Mac pro: valuing what the new apple flagship offers

WWDC 2019, Apple unveils the new Mac Pro, its team focused on the production of professional audiovisual content. The objectives to fulfill are mainly two.

The first fix the cataclysm created by its predecessor and the second return to modularity on which to justify the investment in a team of high (or very high) value, but which can be amortized over time.

Index of contents

The most powerful Mac Pro ever made by Apple to date.

The performance that can be expected from this product is extreme if we decide to configure it with the maximum cataloging components it supports (processor, amount of memory, graphics card and storage).

In any case, we can choose to order a much less ambitious but also much more 'affordable' solution. We can always update the features that compose it if in the future we need 'more power', or new solutions appear.

It would be a lie not to recognize that, based on and without the possibility of selecting a configuration that does not offer so much I / O, the new Mac Pro offers anyone who decides to acquire it the possibility of interconnection with components and peripherals:

• • In abundance with high bandwidth demands.

And this is where the commotion comes from.

The starting price is $ 5, 999 with the following optional components.

• • 1 Xeon W 3223 custom 8/16
    • 3.5GHz /4.0GHz24.5MB cache (expanded on all models for Mac Pro). 2, 666MHz memory (2, 999 Mhz in the rest of the family) 64 PCIe lanes.
    4 x 8 GB of RAM1 Radeon Pro 580X
    • 36 compute units, 2304 stream processors8GB of GDDR5 memory6 teraflops single precision
    1 256GB SSD

Let's try to configure a PC with these components (remember that they are partial) and let's see their price taking into account that at the moment we will not be able to conclude too much.

This is Apple's assessment of the current PC that would face its base Mac Pro of $ 5999.

- The equivalent processor could be placed within the new portfolio of the Xeon W family (Cascade Lake) presented by Intel just a few days before WWDC at Computex.

Xeon W-3223 8/16 3.5 GHz 4.2 GHz 160W 16.5 MB € 1, 000

The new Xeon W 3000 run a long hand in the face of their predecessors.

- The memory would use 2 DIMMs of 16 GB at 2, 666 MHz registered with a value of approx. € 200.

- To replace the GPU we will be a bit flexible and we will consider opting for an RTX 2070 or a Quadro P4000 / Radeon Pro 7100 depending on how versatile or specific the use of our 'clone' would be. Let's put between 500 - 900 €.

- The storage unit manages with the usual 970 Evo Plus 256GB and about € 80.

But there is one more thing…

- Now we need a 1, 400W source since the Mac Pro includes it yes or yes with a view to covering any need, from the first day it has to be used to the last, with the base configuration or with the later ones that update it.

Surely we would not do so if we were creating an equivalent to taste, but what we want is to try to compare the prices and the reality is that in addition to the optional components, there are a number of them in the Mac Pro that are not. You pay them whether you want to or not.

So we have to leave € 300 in the PSU of our Mac Pro Base clone.

- Three quarters of the same with the motherboard, we need a motherboard with LGA 3647 socket and that is close to the possibilities of expansion that the one that Apple forces to take with each Mac Pro and at the moment there is nothing on the market (makes 7 days that they appeared).

I do not think it will be 'cheap' to get a 1P board with six channels and 8 PCIe slots for our new and brand new Intel 3647. Do we put 1000 euros to put something?

It seems increasingly crazy what we are forcing ourselves to do with the Mac PRO, right?

If we could focus on tracing only the performance of the base configuration and forget about offering support for upgrades that would multiply the original performance by 10, we would save ourselves a buck.

Unfortunately, the Mac Pro does not allow this. And the ' NON-OPTIONAL ' components have a lot to say in their price.

Well, let's see where we are going so far with our project.

• • PROCESSOR - 1000 RAM MEMORY - 200 GRAPHICS CARD - 700 STORAGE - 80PSU - 300 BASE PLATE - 1000

- We would still have to take care of getting a box where we can house the components, but without knowing the format of the plate we make castles in the air.

The Mac Pro uses a custom board on which both sides are used to locate components, in this case the generous amount of RAM, which also takes up a generous amount of space (and I remember that it is 1P and six channel).

With you it all started. Surely you all remember this prototype. Now she laughs.

The manufacturers of 'generic' boards will surely choose not to complicate life and that all the components are located on the same side of the board (if the NVMe units are beginning to take advantage of the 'other side', but since we are not in mainstream, this matter doesn't matter much either and we parked it.)

