2013 MP 6 core vs 2010 MP 6 core question

allupons · Oct 24, 2013

I am trying to decide if I would like to upgrade my 2010 3.33 Ghz mac pro for a new 2013 model of the same type (aka the 6 core version). My current mac pro has 16GB ram and the 5870 gpu, and generally performs fairly well. I realize there are no hands on benchmarks yet, but I am trying to gauge what sort of % performance increase could be available if I make the upgrade.

I primarily edit in FCPX, as well as the adobe creative suite (premiere, after effects, photoshop, etc). I do a bit of gaming as well, but mostly its a bunch of 1080p rendering, and soon to be 4k rendering.

I am wondering what sort of benefits I would see from the new mac pro, purely in performance terms. Regarding storage and such, I would just move my internal drives to a thunderbolt raid enclosure, so that doesn't concern me much. What I am more curious about is the % difference between the 2010 6 core processing power, and the 2013 6 core processing power.

Also, what is the difference between the dual d500s power, vs either my current 5870 or a card I could instead upgrade to like an nvidia gtx680. Does the fact that the new mac pro is being built with dual d500s mean twice the opencl power, or is the second card exclusively there to power an additional monitor or two?

What my question boils down to is, if I were to keep my current mac pro and simply upgrade the GPU to the gtx680 how comparable in performance would that be to a 2013 6 core mac pro? If the 2013 is a solid performance bump, I would instead be willing to sell of my current 2010 mac and go that route.

While I know nobody has physically tested the parts yet, any educated guesses based on existing knowledge of the Xeon and GPU equivalents would be very appreciated. Thanks!

jetjaguar · Oct 24, 2013

I have a 3.46 hex core and I am definitely thinking about getting the 6 core nMP. If you use fcpx I am sure the nMP is going to fly since that is what it is going to be made for. No idea as how it will perform with adobe since there is no cuda support and no one knows if adobe will start to use open cl.

spaz8 · Oct 24, 2013

jetjaguar said:
I have a 3.46 hex core and I am definitely thinking about getting the 6 core nMP. If you use fcpx I am sure the nMP is going to fly since that is what it is going to be made for. No idea as how it will perform with adobe since there is no cuda support and no one knows if adobe will start to use open cl.

Actually Adobe has announced it is going to begin adopting openCL.. its one of the few.

http://blogs.adobe.com/standards/2013/05/03/opencl-enables-more-compelling-and-efficient-applications/

wonderspark · Oct 24, 2013

I have a 2009 Mac Pro with the 5,1 firmware and 3.33GHz 6-core. I have FCP X but haven't been able to find it useful yet, and primary use for the machine is Adobe CS6... Pr, Ae, Sg, Lr, Ai, Au, Ps, and the occasional En.

I find Adobe's efforts into OpenCL are wonderful, and that my machine will keep up just fine until perhaps the *next* nMP, maybe 7,1 or whatever. A large part of that is due to a very nice 8-bay RAID 6 box I have attached via an Areca 1880ix-12 card, which is faster than Thunderbolt 1 and 2.

For me, it makes no sense to move to a nMP yet, but if you can get by with only four external disks in a TB box, then it might be a good fit for you.

clamnectar · Oct 24, 2013

allupons said:
I realize there are no hands on benchmarks yet, but I am trying to gauge what sort of % performance increase could be available if I make the upgrade.

The new 6 core uses the 1650 v2 chip. There are no geekbench scores for that chip yet, but if you look at the existing 1650 v1 and extrapolate, you can expect the new model to crunch data somewhere around 25% faster than your current machine, and have about double the memory performance. That's not factoring in the built in GPUs, whose utility will vary greatly depending on the app.

sirio76 · Oct 25, 2013

clamnectar said:
The new 6 core uses the 1650 v2 chip. There are no geekbench scores for that chip yet

Here is some cinebench15 results(they are only about CPU speed). The e5 1650v2 is nearly identical to an i7 4930k which is almost as fast as a dual 6core 2.66ghz.
http://www.cbscores.com/

http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v2-12M-Cache-3_50-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/77780/Intel-Core-i7-4930K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

N19h7m4r3 · Oct 25, 2013

You should find this useful, the main CPU is the new Ivy-Bridge EP 4960X 6 Core 3.6Ghz

If you notice there's an i7 980X 3.33Ghz, which is the equivalent of the Xeon W3680 6 core 3.33Ghz cpu

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_4960x_processor_review,12.html

The entire review is very eye opening. It should a sneak peak of the new 6 Core vs the Old one.

