the cards need the extra power cables on the later model MacPros as they use Sata power on the DVD drives.

[Martin Weiss]

We might need a Ask Jeff Anything thread... ;)

[Martin Widerberg]

Not a bad idea, Martin...:)

[Jose Lomeña]

We might need a Ask Jeff Anything thread... ;)

+1.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I think you'll find it only is 2.5GT/s for both Windows and Mac.

A lot of people run dual configs on MacPros.

Also I find it strange that you say it will work but haven't even tested it???

Getting my info from multiple posters who have actually installed the card on their MacPros.

I have actually tested it, or have tested off the shelf cards in some capacity with the 10.7.3 nVidia drivers. The card I have available that I had not tested was the EVGA CLASSIFIED ULTRA and I decided to give it a go. It was a no-go due to the power requirements I wasn't thinking of when I started. You're right though, I personally have not tested another GTX580 card. I know of others who are running them and up to this point, you're the first person I've seen mention the lower link speed.

As for that link speed, a lack of EFI interface should not automatically dumb it down to PCIe 1.x speeds. If that is happening with some cards, there must be some specific reason why -- something beyond just not having an EFI. We all use plenty of non-EFI cards in Macs that don't get dumbed-down to slower speeds. It does not happen with the cards I have actually tested under these conditions, but I admit that is a very limited scope. The PNY GTX480 works at 5GT/s, so does the Quadro 6000. However, the Quadro 6000 won't show its 6GB, only 2GB.

I'll re-do the Quadro 6000 test at some point in the next 24 hours when I pull one from my Z820 to test the GTX580 cards there. I would happily test another GTX580 card if I had one to fit within the power confines of the Mac Pro. I don't have one in my possession at the moment, no plans on picking up a $400+ video card just for the sake of a test, either. I'll see if I can borrow or scrounge one up though.


Jeff, this is the card I'm awaiting for my 8-core MacPro 5.1: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=03G-P3-1584-AR&family=GeForce 500 Series Family

I guess it's pretty standard version - that should run without extra power, or what do you think?


In terms of power, it should work. You will need a 6pin to 8pin adapter for one of your onboard PCIe power connectors. Just be aware that it does over-draw the power leg for that connector running through the logic board. And drivers will run it as long as nVidia continues support for it in their driver set and keeps those drivers compatible with new OSX updates. I can't comment on the latest 10.7.4 update and compatible drivers, but under 10.7.3, you most likely will not see all 3GB of onboard memory, only 2GB.

According to Ben, you may not be able to run the card at full speed, only PCIe 1.1 2.5GT/s speed... I have not experienced that in my limited testing and I see no logical reason why that would be so, but I guess it's a possibility. If that does indeed happen, I would love to try and figure out why... If it's a GTX580 issue, or issue with similar cards, I would suspect inadequate power. Otherwise it would be a conspiracy of sorts if the Mac EFI were detecting non-approved video devices and crippling them in a real-world case of the man holding us down. ;)

[Subhadip Sen]

If you could confirm you can run GPU-Z on bootcamp? Not sure if the Bus Interface comes up in System Profiler.
Graphics cards drop down to PCIe 1.1 in idle state to save power on Windows. GPU-Z will show PCIe 1.1 at idle. If you have one of the newer versions, you will find a "?" next to it to trigger a load test, which will bring it up back to PCIe 2.0 (or 3.0 for GTX 600 / Radeon 7000 on a PCIe 3.0 motherboard). Maybe that is what you are seeing?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OK, went ahead and threw the Quadro 6000 into the Mac Pro tower and ran a couple tests...

PCIe card reporting is not working, just giving an error collecting PCIe data, or so it says.

As expected, the memory amount is being reported as 2GB, which probably has something to do with the PCIe reporting issue.

OSX 10.7.3 and associated drivers from nVidia.com used. Probably should have updated to 10.7.4 and latest drivers, but I didn't. Not sure if I will bother since I'd have to swap cards in and out to do the updates and this system is ready to go on the auction block anyway.

Quadro 6000 card seems to be stuck in low-power / idle mode. I can't get it's fan to ramp up and performance is snappy for 2D tasks, but 3D i showing no advantage over a Quadro 4000 Mac card. Cinebench OpenGL test score is 48.74 -- which is only 0.2 fps faster than what I get with the Quadro 4000. Loading Modo or Lightwave the performance is just fine, but I can't seem to do any better animation playback speeds than I can with the Quadro 4000 Mac card. The drivers seem to have no proper support for load monitoring, fan control, etc..

