MP All Models Buy cheap 7,1 or Studio

[avro707]

Even if I really wish Apple would offer at least drivers for newer generation graphic cards. It is not a dealbreaker to me.

That’s the only thing I want now from Apple, anything else not interested. PC workstations are now a lot better. More support for newer GPUs will benefit everyone.

I’m looking at other sources for the GPUs I’d intended to get. The W6800X Duo and others can be considered gone for good. The Apple rep (a supervisor) admitted to me on the phone they will probably go from the online stores completely.

The GPUs I’m after I’ll probably get from a different source.

AMD for its part on GPU support says:


Please be informed that Mac OS driver and GPU compatibility depends on system manufacturer, Apple.

Please contact Apple support as the Mac OS is manufactured and maintained by Apple.

As of now W7900 Radeon Pro GPU is compatible with Windows 11 - 64-Bit Edition , Windows 10 - 64-Bit Edition and Linux x86 64-Bit.

 

[Regulus67]

AMD for its part on GPU support says:


Please be informed that Mac OS driver and GPU compatibility depends on system manufacturer, Apple.

Please contact Apple support as the Mac OS is manufactured and maintained by Apple.

As of now W7900 Radeon Pro GPU is compatible with Windows 11 - 64-Bit Edition , Windows 10 - 64-Bit Edition and Linux x86 64-Bit.

After having been in contact with Apple support the past week. It absolutely does not seem like a viable option.

I replied in e-mail with case ID after they could not offer further help. And explained how easy it was to install macOS Sonoma.

I did not receive an answer, or comment from Apple Support.
There were two Apple supporters I was in contact with, here in Sweden. Both by phone and e-mail.

 

[Carrotstick]

That’s the only thing I want now from Apple, anything else not interested. PC workstations are now a lot better. More support for newer GPUs will benefit everyone.

I’m looking at other sources for the GPUs I’d intended to get. The W6800X Duo and others can be considered gone for good. The Apple rep (a supervisor) admitted to me on the phone they will probably go from the online stores completely.

The GPUs I’m after I’ll probably get from a different source.

AMD for its part on GPU support says:


Please be informed that Mac OS driver and GPU compatibility depends on system manufacturer, Apple.

Please contact Apple support as the Mac OS is manufactured and maintained by Apple.

As of now W7900 Radeon Pro GPU is compatible with Windows 11 - 64-Bit Edition , Windows 10 - 64-Bit Edition and Linux x86 64-Bit.

One benefit of having an x86 Mac Pro over ARM one is you can also install Nvidia GPUs and run them thru Bootcamp.

You cannot do that on an ARM Mac Pro. What’s funny is that the 7,1 Mac Pro users will have still have the better GPU thru bootcamp when the M4 Mac Pro come out next year. On top of that the RTX 5090 is coming next year as well.

So for users who need CUDA, RTX software suite and also macOS then the 7,1 is the golden Mac Pro. The 7,1 has it all.

 

[avro707]

One benefit of having an x86 Mac Pro over ARM one is you can also install Nvidia GPUs and run them thru Bootcamp.

I was thinking of that and started looking at RTX4090 (the standard Nvidia version), it was tempting.

 

[avro707]

Has anyone seen the Apple A2667 Infinity Fabric Link available anywhere?

I've seen the A2666 (for W6800X and W6900X) but not the A2667 (W6800X Duo).

 

[avro707]

Looks almost brand new - from iPowerResale.

With a 2.5ghz 28 core Xeon, 2TB SSD, 96GB RAM, W6800X Duo 64GB (brand new card) and Fabric Link. There is only a tiny mark on the front corner near the top. It is running Monterey so I'm updating it now. I will take the GPU out of this one and put it in my other one and this will get the W6800X 32GB.

I have swapped all GPUs around and one of the 2019 Mac Pros is completely stuffed full:

2 W6800X Duos, an Afterburner card, a Sonnet M2 4x4 card with SSDs on it. It cannot possibly fit anything more.

 

[Carrotstick]

View attachment 2395554

Looks almost brand new - from iPowerResale.

With a 2.5ghz 28 core Xeon, 2TB SSD, 96GB RAM, W6800X Duo 64GB (brand new card) and Fabric Link. There is only a tiny mark on the front corner near the top. It is running Monterey so I'm updating it now.

That’s a good machine still faster than any Apple M chip Mac GPU wise.

 

[Rimmsi]

Connect two SATA SSD drives and you have a fully occupied machine.

 

[sfalatko]

Connect two SATA SSD drives and you have a fully occupied machine.

And add one more USB card in that sad, lonely, remaining empty PCI slot....

Do the lights dim when you power it on?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You know what’s impressive? That a studio or 2023 M powered Mac are awful purchases. M3 laptops, and soon to be released M4 machines have made their “pro” offerings a disaster and joke.

