Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

koyoot

macrumors 603
Jun 5, 2012
5,939
1,853
The GPU in question that costs 199$ look like to be 67:C7. There is one, another part over that. 67:C10.

All of this reminds me of HD4850 and 4870 times.
 

antonis

macrumors 68020
Jun 10, 2011
2,085
1,009
big percent? how much we talking here?
how much do you suppose 6,1 base config would cost if it had one d300 instead of 2?

personally, i'd guess, maybe, $2850 instead of $2999.. or about 5%.

is that a big percent? or are you thinking it would be a much greater discount if they had an option to configure with only one gpu?
[doublepost=1464755413][/doublepost]and hey, i'm certainly not trying to tell you how you should spend your money or whether or not such&such is a worthwhile deal for your uses.. like, i'm really not.

the question i opted to answer was 'who is apple targeting with nmp'?

maybe i'm misunderstanding what it means for a company to target a particular group of people but i think that means 'what are apple's advertisements about'

go to their web page, and look through their ads / spiels..
that's who they're targeting.

View attachment 633795

All I'm saying is that I wouldn't easily call nMP targeting to musicians. An iMac with a consumer mobile-class gpu or a buffed MBP would be a more justifiable choice instead of a workstation with ws-class gpus (even more since they are also dual-only). Even a single D300 would be an overkill, and a Xeon cpu unnecessary. It's just not the ideal tool for the job, that's all.

By reading the logical assumptions here, it also seems that the 7,1 won't change direction on that matter (e.g. at least an option for a single-cpu config , so they can widen their target group a bit).
 

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
8GB version of RX480 at 229USD seems good value.
If it gets to 5.5TFlops it's great.

Speed seem to be at 1266MHz, according to TPU:
22a.jpg


Default or OC'ed is anyone's guess.

Those waiting on 970/980 coming down in price with the launch of 1080/1070, there's a reason to hold on for a while longer.
I guess NVidia might have to lower prices at least of the 1070 now, although it's still on another league.
 

Morpheo

macrumors 65816
Feb 26, 2014
1,273
1,589
Paris/Montreal
All I'm saying is that I wouldn't easily call nMP targeting to musicians. An iMac with a consumer mobile-class gpu or a buffed MBP would be a more justifiable choice instead of a workstation with ws-class gpus (even more since they are also dual-only). Even a single D300 would be an overkill, and a Xeon cpu unnecessary. It's just not the ideal tool for the job, that's all.

Define the job then. :confused:

When you work with a full orchestra of VIs you want, and need a lot of cpu power. Not to mention compression, EQs, various realtime effects, etc. Plus the realtime performance/playback of your DAW - plus video tracks(s) (I work in film music), and I could go on. An iMac is certainly NOT the ideal tool for the job! I couldn't do what I do each day on an iMac. If the 7,1 is announced I'll definitely look into it. The only reason I didn't get a 6,1 was the lack of PCI. Maybe I'll reconsider if the 7,1+extrernal PCI is a viable option.

Unless you're talking about the indie pop band that only needs a laptop, a guitar and a cheap mic when they record outside next to their westfalia.
 

koyoot

macrumors 603
Jun 5, 2012
5,939
1,853
2304 GCN cores with 1266 MHz bring 5.833 TFLOPs of compute power, not 5 TFLOPs.

There is a lot of confusion after the presentation. More questions than answers, to be honest.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pat500000

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
Those 1266 might not be final, could be overclocked or AMD doesn't want to provide final specs just yet.
Judging by 10x0 clocks, if AMD can also take 4x0 higher around the same mark, the flagship model will be great.
I'm curious regarding the DP ratio.
 

Mago

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
2,789
912
Beyond the Thunderdome
This is the desktop one. The server ones are further out.

" ... And further down the line it will be appearing in server products and embedded products as well. ... "
Some Xeon are specifically offered at server market other at WS market, the truth is users combine as they need you have desktops with server cpu and servers with desktop cpu, the fact is a 8 core high performance WS cpu zen is comming, as you surely read on my first post, it's more likely a Xeon Mac Pro this year (next year maybe the year of Zen Macs.

