6 core mac pro faster than 12 core mac pro??

[macguy93]

Hello Everyone,

I have a bit of an unusual observation that i found this afternoon. I have been doing some of my typical 3D work in cinema 4d R12 and today i discovered that the extensive 3D animation i was rendering out was rendering faster in the on screen preview on the 6-core than my 12-core.. I was suddenly shocked by how this would ever be possible. My current specs are as follows:

Mac pro 2012 12-core 2.4GHz 12 gigs DDR3 1333MHz ram ATI Radeon 5770

Mac pro 2012 6-core 3.33GHz 12 gigs DDR3 1333MHz ram ATI Radeon 5770

I just bought both computers and i am quite concerned why my 12 core (19000 range qeekbench) would be slower than my 6 core (15000 range qeekbench). does it have something to do with the amount of ram i have in the 12 core? does each processors need a certain amount of ram to function at optimum power? where as the 6 core has 12 gigs all to itself and the 12 core has 6 gigs to each processor only..?

It was a very subtle difference but still a 12 core should be blowing away the 6 core!

I am just concerned something may be wrong with the 12 core??

Thanks in advance for the suggestions!

 

[Demigod Mac]

The 6-core has a higher clocked CPU (3.33 ghz vs 2.4 ghz)

Higher clock speed tends to perform better in realtime operations like that 3D preview you mention, and in games.

The 12 core should easily defeat the 6 core in any heavy number crunching, non-realtime situation where the program utilizes all cores (like audio/video encoding, rendering a 3D animation to video, or that Geekbench test)

 

[CaptainChunk]

I'm not well-versed in Cinema 4D, but it seems plausible that you're running into an available RAM per core bottleneck on the 12-core machine.

If the above is true, it would explain why your hex-core is faster, because its cores are clocked 28% faster.

 

[macguy93]

I guess it will just have to be something I need to live with for the time being. I plan on upgrading the 12 core to dual 6 core 3.33ghz (same processors in the 6 core machine) hopefully by then I will see a bigger difference. However like I mentioned its only a couple second difference, not a deal breaker by all means just something I happen to notice.

Thanks for your replies!

 

[dmax35]

When I was in the process of selecting a Mac Pro, I was advised if I wanted speed to go with the 6 core. I was surprised to hear that thinking 12 cores would process allot faster.

My friend who works for Apple explained the 3.3ghz 6 core is like driving down a six lane freeway doing 75 MPH vs a 12 core on a 12 lane freeway doing 55MPH.

My brother has a 12 core system like yours thou with 48GB ram, we did a test against my 6 core with 48GB ram doing some computational intense runs & video editing process's.

Like Demigod Mac stated, the 12 core won in the heavy number crunching & video editing. If you concerned with Geekbench scores, throw in a SSD and those will go up.

 

[CaptainChunk]

I guess it will just have to be something I need to live with for the time being. I plan on upgrading the 12 core to dual 6 core 3.33ghz (same processors in the 6 core machine) hopefully by then I will see a bigger difference. However like I mentioned its only a couple second difference, not a deal breaker by all means just something I happen to notice.

Thanks for your replies!

Well, RAM is also dirt cheap for your machines, so if you were curious, you could always toss some more RAM into the 12-core and see if it makes a difference. For example, a 32GB kit (8x4GB DIMMs) is about $250 on OWC and that's a LOT cheaper than upgrading 5600 series processors.

 

[macguy93]

My primary line of work is video editing and cgi (visual effects) so I use adobe after effects and 3d applications like I mentioned above. I didn't mention I am only keeping one of the computers, I do plan on upgrading the processors in the 12 core down the road (main reason why I bought it) question is, is it worth keeping the 12 core right now? If I bump up the ram to 32gigs in the 12 core will that make a speed difference in on screen preview? If this is the case with the 6 core being slightly quicker in preview rendering that means this model is quicker than all 12 cores since they don't sell a 12 core model with the 3.33ghz processors in it

 

[GermanyChris]

When I was in the process of selecting a Mac Pro, I was advised if I wanted speed to go with the 6 core. I was surprised to hear that thinking 12 cores would process allot faster.

My friend who works for Apple explained the 3.3ghz 6 core is like driving down a six lane freeway doing 75 MPH vs a 12 core on a 12 lane freeway doing 55MPH.

My brother has a 12 core system like yours thou with 48GB ram, we did a test against my 6 core with 48GB ram doing some computational intense runs & video editing process's.

Like Demigod Mac stated, the 12 core won in the heavy number crunching & video editing. If you concerned with Geekbench scores, throw in a SSD and those will go up.

GB is processor and RAM only an SSD won't help that benchmark. An SSD will help an xBench score though.

I do wonder though if it's a scratch disk difference. Because I don't do movies or animation I'm not sure but you do notice and increase in speed with PS and a fast scratch disk. You are writing to something right?

