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MP All Models Mac Pro Size, Price, and Density

A

Agincourt

Suspended
Original poster
Oct 21, 2009
272
328
As the obvious high-end Apple computer it should come as no surprise that the present generation Mac Pro would be an eye-watering cost even at its cheapest. Professional CGI animators and other high-end professions will often consider an additional $10k on a computer to save a few seconds per render will pay for itself over the course of the computer's life. However I'm concerned over Apple's approach towards smaller machines and exponentially more compact circuitry. As of now not a single Apple machine uses modular storage, and only the Mac Pro only uses RAM modules. As a result the cost of the high-end computers are growing exponentially.

I'm wondering why Apple didn't decide to keep its G5 tower design and simply aim to make its 'pro' computer much more capable. When you reduce a computer's size you're fighting a battle on two fronts...

1) You have to make your upgraded design more capable than the last while also doing it with increased thermal demands for their size.
2) You lose upgradability and modularity as you lose the ability to add or swap hardware. If you invest over $10k USD on a computer you're going to want the ability to upgrade it over its life.

If on the other hand you kept the Mac Pro in the 'G5 tower' package you could theoretically have the same hardware occupying a much larger space, allowing for an exponential growth in capability while allowing all kinds more upgrades. Storage, RAM slots, thermal management... imagine what a modern Mac Pro could be if it were to utilize all the volume of a G5 tower.
 
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A

avro707

macrumors 68000
Dec 13, 2010
1,828
1,161
Agincourt said:
As the obvious high-end Apple computer it should come as no surprise that the present generation Mac Pro would be an eye-watering cost even at its cheapest. Professional CGI animators and other high-end professions will often consider an additional $10k on a computer to save a few seconds per render will pay for itself over the course of the computer's life. However I'm concerned over Apple's approach towards smaller machines and exponentially more compact circuitry. As of now not a single Apple machine uses modular storage, and only the Mac Pro only uses RAM modules. As a result the cost of the high-end computers are growing exponentially.

I'm wondering why Apple didn't decide to keep its G5 tower design and simply aim to make its 'pro' computer much more capable. When you reduce a computer's size you're fighting a battle on two fronts...

1) You have to make your upgraded design more capable than the last while also doing it with increased thermal demands for their size.
2) You lose upgradability and modularity as you lose the ability to add or swap hardware. If you invest over $10k USD on a computer you're going to want the ability to upgrade it over its life.

If on the other hand you kept the Mac Pro in the 'G5 tower' package you could theoretically have the same hardware occupying a much larger space, allowing for an exponential growth in capability while allowing all kinds more upgrades. Storage, RAM slots, thermal management... imagine what a modern Mac Pro could be if it were to utilize all the volume of a G5 tower.
Click to expand...


The traditional 5,1 size tower was too small inside for the needs of today. If you use newer GPUs in it it just gets very cramped inside. Some versions of RX6800XT and the RX6900XT won't even fit inside the 5,1 without modifications. It's even worse if you use a Sonnet card for NVMEs (which is quite large). The GPU and the sonnet card will crowd each other.

The 5,1 also needs Pixlas mod for powering some of the more modern GPUs.

I own a 7,1 and in my view it is the most capable and well thought out Mac Pro so far. It can be expanded easily and much more than the old 5,1.

I think the primary reason it is disliked is price. While it is more expensive, it's also much more capable. As soon as 7,1 machines become available second hand a bit cheaper I predict a lot of people will move away from their 5,1 machines and the 7,1 will become their new favourite thing.

My original 5,1 when it was new was also very expensive for a 3.2ghz quad-core machine with a 1GB graphics card. It was upgraded much later to become the dual X5690 machine in my signature.

A Mac Studio (at maximum spec) would have been cheaper than the Mac Pro 7,1 I purchased from Apple brand new. But it would have left me locked in to a particular spec and other things on it cannot be upgraded.



What we can praise on the 5,1 is the fact it can be upgraded to the levels we see now. It's a 2010-2012 vintage machine which is now running Monterey 12.6.2 with the help of the wizards of Opencore, we can use more modern AMD GPUs thanks to people finding out how to flash them and developing the Pixlas mod so they can be safely powered.

And now we have a project to work on the firmware of the 5,1 itself - how good is that?

Apple could not have imagined in 2010 that we'd have 12 core 3.46ghz machines running 128GB RAM with NVME storage and up to 32GB RAM Radeon W6800X reference video cards. Although there are a few things that could have been better done to make it more spacious inside - these machines are still useful to many people.
 
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S

sam_dean

Suspended
Sep 9, 2022
1,262
1,091
Agincourt said:
As the obvious high-end Apple computer it should come as no surprise that the present generation Mac Pro would be an eye-watering cost even at its cheapest. Professional CGI animators and other high-end professions will often consider an additional $10k on a computer to save a few seconds per render will pay for itself over the course of the computer's life. However I'm concerned over Apple's approach towards smaller machines and exponentially more compact circuitry. As of now not a single Apple machine uses modular storage, and only the Mac Pro only uses RAM modules. As a result the cost of the high-end computers are growing exponentially.

I'm wondering why Apple didn't decide to keep its G5 tower design and simply aim to make its 'pro' computer much more capable. When you reduce a computer's size you're fighting a battle on two fronts...

1) You have to make your upgraded design more capable than the last while also doing it with increased thermal demands for their size.
2) You lose upgradability and modularity as you lose the ability to add or swap hardware. If you invest over $10k USD on a computer you're going to want the ability to upgrade it over its life.

If on the other hand you kept the Mac Pro in the 'G5 tower' package you could theoretically have the same hardware occupying a much larger space, allowing for an exponential growth in capability while allowing all kinds more upgrades. Storage, RAM slots, thermal management... imagine what a modern Mac Pro could be if it were to utilize all the volume of a G5 tower.
Click to expand...
Are you a ChatGPT?

Have you looked at https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ or were you looking at https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/

Apple has yet to transition the Mac Pro to Apple chips

Based on Apple's product refresh priority it appears that their customers are more concerned about raw performance than internal upgradability hence the Mac Studio was introduced.

Based on my use case behavior with my 2001 Power Mac G4 if the 2022 Mac Studio or 2019 Mac Pro was made available back 2 decades I'd probably opt for a Mac Studio as I never had the need to fill in any of the PCI Express expansion slots.
 
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