IPC isn't going to help much on a cache miss. IPC going downhill with a hurricane tail wind or broad workload IPC ? AMD is more than 40% behind Intel's top tier. (link from the comments section on that Anandtech artticle on IPC of Skylake versus current AMD line up)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/698?vs=1554

Until there is an independent benchmark on actual Zen silicone all these are just speculations.

The TB site

"...
Thunderbolt™ Networking
  • 10Gb Ethernet connection between computers
..." ( implicitly TB controller to TB controller )
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all#sthash.mGLoGBpN.dpuf

" ... Thunderbolt 3 will also offer the ability to daisy-chain up to six devices as well as to emulate a 10-gigabit Ethernet connection. That latter capability will let users connect two Thunderbolt 3–supported computers directly in order to transfer large amounts of data quickly. .. "
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/intel-talks-thunderbolt-3

BaseT physical 10GbE .... not mentioned anywhere.

!0GbE Thunderbolt networking is for daysi chained TB clients (utpo 6 computers using its 10GB MAC), on a Peer to Perr it can reach 20Gbps bi-di not using the Ethernet MAC. Hoever I'm in debt with you on the paper detailing this feature, it requires a bit deep search on detailed specs.

This one?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex9700-series-pcie-switches

Features?
Tunneled Windows Host connector ..... not present in Mac Pro ( a single system).
Host to Host memory transfers ..... not present in Mac Pro ( a single system).
Shared I/O ..... not present in Mac Pro ( a single system ).

Server Storage Arrays ...... there is one and only one drive in the system. What array?
High Availability .... not present in Mac Pro ( a single system).

Yes, you miss the good part...

Typically the PCIe switches we encounter in the consumer space use one upstream host to several downstream ports, and each port can have a series of PCIe lanes as bandwidth (so 4 ports can total 16 lanes, etc). This means there is one CPU host by which the PCIe switch can send the work from the downstream ports. The PLX9700 series is designed to communicate with several hosts at once, up to 24 at a time, allowing direct PCIe to PCIe communication, direct memory copy from one host to another, or shared downstream ports. Typically PCIe is a host-to-device topology, however the PEX9700 line allows multiple hosts to come together with an embedded DMA engine on each port to probe host memory for efficient transfer.

Even being a single system, this means a Several PCIe devices communicates efficiently each other and with the host.

That is an adapter issue. Need more v2 lanes than you have. So downshift the 8 v3 lanes into 12 v2 lanes. That isn't oversubscriptoin of bandwidth. TBv3 already is PCIe v3. So no "downshifting" needed to effiecient make use of the v3 lanes.

Oversubscribing lanes that are going to actively and highly concurrently use will lead to issues. Two NVMe x4 SSD that are both actively reading and writing ( or worse being used in stripped pair ) with run into choked bandwidth.

This is a particulas case, but actually every CPU has an internal PCIe swtch inside doing oversuscription, what they do is to share buffer I/O bandwidth the External PCIe Switch what does is to expand this (adding latency as collateral, but this has become insignificant with latest PEX as 8xxx and 9xxx)

7 x16 PCI cards doing what? Loading data one at a time and then tweaking it for several minutes at a time. Prehaps... but that isn't particularly concurrent.

If start to push a model where there is more uniform/"remote" access between main RAM and VRAM then PCIe bus traffic is likely to get higher and more concurrent.
Worth you read the first page to educte yourself on PEX switches, while you (as ussually) are rigth on most your observations, there are few things you miss, and you need to account as system designer-wannabe (sorry if it may sound depreciative, actually I have great respect on you, as ever you gift us solid opinions hardly to rebut, no just logic fallacies as others).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9060/the-asrock-x99-extreme11-review-eighteen-sata-ports-with-haswelle

As quoted on the PEX9xxx article, PCIe switches are designed to be transparent and most users isn't aware their existence, ASROCK and Gygabyte WORKSTATION Motherboards are proof of that, futher even those boards have been using to build monster gaming rigs, Supermicro has Several GPU Servers with 8 slots for 2 E5v3/v4 actually having PEX switches on it, HPC Clusters are among their favorite customers.