 

[twietee]

I do plan on upgrading the processors in the 12 core down the road (main reason why I bought it) question is, is it worth keeping the 12 core right now? If I bump up the ram to 32gigs in the 12 core will that make a speed difference in on screen preview? If this is the case with the 6 core being slightly quicker in preview rendering that means this model is quicker than all 12 cores since they don't sell a 12 core model with the 3.33ghz processors in it

You are aware of CPU upgrading prices? Just asking..I considered the 2.4 12c too, but it didn't seem like the road to go (for me). I know some users differ, but personally I don't expect them to get much cheaper.

I'm not savvy at all, but the new GTX 5xx/6xx can speed up your viewport-render pretty much too in comparison to the stock card. So maybe you can have a look at them too.

 

[macguy93]

You are aware of CPU upgrading prices? Just asking..I considered the 2.4 12c too, but it didn't seem like the road to go (for me). I know some users differ, but personally I don't expect them to get much cheaper.

I'm not savvy at all, but the new GTX 5xx/6xx can speed up your viewport-render pretty much too in comparison to the stock card. So maybe you can have a look at them too.

Yes im well aware of how much a CPU upgrade will cost, its going to be a little more than a $1,000. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117242 (Will this processor work? )

The way i look at it is its much cheaper to replace the CPU's in the future than to go out and spend over $4,000 on a new mac pro. The reason i want this expandability is because video editing and any computer generated imagery is becoming more processor extensive.

A video card upgrade sounds like a good option that may be able to hold me over until i upgrade. I think i will also kick it up to 32 gigs. than i will probably be sitting close to my preview speeds on my 6-core, if not a tad bit faster

 

[twietee]

Yes im well aware of how much a CPU upgrade will cost, its going to be a little more than a $1,000. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117242 (Will this processor work? )

The way i look at it is its much cheaper to replace the CPU's in the future than to go out and spend over $4,000 on a new mac pro. The reason i want this expandability is because video editing and any computer generated imagery is becoming more processor extensive.

A video card upgrade sounds like a good option that may be able to hold me over until i upgrade. I think i will also kick it up to 32 gigs. than i will probably be sitting close to my preview speeds on my 6-core, if not a tad bit faster

Ok, someone def. has to verify this, but my understanding is no, that chip won't work in a 12core configuration. That would be the X5680 for example (3.33Ghz) and more like 1600$ per cpu..

 

[stupidassdrumer]

Ok, someone def. has to verify this, but my understanding is no, that chip won't work in a dual core configuration. That would be the X5680 for example (3.33Ghz) and more like 1600$ per cpu..

you are correct

 

[macguy93]

Ok, someone def. has to verify this, but my understanding is no, that chip won't work in a 12core configuration. That would be the X5680 for example (3.33Ghz) and more like 1600$ per cpu..

What would be my cheapest options for a faster processor upgrade? (im in no rush what so ever, just curious what is available) hopefully these damn processors will go down in price 2 years from now! lol

 

[twietee]

Well, you can get the 2.66 config for example. Buy it on e-bay, sell your cpus too...etc.etc. but I would seriously question the benefit of all that hassle and money to upgrade from 2.4 to 2.66 or something similar.
And don't be too sure about price drops either - there will still be a demand in future with less CPUs available...they could get even more expensive imho, but as I said before: I'm not an expert in all this - just some MRinfo I gathered over the times.

But sorry, really don't want to crush your party though - I'd really consider getting the Hexcore now - that is if it fits your requirements right now.

 

[CaptainChunk]

What would be my cheapest options for a faster processor upgrade? (im in no rush what so ever, just curious what is available) hopefully these damn processors will go down in price 2 years from now! lol

Anything from the 5600 series that will give you an appreciable speed bump over what you already have is going to be very expensive. X5680s (3.33GHz hex) are about $1,600 each new and usually hover around $1,000-1,300 each used on eBay.

 

[bearcatrp]

I bought my Westmere processors from here....
http://www.itcreations.com/ , through eBay. Both my rigs have been solid for over a year crunching data for WCG 24/7.
Of course your 2.4 will be a bit slower due to the speed of the processors and other factors. Here is a comparison between the two processors:
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/841/Intel_Xeon_E5645_vs_Intel_Xeon_X5680.html . When you upgrade, get the X series for better performance the the E series.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

I have a bit of an unusual observation that i found this afternoon. I have been doing some of my typical 3D work in cinema 4d R12 and today i discovered that the extensive 3D animation i was rendering out was rendering faster in the on screen preview on the 6-core than my 12-core.. I was suddenly shocked by how this would ever be possible. My current specs are as follows:

I'm confused as to what your definition of "on screen preview" is.

If you're rendering a frame to the Picture Viewer (or even the viewport, via CMD-R), then C4D should use all 12 cores (24 threads) and max out that 12-core, which would definitely be faster then the 3.33ghz machine.