I will try to update to the 10.7.4 and latest nVidia drivers soon here and will try a couple GeForce cards. As of this posting, the Quadro 6000 "works", but other than basic functionality, I can't say that it truly works.



...update. I put the Quadro 4000 Mac card in slot 2 and connected the monitor to that. PCIe reporting in OSX is still broken with the Quadro 6000 in there. With a proper Mac card in the system I have EFI support for video so I could run some diagnostic tools. Diagnostics are reporting PCIe 2.0 link speeds for both cards.

There is a good chance the Quadro card is dropping link speed within OSX if it's stuck in an idle mode, which it seems to be. But no way to tell as within OSX I can't get PCIe reporting in profiler to pull up at all: "There was an error while gathering PCI card information."

[Bryant Swanstrom]

https://www.facebook.com/MacProsPlease

[Grant H]

OK, went ahead and threw the Quadro 6000 into the Mac Pro tower and ran a couple tests...

PCIe card reporting is not working, just giving an error collecting PCIe data, or so it says.

As expected, the memory amount is being reported as 2GB, which probably has something to do with the PCIe reporting issue.

OSX 10.7.3 and associated drivers from nVidia.com used. Probably should have updated to 10.7.4 and latest drivers, but I didn't. Not sure if I will bother since I'd have to swap cards in and out to do the updates and this system is ready to go on the auction block anyway.

Quadro 6000 card seems to be stuck in low-power / idle mode. I can't get it's fan to ramp up and performance is snappy for 2D tasks, but 3D i showing no advantage over a Quadro 4000 Mac card. Cinebench OpenGL test score is 48.74 -- which is only 0.2 fps faster than what I get with the Quadro 4000. Loading Modo or Lightwave the performance is just fine, but I can't seem to do any better animation playback speeds than I can with the Quadro 4000 Mac card. The drivers seem to have no proper support for load monitoring, fan control, etc..

I will try to update to the 10.7.4 and latest nVidia drivers soon here and will try a couple GeForce cards. As of this posting, the Quadro 6000 "works", but other than basic functionality, I can't say that it truly works.



...update. I put the Quadro 4000 Mac card in slot 2 and connected the monitor to that. PCIe reporting in OSX is still broken with the Quadro 6000 in there. With a proper Mac card in the system I have EFI support for video so I could run some diagnostic tools. Diagnostics are reporting PCIe 2.0 link speeds for both cards.

There is a good chance the Quadro card is dropping link speed within OSX if it's stuck in an idle mode, which it seems to be. But no way to tell as within OSX I can't get PCIe reporting in profiler to pull up at all: "There was an error while gathering PCI card information."

Please do upgrade to 10.7.4 and report your findings. I hear Apple have included a few GFX changes in terms of PnP Compatibility and OpenCL? I may be guestimating way above my head.

G

[Will Keir]

Definitely. In addition to all the help he provides us, a sticky of this nature my net him some attention from hardware developers. Perhaps they could send him gear free gear to provide feedback to us.


We might need a Ask Jeff Anything thread... ;)

[Paul E. McCarthy]

OK, went ahead and threw the Quadro 6000 into the Mac Pro tower and ran a couple tests...

PCIe card reporting is not working, just giving an error collecting PCIe data, or so it says.

As expected, the memory amount is being reported as 2GB, which probably has something to do with the PCIe reporting issue.

OSX 10.7.3 and associated drivers from nVidia.com used. Probably should have updated to 10.7.4 and latest drivers, but I didn't. Not sure if I will bother since I'd have to swap cards in and out to do the updates and this system is ready to go on the auction block anyway.

Quadro 6000 card seems to be stuck in low-power / idle mode. I can't get it's fan to ramp up and performance is snappy for 2D tasks, but 3D i showing no advantage over a Quadro 4000 Mac card. Cinebench OpenGL test score is 48.74 -- which is only 0.2 fps faster than what I get with the Quadro 4000. Loading Modo or Lightwave the performance is just fine, but I can't seem to do any better animation playback speeds than I can with the Quadro 4000 Mac card. The drivers seem to have no proper support for load monitoring, fan control, etc..

