Mac Pro vs. HP Workstation Z820

ThePreditor said:

No..I'M sorry, but when you're shuttling 2-3TB of data on drives back and forth between home and office...it actually means a lot. I edit off a 12TB Fibre RAID (8x2TB with dual redundancy) from Cal Digit at the office, and sometimes have to take projects with ProRes footage home, and the fastest way to move all that data around so I can work at my home rig is Thunderbolt (stuck using FW800 at the moment...but I'm sure that's so much less complex and cluttered than Thunderbolt ). It also makes for much faster backups to hand drives off to clients using my iMac's Thunderbolt ability (using Seagate GoFlexes for client drives due to dockability options and TB capability). But thanks for your input.

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I'm sorry did you not just say you are using 8x2TB? Why on earth did you use my quote?

derbothaus said:

Thanks for the link. Interesting but negligible. Couple seconds difference. How much more is the TB interface over the USB 3? Not negligible
Must have slightly better burst advantage. Still a very expensive cable.
It's cool tech but pricing is outrageous.

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Copying multiple files is about 20% faster since USB 3 does not support command queuing. The other advantage of TB is that you don't lose performance when you connect more than one device.

Pricing is another matter but I am happy to absorb it as a business.

Rustus Maximus said:

I agree that for your iMac rig TB will be the fastest standard interface. As for the comparison to FW800 you are absolutely correct that Thunderbolt is just as complex and cluttered as it or any external daisy chaining solution will be.

I'm confused are you making client backups at home on an iMac or is your home rig a Mac Pro? Are you using Thunderbolt at work to transfer the footage for home use? Either way if you're using a GoFlex as you say, with a HDD 7200 rpm you are hitting a peformance wall anyway so TB gains you little vs eSATA. Wouldn't eSATA be a more economical solution in the case of a Mac Pro anyway?

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eSATA transfers at 1.5Gbps, Thunderbolt at 5Gbps max throughput. My experience playing with both is that Thunderbolt is MUCH faster. I moved 1.5TB in about 2 hours the other day instead of 3-4 with eSATA. That's just how it played out. The HDD isn't the bottleneck, it's the connection. And yes, I am making client backups at home from time to time because sometimes, that's just what the situation calls for.

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derbothaus said:

I'm sorry did you not just say you are using 8x2TB? Why on earth did you use my quote?

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Sorry to offend, you said it "just...doesn't...matter", but from my experience and as noted in my post, it absolutely does. Thanks for your input.

ThePreditor said:

Sorry to offend, you said it "just...doesn't...matter", but from my experience and as noted in my post, it absolutely does. Thanks for your input.

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No offense taken. You were just exactly the type of user where it would matter.

As much as I agree with your decision on the HP, this thread reminds me why I don't miss doing specs with Windows workstations.
Very tiring reading all the posts and the shear amount of options would piss off most managers.
I like companies like BOXX for simple great workstations.
Now of course were on a MacRumors site so I'm always biased for Mac Pro's

Edit: here is a tip, do your specs a month before buying. Tech changes so fast. If you need to budget, just pick a recent set-up and specify, "prices and items are subject to change".
I do a lot of my dept. budgeting.

hajime said:

Is the Xeon E5-2687W still top of the line?

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Yes.

Do you expect Intel will release something faster within the next 2-3 months?

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No. Not until Ivy Bridge in the second half of 2013.

How about the Quadro 5000? A while ago, I heard that the Quadro 3000 is faster and less expensive than the Quadro 5000. Is this true? How the Quadro 3000, 4000 and 5000 compare with each other? Thanks.

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There is no Quadro 3000. The Quadro K5000 is the best choice for 3D graphics and single precision floating point performance. If you were planning on utilizing the double precision floating point performance of a Quadro card for your simulations then you are better with the Quadro 5000.

hajime said:

Thanks for the replies.

How man percent increase in performance do you expect the Ivy Bridge bring? Besides 3D, how is the current configuration of the HP Z820 comapred with my Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro Retina Display 15"?

I plan to use the following software on the Workstation: SolidWorks, Body Builder, 3dsMax, Autodesk Inventor, Matlab/Simulink. Occassionally, I may use Adobe Master Collection CS6 such as Premiere, Illustrator and Photoshop. I got the Mac version of CS6 already.

For 3D applications, do they use double precision floating point performance?

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Umbongo's answer was right on, but some of your questions suggest you need to do more research. Double precision performance matters when calculations have to be carried out to a large number of decimal values. This can be the case in several of the applications you mentioned, but it's not entirely consistent. The workstation is significantly faster than your macbook pro in almost every area. You should be analyzing where your current machine is sluggish or unacceptable. If something runs in real time on your macbook pro, further performance improvements will go unnoticed.

Umbongo said:

There is no Quadro 3000. The Quadro K5000 is the best choice for 3D graphics and single precision floating point performance. If you were planning on utilizing the double precision floating point performance of a Quadro card for your simulations then you are better with the Quadro 5000.

