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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!!!

On my way to see it now, will report what I can.
 
Heh. The Dunecase looks great.

Anyway, to report back I can say this. The new Mac Pro is the greatest Mac ever. It is a very well thought out and tightly engineered piece of kit. I have no details on pricing other than the base price everyone already knows. The 6K XDR display is amazing. I would not spend the $1K for the stand and would prefer an arm for most workspaces anyhow.

Did not get to really study the internals that closely, but the layout seems very well thought out for sure. Details were a bit fuzzy for anything beyond the "here it is" presentation. There were two GPUs installed along with a third party internal PCIe storage setup that I can't really say much about other than it's impressively fast and was 36TB huge and I'm sure is impressively expensive. Got to see a second system as a rack mount setup and that was a welcome sight.

Performance wise it was fast. No specific benchmarks to report. And while it was incredibly powerful, I'm apprehensive over the cost. Especially because we can build some rather impressive 24, 32, 64 core PCs that are absolutely killer.

I'm on the fence as to whether or not I'd buy one. Price of my ideal configuration will be a factor. I may sit it out a bit and see what happens. There are some really cool things about the system and display, but I'm not at liberty to share. I do want that 6K XDR display..


Additionally, got my hands on the new 16" MBP during this presentation. I'm going to order one. Nice improvement to keyboard and screen. I do wish they would pack a full 4K worth of pixels on there though. The extra inch of screen size in the same form factor is a welcome addition yet it's the same pixel count and scaled retina options as the 15" model. They claim it has more battery life and the keyboard seems to feel better, but not different. Not sure if that's a good way of putting it... They had a 2.3GHz i9 with 32GB RAM, 8GB GPU and 2TB SSD on hand to play with, I think this will be the max config that they will stock at retail stores. If you want the 2.4GHz CPU and more RAM or more SSD storage, you have to order. The demo units for the 16" MBP are showing up in Apple stores now and most should have them next week. I'll be ordering 2.4GHz with 64GB and 8GB GPU. Undecided on 2TB or 4TB SSD. I'd go for the max 8TB, but pricing is already stupid. Only money, right?

Oh and the new 16" MBP will drive the 6K XDR display. In fact it will drive two of them.
 
Thanks for sharing your impressions Jeff, was really hoping to get some info on how the new 16 inch MacBook Pro runs 8K R3D files. Hopefully Jarred or someone from RED can chime in with some extra info. I've been holding out for so long to upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro retina, I'm really hoping that this new 16 inch plays well with R3D.
 
Last edited:
David Grigorian said:
I've been holding out for so long to upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro retina, I'm really hoping that this new 16 inch plays well with R3D.
Click to expand...

Same here (lol)
 
Thanks for your report.



Jeff Kilgroe said:
Heh. The Dunecase looks great.

Anyway, to report back I can say this. The new Mac Pro is the greatest Mac ever. It is a very well thought out and tightly engineered piece of kit. I have no details on pricing other than the base price everyone already knows. The 6K XDR display is amazing. I would not spend the $1K for the stand and would prefer an arm for most workspaces anyhow.

Did not get to really study the internals that closely, but the layout seems very well thought out for sure. Details were a bit fuzzy for anything beyond the "here it is" presentation. There were two GPUs installed along with a third party internal PCIe storage setup that I can't really say much about other than it's impressively fast and was 36TB huge and I'm sure is impressively expensive. Got to see a second system as a rack mount setup and that was a welcome sight.

Performance wise it was fast. No specific benchmarks to report. And while it was incredibly powerful, I'm apprehensive over the cost. Especially because we can build some rather impressive 24, 32, 64 core PCs that are absolutely killer.

I'm on the fence as to whether or not I'd buy one. Price of my ideal configuration will be a factor. I may sit it out a bit and see what happens. There are some really cool things about the system and display, but I'm not at liberty to share. I do want that 6K XDR display..


