[Erik Lindahl]

The 680MX and high-end 700-series are decent cards yes. But you still are using a PCIe 16X slot for them. I even think the 2012 iMac has a PCIe 3.0 slot for the GPU. I’m not sure what you gain by going this route if you’re not trying to build a very slim machine.

https://barefeats.com/gpu680v.html

Here we see where the MX suffers badly. I also think the desktop cards relatively perform better in Windows due to immature drivers for these newcomers.

[Erik Lindahl]

What GPU would you have on the motherboard? The integrated chips are sadly still quite crap, especially in a workstation class machine. Even Haswell’s up-coming GPU’s are sniffing on a GTX 650M which is an 18 months old mobile chip. Adding something like a mobile chip might work but I’d imagine you just pay way more for much less GPU power then.

Resolve having two GPU’s would need at least 2 16X slots unless you’re talking about welding a GTX 780M or similar on the motherboard. To me that seems like a very odd design though, a side from the fact you might be able to produce a relatively fast system with less thermal footprint. I’d still think it would be easier to go the desktop GPU route anyway. The new GTX 780M (not 680MX) is sniffing the 660TI / 670 desktop model depending on clock speeds.

The third slot could be 4X or 8X but my idéa of having all three 16X would open up more possibilities for those that need it.

All this said – I presume avaliable lanes vary depending on plattform.

[Erik Lindahl]

I hear you here and I think a lot of people could / would be content with 3 PCIe slots all at 16X. This primarily is for GPU’s but also i/o cards (SAS for example), 10GbE. ProTools systems and alike are still as far as I understand it dependent on PCIe. Some higher end setups like Resolve might need more than 3 slots but I think these systems work quite well with a PCIe expansion unit. I’d imagine with PCIe 3.0 at 16X that limitations of such a unit would be even less.

[Erik Lindahl]

For me that’s sort of “so what?”. If Apple sells 10 iMacs or 10 MacDesktops what’s the difference? In theory they could sell more “extras” attached to the MacDesktop.

I however think the idéa Apple has is selling an “experience”. The iMac is a nice “experience” in a lot of situations (less so when you actually try to use it as a MacPro).

[Erik Lindahl]

What Apple should have, they never will, but what they should have is a MacPro desktop that scales from the highend 4- and 6-core i7’s all the way up the dual core Xeons. This would also scale RAM from 32GB up to a possible 512GB. It would also place the machines from a $1500 dollar price-tag.

Regarding PCIe-slots that varies a lot from user to user, but having at least one desktop-class, user-upgradeable GPU is the bare minimum on the low-end. I think a lot of users would manage with this and TB + USB-3. On the high-end however we need more, way more.

[Erik Lindahl]

IMO a modular approach could in theory work. We just don’t have the technology for that yet. Thunderbolt is to slow to fully replace PCIe, given it’s adaquate for a lot of things. Even it’s main use today – storage – has it’s limitations with the standard.

I could see a “MacPro” where you can buy “2015 GPU option” or “2015 network upgrade” or similar. I even think there was a patent found from 2009 or 2010 showing this type of machine. But we’re just not there yet and I don’t see this being a very practical way of building a “pro” system.

[Erik Lindahl]

I’d say the minimum for a “MacPro” replacement is

– Dual CPU options (sadly this means Xeon)
– Up to 64 GB RAM or 128GB (128GB means Xeon)
– At least 3 PCI slots
– User upgradeable HDD (2 slots minimum, I’d say at least 4)
– User upgradeable RAM

As side from that, we’d need “the usual modern I/O:

– 2-4 thunderbolt slots
– 4-6 USB-3
– 1-2 gigabith ethernet
– Wifi + BT as standard

If we as users can live with 1 CPU (6-core) and 64GB of RAM at the high-end we can stick with desktop class CPUs. This would lover the cost of the machine a lot for the end consumer compared to what we’ve had before. But, if we want dual CPU, more than 64GB RAM and a lot of i/o… Xeon’s are what we need and the new E5’s are months away (September is the rumor). These systems also generate a lot more heat that an i5 / i7 found in the iMac hence a larger enclosure is recommended or even required.

[Erik Lindahl]

I could probably think of 50 features I’d prefer in front of motion roundtripping.

[Erik Lindahl]

Rumor rage! Let’s sack something?! ^^

I think the sadest part of this would be come WWDC and Apple doesn’t even mention the MacPro. It’s not to far fetched. I think IvyBride-E is aimed at a September 2013 release. Possibly some lower-end chips are available now (E3) but a MacPro-class system would use the more powerful E5 processor.

[Erik Lindahl]

I think the new Xeon-line is aimed for a September release, so in Apple-fashion it would be quite early showing off a new line of MacPro’s based on this architecture three-four months ahead of time.

Then again, WWDC is a natural place to show it off on.

If Apple where to move away from Xeon’s on the MacPro I’d think they’d move to the highest end of Haswell. That would to a degree make sense but we’re talking much less powerful systems, no dual CPU, I’d think 64GB RAM max and so forth.