Will the 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 get an Ice Lake Xeon refresh in 2021 ?

[trs96]

The people at MaxTech Youtube channel seem to think so. If true, this is great news for the Hackintosh community. It means more supported Navi graphics cards and longer Intel support. The hackintosh is not dead yet ! Stay tuned.

The 7,1 Mac Pro lets you install a whopping 1.5TB of ram. Apple Silicon Macs will probably not come anywhere even close to that. So it's possible the latest Mac Pro will retain support for another 2 or 3 years minimum.

 

[trs96]

The new Ice Lake Xeons will be built on the 10nm process node instead of 14nm. Finally. They will support 8 channel memory and PCIe 4.0. We could see Apple offer a maxed out Mac Pro with 40 CPU cores and up to 4TB of Ram. Wow !

There's no question that today's Ice Lake Xeons are a significant, badly needed improvement to Intel's server lineup. Similarly to Intel's Ice Lake notebook parts, clock speeds are down from the older 14 nm parts—but IPC is up more than enough to compensate, and unlike the Ice Lake notebook parts, these Xeons generally boast more cores than the last generations do, rather than fewer.

Comparing today's 40-core Xeon 8380 to 2019's 28-core Xeon 8280, single-threaded tests generally come out 3 to 15 percent in favor of the newer generation—and multi-threaded tests favor the newer part by a whopping 54 to 65 percent.

The new generation of Xeon brings support for PCIe 4, 4TiB of DRAM (up from 1TiB), a new 512GB SGX Enclave—and a lower price. The 40-core Xeon 8380 is "only" $8,100, compared to the 28-core Xeon 8280 at $10,100.

Although 8380's overall TDP is up—270 W, compared to 8280's 205 W—the new part is still more efficient overall, at 6.75 W/core to 8280's 7.3 W/core.

 

[dehjomz]

If Apple really is going to release a new intel Mac Pro they should skip ice lake and wait for Sapphire Rapids.

Even more than 40 cores and more IPC. Coming later this year or early next year. The architecture is based on an enhanced superfin, that is a refined willow cove core found in Tiger Lake. The processors will advance the platform to DDR5, as well as PCI Express 5.0 support that will include the cache-coherent CXL protocol.

That will be a beastly Mac Pro. A nice way to go out with a bang before transitioning to Apple Silicon. Although, if intel really is coming back (under Gelsinger’s stewardship) will Apple really want to fully abandon intel ??? Especially if rumors of Lunar Lake are to be believed ??

 

[trs96]

Here's an alternate viewpoint. I'm a Mac says there will be no Mac Pro Xeon refresh. That Apple is all in on the M2 Mac Pro development. Have a look at his arguments.

 

[trs96]

Here's what ZONEofTECH YT channels says will be the next ASi Mac Pro specs.

With that kind of CPU and GPU power coming in 2022, who would even bother buying a refreshed Ice Lake Xeon Intel Mac Pro in 2021 ??? Only to see it's value plummet a year after purchase.

 

[pastrychef]

I don't think Apple will be updating any Intel Macs anymore. What's the point? It's a waste of R&D time and money.

 

[GuitarGuy77]

Bump here for any guesses on the new 2022 Mac Pro 8,1 to be announced next month at WWDC?



Some rumors indicate the Mac Pro 8,1 will have same 7,1 case but will have a 2x Ultra chip connected together. Similar to how an ultra is 2x Max chips together.

Mac Pro: Should You Buy? Advice, Features, Price

Apple released its new high-end, high-throughput M2 Ultra Mac Pro in June 2023. It starts at $6,999, so this machine is only for the most serious...

www.macrumors.com

 

[Bustycat]

Bump here for any guesses on the new 2022 Mac Pro 8,1 to be announced next month at WWDC?



Some rumors indicate the Mac Pro 8,1 will have same 7,1 case but will have a 2x Ultra chip connected together. Similar to how an ultra is 2x Max chips together.

Mac Pro: Should You Buy? Advice, Features, Price

Apple released its new high-end, high-throughput M2 Ultra Mac Pro in June 2023. It starts at $6,999, so this machine is only for the most serious...

www.macrumors.com

It will be insanely powerful if the highest one uses 2x Ultra combined of M2. Or will be named M2 Extreme?

 

[GuitarGuy77]

It will be insanely powerful if the highest one uses 2x Ultra combined of M2. Or will be named M2 Extreme?

Hi @Bustycat
this is what Ive seen so far - rumor 2x m1 Ultras combined:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1503774295033536514

 

[etorix]

From the outcome of the WWDC 2022, it look like the answer is "no". The Mac Pro will not get an Ice Lake upgrade before being replaced by the upcoming Apple Silicon model.