Apple has finally revealed the price tag and release date on the Mac Pro it announced, to some controversy, back in June. The new system will ship starting at $3000 with an Intel E5 Xeon, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics cards, 12GB of DRAM, and a 256GB SSD.
First, if you’ve never heard of a Fire Pro D300, don’t feel bad — that card doesn’t show up anywhere on AMD’s spec sheets. With the company currently rebranding its Radeon hardware, it’s clear that a Fire Pro rollout is imminent as well. The new D300 is most likely a W5000 card — that’s a lower-end workstation GPU with 768 stream processors built on a 256-bit bus, with 2GB of RAM. Apple is claiming 2.7TFLOP of performance, which would match the combined output of a pair of W5000s, making them even more likely.
The Mac Pro’s thermal core interior
The use of E5 (most likely E5 V2 Xeons) confirms that the system is built on Ivy Bridge; the only Haswell-based Xeons currently available from Intel are marketed as E3 products. It would’ve been nice to see the Mac Pro pick up Haswell as a feature other competitors lack, but the gains are typically in the 5-8% range — probably not enough for Apple to push the issue, or for Intel to get excited about doing a custom product.
The 12GB and 256GB SSD seem reasonable enough for the price class, though $3000 will buy you an entry-level dual-socket workstations from other vendors. Still, Apple is offering its own distinctive design, and the Mac Pro isn’t limited to four cores or the two entry-level workstation GPUs. Customers will be able to opt for more powerful chips and up to dual W9000s (or something very similar), with support for up to 3x 4K displays and 12 CPU cores total.
Dec 24, 2013 AMD didn't specify pricing for its new Mac Pro-ready dual FirePro graphics solutions, but to get an idea of what you'll be ponying up, consider that the entry-level Mac Pro with a quad-core Intel. Supported Systems Name Description Revision Number File Size Release Date Download Link Mac Pro (2019) with Radeon Pro 580x and Radeon Pro Vega II Boot Camp Driver for Windows 10 Display Driver AMD Radeon Settings 19.20 444 MB.
Apple’s six-core variant of the chip will start at $4000 with 3.5GHz processors, eight and 12-core variants will also be on tap for an undisclosed price point. This lets the company balance the new, single-socket system against the 12-core dual-socket, older Mac Pros, but if you’re one of the small number of users that can genuinely benefit from 16-24 CPU cores, the Mac Pro simply may not meet your needs on this front.
But will the Mac Pro sell?
That just leaves the question of whether customers will line up to buy the box. There’s one oddity of design that I’d like to call out here — Apple’s decision to rely on dual graphics cards at every stage of the process. Dual GPU support is still in its infancy for most professional applications, Adobe’s Premiere Pro has added it (provided you pay the monthly extortion fee), but as this graph from the Windows Blog shows, dual-GPU utilization is very low; with the first card tapped for 10% or so while the second is pushed to 40-50%.
Long workstation refresh cycles have clearly left Apple thinking it’s better to pad the front-end rather than sell upgrades to users partway through, but it’s not clear if buying two W5000s will result in better overall performance than investing in a single, higher-performing GPU. As with 3D gaming, I suspect this will be highly application specific.
So if the price on the hardware itself is reasonable, will people jump for the design? This is where, even four months later, I’m still on the fence. The fact is the new enclosure from Apple looks sleek, though Dalek mods do seem inevitable. The chassis, while getting points for having just a single fan, remains essentially unexpandable; Apple’s claim that Thunderbolt 2 is a valid drop-in replacement for a total lack of internal drive bays and no optical drive simply isn’t accurate.
If you need more than four USB 3.0 ports or you have multiple internal drives that have to be transferred to expensive Thunderbolt enclosures, the new Mac Pro simply may not be appealing. Right now a Promise Technology single-drive chassis for an SSD is $387 — that’s not the kind of price tag that makes people jump up and down, and if you need those drives, there’s no easy or cheap way to keep them.
I have no doubt that this workstation is going to appeal to a certain set of Apple fans, but the company seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater when it came time to build the chassis.
Now read: Apple unveils iPad Mini with Retina display, A7 SoC, priced at $400
Mar 31, 2012 During the normal usuage the fans don't make a noise (even with multiple apps that are not burden on the RAM). The systems heat up is as normal as that of a PC while running on its normal situation. However, when I play games (like BioShock, Sims etc) Mac just. Jan 29, 2011 Most laptops get very hot. But at least my Mac laptop won't get hot enough to burn while just browsing the internet, like some Dells and HPs I've seen. When I see my computer get to 80c (or 90c in Windows), it's not fun, but normal if I'm going to push it so hard. Mac running hot while gaming pc. Does the heat generated from gaming on Macbook Pros harm the lifespan of the Macbook Pro in the long-run? I recently purchased a game (Pillars of Eternity) to play on my 2014 Macbook Pro Iris, but I exited the game after only a few minutes because I noticed the bottom of the laptop getting quite warm and the fan was on the entire time, somewhat.
This article applies only to video cards that originally shipped with a specified Mac Pro or were offered as an upgrade kit by Apple. Similar cards that were not provided by Apple may have compatibility issues and you should work with the vendor of that card to confirm compatibility.
Mac Pro (2019)
Learn more about cards you can install in Mac Pro (2019) and how to install PCIe cards in your Mac Pro (2019).
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
- Dual AMD FirePro D300
- Dual AMD FirePro D500
- Dual AMD FirePro D700
Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012)
- ATI Radeon HD 5770
- ATI Radeon HD 5870
Learn about graphics cards supported in macOS 10.14 Mojave on Mac Pro (2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012).
Mac Pro (Early 2009)
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
- ATI Radeon HD 4870
- ATI Radeon HD 5870, offered as an upgrade kit
The Radeon HD 5870 card requires Mac OS X 10.6.4 or later and the use of both auxiliary power connections.
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Mac Pro Dual D300 Gaming Mouse
- ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
- NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (part number 630-9191 or 630-9897)*
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600
- ATI Radeon HD 4870, offered as an upgrade kit
The Radeon HD 4870 card requires Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later.
Mac Pro (Original)
Mac Pro Dual D300 Gaming Laptop
- NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 (part number 630-7532 or 630-7895)*
- NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (part number 630-9492), offered as an upgrade kit.*
The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card requires Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later with the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 or the computer may not start up properly.
* To identify a graphics card part number, check the label on the back of the card.
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