MacVidCards · Oct 25, 2013

N19h7m4r3 said:
You should find this useful, the main CPU is the new Ivy-Bridge EP 4960X 6 Core 3.6Ghz

If you notice there's an i7 980X 3.33Ghz, which is the equivalent of the Xeon W3680 6 core 3.33Ghz cpu

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_4960x_processor_review,12.html

The entire review is very eye opening. It should a sneak peak of the new 6 Core vs the Old one.

The article has great info.

But in addition to awful grammar, he makes a critical error " ever since the Gulftown (Core i7 980X) back in 2008 release, performance wise nothing much has changed ", and then AGAIN "The Gulftown Core i7 980X pushed out 28 FPS in 2008."

While the Bloomfield may have come out in 2008, the Gulftown 6 core was intro'd in 2010. Pretty big factual error when he is basing conclusion on it. Especially when any bozo can wikipedia the date with relative ease. (I am the proof of this statement)

I think they are great CPUs, I have a couple 5680s in one 4,1/5,1 and a 3690 in another.

jasonvp · Oct 25, 2013

clamnectar said:
The new 6 core uses the 1650 v2 chip.

This is an important bit. I'm indifferent to the new Mac Pro, but: the Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips have Intel's AVX extensions built in, where the older chips don't. Apple's FCPX does take advantage of AVX to help speed things up. In some cases, rather significantly.

If you're primarily using FCPX, jump in. You'll very likely see a YOOOGE increase in overall performance in that app.

N19h7m4r3 · Oct 25, 2013

MacVidCards said:
The article has great info.

But in addition to awful grammar, he makes a critical error " ever since the Gulftown (Core i7 980X) back in 2008 release, performance wise nothing much has changed ", and then AGAIN "The Gulftown Core i7 980X pushed out 28 FPS in 2008."

While the Bloomfield may have come out in 2008, the Gulftown 6 core was intro'd in 2010. Pretty big factual error when he is basing conclusion on it. Especially when any bozo can wikipedia the date with relative ease. (I am the proof of this statement)

I think they are great CPUs, I have a couple 5680s in one 4,1/5,1 and a 3690 in another.

Yah it's a silly mistake, but it doesn't change the performance numbers in the slightest.
It shows how little Intel has actually improved anything. The overlocking community, and extreme entusiates which these chips( The X series ) are made for are mad as hell at the lack of progress.

It all means I'll wait for at lest Haswell-EP and DDR4 before I even consider the new Mac Pro line.

At the moment FCPX does't even utilise as much of my CPU as possible, Screenflow even transcoding and exporting uses it more currently.
So the new version might run even better on my current Mac Pro.

gugy · Oct 25, 2013

This is my conundrum here and I appreciate any fresh perspectives on it.

I have a 2010 MacPro that Applecare will expire in late February 2014.
Here are the specs:
2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12 core)
24GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

Most of my work is huge Photoshop files/Illustrator and occasional After Effects animation.

That said I am looking into buy the nMP, BUT, I am wondering if I do some upgrades on my current machine (add Mercury Accelsior PCI express storage card and more RAM) might be enough and wait until a V.2 of the nMP comes to life in 2015.

My biggest concern is Applecare expiring. My previous 3 MP's had issues that Apple end up replacing video cards and one time the full motherboard. I know these fixes can be very expensive. The current machine I have, Apple just replaced last month the video card, so this makes me wonder if is better financially just pay the price to jump into a new machine and have the warranty/piece of mind to back me up.

Thanks for any feedback.

jetjaguar · Oct 25, 2013

adding a ssd would definitely speed things up. Your system is a beast..I mean you could upgrade the cpus to 3.46 but that is pretty expensive. I would think adding a SSD and you should be fine holding out for v2.

I have a owc accelsior 480gb that i am going to be selling shortly

gugy · Oct 25, 2013

jetjaguar said:
adding a ssd would definitely speed things up. Your system is a beast..I mean you could upgrade the cpus to 3.46 but that is pretty expensive. I would think adding a SSD and you should be fine holding out for v2.

