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How I gave up waiting for a new MacPro, bought the fastest rMBP and never looked back

SvK

SvK

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 12, 2005
285
0
San Diego
How I gave up waiting for a new MacPro, bought the fastest rMBP and never looked back.....

I'll make this short.

Im a composer / musician who scores music for films. I need a lot of horsepower and very fast reads from SSDs, due to mammoth sample-libraries for my Orchestral music.

I owned a 2010 4 core Mac Pro Tower with 32 gig of RAM and 5 internal 128gig SSD's hooked up to 3 displays. CPU wise, that is a little under-powered and it is generally agreed that for Music , the 6-core is the sweet spot for professional music production.

Well....the rMBP is just under the 6-core speed according to Geekbench.

So ...i bought it. With 16gig ofRAM and the 768 gig SSD (read speeds are just about 500) . I also bought a 27 inch Thunderbolt display.

So, I brought it home, migrated all my data from Tower to rMBP. I took an HDMI cable from rMBP to my over head 1080 TV, another thunderbolt cable to TB display, hooked up my full sized keyboard, midi controllers and mice to the TB 27inch Display (it's a hub)

Loaded up my busiest, most CPU intensive session from my tower......


and hit play............

IT PLAYED!! ...my CPU meters in Logic Audio barely blinked, and that super fast internal SSD inside the rMBP streamed all my strings, brass, woodwinds like a champ!

unbelievable.


The best part?
At the end of the day, I wanted to chill out on the couch and continue editing my recording session...just unhooked 2 cables....and ALL that power came with me to the couch.

To keep things safe, I have a time-capsule that backs up wireless, when im disconnected from the big rig and over ethernet ( the 27 TB display has ethernet ) when hooked up to big rig.

I am free !!


absolutely amazing. That rMBP is running a 27 inch, a 1080 hdmi tv and its own display and audio in/out is powered by the UAD Apollo TB audio interface.

and I've got 6-core MACpro power in a friggin laptop.


Embrace the future, it's here.
I won't be needing that desktop ;-)

best,
SvK
 
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Sadly we have reached a point where the MacBook Pro is almost as fast as the Mac Pro. This is why we need a refresh.

I barely touch my Mac Pro these days. Having to transfer files over to the Mac Pro is just a hassle when I can do everything directly on the MacBook Pro; and if I need more monitors, I can hook them up.

Finally just picked up a Promise Pegasus J4 to store my media, and that's fast and more efficient for my needs than dealing with the slow HDDs in my desktop.

Just a year ago, I would have never imagined let alone argued that the MacBook Pro is a Mac Pro replacement. Today I can say for sure that my rMBP is more than enough for my needs and I think I'm ready to get rid of the Mac Pro.
 
And another person who clearly wanted and needed the power of the rMBP... that got exactly what they want, and more.

Congratulations on the purchase, and on your satisfaction.
 
SvK said:
At the end of the day, I wanted to chill out on the couch and continue editing my recording session...just unhooked 2 cables....and ALL that power came with me to the couch.
Click to expand...


c'mon dude! just buy another one 15" retina and live the first one hooked up! ;)
 
Crazy how a huge 30 pound box can do the same as a 4 pound sleek machine now...

I debated between the Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro and I too chose the 15" RetinaPro last week.

Still amazes me....
 
SvK said:
How I gave up waiting for a new MacPro, bought the fastest rMBP and never looked back.....

I'll make this short.

Im a composer / musician who scores music for films. I need a lot of horsepower and very fast reads from SSDs, due to mammoth sample-libraries for my Orchestral music.

I owned a 2010 4 core Mac Pro Tower with 32 gig of RAM and 5 internal 128gig SSD's hooked up to 3 displays. CPU wise, that is a little under-powered and it is generally agreed that for Music , the 6-core is the sweet spot for professional music production.

Well....the rMBP is just under the 6-core speed according to Geekbench.

So ...i bought it. With 16gig ofRAM and the 768 gig SSD (read speeds are just about 500) . I also bought a 27 inch Thunderbolt display.

So, I brought it home, migrated all my data from Tower to rMBP. I took an HDMI cable from rMBP to my over head 1080 TV, another thunderbolt cable to TB display, hooked up my full sized keyboard, midi controllers and mice to the TB 27inch Display (it's a hub)

Loaded up my busiest, most CPU intensive session from my tower......


and hit play............

IT PLAYED!! ...my CPU meters in Logic Audio barely blinked, and that super fast internal SSD inside the rMBP streamed all my strings, brass, woodwinds like a champ!

unbelievable.


The best part?
At the end of the day, I wanted to chill out on the couch and continue editing my recording session...just unhooked 2 cables....and ALL that power came with me to the couch.

To keep things safe, I have a time-capsule that backs up wireless, when im disconnected from the big rig and over ethernet ( the 27 TB display has ethernet ) when hooked up to big rig.

I am free !!


absolutely amazing. That rMBP is running a 27 inch, a 1080 hdmi tv and its own display and audio in/out is powered by the UAD Apollo TB audio interface.

and I've got 6-core MACpro power in a friggin laptop.


Embrace the future, it's here.
I won't be needing that desktop ;-)

best,
SvK
Click to expand...

Awesome! The next thing you know an iphone is faster than a mac pro! lol
 
swerve147 said:
I love hearing stories like this :D
Click to expand...

