Adding Thunderbolt to the MacPro is such a big problem…

[Craig Seeman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I am talking pre-WWDC announcements. I thought that perhaps the new and rumored “MacPro” was going to turn in to an i7 based tower with thunderbolt. Obviously, that didn’t pan out. ;)”

And if Apple at least had announced an iMacPro or an otherwise updated iMac at the BTO price of around $2300 it would be a reasonable purchase for me. Given that didn’t happen, I suspect they’re looking at a “more challenging” update. If it takes them until “later in 2013” for an i7 update with Thunderbolt and USB3 that would certainly be cause to concern at that point. They longer they take, the more I’m going to expect from them.

[Andrew Richards]

[Erik Lindahl] “Looking at the ASUS example a system like that – given not a “mac pro” system in regards to all aspects – could for example make a software like FCPX, Premier Pro, After Effects or Resolve dance.”

Could it? Don’t be fooled by the presence of physical slots. They are not all-lanes all-the-time. The Z77 chipset on that board only supports a single 16x slot for a GPU (it is halved to 8x+8x when in SLI/CrossFire duty on that board), and then there are only 8 more lanes of PCIe left to go around.

If the two 16x and two 4x slots on a Mac Pro are not enough, and that is a consistent complaint I read around here, then why is one 16x and one 8x on this ASUS enough? Never mind the RAM limit at 32GB and the single 4 core HTCPU.

One 16x PCIe GPU and 8 lanes of combined PCIe I/O? Sounds a lot like the I/O capacity on a 27″ iMac. The iMac may only be equipped with a mobile-class GPU, but it isn’t like Apple left any I/O on the cutting room floor.

Best,
Andy

[Erik Lindahl]

It still beats everything Apple has on the desktop except the MacPro in certain situations (given I think a system based on this would cost less than the iMac). People talk about Thunderbolt as a good expansion solution where there you’re stuck with even less i/o performance than the PCIe-slots from the above motherboard.

This wouldn’t be the MacPro replacement. It would be the Apple desktop compliment product they’ve been laking since… Well for ever I think. As a “high end desktop system” it would be perfect. The other option would be going with a simpler Xeon-system but these tend to run away in terms of price very fast (look at for example the HP Z1 vs iMac). But sure, if Apple could scale the MacPro from around $1000 and up that would be perfectly fine. There are other benefits of Core vs Xeon though – more frequent updates, often a lot of bang for the buck.

Currently they have their 2-3 year old machine lurking along. Or an 27″ MacBook Pro that requires a power cable. For some applications – it’s perfect. For a others it very much not so.

I’d imagine a mobile GPU will have a harder time saturating the buss seeing these are something in the lines of 2-3 years behind desktop GPUs in performance, not to mention being able to have multiple GPU’s which neither the iMac, MacMini or MacBook Pro handles (even via TB as they should but they don’t).

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “Or an 27″ MacBook Pro that requires a power cable.”

This was good for a chuckle.

In fairness to the iMac, you can get it with a desktop Core i7-2600 — very good performance for the money at launch.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Erik Lindahl]

Well the Mac-lineup is CPU-wise decent (disregarding the MacPro at the moment that is). But GPU and expansibility wise it’s somewhat of a mess. I mean “if only” the iMac had the current generation desktop CPU AND GPU it would be so much more of a robust system especially considering the giant screen that poor GPU has to power. If you also had the option of either a consumer AMD chip as well as a consumer nVidia Chip or even a professional nVidia Chip – we’d really be rocking.

Now we’re basically stranded with a huge laptop with the GPU-performance a mid-range desktop GPU had 2009 or 2010.

Yes, the iMac would still be stuck at 32GB RAM and possibly 4 cores (I thought there was a 6-core version of the IvyBridge CPU but I might be mistaking). Still it would up the performance of the machine in a lot of tasks probably 5 fold – even in Apples own apps (FCPX and Aperture)

https://www.barefeats.com/wst10g14.html

The above says it more than anything. Still that’s 6 months old.

Radeon 7970 = 100% (not available for the Mac yet)
Radeon 5870 = 28% (the best the MacPro can offer)
Radeon 6970M = 15% (the best the iMac can offer, or roughly 50% of what the 2-3 year old MacPro can offer).

It’s quite ridiculous to be honest.

[Erik Lindahl]

The below is a quote from Netkas.org in regards to OpenGL-supprt in OSX 10.7.x as well as 10.8.

As for this update, no it doesn’t add any new apis though, nor did DP4 of 10.8, still same 3.2 support, which is ridiculous considering 3.2 is 2009-2010 tech and 4.2 is what we SHOULD be getting in 10.8. But that’s apple for you, 2-3 years behind on gaming at all times while innovating mobile market.

It’s actually quite ironic the OS is lagging pretty much as far behind as the hardware is.

[Andrew Richards]

[Erik Lindahl] “I mean “if only” the iMac had the current generation desktop CPU AND GPU it would be so much more of a robust system especially considering the giant screen that poor GPU has to power.”

The Ivy Bridge i7 3700 chips we should expect in a 2012 iMac haven’t even been shipping for two months at this point. If the iMac doesn’t get its Ivy Bridge bump in the next few weeks around the release of Mountain Lion, I’ll be pretty surprised. They’ll probably get current-gen mobile GPUs as well, and of course those pale in comparison to desktop-class GPUs.

[Erik Lindahl] “I thought there was a 6-core version of the IvyBridge CPU but I might be mistaking”

There isn’t yet. They are probably coming later this year.

Anyhow…

Really, the only performance gap is the class of the GPU, right? Once you really start going down the list of what you want in a desktop pro video work, you quickly surpass what that ASUS mobo and its peers can support. Those are gamer boards. They only really care about driving GPUs and not much else. There is not enough PCIe pipe in the Z77 for serious storage I/O (x8 PCIe 2.0) and video I/O (x4 PCIe 2.0) and a big desktop GPU (x16 PCIe 3.0).

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Erik Lindahl] “It’s actually quite ironic the OS is lagging pretty much as far behind as the hardware is.”

For OpenGL. Which is really only for realtime 3D rendering. Games and Maya, that’s about it.

OS X does recently look pretty stale in terms of its underpinnings though- the atrophy from the early years of iOS when Apple was stealing dev cycles from OS X is still showing today, including Mountain Lion.

Best,
Andy

[Erik Lindahl]

OpenGL, OpenCL (this did get a boost in 10.7.4 so maybe there is hope) – not sure the “state” of how CoreMedia is in OSX 10.8 but in 10.7 QuickTime and CoreMedia is half-developed it seems.

All these fundamental technologies accelerate more and more pro apps. And even if the GPU is the only thing lacking that’s huge. And, it’s not just lacking, it’s around 1/8th of the performance it *should* be. And the fact Apple doesn’t offer the choice of AMD or nVidia graphics render CUDA-apps useless as well.

I don’t see how and iMac or a Mac Mini is in any way better than for example the ASUS-board for general to high-end media creation and consumption.

[Bill Davis]

[Erik Lindahl] “The iMac technically is a laptop with a 27″ screen.”

Uh,

There are 10 (to the gazillionth power) of images floating around the internet.

So far I haven’t seen a single one of anyone operating an iMac on their lap.

Just sayin’

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor