Observations One Hour into WWDC 2019

[trs96]

Looks like they concentrated on the rack mount chassis and then made it into a tower too.

Using it as a server makes sense when you can go up to 1.5 TB of ram and a 28 core Xeon. That's why they needed to have those 3D vents on the front and back. Could get pretty toasty if you push it to the limits in a server environment.

 

[mattystonnie]

Here's the funniest thing I've read about the new Mac Pro so far.

To me it just looks strange. Nothing like the beautiful lines and curves the original Mac Pro had.
To give Jony some credit, the design of the handles make a lot more sense if you have to lift it.

View attachment 409619 View attachment 409620

Quote is from MacRumors.com comments section "First-Look Impressions of the New Mac Pro"

It really is a chee$e grater

 

[trs96]

This is one of the better "hands on" videos so far. They didn't let anyone actually touch it.

 

[pastrychef]

So far, the only complaints I've seen about the new Mac Pro are (1) price and (2) aesthetics, so it appears Apple got it right as far as specs are concerned.

I have yet to see, however, anyone do a side-by-side price comparison with any other system. I don't even know if anything currently out there can compare especially when you factor in the special PCI-e slots that provide additional power and the integration with the Afterburner card.

Aesthetics, of course, is strictly opinion and beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

 

[b.kind]

I was hoping for a more of a toaster.

This would make a much sexier case.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000A1ZN1/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

 

[robomartion]

I wonder why Radeon VII isn't an option.

Radeon Vega Pro II = Radeon VII same as Radeon Pro 580X = RX 580 no?

 

[robomartion]

I was wondering if Afterburner will work in Customacs. Aside from aesthetics that's really the main draw it seems to me.

 

[pastrychef]

Radeon Vega Pro II = Radeon VII same as Radeon Pro 580X = RX 580 no?

I think the GPUs offered are closer to Vega 64 or Frontier Edition than Radeon VII. In the spec page, they state 64 compute units. Radeon VII would be 60.

 

[mattystonnie]

Everything started with the mac mini 2018, there was there a little cheese grater on the rams

 

[Sofronis]

I think the GPUs offered are closer to Vega 64 or Frontier Edition than Radeon VII. In the spec page, they state 64 compute units. Radeon VII would be 60.

No, these are pretty much Radeon Instinct MI60 cards, which are effectively fully enabled Radeon VIIs, with twice the VRAM and no FP64 limits. These cards are super expensive and I wouldn't be surprised if a Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX module, cost $10,000+.

Also, theoretically, a Radeon VII should work (drivers are there) if you just plugged it in a PCIe slot. We'll have to wait and see.

The interesting thing is, that this opens the possibility for a 28-core Xeon W-3175X hackintosh build, once 10.15 launches. It would be a super expensive experiment for the first one who tries though ($3,000 for the CPU and ~$2,000 motherboard)