PCIe has DMA... The "newer" element here is host-to-host DMA ( and mapping to some sane addressing between hosts. )

certainly the new PEX switches introduced several HOST-HOST fabric features good for HSA systems, not the case for single socket WS and I was obviating this.

Typically DMA transfers between peripherals are coordinated by the CPUs internal Switch and requires all the data going up/down the cpu while not touching DRAM buffers, previously PCIe switched didn't do anything about a DMA transfer required to share the CPU PCIe lines bandwidth, the newer PEX switched DMA transfers actually dont reach the cpu PCIe lines, are resolved at PEX, so its like having all PCIe slots concurrent (actually switched), on some situations its an improvement to the system native capabilities.

Most of the PEX9XXX innovations are aimed at multi-socket system, but two specific are major importance for single socket: much lower latency (in case 8xxx series it implies a performance penalization near to 1%, with PEX-9XXX it should be lower than on 8xxx.

In case latency still significant for GPU perfomace amid the DMA improvement, Apple could restrict the PEX switches only to TB3/NVMe where its less noticed, or TB3 alone if they use PCIe2 NVMe's (the latest is the fastest Mac possible, but implies using internal USB3 for Wireless/BT and using only the integrated 1GbT Lan, enforcing use Thunderbolt Etherner for those requiring faster links.
 
Last edited:

Morpheo

macrumors 65816
Feb 26, 2014
1,273
1,589
Paris/Montreal
I don’t buy that at all. I think it’s Apple just trying to be cool.

So you bought a Mac Pro just to encourage Apple's quest for coolness or something?;)

The target for the Mac Pro has always been the same and that won't change as long as there are Mac Pros.
 

H2SO4

macrumors 603
Nov 4, 2008
5,660
6,939
So you bought a Mac Pro just to encourage Apple's quest for coolness or something?;)

The target for the Mac Pro has always been the same and that won't change as long as there are Mac Pros.
Only in one sense, the target for Mac Pro is deemed for professionals. The landscape has changed. Software and hardware advances mean computers are used for things that were never envisioned back then.
The Mac Pro, is best for anyone that needs significant compute power from a GPUs and is optimised for FCPX. Right now they say that they aren’t for gaming, well guess what if the software is written such that games make use of parallel processing and run well on it then suddenly it’s a gaming computer.
I still maintain that Apple love to feel cool and suggest it’s for creatives. They may well be excellent for genome sequencing, are those guys in their labcoats what you’d call creatives?
 

antonis

macrumors 68020
Jun 10, 2011
2,085
1,009
Define the job then. :confused:

When you work with a full orchestra of VIs you want, and need a lot of cpu power. Not to mention compression, EQs, various realtime effects, etc. Plus the realtime performance/playback of your DAW - plus video tracks(s) (I work in film music), and I could go on. An iMac is certainly NOT the ideal tool for the job! I couldn't do what I do each day on an iMac. If the 7,1 is announced I'll definitely look into it. The only reason I didn't get a 6,1 was the lack of PCI. Maybe I'll reconsider if the 7,1+extrernal PCI is a viable option.

Unless you're talking about the indie pop band that only needs a laptop, a guitar and a cheap mic when they record outside next to their westfalia.

Yes, jobs may vary. But it's easy to understand that a machine that forcing you to get it with dual-only gpus (and there's not even a BTO option to reduce them) is narrowing its target group a lot, towards graphics professionals and a lot less towards musicians. That's plain common sense.

However, I'll take it that did you tried to do the same job with an iMac and failed, then ? And that was because the speed difference between nMP's Xeon cpu and iMac's latest i7 is that big ?
 