If that's not the case, either C4D is locked to a certain number of render threads (check your preferences), or something else is wrong with the machine. It is impossible that the 6-core machine would beat the 12-core machine if all cores are maxed at 100%.

-SC

 

[spacedesign911]

I'm confused as to what your definition of "on screen preview" is.

If you're rendering a frame to the Picture Viewer (or even the viewport, via CMD-R), then C4D should use all 12 cores (24 threads) and max out that 12-core, which would definitely be faster then the 3.33ghz machine.

If that's not the case, either C4D is locked to a certain number of render threads (check your preferences), or something else is wrong with the machine. It is impossible that the 6-core machine would beat the 12-core machine if all cores are maxed at 100%.

-SC

I concur, Im running Vectorworks and Renderworks on my HEx 3.3 and it screams, when I render using the Cinema engine, my renderings appear in blocks of 6 (6 core) are you seeing 12 blocks render at a time? if not your prefs are not using the full whammy!

 

[ScottishCaptain]

I concur, Im running Vectorworks and Renderworks on my HEx 3.3 and it screams, when I render using the Cinema engine, my renderings appear in blocks of 6 (6 core) are you seeing 12 blocks render at a time? if not your prefs are not using the full whammy!

Then both of your machines are whacked.

The CPUs in a modern day Mac Pro are hyperthreaded. This means that one physical core appears as two logical cores to the operating system (and by extension, any programs running under that). This allows the hardware to execute two threads at once per core.

Therefore, under Cinema 4D- a 6 core machine should spawn 12 render threads. A 12 core machine should spawn 24 render threads. The render threads manifest as those yellow buckets/blocks/squares, one per thread. You see them during the GI computation and raytracing phases of the render.

If you're using the XMB (physical) renderer, then you won't see any yellow squares at all since the XMB sampler is a brute force ray tracer (there is no progress per say, the time you let it run determines the quality of the finished image). Nevertheless, you should be able to open Activity Monitor and see the "CINEMA 4D" process sucking up anywhere from 1600% CPU to 2400%.

Again, if you're only seeing 6 render threads on a 6 core machine... Something is wrong. If you're only seeing 12 render threads on a 12 core machine... Something is wrong. If you're only seeing 6 render threads on a 12 core machine... Something is really wrong.

Unless your preferences have otherwise been configured to limit the number of spawned render threads, then the only "correct" thing to see here is that a 6 core machine should spawn 12 render threads, likewise a 12 core machine should spawn 24 render threads.

-SC

 

[macguy93]

I am curious to know, how much faster is the 3.06GHz 12 core mac pro than my 2.4GHz 12 core? The guys in the apple store said it wasn't really a night and day difference in speed, is that truly the case? They also said that i cant upgrade the processors inside my computer... how true is that?

I'm confused as to what your definition of "on screen preview" is.

If you're rendering a frame to the Picture Viewer (or even the viewport, via CMD-R), then C4D should use all 12 cores (24 threads) and max out that 12-core, which would definitely be faster then the 3.33ghz machine.

If that's not the case, either C4D is locked to a certain number of render threads (check your preferences), or something else is wrong with the machine. It is impossible that the 6-core machine would beat the 12-core machine if all cores are maxed at 100%.

-SC

Yes i meant rendering to the picture viewer via command R. But, i think i figured out why i was noticing this. on my 12 core i have a 24inch cinema display and on the 6 core i have a samsung 23inch sync master SA300. I realized that the area that was being rendered was bigger on the 24inch (bigger screen, bigger render area) on the 6 core the 23inch screen had a smaller area to render, therefore making the render time faster. I scaled down C4D's window on each monitor (to what looked closely identical in size) and ran the test again and the 12 core beat the 6 core. However it was not night and day, but still had the 6 core by a couple of seconds. does that sound like that would cause that to happen? or is that just sheer coincidence? or should the 12 core be noticeably faster?

I concur, Im running Vectorworks and Renderworks on my HEx 3.3 and it screams, when I render using the Cinema engine, my renderings appear in blocks of 6 (6 core) are you seeing 12 blocks render at a time? if not your prefs are not using the full whammy!

yes, but the 12 core had 24 boxes (via hyper threading) and the 6 core had 12 boxes (via hyper threading)

 

[macguy93]

I guess this test says it all!

I included results from both my 12 core and 6 core. The 12 core had a CPU score of 12.64 and an openGL score of 29.62fps. The 6 core had a CPU score of 8.83 and an openGL score of 38.31fps.

The 12 core is certainly faster in CPU power, but why is the openGL score lower? (lower ghz?)