Additionally, got my hands on the new 16" MBP during this presentation. I'm going to order one. Nice improvement to keyboard and screen. I do wish they would pack a full 4K worth of pixels on there though. The extra inch of screen size in the same form factor is a welcome addition yet it's the same pixel count and scaled retina options as the 15" model. They claim it has more battery life and the keyboard seems to feel better, but not different. Not sure if that's a good way of putting it... They had a 2.3GHz i9 with 32GB RAM, 8GB GPU and 2TB SSD on hand to play with, I think this will be the max config that they will stock at retail stores. If you want the 2.4GHz CPU and more RAM or more SSD storage, you have to order. The demo units for the 16" MBP are showing up in Apple stores now and most should have them next week. I'll be ordering 2.4GHz with 64GB and 8GB GPU. Undecided on 2TB or 4TB SSD. I'd go for the max 8TB, but pricing is already stupid. Only money, right?

Oh and the new 16" MBP will drive the 6K XDR display. In fact it will drive two of them.
Click to expand...
 
DJ Meyer said:
100k maxed out?
Click to expand...

Maxing out the memory will blow the lid off the price.

The Mac Pro can be configured with 12x 128GB dimms for a total of 1.5TB. One of those dimms is a couple of thousand on its own. Kingston has a 128GB ValueRAM module that is slower for $1500 and Fujitsu has a PC4-2666 128GB module that's $13000(!). If Apple asks $4-5K for a module... well, that's up to $60.000 just for memory.

This has zero relevance to most buyers, obviously.

Let's leave it to the Internet personalities and news outlets to reveal themselves as clueless and sensationalist when they—NO DOUBT—all list the maxed out price of the new Mac Pro.
 
Mark Andersen said:
I would love to hear the recommended config. for those of us who just want to edit or transcode 8K. Someone please chime in, I am ordering soon.
Click to expand...

The base model is more or less a skeleton to get into the platform and you don't want that.

Going up to 12-core you get faster single thread performance and you lift the memory to 2933MHz (instead of 2666MHz with the 8-core). Depending on price, you'll want 12 or 16 core...

Same with graphics, you want to go to the first level up: from 580X to Radeon Pro Vega II. Both cards are getting long in the tooth, but the 580X has no place in the new Mac Pro. Already the base Pro Vega II (not talking about the Pro Vega II Duo, which is two Pro Vega II combined) comes with 32GB of RAM—nice for 8K.

System RAM: you don't want the base 32GB. It's only 4 modules and you want to use 6. From 48GB and up you're good. In my experience people need less RAM than they think. RAM won't make the computer faster per se, but having too little will slow it down. As an example, DaVinci Resolve runs fine with as low as 16GB. Once you do 3D or compositing where textures and such needs to be read into memory.... then you need more.

Disk space needs no explanation. But if the stock config really only comes with 256GB (one module), you at least need to go to 1TB (over two modules).
 
Playing with the pricing... Max config is $50K, pretty much where I expected it to land.

GPU pricing is a joke.

Can’t order > 4TB onboard SSD yet. No MPX storage systems available yet. No Pro Display XDR yet. No rack mount option to order yet. No afterburner card yet. They are totally price gouging for the 16 core CPU because it’s a huge step up to the 24 and 28 core CPUs that can support the full 1.5TB RAM and they’re stretching the price to fill the gap.

I’m unsure if I’m buying at this time, going to wait for some more real-world info and such. I’m thinking if I order, I’d get the base model with a Vega Pro II Duo and then upgrade CPU and RAM on my own. ...As many of us were doing with the previous Mac Pro tower and trash can. I’m really hoping for other GPU options. Having a hard time digesting a $2400 price tag for a 1 year old GPU combined with a TB3 add-on board in its own air duct housing.
 
Never mind on my Pro Display comment above. It must have been a cookie glitch. Can order them now too. People already posting pics of the system and taking delivery of some readily available configurations.
 
Those MPX hard drive bays were not showing when it all went live, but I guess it probably took a bit to get it online and cookies and caches to clear. ...Still waiting for the SSD storage modules. I’ve already get to see the 32TB SSD unit in action, but don’t know when we’ll see it or pricing.

At the time of my last posts here. The Afterburner card and the options for feet or wheels were not there on the configure page. ...Not seeing anything where that Afterburner card makes sense. Maybe for high speed turn around broadcast/ news all ProRes workflows.
 
The Pro Vega II are pretty cheap compared to the RTX Quadro cards, Apple must have pushed AMD to the limit.
 
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