All the sudden your choices are the last out-of-date intel machine that is actually a pro machine, the 7,1, or 2 terrible and also woefully out of date M2 machines that are not really pro machines and also are not competitive. Or more realistically, just get a now also dated M3max laptop.

Think how much apple sucks that a 2019 offering is still in the mix as a reasonable choice 5 years later. It’s astounding how awful they are, and how the tech press are awful uncritical Lackeys.

The Apple pro market is dead. And what’s sadder is, no one noticed.

 

[Harry Haller]

You know what’s impressive? That a studio or 2023 M powered Mac are awful purchases. M3 laptops, and soon to be released M4 machines have made their “pro” offerings a disaster and joke.

All the sudden your choices are the last out-of-date intel machine that is actually a pro machine, the 7,1, or 2 terrible and also woefully out of date M2 machines that are not really pro machines and also are not competitive. Or more realistically, just get a now also dated M3max laptop.

Think how much apple sucks that a 2019 offering is still in the mix as a reasonable choice 5 years later. It’s astounding how awful they are, and how the tech press are awful uncritical Lackeys.

The Apple pro market is dead. And what’s sadder is, no one noticed.

What's really infuriating is that after making amends for the absurd trashcan with the brilliant 7.1 they abandoned it like they did with the iMac Pro. Imagine the 7.1 or a 32" iMac Pro with the latest Xeons, Threadrippers and 5000 series RTX GPUs, PCIe 5 and Thunderbolt 5. Tim has used his praying hands to flip the bird to the pro market with iPads on a stick, $3K PCIe slots and 2 generation old Studio and Mac Pro CPUs. Insulting.

 

[avro707]

Think how much apple sucks that a 2019 offering is still in the mix as a reasonable choice 5 years later. It’s astounding how awful they are, and how the tech press are awful uncritical Lackeys.

The Apple pro market is dead. And what’s sadder is, no one noticed.

It was an absolutely brilliant machine but the Mac crowd were furious because they couldn’t afford it.

But really looking at other workstations in the PC world, they also get very expensive when you start optioning them up.

The current Mac Pro is a joke, it’s a throwaway computer in a fancy box. Imagine where the Mac Pro would be with indeed the 56 core Xeons or the AMD chips mentioned. And multiple Radeon W7900s. Actually our 7,1 can run the W7900 - if we use Windows which it also runs quite well.

The 7,1 is so beautifully engineered as well. It is easy to work on if you are upgrading it.

Anyhow, the Defenders of the Silicon Realm will be along shortly to enter the battle.

It’s astounding how awful they are, and how the tech press are awful uncritical Lackeys.

Tech press or YouTube influencers? Both have to be nice in their reviews or they get excluded from future access to new products.

Do the lights dim when you power it on?

Haha no problems there. But it keeps the room warm in winter (which it is now here). Now I have two of them, double the effect.

Something I noticed different between my original 7,1 (2022) and the new one is the startup in macOS:

Original one (15.0b2) goes through traditional macOS startup progress bar then shows a login screen.

New one (14.5) shows a login screen almost immediately after turn on, then after that does the progress indicator.

 

[Carrotstick]

Anyhow, the Defenders of the Silicon Realm will be along shortly to enter the battle.

I feel as Apple Silicon is only good for laptops because of its inherent mobile nature. It cannot scale to workstation. It could but Apple couldn’t care to design it that way.

Kinda sucks tho, a 64 core M3 P cores paired with a RTX or Radeon would beat the crap out the 2019 MP. Too bad Apple dislikes pros

 

[sfalatko]

Something I noticed different between my original 7,1 (2022) and the new one is the startup in macOS:

Original one (15.0b2) goes through traditional macOS startup progress bar then shows a login screen.

New one (14.5) shows a login screen almost immediately after turn on, then after that does the progress indicator.

Interesting, mine (both 14.5 and 15.0b2) goes through the traditional macOS startup progress bar then shows the login screen. It also is noticeably slower to get to the login screen when my NVMEs (on the Sonnet card) drop out.

 

[tsialex]

Something I noticed different between my original 7,1 (2022) and the new one is the startup in macOS:

Original one (15.0b2) goes through traditional macOS startup progress bar then shows a login screen.

FileVault disabled.

New one (14.5) shows a login screen almost immediately after turn on, then after that does the progress indicator.

FileVault enabled.

 

[Melbourne Park]

I think too that we should assume that there will not be an M3 Studio. Most seem to think that Studios will skip a processor in their upgrade path, so therefor the next step will be M4 processors.

I'm now starting to think about buying a PC, and making my mind up about which video software. I'll miss a lot about Apple's connectivity though, but value wise there is no comparison. But I have always felt Apple support is terrific, especially compared to Windows hardware and software support.

