2013 Mac Pro Specs and Benches Revealed on Geekbench?

[jovenave]

hi.

could this mean full support for sandy bridge E on mavericks?

 

[Peter R.]

Ok, just my 2 cents.

It's going to be a non starter.

My guess (and let me emphasise that's just what it is) there's going to be two versions.

1. Something with a single CPU. I don't think they'll bother with E3's. They will possibly use the not yer released E5 1XXX series. Single CPU, not expandable. With half decent graphics and the new design they can MAYBE get it out the door a little over 3K. Remember, every board in there is custom, so they won't be able to cut corners by using derivatives of mass produced Intel boards and the associated volume production savings.

2. Then, for those who are so inclined, a 2 CPU solution. This is NOT a server box, and currently the only muscle workstation CPU is the 2687W. This is a 2K part. For ONE CPU. So imagine a 2 CPU box (OK, keg) with something like a Quadro 6000 equivalent. That's a 3.5K graphics card in it's standard form, how much a design they'll be able to shoehorn into that keg is going to cost is anyone's guess.

So you are talking 7.5K USD retail for the CPU and graphics card, excluding everything else and Apple tax. How much is this going to cost with filled memory banks? 12K ? 15 ?

I'm really looking forward to the new Pro's, but I don't think I can justify the expense, not even with company money.

 

[hardtac0]

My guess (and let me emphasise that's just what it is) there's going to be two versions.

1. Something with a single CPU. I don't think they'll bother with E3's. They will possibly use the not yer released E5 1XXX series. Single CPU, not expandable. With half decent graphics and the new design they can MAYBE get it out the door a little over 3K. Remember, every board in there is custom, so they won't be able to cut corners by using derivatives of mass produced Intel boards and the associated volume production savings.

Twelve cores on a single socket means Xeon E5's v2, aka Ivy Bridge-E. This was confirmed the day of the new Mac Pro revealed.

Other recent benchmark leaks point toward a 6 core model as well.

2. Then, for those who are so inclined, a 2 CPU solution. This is NOT a server box, and currently the only muscle workstation CPU is the 2687W. This is a 2K part. For ONE CPU. So imagine a 2 CPU box (OK, keg) with something like a Quadro 6000 equivalent. That's a 3.5K graphics card in it's standard form, how much a design they'll be able to shoehorn into that keg is going to cost is anyone's guess.

Except Apple announced the new Mac Pro with its standard configuration containing two FirePro W9000 cards that cost ~$3300 USD.

As far as thermals go, the CPU is rated for 130W max, the GPU's are 275W max so the shared heat sink/fan has to deal with 680W under full load without having to throttle due to thermals.

There is a problem with Apple offering a 2 CPU version: there isn't physically enough room. The secondary CPU board would have to occupy the space that one of the GPU's do in the released pictures. The cooling system is an isosceles triangle too: the equal length sides support the two GPU's.

So you are talking 7.5K USD retail for the CPU and graphics card, excluding everything else and Apple tax. How much is this going to cost with filled memory banks? 12K ? 15 ?

The memory expense shouldn't be that much. I picked up 128 GB of registered ECC 1.35v 1600 Mhz DDR3 memory for a workstation at home for just under $1k USD earlier this year. For Apple, getting 64 GB at 1866 Mhz speed should be under $500 USD. The downside is that going with 128 GB of RAM would require the usage of 32 GB DIMM's which go for 2.5x to 3x the cost of 16 GB DIMM's. Those looking to upgrade from 64 GB will also have to remove all their memory and replace with higher capacity models.

There is a bit more than just the CPU's, GPU's and memory. There are Intel C600 series chipset, three Thunderbolt controllers, the SATA-Express controllers, USB 3 controllers (these are not part of the Intel chipset), case and power supply.

The one thing Apple has going for it is OEM pricing which can be radically less than retail pricing. Even then, I'd be surprised if this new box was less than $6k USD at launch with the two FirePro GPU's and six core Ivy Bridge-E chip.

 

[hardtac0]

Sorry for some noob questions... Ya I'm a noob.

Will the 2013 Mac Pro's Intel Xeon E5-2697 will run in a desktop X79 based motherboard? E.g., if I build a rig around a well-supported X79 mobo, will the Xeon run in it?

Officially the new Mac Pro will use a C600 series chipset. This is just the Xeon version of the X79 though. Pretty like the 2009/2010 Mac Pro used the 5500 series chipset while the consumer version was X58.

The next chipset for this market is going to be the X97 for Haswell-E sometime in late 2014. Beyond that is very cloudy has Intel hasn't officially put Broadwell-E on their roadmap and pushed back the consumer Broadwell chips to 2015. In short, the C600/X79 chipset will remain current for at least another year.

On a different note, do you guys think the 2013 Mac Pro video cards will be removable? I've read elsewhere that they're soldered to the motherboard, but that would be pretty dumb in case a GPU failed and needed to be serviced by Apple. I remember the old Power Mac G4 Cube could be "hack upgraded" by replacing the video card with a small selection of alternative video cards. It would be nice if the Mac Pro could do that too.

They are indeed removable but with a catch: they use a proprietary connector. So unless Apple updates the new Mac Pro with some BTO graphics options, there likely won't be any 3rd party upgrades for it.

Now that Apple is giving up on computers with changeable motherboards, do you think nVidia and AMD will stop making a variety of drivers for OS X? The outgoing Mac Pro is the only Mac with a changeable video card, IIRC.

This is dependent on how external PCI-E chassis over Thunderbolt takes off after the new Mac Pro launches. On the nVidia side of things, the recently released Geforce GTX 700 series are just renamed Geforce GTX 600/Titan chips which effectively already have drivers. AMD is set to release the Radeon 8000 series later this year but workstation versions are due in early 2014. In the mean time, there is the iMac and Macbook Pro lines which may still require driver support for new GPU's (which generally cover entire GPU families). So we'd have to wait at least 6 months to see if they start dropping driver support for new cards.