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The only Quadro 3000 is the Quadro 3000m. He's thinking of a mobile card. I think he was probably comparing against notebooks as well simply because that's what he's using at the moment.

hajime said:

Thanks.

Because somebody mentioned that the MacBook Pro retina display is faster than the Mac Pro.

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It's not quite as simple as that. If they were comparing against the lowest mac pro, the rMBP would be faster in some aspects. The default hard drive option would be faster. The gpu would still be a bit slower (aside from CUDA calculations where applicable), and the cpu would be faster on the rMBP assuming that it doesn't hit thermal throttling. The cpu and gpu are older generations. Both came out in 2009 (gpu came out late in the fourth quarter so it was almost 2010). They're basically a generation behind what they could be using. Westmere only had one quad cpu option, and it's not much different. The 650m would be better where cuda is involved. This would include Premiere which you mentioned using. It would be slower otherwise, especially compared to the 5870.

The HP has been updated more recently. It has a lot of updated options compared to the mac pro. It can be a complex task determining how to maximize performance. You're running a somewhat wide range of applications, and they don't leverage the same things. In the end you'll have to rely on more than just forum research if you're trying to spend as efficiently as possible.

hajime said:

Still no new Mac Pro!

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Of course. As anyone with common sense will suggest you need to select and buy from what's available now and not what might be.

Case in point... you started this thread on Aug 2, 2012.

Build quality on Z820 is cataclysmically bad.

I took some pictures for one example: a massive buzzing plastic fan assembly with 6 fan on it to cool CPUs and four separated RAM groups of RAM



Plastic everywhere



This part of front mask you can brake with toothpick



And default GPU - Quadro 4000, my god, 700+ $, GTX 560 Ti destroys it in CUDA and OpenGL for 150 $.

bax2003 said:

And default GPU - Quadro 4000, my god, 700+ $, GTX 560 Ti destroys it in CUDA and OpenGL for 150 $.

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Try working in professional apps with a non-workstation card.

handsome pete said:

Try working in professional apps with a non-workstation card.

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Media Composer, After Effects and Premiere is what I need and it is Pro use. Even in Autocad GeForce destroys it. 4000 is rubbish - 256 CUDA cores for 700+ $ - waste.

I wont give 700+ $ for cheat like Adobe does in partner with nVidia. This the list of supported cards in AE....yea right



One more thing. 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB Seagate, Dual E5-2665, Q4000...6700 euros !

bax2003 said:

Media Composer, After Effects and Premiere is what I need and it is Pro use. Even in Autocad GeForce destroys it. 4000 is rubbish - 256 CUDA cores for 700+ $ - waste.

I wont give 700+ $ for cheat like Adobe does in partner with nVidia. This the list of supported cards in AE....yea right

One more thing. 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB Seagate, Dual E5-2665, Q4000...6700 euros !

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Are you suggesting Apple would charge a similar price for the same hardware?

Besides, that's great that you can get away with a cheaper card but a lot can't. You listed only a few programs out of the many that benefit from a workstation card/drivers. Not to mention Avid won't even support a system without a certified card.

Open GL accelerated effects in Media Composer work perfectly fine on GeForce. Only thing that Avid warns you is certified driver version.

My point was, Quadro is too expensive for what it is.
Driver optimisation and obvious app cheating is only way nVidia can sell those cards.

And yes, luckily I can buy cheaper cards and do not think Apple should ask that much for Mac Pro workstations. HP was more expensive by almost 1000$ when they rolled out xw8400 series which was Mac Pro 1.1 / 2.1 competitor.

bax2003 said:

Open GL accelerated effects in Media Composer work perfectly fine on GeForce. Only thing that Avid warns you is certified driver version.

My point was, Quadro is too expensive for what it is.
Driver optimisation and obvious app cheating is only way nVidia can sell those cards.

And yes, luckily I can buy cheaper cards and do not think Apple should ask that much for Mac Pro workstations. HP was more expensive by almost 1000$ when they rolled out xw8400 series which was Mac Pro 1.1 / 2.1 competitor.

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I guess you feel the cost of professional support and drivers should be spread to GeForce owners?

Umbongo said:

I guess you feel the cost of professional support and drivers should be spread to GeForce owners?

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Exactly , those cards have all hardware needed.

bax2003 said:

Exactly , those cards have all hardware needed.

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Yes but Nvidia has worked very hard to fracture their market. They are not going back to letting a GTX 580 destroy their Quadro's in compute. GeForce 6xx, 7xx is compute hobbled intentionally to drive pro's to Tesla and Quadro. Would be nice yes, but a pipe dream now.

derbothaus said:

Yes but Nvidia has worked very hard to fracture their market. They are not going back to letting a GTX 580 destroy their Quadro's in compute. GeForce 6xx, 7xx is compute hobbled intentionally to drive pro's to Tesla and Quadro. Would be nice yes, but a pipe dream now.

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Of course, still, there are lots of CUDA cores and up to date OpenGL standard in GF models and can be well used in lots of Pro apps.