I will try to update to the 10.7.4 and latest nVidia drivers soon here and will try a couple GeForce cards. As of this posting, the Quadro 6000 "works", but other than basic functionality, I can't say that it truly works.



...update. I put the Quadro 4000 Mac card in slot 2 and connected the monitor to that. PCIe reporting in OSX is still broken with the Quadro 6000 in there. With a proper Mac card in the system I have EFI support for video so I could run some diagnostic tools. Diagnostics are reporting PCIe 2.0 link speeds for both cards.

There is a good chance the Quadro card is dropping link speed within OSX if it's stuck in an idle mode, which it seems to be. But no way to tell as within OSX I can't get PCIe reporting in profiler to pull up at all: "There was an error while gathering PCI card information."

I heard a rumor that the RED Rocket might go away and all its abilities can be done by the Nvidia GPUs. Is that even possible?

[L. Langer]

I heard a rumor that the RED Rocket might go away and all its abilities can be done by the Nvidia GPUs. Is that even possible?

Yes, it is. The Rocket is just a specialized CPU video processing board that operates just like a Tesla card does. Using an Nvidia Maximus configuration, you can whoop some serious ass, but it would probably be more expensive than the RED Rocket. If RED buys another hardware design from DVS (The RED Rocket is based on their board) to replace the Rocket, it will be something like their current Atomix HDMI card.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The real trick with accelerating R3D work is faster performance for the wavelet decompression. This is where most of the intensive processing happens, not in the "debayer" process. Generally speaking, GPUs as we see in the form of the nVidia Fermi architecture, are not well suited to decoding wavelets. They rock when it comes to processing bayer data and pushing pixels around... So that's one big reason we haven't seen GPU acceleration for R3D with the actual R3D and wavelet decode taking place on the Rocket or only in the CPUs.

There's a new game in town though. Both AMD/ATI and nVidia are doing it -- moving to larger numbers of stream processors (cores) on their GPUs, but these cores are "lighter weight" and not capable of the same intense computations on an individual level. We're seeing much higher memory bandwidth and overall throughput, for single precision operations, the new nVidia Kepler architecture is several times faster than the Fermi architecture.

I think the upcoming Tesla K-series GPUs will be promising candidates for accelerating R3D wavelet decoding -- especially the Tesla K20 single or double-precision model. Granted, it's initial street price will be as expensive as a full-priced Rocket, but I think it has the potential to actually do the task and surpass what the Rocket can do. On paper, anyway... And we haven't even seen the full specs from nVidia yet. The K10 single-precision model is essentially a Tesla version of the GTX690 hardware with 4GB RAM per each of the two onboard GPUs. It's supposed to ship by the end of this month, the K20 ships 4th quarter and we should have full specs in a couple months.

Another factor that's moving us closer to more mainstream processing and acceleration options is that nVidia has made great strides with CUDA lately -- evening out performance and precision, at least amongst GPUs within the same family.

[Subhadip Sen]

The real trick with accelerating R3D work is faster performance for the wavelet decompression. This is where most of the intensive processing happens, not in the "debayer" process. Generally speaking, GPUs as we see in the form of the nVidia Fermi architecture, are not well suited to decoding wavelets. They rock when it comes to processing bayer data and pushing pixels around... So that's one big reason we haven't seen GPU acceleration for R3D with the actual R3D and wavelet decode taking place on the Rocket or only in the CPUs.

There's a new game in town though. Both AMD/ATI and nVidia are doing it -- moving to larger numbers of stream processors (cores) on their GPUs, but these cores are "lighter weight" and not capable of the same intense computations on an individual level. We're seeing much higher memory bandwidth and overall throughput, for single precision operations, the new nVidia Kepler architecture is several times faster than the Fermi architecture.

I think the upcoming Tesla K-series GPUs will be promising candidates for accelerating R3D wavelet decoding -- especially the Tesla K20 single or double-precision model. Granted, it's initial street price will be as expensive as a full-priced Rocket, but I think it has the potential to actually do the task and surpass what the Rocket can do. On paper, anyway... And we haven't even seen the full specs from nVidia yet. The K10 single-precision model is essentially a Tesla version of the GTX690 hardware with 4GB RAM per each of the two onboard GPUs. It's supposed to ship by the end of this month, the K20 ships 4th quarter and we should have full specs in a couple months.

Another factor that's moving us closer to more mainstream processing and acceleration options is that nVidia has made great strides with CUDA lately -- evening out performance and precision, at least amongst GPUs within the same family.