So I am assuming a minimal extended format board, so the box has to be able to hold this size. Much bigger than the Mac Pro.

- Again, you "guess" another point that Apple will use to justify the price of its creature. It is as small as possible, allowing direct access to the components with minimal complication. And at the same time, its own structure is part of the system used to keep temperatures in place.

This is the custom solution Apple uses to keep the new Xeon cool.

Our box will not do any of the latter, discount it from the price, or write it down to the heatsink that we are going to have to mount on the CPU. I propose another € 200 / € 300 to deal with both… and I think I heal in health.

I get about € 3, 500 and give up (gladly or with tears and pain as you prefer) to:

• • Opt for the MPX Modules, the Radeon Pro Vega 2, etc. Thunderbolt 3 unless we deal specifically. The Afterburner accelerator for ProRes and ProRes RAW Have such a compact, solid and small equipment. Lack of wiring, the power supply is always from slot.Easy access to and from any part of the tower.Chip T2 for encryption of information.

- It is true that there is a significant price difference, but it is also true that I have not been able to create a team that can offer what the Mac Pro links to its price (from the basic configuration and mandatory), because they basically consist of in possibilities of expansion and of increasing its benefits on the original basis.

When Apple opens the configurator of the new Mac Pro and scares us with its expansion prices for optional components, we will tremble with the 1.5 TB of DDR4 with 128GB modules, the combinations of Radeon Pro Vega II / Duo and its up to 4 GPUs interconnected by Infinity Fabric, or storage upgrade to 2 + 2TB NVMe RAID.

Then we will see more clearly if what is really striking is the $ 5999 of the base configuration, or if its existence really makes sense.

Its performance will be much lower than supercharged models but we are already paying the base that will allow it to be expanded.

I think that when we have the configurator it will be when we can really appreciate if there is a significant extra cost compared to what we could obtain by purchasing the components ourselves instead of ordering them from Apple or using substitute GPUs since the Pro Vega II are exclusive to Mac.

I still think that the base Mac Pro 2019 is expensive, but after all the roll not as excessive or unjustified as I originally thought.

And since we have come this far, let's partially simulate the maximum configuration also for our super PC. Get ready to make the Mac Pro base look like a toy and change your $ 5, 999.

Let's pre-calculate:

- The price of the most powerful new Xeon W would be approximately € 9, 000

(Xeon W-3275M 28/56 2.5 GHz 4.6 GHz 205W 38.5 MB)

- Upload to 768GB or 1.5TB of memory using 64 or 128 GB modules can be 'called'. € 500/600 per module (64GB). And € 2, 500 per module (128GB).

- A 2TB NVMe SSD is around € 450/500

I get to add 'roughly' to the base price of $ 5, 999 the following:

• CPU
  • + € 8, 000 of the processor.
  MEMORY
  • + € 6, 600 (12 dimme of 64 GB to reach 768 GB) + € 15, 000 (6 dimm of 128 GB to reach 768GB) + € 30, 000 (12 dimm of 128GB to reach 1.5TB)
  INTERNAL STORAGE
  • +900 (a joke seen the seen).

We go for between 40 / 45, 000 € without counting the Radeon Pro Vega 2 (and things can go up a lot very much 'thanks' to them, look at the pictures a little below) and 'the extra' that Apple wants to add to the prices of the components that we have calculated. Surely my 'bareback' prices are much better than what we see on the Apple website in a few days.

Radeon Pro Vega 2 / Duo and its modularity through MPX modules.

There is another component that is going unnoticed that allows managing the planned tasks (video in this case) downloading the rest of the components from part of the work.

Without having references about how decisive the presence or absence of the Afterburner accelerator card could be, it is difficult to continue without doing it, either proceed without any reference to try to emulate.

• Supports up to 3 8K ProRes RAW streams Supports up to 12 4K ProRes RAW streams.

As to go unnoticed (or that does not have its part to do in the price).

We have also not tried to replicate it on our 'clone' PC of the Mac Pro, and therefore its cost does not appear directly, therefore, its work will have to be absorbed by cpu and gpu, so performance comparisons can never be from peer to peer.

E3 started this week and at the moment we have not seen any product that is similar. It is time to wait to see if any manufacturer launches one that coughs it. We are sure that there are many companies willing to do it?