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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The New Mac Pro is Here!!!

Mike Halper said:
It would not be difficult for Apple to switch to AMD. They could flip a switch and it would be done. AMD Ryzen Hackintoshes run with a simple kernel patch. Some other optimizations and changes would be needed, but it wouldn’t be that difficult. And I don’t see why Apple couldn’t have the kernel adjusted to work for both Intel and AMD at the same time, or to just have to different versions of the OS like they did during the PowerPC->Intel transition. It would mostly be invisible to the end user. Thunderbolt would even be working since it works on a couple AMD-based motherboards. It doesn’t make sense for Apple to do that right now though when it’s pretty certain that the switch to ARM is really where they’re headed.
Click to expand...

I’d bet everything that Apple has had AMD optimized versions of MacOS in development and running for years...just in case.
 
Apple switching to AMD would be about the only thing that would make me jump back to Windows.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Still waiting. What gives?
Click to expand...

Well, while we've been waiting, my predictions kinda came true :)

- PCIe v4 (something the not-yet-released Mac Pro can't ever support) has really taken off.

- AMD's new Ryzen chips have been an even bigger success than predicted. And Threadripper's coming next month.

- Intel had to halve their CPU prices to react (what's the bet we see a big price cut in the Mac Pro to match? Not high...)

- you can buy a good 8K HDR TV and use it as your monitor for MUCH less than the cost of Apple's 6K monitor.

- the GPU architecture the Mac Pro is going to use continues to be crushed by NVIDIA, eg:
http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/10/group-test-nvidia-quadro-titan-and-geforce-rtx-gpus/

Personally I bought a $4K Apple Macbook Pro in August, but my interest in the new Mac Pro has dropped even further. This one's a massive fail for me. It's a joke that it's almost obsolete even before it's been released, with the wrong GPU, wrong CPU and wrong PCIe version. Apple made some seriously bad bets when planning this. Basically twice in a row now (trashcan had similarly bad bets!).

I don't know anyone who is going to buy one. I know a lot of people excited about getting new PCs though... all AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU based.

Better luck for v2, Apple? I seriously hope they do get it right - it would benefit everyone if we had more competition.

Call us when you have NVIDIA graphics, competitively priced chips (Intel or AMD), and PCIe v4?

Bruce Allen
www.bruceallen.tv
 
Bruce Allen said:
It's a joke that it's almost obsolete even before it's been released, with the wrong GPU, wrong CPU and wrong PCIe version. Apple made some seriously bad bets when planning this. Basically twice in a row now (trashcan had similarly bad bets!).
Click to expand...

Ouch. Lucky for Apple that they are making all the right decisions when it comes to mobile. And those ARM chips are going to be amazing once they find their way into Macbooks.
 
Karim D. Ghantous said:
Ouch. Lucky for Apple that they are making all the right decisions when it comes to mobile. And those ARM chips are going to be amazing once they find their way into Macbooks.
Click to expand...

Not really, China and India are going RISC-V all the way. Apple already had it's peak.
 
I wouldn’t say Apple had it’s peak when they’re stomping all over everyone else and making huge gains with each revision. And yet they’re still a good ways off from challenging x86 on the desktop. As for RISC-V, it’s a conceptual standard ISA with products in early stages of development. Let’s see the implementations and how well they fare. Apple is a member of the RISC-V Foundation too.
 
RISC V does have a place at the table for extensions to CPUs with fixed instruction sets.
(This being the reason ARM next revision of ISA caters for custom ISA extensions).

In the mobile space, Apple’s CPU offering is king.

In the High Performance Compute - Satoshi explains the scaling limitations of Intel’s top end Xeons.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9605xIHdew

As Fujitsu are looking to sell these (A64fx ARM chips) and they are circa an order of magnitude better performance / watt for generic workloads than Intel’s top Xeons - Apple could even switch to Fujitsu (CPU) chip for a laptop that outperforms a desktop (CPU).

ARMs latest (v8.6) ISA addition (general matrix multiplication) may lay the groundwork for code that has a higher efficacy for ML & NeuralNetworks - features of which are creeping into our field.
https://community.arm.com/developer...posts/arm-architecture-developments-armv8-6-a

AJ
 
Karim D. Ghantous said:
Ouch. Lucky for Apple that they are making all the right decisions when it comes to mobile. And those ARM chips are going to be amazing once they find their way into Macbooks.
Click to expand...

I know!

Since they're so profitable, it does make you wonder why they have to charge such a massively high markup for SSDs. Or why they don't put a second input port on that $6K monitor.

It's almost like they're just trying to be assholes about it.

