The New Mac Pro is Here!!!

[Eric Santiago]

Shame on the $1,000 monitor stand though. That was a low-blow. Lol

Haha, I for one am so used to monitor arms. I go between dual Apple 30s (on original base) and Dell 32s (on arms) and love the mobility options of the arms.

If they add TB3/USB-C/XBox controllers on that stand then Im in

 

[Ketch Rossi]

I guess I don't have to switch to the Dark side after all

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Always on arms for me. Apple has a track record of making shitty monitor stands anyway. They’re always sized to set the monitor too high on many desks. Work best if you can have the base sitting at ideal keyboard height. This new XDR monitor looks as good as the new Mac Pro. Expensive? Sure, but I paid $4K for my 8K Dell when it was new and while I appreciate the pixels, that monitor is shit.

FWIW, I’m supposed to get an early preview of the new MP and XDR monitor. Don’t know when or anything yet... will report here when I know more.

 

[andrewhake]

So great to see everyone hyped back up. Can't wait for you all to get your hands on one and see the new display in person.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Anyone knows the price of afterburner?

They are being evasive about the specifics of all the options and costs involved.

This website is predicting that a fully-equipped 2019 Mac Pro could go north of $35,000...

Apple’s top spec Mac Pro will likely cost at least $35,000

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Work best if you can have the base sitting at ideal keyboard height.

Wait. You mean you like the base of the monitor at keyboard height? Like a laptop? I prefer the centre of the display almost at eye height.

 

[Sergio Perez]

Always on arms for me. Apple has a track record of making shitty monitor stands anyway. They’re always sized to set the monitor too high on many desks. Work best if you can have the base sitting at ideal keyboard height. This new XDR monitor looks as good as the new Mac Pro. Expensive? Sure, but I paid $4K for my 8K Dell when it was new and while I appreciate the pixels, that monitor is shit.

FWIW, I’m supposed to get an early preview of the new MP and XDR monitor. Don’t know when or anything yet... will report here when I know more.

Jeff, you will probably go for the “rocket” tesla model 3 performance price point one, but what would you say would be the sweet spot for
8K video editing? is the 12 core enough, provided we get 64gb of ram , that afterburner card and what type of Vega card?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

So...Cupertinosaurus finally manages to make a proper workstation for photo/video/graphic/post community, after what....7 years (?) but it's $1000 per monitor stand and what looks as - at least $10K for a configuration which makes any sense in performance increase context next to 8 Core iMac.
Plus $5000 for the monitor.

Rational as expected.

Engineered to go all out. All the time.

Squeezing every possible ounce of performance out of the processor means giving it a lot of power. In this case, over 300 watts. A massive heat sink keeps the system cool, enabling it to run fully unconstrained.

"Engineered this time with proper cooling per heat dissipation so should not require throttling to prevent cooking itself".

= Attempt of presenting normal functionality as a special market advantage

 

[L. Langer]

We asked for a new USS Enterprise and they gave us the USS Excelsior, with optional Transwarp drive. I'm glad they have advanced the design again, but I'm leery that this will end up as a poorly (industry) supported design that is overly expensive like the last one ended up being. Also, we're fairly close to more generational transitions in hardware standards (PCIe, HDMI, DDR, USB, etc.) and display tech (miniLED/microLED) than we've been in a long time and it feels a bit like too much and too soon, before they could have just rolled it out with the newer stuff that is around the corner.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

FALD = Blooming = No thanks.

1000 nits for ~200nit interiors = zero sense = techy fluff, desensitization

 

[Timothy Jones]

A lot to love , but The cost is staggering .

Thanks,
Tim
www.tjphoto.net

 

[Michael Lindsay]

....We are very excited to bring a Metal-optimized version of R3D in September.” — Jarred Land, president, Red Digital Cinema

Does this mean the 8 core Macpro laptop I am about to buy should be specced with the best GX card? I was worried if only Nvida gets de-Wavelet on GPU there was no piont?

Is Jarred saying Dewavelets on GPU with MAC or just further optimisiaion of Debayering etc?

thanks in advance for educated thoughts?... and extra big thanks if the tall guy himself wants to wade in and clarify..

 

[Michael Lindsay]

A lot to love , but The cost is staggering .

Thanks,
Tim
www.tjphoto.net

I bought a 2 x 14 core HP Z8 with a 1TB of Ram and a shit load of storage and it costed a pretty penny too... I actually think Mac products often (if you buy at the right time and place in the hierarchy) are ok priced!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Wait. You mean you like the base of the monitor at keyboard height? Like a laptop? I prefer the centre of the display almost at eye height.