Mago

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
2,789
912
Beyond the Thunderdome
Aiden, whatsup? this is the PEX-switch for the TB2 controller on the nMP6,1, we where talking about the 8 PCIe2 lines from the PCH C602 on the nMP6,2 which has 4 wired to the SSD, 2 wired to the dual GbE controller and one Wired to the WiFi/BT module, leaving only one line PCIe2 free.

a nMP based on C612 not using a PEX to share the 8 free PCIe3 lines from the CPU, and enabling only 4 TB3 ports would require all that 8 PCIe2 lines from the PCH to drive the NVMe ssd(s), but given the C612 provides also USB3, it could wire unused USB3 ports to WiFI/BT
 
Last edited:

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
Aiden, whatsup? this is the PEX-switch for the TB2 controller on the nMP6,1, we where talking about the 8 PCIe2 lines from the PCH C602 on the nMP6,2 which has 4 wired to the SSD, 2 wired to the dual GbE controller and one Wired to the WiFi/BT module, leaving only one line PCIe2 free.

a nMP based on C612 not using a PEX to share the 8 free PCIe3 lines from the CPU, and enabling only 4 TB3 ports would require all that 8 PCIe2 lines from the PCH to drive the NVMe ssd(s), but given the C612 provides also USB3, it could wire unused USB3 ports to WiFI/BT
The posts that I replied to were discussing the MP6,1. Apple left four PCIe 2.0 lanes unused on the MP6,1.

The MP7,1 will be interesting, since each T-Bolt3 controller needs twice as much bandwidth.
 

Mago

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
2,789
912
Beyond the Thunderdome
The GPU in question that costs 199$ look like to be 67:C7. There is one, another part over that. 67:C10.

All of this reminds me of HD4850 and 4870 times.
I assume those are respectively the 4gb(199$) and 8gb(229$) versions.

I figure the nMP7,1 to have a slightly underclocked version of the 4GB model rebranded ad D310, and the 8GB version Rebranded as D510, introducing Vega as D710 later as the Darkent source commented, I would preffer to have an lower end 8GB Vega as D510, lets see what Apple thinks.
[doublepost=1464785903][/doublepost]
The posts that I replied to were discussing the MP6,1. Apple left four PCIe 2.0 lanes unused on the MP6,1.

The MP7,1 will be interesting, since each T-Bolt3 controller needs twice as much bandwidth.
You're wrong Aiden, take your time to read the article from Arstechnica on the MP6,1 it details onlu 1 PCIe 2 line was left unused.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
You're wrong Aiden, take your time to read the article from Arstechnica on the MP6,1 it details onlu 1 PCIe 2 line was left unused.
Beg to differ.

Only 3/4 of the bandwidth of the 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes going into the PEX are used - 25% of the bandwidth is left on the table.
 

Mago

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
2,789
912
Beyond the Thunderdome
Beg to differ.

Only 3/4 of the bandwidth of the 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes going into the PEX are used - 25% of the bandwidth is left on the table.
ahh, that's another question, you talk anbout the 4 PCIe2 lines from the PEX Switch, sorry again those are used by the USB3 adapter since the C602 don't provide USB3.

609164


Still sistem wide, the nMP 6,1 only left 1 PCIe2 unused.
 
Last edited:

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
ahh, that's another question, you talk anbout the 4 PCIe2 lines from the PEX Switch, sorry again those are used by the USB3 adapter since the C602 don't provide USB3.

609164


Still sistem wide, the nMP 6,1 only left 1 PCIe2 unused.
The above diagram does not agree with what Anandtech found by mapping the PCIe complexes.

MPsystemarch_south[1].png
They put the USB 3.0 controller on the PCH.

In any event, there are four unused PCIe 2.0 lanes in the MP6,1. Either four from the PEX, or three from the PEX and one from the PCH. (Notice the unused PCH lane on your diagram.)
 

