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New Mac Pro Tech Specs

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Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#481

Post by wlesieutre »

arvinsim wrote: post #473
wlesieutre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the home users who were buying $3000 base model cheese grater Mac Pros could get by now with a 6-core i7 Mac Mini. Price would be around $1300 for the computer, $300 for an eGPU enclosure, and $700ish for a Radeon R7, plus aftermarket RAM. AMD's not in a great spot for high end GPUs right now, but when the Navi 23 cards land next year it will be looking better. This doesn't scale as well for multi GPU machine…

> Price would be around $1300 for the computer, $300 for an eGPU enclosure, and $700ish for a Radeon R7, plus aftermarket RAM. AMD's not in a great spot for high end GPUs right now, but when the Navi 23 cards land next year it will be looking better. I used to want an eGPU. Then I learned that you need to disable SIP in order to do so... > This doesn't scale as well for multi GPU machine learning workloads and Apple…

> I used to want an eGPU. Then I learned that you need to disable SIP in order to do so...

I hadn’t heard that. A quick search suggests it’s only necessary for loading Nvidia kexts or using TB2 https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/8lybin/macos_egpu_wit...

> No one is going to wait for that hypothetical future where MacOS supports Nvidia GPUs.

True, but their Navi cards are at least competitive in the price ranges where they exist. Hopefully the high end ones next year continue that. If you’re looking at Titan or whatever the current ML thing is in the $1000+ range, then you might be stuck with Nvidia.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#482

Post by atemerev »

tracker1 wrote: post #448
Uehreka wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia really has the GPU market under their thumb. It would be one thing if their pitch was "We're not as good as AMD for games, but we've got CUDA for professionals and researchers!". At least that way there could be some sort of segmentation and I could tell people shopping for GPUs to "get the right one for what you want to do!" But that's not the world we live in. Nvidia's pitch is "We make the only hardware tha…

I'd guess that within 2 years AMD will be competitive to Nvidia at the high end. Their strategy is a bit different, they're delivering good value at 2/3 the way up the performance graph... not as big a markup as a $1200 RTX 2080 Ti, but the RX 5700 XT is decent, especially for the price. Most people aren't spending over $500 on a GPU, so they get the volume sales. The better aftermarket cards have been selling out pr…

Yes, because nobody replicated the pragmatism and power of CUDA. OpenCL is much uglier and lower level. So AMD decided to do something about that... and invented ROCm, which is somehow even uglier and more low-level! A reference FFT implementation in CUDA is about 150 lines of code... and it is almost 10 times more in ROCm.

It was always about software. Granted, CUDA is not the best and most elegant platform in the world... but AMD seems not to be able to reach even that level.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#483

Post by atemerev »

reilly3000 wrote: post #199
mark_l_watson wrote: post #151

A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market is better served by Linux boxes with appropriate GPUs for TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc. support.

Bingo. Although it looks clear that there is a lot of movement towards broader support of AMD in DL via ROCm: https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_lea...

A reference FFT implementation in CUDA: about 150 lines of code. A reference FFT implementation in ROCm: about 1200 lines of much uglier code using advanced C++ idioms.

So no, it is not a replacement, again. Elegance matters.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#484

Post by nvarsj »

8draco8 wrote: post #301
nvarsj wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, it makes a _huge_ difference. Most modern laptops use constrained, low power CPUs and GPUs. They are dog slow. Even my 5 year old desktop is substantially faster (like, builds take half the time kind of difference) compared to my Possibly the only laptops that could compare to desktops are gaming laptops, and I know developers who buy things like the Razer gaming laptop to try and get desktop-like performance…

For me the problem with gaming laptops for work is their GPUs. I honestly don't need anything beyond build in Intel GPUs but I would love to have powerful CPU + a lot of RAM. Highend GPUs are driving prices of laptops very high so essentially I'm paying a lot for hardware that I would never use. That's why I prefer desktops, there is no problem with having Threadripper and 128GB of RAM in case with some basic $30 use…

I think good GPUs are necessary to support external monitors. My thinkpad really struggles to power two external normal DPI monitors. If I had high DPI I don't think it would even be possible. I suspect the gaming laptops with their full powered GPUs, usually Nvidia or AMD, would have no problem powering several high DPI external monitors.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#485

Post by jcadam »

inlined wrote: post #388
jcadam wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I remember when PowerMacs could be had at a wide variety of price points. That was nice. If Apple doesn't want to serve the "I need a decently powerful machine but don't want to waste money on what is basically a status symbol" market, maybe they should license MacOS to someone who does. Something like that might actually bring me back to the platform. As it is, I stick to PCs running Linux.

They used to do this and it almost led to the death of the company. I’m sure they’re quite hesitant to try again. Instead, you can look into the hackintosh project

That was back when Apple was primarily a desktop computer manufacturer. In any case, they could place restrictions on licensed clone makers to avoid cannibalizing sales of their more popular products (e.g., no laptops).

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#486

Post by joshgachnang »

benburleson wrote: post #36
joshgachnang wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're expecting you to plug in a "proper" keyboard and mouse since it comes with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Plus it appears you get another 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front as well.

Which is insane.. do people really use the wireless capability of their keyboard or mouse? Especially when you can't use your freaking mouse when it's charging? Serious insanity. Edit to add: of course I know people use those keyboards... I meant are people actually moving with them in ways that makes the wireless capability useful? Do most users not stay in a pretty close proximity the whole time?

Yes, most certainly. It charges enough for the whole day in like 2 minutes with Lightning fast charge. It's really not a problem.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#487

Post by arvinsim »

wlesieutre wrote: post #481
arvinsim wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price would be around $1300 for the computer, $300 for an eGPU enclosure, and $700ish for a Radeon R7, plus aftermarket RAM. AMD's not in a great spot for high end GPUs right now, but when the Navi 23 cards land next year it will be looking better. I used to want an eGPU. Then I learned that you need to disable SIP in order to do so... > This doesn't scale as well for multi GPU machine learning workloads and Apple…

> I used to want an eGPU. Then I learned that you need to disable SIP in order to do so... I hadn’t heard that. A quick search suggests it’s only necessary for loading Nvidia kexts or using TB2 https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/8lybin/macos_egpu_wit... > No one is going to wait for that hypothetical future where MacOS supports Nvidia GPUs. True, but their Navi cards are at least competitive in the price ranges w…

> I hadn’t heard that. A quick search suggests it’s only necessary for loading Nvidia kexts or using TB2 https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/8lybin/macos_egpu_wit....

Interesting. I might ask around to verify this.

> True, but their Navi cards are at least competitive in the price ranges where they exist. Hopefully the high end ones next year continue that. If you’re looking at Titan or whatever the current ML thing is in the $1000+ range, then you might be stuck with Nvidia.

I am rooting for AMD's Navi cards too. It's just unfortunate that CUDA seems to be more supported than OpenCL.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#489

Post by 29_29 »

rrss wrote: post #178
baroffoos wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is open CL now which blender and other programs have started using. Hopefully the lack of nvidia cards in these mac pros means proprietary tech like cuda gets left behind.

Apple is ending support for opencl, too.

this is darkeness

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#490

Post by dang »

kirstenbirgit wrote: post #281
benburleson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, is the freedom of wireless worth the hassle+cost of batteries?

Who hurt you, Ben?

Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. And please, no personal swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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