OK then...

The last time I updated my Garmin Zumo European maps, I had a Sony Viao. After I'd downloaded the maps, I hit install. It took 6 hours to prepare the maps, and a further 5 hours to install them.

Last night, my rMBP took 10 minutes to prepare the maps, and 10 minutes to install them. :D
 
alphaod said:
Sadly we have reached a point where the MacBook Pro is almost as fast as the Mac Pro. This is why we need a refresh.
Click to expand...

Whaaat?

lDDUW4g.png


If you bought the Mac Pro because you needed 6, 8 or 12 cores, the 2009 model is still almost twice as fast as the rMBP at tasks that can take advantage of it.

Now if they would just put some 8-core, Ivy or Haswell-based Xeons in that thing....
 
robvas said:
Whaaat?

<image of 3d rendering benchmark>
Click to expand...

Okay, so the OP has an application that requires very fast disk access and loads of memory. And you come up with a 3D benchmark. What is the connection ? He doesn't need any kind of 3D or GPU offloading !

Clearly another case where it would help to read first, write later.


Peter.
 
If you need other aspects of the Mac Pro then no macbook will ever be a replacement.

However, it is a limited (and shrinking) market.


The number of tasks that demand a mac pro that aren't better run on a server or server cluster these days is fairly tiny and shrinking.
 
PeterJP said:
Okay, so the OP has an application that requires very fast disk access and loads of memory. And you come up with a 3D benchmark. What is the connection ? He doesn't need any kind of 3D or GPU offloading !

Clearly another case where it would help to read first, write later.
Click to expand...

The point is there are workloads the rMBP in which is not a replacement for the Mac Pro.

That benchmark is for showcasing raw (and parallel) CPU power, there is no 3D graphics or GPU involved despite the name.
 
robvas said:
Whaaat?

Image

If you bought the Mac Pro because you needed 6, 8 or 12 cores, the 2009 model is still almost twice as fast as the rMBP at tasks that can take advantage of it.

Now if they would just put some 8-core, Ivy or Haswell-based Xeons in that thing....
Click to expand...

If you look at pure numbers sure the Mac Pro is still faster than the MacBook Pro… but lets compare other values…

Looking at your chart, in order to be faster than the MacBook Pro, you need the 8 or 12 core models of the latest Mac Pro release. Now have you looked at the price of 8/12 core Mac Pro? Have you noticed the amount of other hardware you need? There are multiple factors to the Mac Pro being faster, but it's twice if not three times as expensive as a MacBook Pro.

Most professional software including Cinema 4D can utilize distributed rendering these days. If you really need the power of a Mac Pro, get two or three smaller Macs at the same cost. For the 90% of the other times you don't need the massive processing power in the Mac Pro, you have a very portable and rather powerful computer to get your work done.

Thus, in my opinion, the current MacBook Pro is a viable replacement for the Mac Pro.


(Also my 2009 Mac Pro is not twice as fast as my MacBook Pro… maybe 10-20% at best); the only advantage of my Mac Pro is the amount of RAM I can use.
 
robvas said:
The point is there are workloads the rMBP in which is not a replacement for the Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Sure.

But in many of those workloads, you're better off sending them to a cluster of machines (even better, cheap PC servers) for processing.

Yes, sure, there are edge cases where nothing other than a mac pro will do.


But they're becoming less and less common.
 
throAU said:
But in many of those workloads, you're better off sending them to a cluster of machines (even better, cheap PC servers) for processing.

Yes, sure, there are edge cases where nothing other than a mac pro will do.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong - the iMac/MBP is better for 90% of people than the Pro

But for the people who need the Pro, it's not a replacment.

You can't stick 4 x 3.5" SATA drives in an iMac or rMBP. You don't have dual optical drives. You can't put 128GB of RAM in either of those. You can't get 6, 8 or 12 CPU cores.

Sure you can spend tens of thousands on a small cluster but we're talking about a desktop PC here. Not a noisy, hot room full of servers that would make your power bill go crazy.
 
robvas said:
But for the people who need the Pro, it's not a replacment.
Click to expand...

thro said:
If you need other aspects of the Mac Pro then no macbook will ever be a replacement.
Click to expand...

Tis what I already said.... just that those use cases are very uncommon and getting less so.

And I'm betting a cluster of quad core Mac minis would likely provide more compute (i.e., CPU) power than a single mac pro at a cheaper price, if your app can support grid computing as provided by OS X server.


Say 4x quad core i7 minis with 16 GB each, plus some shared network storage is likely price competitive with a high end Pro and can be scaled (i.e., add another 4-8 machines or more if required) - again, if your workload can be run on grid. If it can't fair enough, but....


But yes, if you need it in a single machine (you're dealing with a single large data set that can't be broken up), there's not an alternative.
 
Last edited:
robvas said:
Whaaat?

If you bought the Mac Pro because you needed 6, 8 or 12 cores, the 2009 model is still almost twice as fast as the rMBP at tasks that can take advantage of it.

Now if they would just put some 8-core, Ivy or Haswell-based Xeons in that thing....
Click to expand...

According to my personal experience, latest Macbook Pro is much faster than latest, yet outdated, Mac Pro.
Despite there were some optimistic rumors recently, the market segment of Mac Pro is almost captured by MBP.
Even if Mac Pro gets this long-awaited update, it is simply too late.
 
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