Morpheo

macrumors 65816
Feb 26, 2014
1,273
1,589
Paris/Montreal
However, I'll take it that did you tried to do the same job with an iMac and failed, then ? And that was because the speed difference between nMP's Xeon cpu and iMac's latest i7 is that big ?

No I didn't try that on an iMac so I can't compare. Like I said I need PCI (for now), and the more cores I get the happier my project are, so I never really considered the iMac as an option.
[doublepost=1464788950][/doublepost]
I still maintain that Apple love to feel cool and suggest it’s for creatives. They may well be excellent for genome sequencing, are those guys in their labcoats what you’d call creatives?

Well, then at least they are all "pros", whatever that means. :) I work in a certain field and I'm not going to pretend I know people's needs outside of my experience/knowledge.
 

Stacc

macrumors 6502a
Jun 22, 2005
888
353
Sigh the last thread locked up due to GPU fanboy flame wars.. If there are a high number of GPU component posts again here then extremely likely to get the exact same results.

There isn't good movement, leak, or otherwise as to which way Apple is going. So just give this particular component a rest. It does exceedingly little to invite another round of the fanboy flame wars.

Since Apple has shifted its entire mac product with discrete GPUs to AMD it would make sense to discuss upcoming AMD product releases. There are a handful of people who consistently troll these threads and turn them into flame wars every time. I would encourage everyone to not engage with people exhibiting obvious trolling behavior.

D310 having only 4GB, although lame at this point (besides HBM 1st gen which cards come with 4GB? Excluding lower end of course) could happen, unfortunately. 8GB for Vega D510 and 16GB for Vega D710 are more reasonable.

I could also see a GPU lineup looking like:

D310: Polaris 11 XT, 4 GB VRAM, 7 TFLOPS total
D510: Polaris 10 cut, 8 GB VRAM, 11 TFLOPS total
D710: Polaris 10 XT, 16 GB VRAM, 12-13 TFLOPS total

There is a rumor on the front page that says the thunderbolt display is in short supply in Apple stores. Hopefully it means we are getting a 5k thunderbolt 3 display at WWDC! Something strange to me is several websites have reported on this but when they speculate on a 5k display they think its impossible because skylake doesn't support displayport 1.3. It seems pretty clear to me that a 5k display would be driven by 2 displayport 1.2 streams via a single thunderbolt 3 cable.

Why intro the product 3-6 months before release in complete violation of normal Apple policy?

Last time it was primarily because of a major form factor change and while keeping the same name the product targeting was substantially changing.

If the same market with new parts .... why? All it primarily does is kill off sales now. "Buy it now because it won't be for sale anymore in 4-6 months" is different than ".... don't buy now because the current is extremely dated and once-in-a-blue-moon update is coming 4-6 months from now... " .

Given Apple's standard practices, any announcement is most likely means shipping within a month (maybe two). Weaving in components that aren't going to ship for more than Quarter is highly unlikely if tightly coupled to a WWDC announce date. Not impossible, just unlikely.

Agreed. I don't think Apple will announce a Mac Pro with a multi-month ship date. If they announce it at WWDC we are getting a mac pro with Polaris (or another currently shipping GPU).

Just like 3yr ago when the nMP 6,1 was introduced at WWDC aimed for Q3'13 availability (which actually ends on late q1'14 due the huge backlog), the WWDC it's a main focus event for developers and power users, those that even dont use an iPhone but a Macintosh and dont miss an WWDC while iPhone events dont worry miss..

Thats because we were getting a significant form factor change. You have to give developers a little time to prepare their workloads for dual GPUs and to use OpenCL. For just an update of the specs they will announce it within a couple weeks of the ship date.

8GB version of RX480 at 229USD seems good value.
If it gets to 5.5TFlops it's great.

Speed seem to be at 1266MHz, according to TPU:
22a.jpg


Default or OC'ed is anyone's guess.

