2019 Mac Pro is Now Available at Apple.com

[HackinMax]

I just priced out the LOWEST feature set I could possibly accept in a MacPro. And, I am just laughing my bu77 off at how Apple is killing its Pro line of systems.

We definitely have seen a massive increase in the Apple-Tax.

COMPLETELY proprietary, absolutely over-the-top design costs and, ALL of that effort put into a machine that STILL uses three year old graphics tech and will only be upgradeable with even more overpriced, proprietary parts. My lowest-acceptable configuration costs over $15,000 after our 10% sales tax and shipping. And, honestly, I probably would not be satisfied with this config in two or three years time.

My dream machine... over $60K after >$5000 taxes and hundreds in shipping to my (rather remote) location.

Not Just 'no'... HeII NO!

Apple was asked to design a powerful, AFFORDABLE Pro machine for large AND small businesses as well... And, they kick us small businesses to the curb like yesterdays trash.

Long Live the Hack! I pray the T2 doesn't kill us off

Now... someone get busy knocking off this case design for ATX and eATX motherboards. I'll buy one of those.

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[trs96]

I just priced out the LOWEST feature set I could possibly accept in a MacPro.

You would never buy the ram from Apple. Way too expensive. It's much better to get the stock 32 GB and upgrade to 96 with the Nemix 2 x 32GB ram kit for $239. I posted that earlier in this thread. You can also upgrade the graphics card yourself to at least a Radeon Pro 5700 XT 8GB. That is Navi based, much newer and costs about 400 USD.

So to get a decent MP doesn't cost nearly as much when you do it this way.

$7,399 + $239 (ram) + $400 (graphics card) = a more reasonable $8,038. Then you get 6% back with an Apple card purchase to reduce Sales tax to 4%. Then instead of nearly $15,000 it only costs less than $8,350 by doing two simple upgrades yourself and taking out an Apple credit card which you pay off over time. You could even sell the Radeon Pro RX 580 8GB for 200 dollars to cut total cost to $8150. Not that bad for a 12 core, 1TB SSD, 96GB ram, Mac Pro that still has lots of room for future upgrades and holds it's value longer term.

If you don't need even that much power just get the maxed out 16" 2019 Macbook Pro for less than half the price of the above Mac Pro config. Look at how it compares in the following video. Colin doesn't test FCP X but you can still get the idea. These Macs will all perform much better in tests using FCP X over the less optimized Adobe software.

 

[HackinMax]

You would never buy the ram from Apple. Way too expensive. It's much better to get the stock 32 GB and upgrade to 96 with the Nemix 2 x 32GB ram kit for $239. I posted that earlier in this thread. You can also upgrade the graphics card yourself to at least a Radeon Pro 5700 XT 8GB. That is Navi based, much newer and costs about 400 USD.

So to get a decent MP doesn't cost nearly as much when you do it this way...

That makes it almost do-able. Thanks for the perspective.

I was, however, under the impression that the GPU module slots on the MP were proprietary as well. Are they standard PCIe slots?

That's a bit of a game-changer

 

[D-One]

Kinda weird that without at least one true MPX module GPU there's no support for monitors above 4k... Is there a logical hardware reason for this or is it to force people to get the MPX?

Vega 7 scores in geekbench metal are very low, Vega 64 is better but still low... Can't say I am surprised since my hack's Vega64 never performed as it should... At least it's consistent lol

 

[AnAppleADay]

He certainly deserved all the extra upgrades he got as does everyone who has supported Apple long term, back to before they were the largest company in the world and on the brink of bankruptcy just around 22 years ago. Zollotech has posted literally thousands of reviews of Apple hardware and softwares that haved helped sell hundreds of thousands of Apple products that Apple has profited greatly from. Youtubers that constantly criticize and complain about Apple will never get this kind of a favor from them. Even if they do say a few good things about an Apple product occasionally.

My Mac Pro was delivered today. Sadly there wasn't anything free. In person, it's physically quite beautiful, stunning, and massive.

 

[Shiitaki]

Kinda weird that without at least one true MPX module GPU there's no support for monitors above 4k... Is there a logical hardware reason for this or is it to force people to get the MPX?

Vega 7 scores in geekbench metal are very low, Vega 64 is better but still low... Can't say I am surprised since my hack's Vega64 never performed as it should... At least it's consistent lol

Kinda weird that without at least one true MPX module GPU there's no support for monitors above 4k... Is there a logical hardware reason for this or is it to force people to get the MPX?

Vega 7 scores in geekbench metal are very low, Vega 64 is better but still low... Can't say I am surprised since my hack's Vega64 never performed as it should... At least it's consistent lol

I think the issue is that the MPX is how you get the display output between the graphics card and the thunderbolt controller and thus Apple's monitors via the Apple outputs on the case. I'm pretty sure you can plug in a regular PC Card and hook up a monitor to the GPU directly instead of a thunderbolt port. Apple had to invent the MPX or you would need to use ugly jumper cables to route the GPU output to the thunderbolt controllers.

Really, I'm surprised you get any display output through the built in connectors without a MPX since I'm pretty sure that Xeon doesn't have integrated graphcis. I'm pretty sure Intel graphics don't don't do better than 4K.

So yes, there is a technical reason.

 

[trs96]

I was, however, under the impression that the GPU module slots on the MP were proprietary as well. Are they standard PCIe slots?

The PCIe slots are standard x16 slots that you can use just like in a hackintosh. You'll need to buy a cable kit from Apple to connect up the 8 pin supplemental power to the gfx card. That's it.

