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12 Core / 64GB Ram ???????
- Thread starter Carl S.
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Tell that to my dad. He's a physicist at CERN in Geneva and he needs 2 Mac Pros, each with 12 cores and 64GB of RAM. Don't ask me what software he uses, I have no idea
Like alphaod said.
Any 3D app will use all those cores and ram and more if possible.
for example: Cinema 4D, Maya, 3DS Max, Houdini, Softimage, Modo, Lightwave, Z brush, Mudbox, 3D coat, After Effects, FCPX, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, Real flow, Vue, V-ray, Maxwell Render and so on.
There are tons of pro apps that would push that mac pro to its limits.
So yes there is a big need for that and much, much more.
i think this kind of powerhouse would be great for video editing (with the right graphics card ) programs such as davinci resolve and maybe cinema 4d. just my 2 cents
It's honestly like a downtown new yorker who owns a car he's driven once in 3 months asking a guy who lives out where I do why he needs a 4 wheel drive jeep when he never hauls anything or goes off road. Well, when you live in a semi-rural area (next to some very rural areas, we're just barely 'in town' so to speak, far from any major cities), and you wake up and there's 6 inches of snow on top of poorly maintained roads and the plows are a day away, well, you still gotta get to work! Mass transit is unheard of out here, and most commute to work, often 45 minutes or more.
It's need based. There are applications where it's needed. What you mentioned, iLife, aperture, etc. That can all be done on a base spec'ed Mac mini. A professional using apps like aperture might have a middle-of-the-road Mac Pro in order to add additional storage, and if they did any video the processing power would be nice. However consider applications like hollywood 3D movies. Do you know how long it took to render Avatar? They used 104TB (Yes, Terabyte) of RAM and systems that would make your $23,000 Mac Pro example look like a toy. The 'computer' is a series of rack mounted machines all inside a 10,000 square foot facility in order to process the intense 3D work that's required for that kind of production. Millions of dollars goes into the computing power that does Hollywood level 3D work.
So, yes, absolutely, there are uses for high end machines like that.
It's need based. There are applications where it's needed. What you mentioned, iLife, aperture, etc. That can all be done on a base spec'ed Mac mini. A professional using apps like aperture might have a middle-of-the-road Mac Pro in order to add additional storage, and if they did any video the processing power would be nice. However consider applications like hollywood 3D movies. Do you know how long it took to render Avatar? They used 104TB (Yes, Terabyte) of RAM and systems that would make your $23,000 Mac Pro example look like a toy. The 'computer' is a series of rack mounted machines all inside a 10,000 square foot facility in order to process the intense 3D work that's required for that kind of production. Millions of dollars goes into the computing power that does Hollywood level 3D work.
So, yes, absolutely, there are uses for high end machines like that.
Yes.
Virtualization can use a lot of RAM. In my job I could certainly use 64gb of RAM or more, as I deal with simulating networks and networked applications. If i had a box with 64GB of ram on my desk, I wouldn't need to tie up our production vSphere cluster (which has 4 hosts with 96GB in them each) with test lab virtual machines.
Ditto for CPUs. Simulating Cisco devices with GNS3 requires a LOT of CPU power.
If you're talking server stuff - even more so - eg Virtual Desktop infrastructure. I have VMware boxes at work with 96GB of RAM in them (and RAM is right now starting to get tight!) and if we're going to start doing VDI, they'll be upgraded to 256 or 512GB (yes, half a TB) of RAM to handle the load (which may, for example be 50-100 desktop operating systems per machine). But the Mac Pro isn't really used in that type of environment..
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Vienna Pro Ensemble loaded up with its own patches, or instances of Kontakt will easily utilize that much ram and more. It's a shame OSX runs out at ..is it 96?
Industrial Light & Magic uses machines with 100's of GB of RAM... other 3D video production shops do as well... its big time in the movie industry.