I have a owc accelsior 480gb that i am going to be selling shortly

Yeah, I heard great things about the OWC accelsior.
My biggest concern is the darn Applecare. Every single MP I had I end using it. I know the current video card won't cost more than $300, but I wonder if a motherboard or something else goes terribly wrong, how much that might cost.

I think I can get something like $3k for my machine, but the equivalent on the nMP might be $6k just to start.

Crazy....

jetjaguar · Oct 25, 2013

gugy said:
Yeah, I heard great things about the OWC accelsior.
My biggest concern is the darn Applecare. Every single MP I had I end using it. I know the current video card won't cost more than $300, but I wonder if a motherboard or something else goes terribly wrong, how much that might cost.

I think I can get something like $3k for my machine, but the equivalent on the nMP might be $6k just to start. Crazy....

Yea I hear ya. I would love a 12core but I'm sure it is going to start at 6k. So i think I am going to just get the 6core config with the dual d500 gpus and then upgrade the ram on my own

allupons · Oct 25, 2013

So it sounds like I could likely count on about a 25% boost in CPU power if I were to go the route of upgrading.

Does anyone have a good feel for how the 2 d500s stack up against either my current amd 5870 or an available gpu upgrade option like the gtx680? I know that on os X you can't typically run crossfire, so does anyone know if both d500s will be used for opencl, or is the second card there exclusively for powering an additional monitor? Just curious if anyone has a sense of these things.

clamnectar · Oct 25, 2013

allupons said:
So it sounds like I could likely count on about a 25% boost in CPU power if I were to go the route of upgrading.

Does anyone have a good feel for how the 2 d500s stack up against either my current amd 5870 or an available gpu upgrade option like the gtx680? I know that on os X you can't typically run crossfire, so does anyone know if both d500s will be used for opencl, or is the second card there exclusively for powering an additional monitor? Just curious if anyone has a sense of these things.

Double D500 would be about 3x as powerful as a single 5870, if fully utilized

deconstruct60 · Oct 25, 2013

allupons said:
.....so does anyone know if both d500s will be used for opencl, or is the second card there exclusively for powering an additional monitor? .

I think what is flawed is the notion that the cards are exclusive assigned to any one role. ( permanently crossfire, permanently OpenCL , permanently just display , etc. ). The simplest is that it is two cards just like two cards now. OS X 10.9 and 10.9 aware apps can probably can do a better job of "finding" work for lonely GPU card to do, but it isn't a permanently assigned role for specific hardware.

Once there is a widely deployed hardware base, software apps tend to get written to the characteristics of that base. So not going to see many 4+ core capable apps if 99% of folks have just 2 cores. Same is true of 2 GPU set ups.

Similar issue if 4K monitors go common place. If there are two (or more) then two cards probably works better.

With two the Mac Pro can follow both paths into the future.

Larry-K · Oct 25, 2013

gugy said:
Yeah, I heard great things about the OWC accelsior.
My biggest concern is the darn Applecare. Every single MP I had I end using it. I know the current video card won't cost more than $300, but I wonder if a motherboard or something else goes terribly wrong, how much that might cost.

I think I can get something like $3k for my machine, but the equivalent on the nMP might be $6k just to start. Crazy....

That many problems? Guess I've been lucky, never had a pro model tank since my G5 Quad (Water-cooled, still runs fine). Are you running clean power to those things?

Demigod Mac · Oct 25, 2013

I got a modded 780 from MVC and am very pleased with it. Makes my 6-core scream again.

Reason I mention this is because the Radeon 5000 series was already kind of old when the 2010 MP came out (3 months later the 6000 series were out), add that onto the years since then and the video card is one of the weaker links in the factory-configured system.

gugy · Oct 25, 2013

Larry-K said:
That many problems? Guess I've been lucky, never had a pro model tank since my G5 Quad (Water-cooled, still runs fine). Are you running clean power to those things?

yep, I have a APC system and my electrician grounded my work office. So it all should be OK.

Larry-K · Oct 25, 2013

gugy said:
yep, I have a APC system and my electrician grounded my work office. So it all should be OK.

Well, let's hope you got all your bad luck out of the way, and it's smooth sailing from here on out.

You never know what to expect in a new form factor. I'm debating the new machine versus an old Dual Processor that I can upgrade as I see fit, but I still don't know enough to make an educated decision.

2013 MP 6 core vs 2010 MP 6 core question

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