 

[Natalia22]

Currently, for my work with AI photo plugins, the MP7.1+ 6900xt's performance is equal to the M3 Max (16/40). Previously, most of my colleagues switched from MBP Intel/M1 to laptops/PCs with Nvidia (usually 4060ti in terms of price/performance ratio). And here the difference is 40% in favor of the 4060ti, tempting. I don’t want to leave Apple and I don’t yet find any reason to replace the old 7.1 with new Apple Silicon.

 

[Regulus67]

.../PCs with Nvidia (usually 4060ti in terms of price/performance ratio). And here the difference is 40% in favor of the 4060ti, tempting. I don’t want to leave Apple and I don’t yet find any reason to replace the old 7.1 with new Apple Silicon.

Run Bootmanager with a Windows partition, and you can use the 4060 Ti (or better) as well in your 7.1.
Best of both worlds. Which you can not do with Apple Silicon macs

 

[avro707]

Currently, for my work with AI photo plugins, the MP7.1+ 6900xt's performance is equal to the M3 Max (16/40). Previously, most of my colleagues switched from MBP Intel/M1 to laptops/PCs with Nvidia (usually 4060ti in terms of price/performance ratio). And here the difference is 40% in favor of the 4060ti, tempting. I don’t want to leave Apple and I don’t yet find any reason to replace the old 7.1 with new Apple Silicon.

Regulus above has the right idea - the 7,1 will take the 4090 no problems and it works in windows.

I haven’t thought about how things go with an AMD MPX module and an Nvidia also going in Windows with drivers and all that. But the nvidia cards are fast and the drivers seem more stable than the latest AMD ones.

 

[Natalia22]

Run Bootmanager with a Windows partition, and you can use the 4060 Ti (or better) as well in your 7.1.
Best of both worlds. Which you can not do with Apple Silicon macs

Thanks, I like this idea, although I don’t see myself in a Windows environment yet, but I agree to try “The best of both worlds”
Windows is already installed on my MP. Bootmanager is not a BootCamp assistant?

Regulus above has the right idea - the 7,1 will take the 4090 no problems and it works in windows.

I haven’t thought about how things go with an AMD MPX module and an Nvidia also going in Windows with drivers and all that. But the nvidia cards are fast and the drivers seem more stable than the latest AMD ones.

4090 is 130% of the 6900 card for my plugins
Drivers, card compatibility, power supply, cooling and many other issues... I don’t think I can handle this task on my own. I’ll look for information here or on YouTube, otherwise the admin will ban me for spam. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Run Bootmanager with a Windows partition, and you can use the 4060 Ti (or better) as well in your 7.1.
Best of both worlds. Which you can not do with Apple Silicon macs

Got to admit it's tempting. A way to get into Windoze and keep Mac OS for a while longer. But how slow will a 16 core 7,1 be running windows with for instance a 4080 GPU compared to an M4 Max notebook? Or a Studio?

 

[avro707]

Well of course the older machine is going to be slower versus something that isn't available yet, it's older. It was introduced 2019.

How would an M4 Max compare to an M5 Max or M6 Max? You see the point I'm making.

Windows isn't really that bad at all these days. I have 11 Pro for Workstations and find it fast and reliable. Not it isn't as beautiful as MacOS but it's not like the bad old days of Windows ME.

I wouldn't buy any new Mac right now until it becomes clearer what direction Apple is going to take. If the existing machines you have do the job (and the 7,1 is still supported with Sequoia) then wait and see.

 

[Regulus67]

Windows is already installed on my MP. Bootmanager is not a BootCamp assistant?

Yes, Boot Camp Assistant.

Drivers, card compatibility, power supply, cooling and many other issues... I don’t think I can handle this task on my own. I’ll look for information here or on YouTube, otherwise the admin will ban me for spam. Thanks for the tips.

It should be fairly easy to install. But you need special pci-e power cables, mini-to regular 8 pin cables. Belkin or OWC.
And the card should not be to long. Max 304 mm / 12 inches (tight fit). RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 cards will have more than enough room, and no cooling proplem.

MacOS will not support the cards, of course.
I installed Windows 10 on a separate SSD HD, which does not have boot issues like the NVMe cards.
I have only MPX cards in my machines for now.

Got to admit it's tempting. A way to get into Windoze and keep Mac OS for a while longer. But how slow will a 16 core 7,1 be running windows with for instance a 4080 GPU compared to an M4 Max notebook? Or a Studio?

The strength of the Mac Pro is the graphic power you can get. As avro707 expained, the CPU is old, but it also supports more RAM. 16-core up to 768GB RAM.

 

[mattspace]

Max 304 cm / 12 inches (tight fit).

304 mm

 

[mattspace]

Haha no problems there. But it keeps the room warm in winter (which it is now here). Now I have two of them, double the effect.

I hang my damp t-shirts side-on in front of the exhaust when they're out of the spin cycle. Also, keeps the room 20c when it's 15c outside