Those waiting on 970/980 coming down in price with the launch of 1080/1070, there's a reason to hold on for a while longer.
I guess NVidia might have to lower prices at least of the 1070 now, although it's still on another league.

AMD is going to kill it with this RX 480. $200 is a great price point and it will be an easy buy for a lot of people if it is only 80-90% as fast as the GTX 1070.

There is still a lot we don't know about Polaris 10 and the RX 480. I think its clear this is a cut down chip since they are pricing it so aggressively. Lisa Su also mentioned their will be a $300 Polaris part which would fit with a 8 GB full Polaris 10. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple got first dibs on the full chip and AMD waited 3-6 months to announce a RX 480X. We also don't know how capable it is at dual precision compute.

The above diagram does not agree with what Anandtech found by mapping the PCIe complexes.

They put the USB 3.0 controller on the PCH.

In any event, there are four unused PCIe 2.0 lanes in the MP6,1. Either four from the PEX, or three from the PEX and one from the PCH. (Notice the unused PCH lane on your diagram.)

Macvidcards posted a picture that suggests that Anandtech was incorrect in their PCIe mapping and that Mago's diagram is right. The USB 3 controller is off the PCIe switch.

My bet is that the new mac pro will still need a PCIe switch and they will put both GPUs behind a single x16 PCIe lane. AMD already does this on their dual GPU cards and they need a lot of bandwidth due to the added lanes required from a faster SSD and each thunderbolt 3 controller. Either that or maybe AMD has a proprietary interconnect that Apple could use to directly attach the GPUs and then each would have a 8x connection to the CPU.

Macbook pro leaks show 4 USB-C connections and no standard USB-A connectors. If the mac pro follows suit than it will need all the extra PCIe bandwidth they can get if they do something like 10 USB-C connectors.
 

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
I believe the USB3 controller is using the 4 additional lanes out of the PEX, not as Anandtech says that it only takes 1 PCIe2 lane. that would be serious bad design choice.
 

AdamSeen

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2013
348
415
Since Apple has shifted its entire mac product with discrete GPUs to AMD it would make sense to discuss upcoming AMD product releases. There are a handful of people who consistently troll these threads and turn them into flame wars every time. I would encourage everyone to not engage with people exhibiting obvious trolling behavior.

Or better yet, report it. Check the forum rules here: http://guides.macrumors.com/Help:MacRumors_Rules and use the report button after each post. You'll see a few of the forum members have been suspended over the previous thread closing. So if things get uncivil, point it out to the mods.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula

fuchsdh

macrumors 68020
Jun 19, 2014
2,018
1,816
Since Apple has shifted its entire mac product with discrete GPUs to AMD it would make sense to discuss upcoming AMD product releases. There are a handful of people who consistently troll these threads and turn them into flame wars every time. I would encourage everyone to not engage with people exhibiting obvious trolling behavior.



I could also see a GPU lineup looking like:

D310: Polaris 11 XT, 4 GB VRAM, 7 TFLOPS total
D510: Polaris 10 cut, 8 GB VRAM, 11 TFLOPS total
D710: Polaris 10 XT, 16 GB VRAM, 12-13 TFLOPS total

There is a rumor on the front page that says the thunderbolt display is in short supply in Apple stores. Hopefully it means we are getting a 5k thunderbolt 3 display at WWDC! Something strange to me is several websites have reported on this but when they speculate on a 5k display they think its impossible because skylake doesn't support displayport 1.3. It seems pretty clear to me that a 5k display would be driven by 2 displayport 1.2 streams via a single thunderbolt 3 cable.

I mean, especially as we're talking about people here in certain fields that are not GPU-focused, I don't see an issue with offering a 4GB card as the entry level. It's still going to be a substantial step up from the current GPUs and for properly optimized tasks will scream along (just like how my old 7950 punches well above its weight still in FCPX compared to other programs.)

If you need more GPU power, and especially if they offered an ECC option, then you've got your built-in "good/better/best" incentive to upgrade.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.