Encoders like CUJ2K does prove wavelet encoding (JPEG2000 no less) can be assisted by the GPU. RED just needs to integrate it into their SDK. ATI/AMD has been following that approach since 2007, Nvidia has finally followed suit and it is working out very well for them. The cores are not really "lighter weight" - they are smaller because they are clocked much lower, but overall the 50% downclock is more than offset by the 200% density increase so it works out well. What is slashed out of GK104 / GTX 680 is CUDA registers, FP64 units, load/store units and cache structure (versus GTX 580) to optimize gaming performance at the expense of compute. It had to be done, AMD had held a massive lead in performance / die size / power since 2007. It was pretty bad in 2008 where AMD 4870 (250 mm2 die) would beat a GTX 260 (576 mm2), and 2008 is when GK104 was conceived.

Not so for GK110 / K20. It brings back 2880 single precision / FP32 CUDA cores but introduces 960 double precision / FP64 cores (as opposed to 64 for GK104). There are 32x as many compute registers, 8x load/store units, and cache is back up to 1.5 MB. GTX 680 had exactly the same memory bandwidth as GTX 580, GK110 increases memory bus to 384-bit and hopefully a 50% memory bandwidth advantage. There's no doubt about it, GK110 is a compute monster and is easily the biggest production chip ever made. I mean... 7.1 billion transistors! That's 3 times Sandy Bridge-E 8 core! Highly doubt we will ever see it as Quadro, let alone GeForce. It seems built for compute for ground up. It is obviously a response to Intel's MIC Knights Corner, which still looks more attractive on paper.

The biggest advantage is it is x86 based, so you don't need CUDA or OpenCL (although it does support OpenCL)- the same R3D decode as it exists today can be accelerated massively by Intel MIC. For applications like wavelet decode that don't gain much from GPU architectures, Intel MIC will be the clear winner over Tesla or Firestream. Going by specs and comparing to dual Xeon E5 performance, I would say a single Knights Corner would be good for decoding at least 12 streams of 5K in real-time. The bottleneck will probably be PCIe bandwidth and not the MIC, so PCIe 3.0 x16 could be a must. Once again, using the very same x86 code as your CPU. Watch out for Knights Corner in late 2012, it should cost as much as a Rocket, outperform it by a dozen times at what it does best (actually, the only thing it does) and do a whole lot more a Rocket never could.

PS: I just realized we are way off-topic! I highly doubt Nvidia will ever officially support Tesla on OS X.

[Paul E. McCarthy]

So basically in short you guys don't see a red rocket card hanging around much longer..
The Knights Corner seems like pretty a big deal. Could apple implement these into the new Mac Pros by 2013 and call it a night for another 10 years. What kind of mother board are we talking here?

[L. Langer]

So basically in short you guys don't see a red rocket card hanging around much longer..
The Knights Corner seems like pretty a big deal. Could apple implement these into the new Mac Pros by 2013 and call it a night for another 10 years. What kind of mother board are we talking here?

Intel loves OpenCL.
Apple loves OpenCL.
Intel's MIC works with OpenCL.
Only time will tell if those add-in boards ever make it into Apple's ecosystem but they would be stupid not to let them in as it would allow Apple to get some market share in areas where they have either lost ground or not been a contender.

[Will Keir]

Do you think that a RR will be relevant in a year? Should I wait or buy a RR now, I know at this point they are quite old, don't want to be left out in the cold on a refresh. This is for use in a Mac Pro.


Yes, it is. The Rocket is just a specialized CPU video processing board that operates just like a Tesla card does. Using an Nvidia Maximus configuration, you can whoop some serious ass, but it would probably be more expensive than the RED Rocket. If RED buys another hardware design from DVS (The RED Rocket is based on their board) to replace the Rocket, it will be something like their current Atomix HDMI card.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

@ Subhadip, I had not seen the specs for the G110 / K20 yet. Seems promising. I keep forgetting about Knights Corner too...