Bruce Allen
www.bruceallen.tv
 
Bruce Allen said:
Well, while we've been waiting, my predictions kinda came true :)

- PCIe v4 (something the not-yet-released Mac Pro can't ever support) has really taken off.

- AMD's new Ryzen chips have been an even bigger success than predicted. And Threadripper's coming next month.

- Intel had to halve their CPU prices to react (what's the bet we see a big price cut in the Mac Pro to match? Not high...)

- you can buy a good 8K HDR TV and use it as your monitor for MUCH less than the cost of Apple's 6K monitor.

- the GPU architecture the Mac Pro is going to use continues to be crushed by NVIDIA, eg:
http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/10/group-test-nvidia-quadro-titan-and-geforce-rtx-gpus/

Personally I bought a $4K Apple Macbook Pro in August, but my interest in the new Mac Pro has dropped even further. This one's a massive fail for me. It's a joke that it's almost obsolete even before it's been released, with the wrong GPU, wrong CPU and wrong PCIe version. Apple made some seriously bad bets when planning this. Basically twice in a row now (trashcan had similarly bad bets!).

I don't know anyone who is going to buy one. I know a lot of people excited about getting new PCs though... all AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU based.

Better luck for v2, Apple? I seriously hope they do get it right - it would benefit everyone if we had more competition.

Call us when you have NVIDIA graphics, competitively priced chips (Intel or AMD), and PCIe v4?

Bruce Allen
www.bruceallen.tv
Click to expand...

Nothing in this post is even remotely true, and mostly just obnoxiously naive and obtuse.
 
andrewhake said:
Nothing in this post is even remotely true, and mostly just obnoxiously naive and obtuse.
Click to expand...

I dunno. You're just slinging cheap insults.

You just said nothing I posted is remotely true. So... where are your sources to prove your assertions that:

- PCIe v4 is NOT taking off

- AMD's new Ryzen chips are NOT doing well and Threadripper is NOT coming next month

- Intel has NOT halved their CPU prices to react

- You can't buy a good 8K HDR TV and use it as your monitor for MUCH less than the cost of Apple's 6K monitor

- the GPU architecture the Mac Pro is going to use continues to be crushed by NVIDIA, eg:
http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/10/gro...orce-rtx-gpus/

If you can't find sources for ALL of those (remember you said "NOTHING IN THIS POST IS EVEN REMOTELY TRUE") you owe me an apology. And you should stop being so unprofessional and impolite.

Bruce Allen
www.bruceallen.tv
 
Bruce Allen said:
Since they're so profitable, it does make you wonder why they have to charge such a massively high markup for SSDs.
Click to expand...
I'd just like a Mac mini that costs US$500 and that can be going strong in five years. I don't need a great GPU, but everything else should be reasonable: 500GB SSD as standard, 8GB as standard. It's not that hard, surely? Or, make it more expensive but give us a 1TB SSD and a decent GPU as standard.

The real hindrance with my old Mac mini (over 5 years old now) is not the CPU or RAM, but the hard drive. That is the single biggest bottleneck. And I can't be bothered changing it for an SSD.
 
Antony Newman said:
In the High Performance Compute - Satoshi explains the scaling limitations of Intel’s top end Xeons.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9605xIHdew
Click to expand...

Now, that was illuminating. A CPU package that has the architecture of a GPU, with the bonus of being more efficient. Smart! I used to want to be in this kind of field. I bought the Minix book but I couldn't really get past the first couple of chapters. Way above my head. It was tough back in the '90s, and now it's just... phew. The good news is that the basics are still comprehensible, and always will be, which means that it can be a fun hobby. Logic gates are logic gates.
 
I have an older (2013) MBP that has a decent GPU. I have kept it useful by using external boot SSDs. I actually use a different boot drive for every project now. Running over TB2 the response is similar to the internal SSD. I can use any OS version -- my internal drive still runs CS6 while my externals match more current tools like Blender. I use Sandisk Extremes at 500gb, they are $99 or less and very unobtrusive as a dongle. I like this system so much I will probably do the same with my next Mac -- USB-C should only make it faster. This does demand a different back-up strategy but I actually prefer having an entire back-up drive for important projects.



Karim D. Ghantous said:
I'd just like a Mac mini that costs US$500 and that can be going strong in five years. I don't need a great GPU, but everything else should be reasonable: 500GB SSD as standard, 8GB as standard. It's not that hard, surely? Or, make it more expensive but give us a 1TB SSD and a decent GPU as standard.

The real hindrance with my old Mac mini (over 5 years old now) is not the CPU or RAM, but the hard drive. That is the single biggest bottleneck. And I can't be bothered changing it for an SSD.
Click to expand...
 
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