Sorry, no, I meant the monitor stand/base sitting at keyboard height. That typically puts the center of the display at or just below eye height for most people, which is where it should be. Problem is that Apple has never incorporated vertical height adjustment into their monitor bases/stands. OK, that's not true, the last and only one to ever include any sort of height adjustment was the first LCD iMac which had the CPU in a base and the display on an articulating arm.

So I typically take my iMacs or Mac Monitors and pull the stand off and use a VESA mount to an arm or other more adjustable system. So I'm glad to see this new pro monitor offer the base separately. It looks like a nice base design, but still needs more vertical adjustment, IMO. Anyway, I'll have to wait and see what it's like.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff, you will probably go for the “rocket” tesla model 3 performance price point one, but what would you say would be the sweet spot for
8K video editing? is the 12 core enough, provided we get 64gb of ram , that afterburner card and what type of Vega card?

I really think it will be about balancing between GPU options and CPU cores. Based on the specs we have, I would advise people away from the 8-core model. The Xeon W series basically comes in two levels and the 8-core is the top of the lower level. You get slower memory speeds and it does not support the same memory configurations and capacities. There are other differences, but that is the big one. 8-core is still an option for an entry-level configuration or if you need to load up with quad GPUs while CPU and main RAM is not your primary concern.

Without pricing, it will be hard to identify the "sweet spot" but it looks like I'd recommend the 12-core as the starting point and then flesh our your RAM, GPUs and storage as needed. Then, if you still have money left in the budget and can use more cores, spend more money to get them. You will need the top two Xeon CPU options (24 or 28 cores) in order to utilize all the PCIe lanes and features. And yet the 12 thru 28 core options all have a top turbo speed of 4.4GHz and while base clock does drop with more cores, that represents the speed at which it can operate and sustain all cores. In a nutshell, the 12-core can operate all cores at 3.3GHz and burst two cores at up to 4.4GHz while it scales to different speeds in between, depending on how many cores/threads are in use and at what sort of loads. Likewise, the 28-core operates all at 2.5GHz, but can probably still sustain 12 cores at close to 3.3GHz of the 12-core model.

If I had to guess as to which will be the sweet spot for many, I would say the 16-core system. Premiere, Resolve and many others can use 20~30 threads effectively at this point, but the benefit really falls off after that and we also have to take GPUs into consideration as well. I've built some systems with 32+ cores and it actually becomes a thing trying to feed all those cores, all the memory you need, trying to supply adequate GPU resources to support that many cores and yet the clock rates fall with that many cores, so on the flip-side it's hard for lots of cores running at only 2GHz or so to feed a few monster GPUs. IMO, if you need that much processing power, it's not necessarily best to put it all in one box.

So, I'm rambling on here... And we really won't know until we see all the pricing. Yes, they will be expensive, but I also expect that just like the last cheese-grater Mac Pro, it will be priced competitively with HP, Boxx and other performance workstation options. By no means cheap, but I think they have a really nice design here.

I'm also hoping nVidia comes back to the table here with some GPU offerings. I'm fully expecting them to, but worried it will only be the high-end Quadro models.

 

[Misha Engel]

I'm also hoping nVidia comes back to the table here with some GPU offerings. I'm fully expecting them to, but worried it will only be the high-end Quadro models.

What would be the benefit of NVidia GPU's over the GPU's Apple will offer in the MacPro's?

 

[DJ Meyer]

What would be the benefit of NVidia GPU's over the GPU's Apple will offer in the MacPro's?

You'd be able to run CUDA applications in addition to Metal, and have access to the fastest GPUs.

Many devs have promised a Metal port but many also promised sustained OpenCL support in the past and we know how that turned out.

 

[Misha Engel]

NVidia doesn't support Metal and yes NVidia has the fastest gaming GPU's.
For compute workloads those new dual cards are pretty fast (upto 28.3 fp32 TFlops and 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth).

Still waiting for the first NLE's to deliver support for GPU .R3D decode, a current epyc7371 system with 4x RTX titan's has a lot of potential for .R3D workloads and you can buy one today also in a 2U-rack server for half the price of a MacPro with approx. the same .R3D performance.

When you want CUDA use linux or windows, when you want Apple it's metal with a supported GPU.

Many devs only deliver their promises when you sponser them (the end user pays eventually).

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I would love to see Apple put some $ into coding resources to facilitate Metal optimization - if for no other reason than to provide competition for nVidia/CUDA.

Cheers - #19

 

[Ivan Verlaan]

Problem is that Apple has never incorporated vertical height adjustment into their monitor bases/stands. OK, that's not true, the last and only one to ever include any sort of height adjustment was the first LCD iMac which had the CPU in a base and the display on an articulating arm.

I hate to be the "Well actually" guy... but... actually Apple did make a pretty awesome little adjustable LCD display the first time out. This was their first and second gen (2nd gen was just the Bondi Blue case update) LCD studio display, and it was the bee's knees