Will.. As for the Rocket, I do think it will be very relevant still in a year from now. Lots of promising technologies coming along, but like all these things, it takes time for them to reach the market, settle into the market, etc.. The Rocket is available now and is a known quantity. Even in the latest dual Xeon E5 systems, that can decode 4K/5K R3Ds in full quality, real time, the Rocket still offers an advantage. Anything that can be done to offload work from the CPUs and speed up the process is usually welcome in most workflows. You also say this is for a Mac Pro. Chances are moving forward that a lot of the exciting new technologies will need new platforms -- PCIe 3.0 X16 for K20 for sure, stuff that's not available in a Mac Pro at this time. I think the only reason you wouldn't want a Rocket is if your work load is very small and you don't feel it would ROI itself within the next year.

Try and pick up a battle-tested one from RED. They come and go from the store, maybe call them to see, best deal going right now for RED post, iMO...

[Will Keir]

Thanks Jeff.

[Paul E. McCarthy]

Jeff
Can you build a Knight Corner Mac Mini with thunder bolt, USB 3, and PCI 3.0 x16?....
That would be perfect for set....joke.

This all very interesting.

In my experience the biggest problem with the RED workflow is the fragility of the RED Rocket. I've sent back quite a few they don't transport well and DITs hate lugging around towers.. If you can debayer on the GPU of an iMac or a Z1 in real time you simplify everything for RED and it takes pressure off apple putting out another Mac Pro. With no Rocket, we no longer need that additional x16 slot, just thunderbolt to run some SDI break outs and you're pretty stylin'. You really don't need the tower anymore....Maybe there really won't be another Mac Pro...

[L. Langer]

Do you think that a RR will be relevant in a year? Should I wait or buy a RR now, I know at this point they are quite old, don't want to be left out in the cold on a refresh. This is for use in a Mac Pro.

If it works with the software and does what it's supposed to do at a price you find acceptable, it's relevant. RED IS looking at a replacement for the Rocket card and that is all we know at this point. It's your call but I would play the waiting game for the time being until the options are more clear with what is coming out. Assuming you don't have any pressing need for a RED Rocket card.

[Paul E. McCarthy]

Check this out link. Knight Corner seems like its right around the corner and coming to kick Tesla's ass..

http://lenzfire.com/2011/11/intel-says-mic-will-be-powerful-than-gpus-in-parallel-computing-32261/

[L. Langer]

Well, they are completely worthless unless Adobe and Apple work with Intel to adapt their respective software packages to the capabilities of the boards. As far as we know, that's not happening at all though it would be logical for them to do it, at least for the purposes of having something to crow about in news write-ups just as Nvidia had Adobe using it's multi-card Tesla setups for demos/benchmarks.

[Brian Merlen]

true story:

i was in my local apple store today to buy a raid and the employee didn't know the mac pro has no thunderbolt. he also didn't know if they sold the legacy ports for that seagate drive that has thunderbolt (i would of bought it then and there if he had the legacy adapter for non thunderbolt). he also kept talking about the macbook pro every time i talked about the mac pro. talk about a total disappointment lol...


at one point i told him "don't you guys know professionals need a new mac pro" he then tried to make me sign up for the business account with them. arghhh why won't they just release it...and perhaps get people to know a tad more about the professional gear and a tad less about the stupid itoys.... anyway rant over guys thanks for letting me get that off my chest....

[Sergio Perez]

Guys, the online facebook "we want a new Macpro" page is now 13 000 people strong and has been reported in sites such as Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/05/29/apple-fans-want-a-product-the-company-wont-make/

I would suggest everyone to keep pushing and sending feedback to apple at:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html

We successfully got Apple to commit to R3D editing in an upcoming release of FCPX, lets push them to create a true Mac Pro tower with Thunderbolt, multiple PCi 3.0 slots and the latest CPU's and Ram possibilities to keep our businesses running on OSX. They need to listen!

[Steve Sherrick]

Guys, the online facebook "we want a new Macpro" page is now 13 000 people strong and has been reported in sites such as Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/05/29/apple-fans-want-a-product-the-company-wont-make/

I would suggest everyone to keep pushing and sending feedback to apple at:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html

We successfully got Apple to commit to R3D editing in an upcoming release of FCPX, lets push them to create a true Mac Pro tower with Thunderbolt, multiple PCi 3.0 slots and the latest CPU's and Ram possibilities to keep our businesses running on OSX. They need to listen!
Although the effort is admirable, unfortunately the reality is that Apple doesn't have to listen. If the Mac Pro is not going to generate profit and Apple truly does believe that the days of towers are numbered, then at best there may be one more Mac Pro. I think Apple's eyes are on the prize right now and they are focused on growth. I do hope I'm wrong.