Belkin AUX Power Cable Kit for Mac Pro - Apple

Apple Store Search Results

www.apple.com

Quinn from Snazzy Labs YT channel got a GTX 1080 Ti to work in his Mac Pro. Running Windows in Boot Camp of course. Earlier on in the video he showed you can get the base model 256 GB SSD, save $1,000 and spend about $200 on your own 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD (that's faster than Apple's) and boot from that via a PCIe adapter. See it at the 2:28 timestamp in the video. Reduces your total cost by another $800 ! Not bad for an "upgrade it yourself" custom Mac Pro.

https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-1tb/p/N82E16820147743

 

[trs96]

The Pro Display XDR Grand Stand
​

You have to wonder why Apple would make you wait a month after you order the stand to get this to pair with the actual display. I've got a plausible theory. They don't want Youtubers to buy this XDR Pro display on credit and then return it within a month to get their money back. Which you know they would do. They'll make a lot of money on their review videos after making jokes about the high priice and then send it back for a full refund. Then they'd have all these used/refurb stands and monitors to sell at a lower than retail price that no one will buy. Well played, Apple.

Max does a good job of explaining what goes into making one. He states it should cost $500. $499.99

9 out of 10 reviews on youtube are already highly critical of it.

YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

If you look at the build quality this will probably never break. It will still work 30 years from now. I do agree that $1,000 is too high of a price but it's not completely unreasonable when you consider how good the XDR display is that you pair with it. I've never seen any stand as easy to use, sturdy and durable as this is. For a true Pro monitor you'll have to pay Pro prices. That's simply how it works. You get the company you work for to foot the bill. Besides that XDR monitor is really cheap (price wise). You could skip it and get a true 8K OLED monitor that is worthy of the $53,000 Mac Pro. Here it is:

LG SIGNATURE Z9 88-inch OLED 4K Smart TV w/AI ThinQ® | LG USA

LG delivers Innovation for a Better Life at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. See the Z9 88 Inch OLED 8K HDR TV at CES 2019.

www.lg.com

If you'll be spending that much on the Mac Pro tower might as well go all the way and see that 8K footage at full resolution.

 

[trs96]

That's a bit of a game-changer

Here's a way you can upgrade to a less expensive 16 Core Xeon Gold and get even more performance per dollar.

1. Buy the base model for $5995.
2. Upgrade ram, storage and graphics yourself. As stated previously.
3. Remove the included 8 Core Xeon W-3223 and resell it for at least $800
It retails for $872 on Amazon plus shipping.

4. So now instead of paying Apple to upgrade to the 12 core from the factory for $1000, buy your own Xeon Gold 5218 sixteen core CPU for just $522 (after you deduct the money you got for selling the 8 core Xeon). You're coming out even further ahead by upgrading the CPU yourself. Instead a paying Apple roughly $1800 for the twelve core you get the 16 core for a $522 price. How great is that ? The Apple 16 core Xeon turbos up to 4.4 GHz while the Xeon Gold goes up to 4.0 GHz. Not a difference you'll even notice when you're using all those cores.

Listing currently on Newegg.com

https://www.newegg.com/p/0ZK-02J0-00762?Description=xeon%20gold%2016%20core&cm_re=xeon_gold_16_core-_-0ZK-02J0-00762-_-Product

The 16 Core Xeon W-3245 sells for a whopping $2,421 if you buy direct from Amazon. Over a thousand dollars more than the 16 core Xeon Gold 5218. Apple basically charges you $2,800 to upgrade to the W-3245 16 core, when you inclued the $800+ value of the 8 core Xeon in the base model that they take away when selling you the W-3245.

 

[Sofronis]

It's much better to get the stock 32 GB and upgrade to 96 with the Nemix 2 x 32GB ram kit for $239.

Although this would work, keep in mind that this creates a non optimal memory configuration (it's called near-balanced) and there will be a performance hit. Ideally you want 6/12 DIMMs of the same capacity.

That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

The fact that a laptop can often times outperform a Mac Pro with 50% more cores, goes to show that even apps that Pros use, can favor low core-count but higher frequency CPUs. Also the new Navi GPU in the MacBook Pro seems to work very well.

Imagine if, without testing, he had bought a maxed out Mac Pro, thinking that for his specific Pro tools, more cores/more expensive = better investment/productivity. He would have wasted his money and gotten worse performance.

I'm afraid that there will be Pros who do exactly that.

Both the base 8-core (W-3223) and 28-core (W-3175X) support 6-channel memory (you can even configure the 8-core with 6/12 DIMMs), so I don't know what this "only support 4-channels", that he mentions in the video, is all about. Either it's a mistake or Apple is doing something to limit the channels for some reason.

Also, I'm pretty sure that without an MPX module, no monitor would work (regardless of resolution) with the built-in TB3 ports (Quinn mentions it in his video). From what I can understand, the extra MPX connector is needed to route the dual DisplayPort 1.4 signals to the internal TB3 controller.

Unfortunately, Max in his videos does tend to pull statistics and "facts" out of his... thin air, so I usually don't take his videos very seriously (more entertaining than informative).

Here's a way you can upgrade to a less expensive 16 Core Xeon Gold and get even more performance per dollar.

Are you sure this Xeon Gold 5128 will work without problems (if at all)? Have you seen anyone do it?

I'm asking because, compared to the 16-core that Apple offers, apart from the significantly lower frequencies (would be even slower than the base 8-core, in lightly threaded workloads),

• Base: 2.3 GHz vs. 3.2 GHz
• Max Turbo: 3.9 GHz vs. 4.6 GHz
• Memory: 2667 MHz vs. 2933 MHz

this is a 4-way socket Xeon that only has 48 PCI-e lanes, while all other Xeons that Apple offers have 64 lanes.

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These concealed/deceptive Newegg affiliate links are driving me nuts. There's got to be a better way to directly support tonymacx86 than having to resort to these.​

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