2012 Mac Pro Specs: Xeon E5, Thunderbolt, USB3, PCIE3

[DoctorWho]

How can a "pro" system be using a 2 year old GPU?

 

[chorner]

Wow, the Mac Pro update sucked. It's the same thing in the base model as always. The only difference are the 12 core systems, and all the same crap as before. Wow, a 5770...

There has to be more coming with Mountain Lion. As a side note, they dropped the price big-time for the upgrade to the 3.33ghz 6 core Mac Pro.

 

[Tagny Daggart]

The only thing that is a bit 'bogus' about this ArsTechnica article is that Apple "needs" to pipe a connection from the internal graphics to the Thunderbolt chipset.

That's just wrong. You don't need to connect a display output to attach storage or any other device. Thunderbolt is simply an externally available connection to PCIe ports, and ALSO has the capability of transferring graphics via the DisplayPort protocol.

There is no way in hell you're required to saturate your Thunderbolt bus with a display signal. Stupid, and Intel engineers aren't that stupid either.

I'm afraid that I suspect ArsTechnica got it very right. While you're correct that there is no need to FORCE both video and data on the same mDP, Apple and Intel have been marketing it that way since the beginning, so, Apple's not going to suddenly offer machines that have a TB socket for data and another one for video. That would be very un-Apple-like for sure. Don't forget, Apple have a love affaire of daisy-chaining too.

My bet is that the 2012/2013 machines will have optical Thunder Bolt (Light Peak), so this will add further potential complications for the 3rd party display card possibilities. Or, perhaps this is precisely where the solution to the dilemma lies. Some internal optical connection from a 3rd party board directly back into the mobo very close to the cpu where that data will be multiplexed in again (or vice-versa).

 

[Mieze]

It is only "key" for platforms that could make use of such a setup.

How will this work on a system based on the Sandy Bridge Xeon chips, with 6-8 cores and no built-in video hardware?

Think about that one...

Wrong! Some of the Xeon CPUs have an integrated GPU and Apple is experimenting with these chips. As servers don't need a powerful graphics card I guess we will see MacPros with onboard graphics soon.

You don't believe it? Take a look at

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/Contents/Info.plist

and you will find the following lines:

<key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>
<string>0x010b8086</string>

As you may already know this is the ID of the Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller and it is supported in Lion. Also see http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/8086.

Mieze

 

[chorner]

It is only "key" for platforms that could make use of such a setup.

How will this work on a system based on the Sandy Bridge Xeon chips, with 6-8 cores and no built-in video hardware?

Think about that one...

Wrong! Some of the Xeon CPUs have an integrated GPU and Apple is experimenting with these chips. As servers don't need a powerful graphics card I guess we will see MacPros with onboard graphics soon.

You don't believe it? Take a look at

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/Contents/Info.plist

and you will find the following lines:

<key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>
<string>0x010b8086</string>

As you may already know this is the ID of the Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller and it is supported in Lion. Also see http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/8086.

Mieze

Very interesting... excellent find! I will take my place from speculation and sit down now lol

Cool, thanks for sharing that!