[Terry VerHaar]

The fact that Apple is adding support for R3Ds in FCPX doesn't necessarily mean that it was because of any communication by Redusers. They supported it in earlier versions of FCP, before anyone "petitioned" them. I'd suspect it was on the roadmap all the along. Coincidence more than causality.

As for the MacPro - I am sure Steve is right; Apple will do what is good for Apple.

[Tim Sutherland]

Also, it takes Apple at least 2 years to develop a new computer from the ground up, so requesting this now if you think they're already abandoning it won't do much good for a couple years. And if they already started one, well, then its already in the works.

Tim

[Sergio Perez]

You guys remind me of these guys :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I&feature=related

[joe hedge]

Reliable source says no chance Apple will ax Mac Pro

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/31/reliable_source_says_no_chance_apple_will_ax_mac_p ro.html

[Clint Engler]

Don't hold your breath They always take their sweet time on this stuff

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

https://www.facebook.com/MacProsPlease

[Dmitry Burenok]

14,000 requests so far... Pretty bad sign for Apple - not much reason to create product for almost non-existent market. Waste of time and money. On other side - billions of people waiting for new more shiny iPhone/iPad - definitely way to go :)

[Subhadip Sen]

Watched Tim Cook's D10 session a few days back and he mentioned a very important point and a key reason to Apple's heightened brand value. If there was ever a product that wasn't greatly successful, they don't hesitate to kill it and move on, instead re-allocating the team from that project onto a more successful and profitable one.

Cook noted that the only real exception to this was Apple TV. Note - it doesn't have to make a loss or be completely unsuccessful. Apple has killed many products in the past which were profitable but there was a parallel line which was even more so. The last product line which "disappeared" was Macbook, it unceremoniously vanished from the stores one fine day after not being updated for a long while. By no means a failure, but Macbook Air was simply a more attractive line to focus on.

Obviously, this may have nothing to do with Mac Pro, and I still expect some product above the iMac to make it to Apple Store sometime (mostly to support the ecosystem), but just something to consider. It won't be terribly surprising if they did indeed kill the Mac Pro line.

[Glen David Miller]

One thing that's starting to drive me crazy is talk of the Post PC. Okay, yes, I own an ipad. I own an iphone. And a few years ago I switched over to a Mac Pro simply because I was tired of dealing with all the PC nonsense. And this is coming from one of the first CG animators, someone who loved building computers in the garage. I worked on Titanic, Star Trek an a whole lotta other things and it got to the point that I wanted to stop building machines and start creating art with the machines.

Now that my whole array of software is working on the Mac (except for one app), It drives me crazy to hear on one side, "Oh, you know the Mac Pro will be killed off," and the other, "The tablet is the PC of the future."

Well, the ipad is great. But I do more with my computer than browse websites, write e-mail and dabble with hobby photo editors. There are no professional tools for the ipad. And it will be years before any appear. And when they do, I'll probably want a mouse, a stylus and a keyboard to use them!

You can't change out the video card of an ipad, nor an iMac. That's sort of key for what I do (3D, video editing, photoshop, animation, etc). You can't add a second HD to an iMac without pulling the machine apart or stacking yet another external drive on the desk. And I also haven't found a way to hook up my 30" monitors to the ipad.

So, I hope everyone who professes the death of the expandable tower is dead wrong in their opinion.

And if they're right, I hope Apple is smart enough to offer OSX to the PC world. Tell me what cards you like and I'll (UGH) build my own mac. Whatever the case.... I not only want it.... I need it.

-Glen

[FrankMcPartland]

Pre-WWDC flurry: updates expected for most Macs, but wither Mac Pro?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/pre-wwdc-flurry-updates-expected-for-most-macs-but-wither-mac-pro/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Te chnica+-+All+content%29

[Corey Culp]

One thing that's starting to drive me crazy is talk of the Post PC. Okay, yes, I own an ipad. I own an iphone. And a few years ago I switched over to a Mac Pro simply because I was tired of dealing with all the PC nonsense. And this is coming from one of the first CG animators, someone who loved building computers in the garage. I worked on Titanic, Star Trek an a whole lotta other things and it got to the point that I wanted to stop building machines and start creating art with the machines.

Now that my whole array of software is working on the Mac (except for one app), It drives me crazy to hear on one side, "Oh, you know the Mac Pro will be killed off," and the other, "The tablet is the PC of the future."

