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Indeed, I've been using the same Mac Pro since 2008. I bought an ATI Radeon 6970 around a year or so ago and extended its life that much more. For most of my co

Indeed, I've been using the same Mac Pro since 2008. I bought an ATI Radeon 6970 around a year or so ago and extended its life that much more. For most of my computer's life, its had a PCIe eSATA card. I can't say I'm too excited about a computer that's relegated to an much more expensive Mac Mini.

astrodust 13y ago
The idea here is any video card you might want you can just plug in to a Thunderbolt 2 port. Six of those, which can be chained, is way better than having four internal slots.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  So on top of the almost-certainly really expensive Mac Pro, you now also need to get the really expensive PCIe expansion enclosure on top of it? Or did I miss nvidia or ati making thunderbolt video cards? This is why the idea that this makes sense for professional users is silly. It's just asking them to spend a lot more money for something that's been possible with standard case designs for decades. The old Mac Pro was already a bit silly with its chassis that seemed designed to survive a car crash, but this one just takes the cake. The cooling system design is innovative and interesting on its own, but this continues the trend of the Mac Pro being a check box for Apple instead of a real product.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrodust 13y ago
    The existing Mac Pro has four drive bays. That number seems to be too many, or way too few, never quite right. This design seems to surrender to the fact that one stupidly fast SSD is good enough to build a base, and the rest can be attached externally. NVidia and AMD have been making external video cards for a while now using external PCIe, but they haven't sold very well and support for these sorts of connectors is limited. Thunderbolt 2 should eventually change that. Apple's in a bit of a tough spot here. The Mac Pro can never be fast enough or big enough for some, and the bigger and faster they make it, the more it becomes overkill for those that just need something more serious than an iMac or Mac Mini.
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  Not quite. Note that Thunderbolt 2 can do 2x20G/bits/ per second, vs PCI-E v3 at 32G/bytes/ per second (on a 16x slot). Refs: - http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/pci-express-makes-the-3-0-leap-doubles-bandwidth-over-pcie-2-0/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/pci-express-makes-the-3-0... - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express - http://www.zdnet.com/intel-unveils-thunderbolt-2-7000016595/ http://www.zdnet.com/intel-unveils-thunderbolt-2-7000016595/ - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderbolt-external,17520.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderb... - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thunderbolt,3263-7.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thu... TL;DR external video cards via Thunderbolt help but can't hang in terms of performance with real internal cards. (edited for formatting)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrodust 13y ago
    I did some more reading and it looks like Thunderbolt 2 is a lot like a single lane of PCI-e v4, slightly faster but similar. Hopefully Thunderbolt performance will continue to improve, though, and it can leverage all of the improvements to PCI-e. The fiber version of Thunderbolt/Light-Peak could probably fix a lot of these issues with copper signal limitations. At this point the electronics in the Thunderbolt cable are so expensive that switching to a more expensive cable with no electronics might be a net win.
  - stormbrew 13y ago
    I was looking at that kind of thing as well and the only thing that's worth noting is that I think a lot of video cards currently actively used are only 16x so they can be run on older motherboards with pcie 1 or 2. It's not clear that thunderbolt 2 isn't enough bandwidth to effectively run a video card, though I think you'd probably run into problems daisy chaining video cards with video cards or trying to run two out of one enclosure.

astrodust 13y ago

The idea here is any video card you might want you can just plug in to a Thunderbolt 2 port. Six of those, which can be chained, is way better than having four internal slots.

stormbrew 13y ago
So on top of the almost-certainly really expensive Mac Pro, you now also need to get the really expensive PCIe expansion enclosure on top of it? Or did I miss nvidia or ati making thunderbolt video cards? This is why the idea that this makes sense for professional users is silly. It's just asking them to spend a lot more money for something that's been possible with standard case designs for decades. The old Mac Pro was already a bit silly with its chassis that seemed designed to survive a car crash, but this one just takes the cake. The cooling system design is innovative and interesting on its own, but this continues the trend of the Mac Pro being a check box for Apple instead of a real product.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- astrodust 13y ago
  The existing Mac Pro has four drive bays. That number seems to be too many, or way too few, never quite right. This design seems to surrender to the fact that one stupidly fast SSD is good enough to build a base, and the rest can be attached externally. NVidia and AMD have been making external video cards for a while now using external PCIe, but they haven't sold very well and support for these sorts of connectors is limited. Thunderbolt 2 should eventually change that. Apple's in a bit of a tough spot here. The Mac Pro can never be fast enough or big enough for some, and the bigger and faster they make it, the more it becomes overkill for those that just need something more serious than an iMac or Mac Mini.
seanp2k2 13y ago
Not quite. Note that Thunderbolt 2 can do 2x20G/bits/ per second, vs PCI-E v3 at 32G/bytes/ per second (on a 16x slot). Refs: - http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/pci-express-makes-the-3-0-leap-doubles-bandwidth-over-pcie-2-0/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/pci-express-makes-the-3-0... - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express - http://www.zdnet.com/intel-unveils-thunderbolt-2-7000016595/ http://www.zdnet.com/intel-unveils-thunderbolt-2-7000016595/ - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderbolt-external,17520.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderb... - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thunderbolt,3263-7.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thu... TL;DR external video cards via Thunderbolt help but can't hang in terms of performance with real internal cards. (edited for formatting)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- astrodust 13y ago
  I did some more reading and it looks like Thunderbolt 2 is a lot like a single lane of PCI-e v4, slightly faster but similar. Hopefully Thunderbolt performance will continue to improve, though, and it can leverage all of the improvements to PCI-e. The fiber version of Thunderbolt/Light-Peak could probably fix a lot of these issues with copper signal limitations. At this point the electronics in the Thunderbolt cable are so expensive that switching to a more expensive cable with no electronics might be a net win.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  I was looking at that kind of thing as well and the only thing that's worth noting is that I think a lot of video cards currently actively used are only 16x so they can be run on older motherboards with pcie 1 or 2. It's not clear that thunderbolt 2 isn't enough bandwidth to effectively run a video card, though I think you'd probably run into problems daisy chaining video cards with video cards or trying to run two out of one enclosure.