I seen a test done with a 12 core 2.93ghz and it had a CPU score of 14.8. so im pretty pleased with my near identical results.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

I am curious to know, how much faster is the 3.06GHz 12 core mac pro than my 2.4GHz 12 core? The guys in the apple store said it wasn't really a night and day difference in speed, is that truly the case? They also said that i cant upgrade the processors inside my computer... how true is that?

Uh, it's (3.06ghz - 2.4ghz) * 12 = 7.92ghz faster.

The guys in the Apple store likely know jack **** about this subject. At least, that has been my general experience dealing with an actual Apple store. It is likely that the person you talked to didn't realize that the box has 12 cores, so the difference between 3.06ghz and 2.4ghz (660mhz) is multiplied by 12. The last time I talked to them about the Mac Pro demo they had on the floor (which was two versions out of date), the guy knew absolutely nothing about the machine and thought I should buy an iMac instead.

Yes i meant rendering to the picture viewer via command R. But, i think i figured out why i was noticing this. on my 12 core i have a 24inch cinema display and on the 6 core i have a samsung 23inch sync master SA300. I realized that the area that was being rendered was bigger on the 24inch (bigger screen, bigger render area) on the 6 core the 23inch screen had a smaller area to render, therefore making the render time faster. I scaled down C4D's window on each monitor (to what looked closely identical in size) and ran the test again and the 12 core beat the 6 core. However it was not night and day, but still had the 6 core by a couple of seconds. does that sound like that would cause that to happen? or is that just sheer coincidence? or should the 12 core be noticeably faster?

That makes absolutely no sense.

The only thing that matters in that regard is the actual resolution of the render, which is configured via the "Width" and "Height" options under Render Settings. The size of the picture viewer window is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the resolution that your scene renders out at, and therefore plays no role in the time each machine would take to complete a job.

Edit:

Just for comparison, the system in my sig does 31.95 FPS on OpenGL and 15.41 on CPU. I'm guessing the difference in your OpenGL results has to do with either the CPU speed (which seems odd, given that the test is supposed to be GPU based) or the fact that one system is on 10.8.0 and the other is on 10.8.1.

-SC

 

[derbothaus]

I guess this test says it all!

It kind of does for CPU only. And only massively multithreaded. Get out the CPU monitor and look at what is getting worked while doing things. If your boxes never get more than 4-8 threads maxed the 3.33GHz 6-core is most likely the fastest doing that task. If you have no headroom left more cores will help you move faster. Otherwise and usually a waste.

 

[thekev]

GB is processor and RAM only an SSD won't help that benchmark. An SSD will help an xBench score though.

I do wonder though if it's a scratch disk difference. Because I don't do movies or animation I'm not sure but you do notice and increase in speed with PS and a fast scratch disk. You are writing to something right?

That can be addressed to a very high degree with ram too these days as long as you assign PS to use it via its preferences.

The way i look at it is its much cheaper to replace the CPU's in the future than to go out and spend over $4,000 on a new mac pro. The reason i want this expandability is because video editing and any computer generated imagery is becoming more processor extensive.

A video card upgrade sounds like a good option that may be able to hold me over until i upgrade. I think i will also kick it up to 32 gigs. than i will probably be sitting close to my preview speeds on my 6-core, if not a tad bit faster

32GB is the least I'd put in a dual package machine these days. It sounds large, but I don't see it that way when it's being distributed across many physical cores. As far far as video card upgrades, they usually address totally different things. Packages like After Effects can make use of CUDA functions for raytraced effects, yet most of it won't make a difference in offline rendering. Gpus can allow for faster interaction with 3d scenes, especially with dense scenes. They can allow for faster playback when such functions are tied to the gpu. You have to actually read documentation to understand whether something will benefit you in the way that you anticipate. Otherwise you're just throwing money at the situation and hoping for an overall improvement.

What would be my cheapest options for a faster processor upgrade? (im in no rush what so ever, just curious what is available) hopefully these damn processors will go down in price 2 years from now! lol

At that time it may just be a better idea to look at a newer machine. The cpus you're looking at came out in 2010. Unless intel is just lagging, there should be a better option by 2014.

The 12 core is certainly faster in CPU power, but why is the openGL score lower? (lower ghz?)

OpenGL isn't really a cpu dependent operation. Beyond that I don't think the gpu is used there for accelerating offline renders. There are a couple rendering engines that do so, but it's a relatively new concept, and not commonly run via OpenGL framework.

 

[CaptainChunk]

I am curious to know, how much faster is the 3.06GHz 12 core mac pro than my 2.4GHz 12 core? The guys in the apple store said it wasn't really a night and day difference in speed, is that truly the case? They also said that i cant upgrade the processors inside my computer... how true is that?

Well, you can't "officially" upgrade the processors in a Mac Pro. Unofficially, yes (and it isn't that hard).

Apple just won't cover problems caused by an unsupported upgrade under warranty. Therefore, an Apple Store employee is going to tell you "no".