Well, the ipad is great. But I do more with my computer than browse websites, write e-mail and dabble with hobby photo editors. There are no professional tools for the ipad. And it will be years before any appear. And when they do, I'll probably want a mouse, a stylus and a keyboard to use them!

You can't change out the video card of an ipad, nor an iMac. That's sort of key for what I do (3D, video editing, photoshop, animation, etc). You can't add a second HD to an iMac without pulling the machine apart or stacking yet another external drive on the desk. And I also haven't found a way to hook up my 30" monitors to the ipad.

So, I hope everyone who professes the death of the expandable tower is dead wrong in their opinion.

And if they're right, I hope Apple is smart enough to offer OSX to the PC world. Tell me what cards you like and I'll (UGH) build my own mac. Whatever the case.... I not only want it.... I need it.

-Glen

Great points, Glen. Even if OS X were to come at a premium (with similar pricing of Windows), it would be a very nice option.

[joe hedge]

Apple Pulls Mac Pro Stocks from Most Retail Stores Ahead of WWDC

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/05/apple-pulls-mac-pro-stocks-from-most-retail-stores-ahead-of-wwdc/

[FrankMcPartland]

Mac Pro to Finally See Updates Next Week
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/05/mac-pro-to-finally-see-updates-next-week/

[Jeremiah Kuehne]

My day was just made. Thank you.

[Bob Gundu]

Allocating funds....

[Jeff Kilgroe]

New systems are coming... Can't comment on the Mac Pro as I don't have any details beyond potential product codes posted at the rumor sites. But it looks like there's also product numbers for Macbook Pro and Macbook Air systems too. One of my sources (who has proven very reliable) is saying the new MB Airs will sport retina displays, all new systems have Thunderbolt, USB3.0 and Ethernet (no Ethernet on the Air systems). And all have dropped support for FW800.

I'm getting so many conflicting reports and wild-ass rumors about specs on the new systems, there's jus no way to tell if any are legit. Some of the rumors are very believable and even exciting, but I think we'll have to wait for WWDC to open.

One interesting rumor that I have heard from three sources now is that the "Mac Pro" is dead, it's not the "Mac Pro" anymore. Apple will supposedly reintroduce a new system line that they will call the new "Mac". Prices start out about the same as the 27" iMac or even a bit less and ramp up as you add more options. I don't know how credible that rumor is, but it seems likely and seems a very Apple thing to do. Also seems to play into the hands of all those "no more Mac Pro" rumors that people who supposedly are in the know have been spouting for months.

[Joe Kleber]

I wish they would give us a dual CPU option on the new Macbook Pro. I'd be OK with them keeping the current form factor, if needed.

...looking forward to it, nonetheless.

[Sergio Perez]

One interesting rumor that I have heard from three sources now is that the "Mac Pro" is dead, it's not the "Mac Pro" anymore. Apple will supposedly reintroduce a new system line that they will call the new "Mac". Prices start out about the same as the 27" iMac or even a bit less and ramp up as you add more options. I don't know how credible that rumor is, but it seems likely and seems a very Apple thing to do. Also seems to play into the hands of all those "no more Mac Pro" rumors that people who supposedly are in the know have been spouting for months.

This makes sense. Tim Cook's recent interview referred to the computer line vs the mobile line as "the mac line" . By dropping the "Pro" name ( but keeping the features the "pro's" want) they open the space for potential new costumers looking for a little more "power" on their Macs, avoiding the somehow "corporate" "Pro" nomenclature that might put of some potential costumers. The Powermac brand, for example, was a name that didn't include the "Pro" word and worked for the pro market. The key question here is how are the slots designed, how many or if they went to a dual or triple thunderbolt enclosure? If its a complete redesign, will we see form over function? Anyhow, its my next "mac" :)

[Brian Merlen]

im just so happy it hurts lol:sifone:

[Michael Matossian]

I can't wait for the Mac Pro update. Hopefully they include larger Cinema Displays with the update. Miss the old 30"

[DJ Meyer]

I can't wait for the Mac Pro update. Hopefully they include larger Cinema Displays with the update. Miss the old 30"

I could go for 3 30" retinas.

[Brian Merlen]

i really hope apple pushes out some 4k consumer monitors....probably wont happen but it'd validate a lot of our "has to be 4k and up" logic if the consumer market could finally see it for themselves....