Not a benching program, but Handbrake reliably pushes temperatures to the max on my i7.
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iMac Pro - First Hands On Thread
- Thread starter bplein
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For everyone who has their hands on iMac Pro, well, first off, congrats. I envy you
But I'm still holding off on purchasing one. Mostly because it's way overpowered for my needs (app developer, game dev, but not AAA+ titles, so...), and lastly, I'm waiting for some decent reviews.
Could anyone just post on how the fans work? On iMac 27, 2017 with an i7 CPU, fans are quite annoying. At least to me. Can you hear them on iMac Pro during some normal stuff like browsing, music, and some simple apps? And how about under full load?
From all the reports and reviews so far for the iMac Pro I doubt very much if fan noise will be an issue for anyone. There are two fans vs. one in previous iMacs so that may give off a different noise frequency/harmonics which to some people maybe an annoyance.
Also, I'm unsure about the diameter of the two new fans in the iMac Pro. If they are larger than what is used for the previous iMacs then they quite likely will run at lower RPM yet still be able to push enough cooling air around. In the MP6,1 the fan diameter is enormous and runs at a very low RPM most of the time and really cannot be heard unless you put your ear physically on the casing.
Sorry to hear that man, hope it's short. Unfortunate timing, I'm sure your iMac Pro will wait for you to catch up with it.
Appreciate your posts.
Sorry to hear bplein! Feel better soon! I really appreciate all of your insight so far. Get better and keep the focus on the family on Christmas Day. The iMac Pro will be there for ya in a few days. Cheers!
Great. What SSD model inside iMac Pro (4 TB) shows at
"Apple - About This Mac - System Report - Hardware - Storage - Physical Drive - Device Name"?
For instance, iMac 5K 27-inch shows "APPLE SSD SM2048L", which stands for SaMsung SSD 2,048 GB (2 TB). Thanks and Happy Christmas!
"Apple - About This Mac - System Report - Hardware - Storage - Physical Drive - Device Name"?
For instance, iMac 5K 27-inch shows "APPLE SSD SM2048L", which stands for SaMsung SSD 2,048 GB (2 TB). Thanks and Happy Christmas!
Thanks for the benchmarks, very interesting.
I'm considering ordering a 8 core/32gb/Vega64 myself. Could you benchmarks some modern games that rely more on CPU clock speed (eg. Battlefield 1, Grand Theft Auto 5 - Bootcamp). The 3.2ghz Xeon has a whole 1gb of turbo boost, and I wonder how effective that is for sustained load in games - say compared to the higher base clocked 8700K, or 7700K in the 2017 iMac. CPU clock speed can have a big impact on the framerate. Would be very interesting to see how the iMac Pro fares here.
For those that want to fiddle around with the Vega GPU:
Undervolting the Vega GPU with MSI Afterburner (Bootcamp) could give more performance and/or lower temps. Process Lasso can make specific programs (ie. games) avoid hyperthreading (Hyper-threaded core avoidance), which could also help the CPU temp (8 cores wo/HT is more than enough for gaming).
I'm considering ordering a 8 core/32gb/Vega64 myself. Could you benchmarks some modern games that rely more on CPU clock speed (eg. Battlefield 1, Grand Theft Auto 5 - Bootcamp). The 3.2ghz Xeon has a whole 1gb of turbo boost, and I wonder how effective that is for sustained load in games - say compared to the higher base clocked 8700K, or 7700K in the 2017 iMac. CPU clock speed can have a big impact on the framerate. Would be very interesting to see how the iMac Pro fares here.
For those that want to fiddle around with the Vega GPU:
Undervolting the Vega GPU with MSI Afterburner (Bootcamp) could give more performance and/or lower temps. Process Lasso can make specific programs (ie. games) avoid hyperthreading (Hyper-threaded core avoidance), which could also help the CPU temp (8 cores wo/HT is more than enough for gaming).
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Back to life (sort of!)
I was going to start testing 10Gbit tonight. I only have one cable in the house long enough to make it to my 10Gbit switch, and that's 300ft Cat 6, which isn't 10Gb spec. I tried it anyhow, and could get it to connect at 1000, 2500 and 5000 but not 10Gb.
So I ordered a good Cat7 cable and will have it in a couple of days.
With respect to the SSD, it shows APPLE. This is in keeping with someone who is claiming that there are 2 devices behind a controller with hardware RAID 0. In other words, the SSDs (if there are 2 as supposed) are behind a RAID controller so you won't see the actual brand of the SSDs.
The controller NVMe controller is PCIe v3 with a x8 connection.
![Screenshot 2017-12-25 17.38.48.png]( "Screenshot 2017-12-25 17.38.48.png")
![Screenshot 2017-12-25 17.39.39.png]( "Screenshot 2017-12-25 17.39.39.png")
I was going to start testing 10Gbit tonight. I only have one cable in the house long enough to make it to my 10Gbit switch, and that's 300ft Cat 6, which isn't 10Gb spec. I tried it anyhow, and could get it to connect at 1000, 2500 and 5000 but not 10Gb.
So I ordered a good Cat7 cable and will have it in a couple of days.
With respect to the SSD, it shows APPLE. This is in keeping with someone who is claiming that there are 2 devices behind a controller with hardware RAID 0. In other words, the SSDs (if there are 2 as supposed) are behind a RAID controller so you won't see the actual brand of the SSDs.
The controller NVMe controller is PCIe v3 with a x8 connection.
I am nearly 100% sure it's going to say AP4096M (where maybe the M will be something else).
Grateful for all the info you have shared thus far. Glad to hear you are feeling better.
With regard to 10Gbit networking, that's not something achievable via something like a cable modem and normal (airport extreme) router, correct? You need something like a dedicated line and special switch?
Airport Extreme or any other home switch or router isn't capable of 10Gbit. You need a 10Gbit switch. Or direct connection between two 10Gbit servers/hosts.
I have 2 VMware ESXi servers with dual 40Gbit (yes!) but running at 10Gbit into a Ubiquiti XG switch, which is 12 ports SFP+ (i.e. removable transceivers using either optical or DAC cables) and 4 ports 10GBASE-T, which is 10Gbit over twisted pair.
My first test will be to run iperf in a VM on one of the hosts to see what I can get the network performance up to without the storage side of the action. If I can't make iperf work I have other things going wrong. After iperf gives me good performance, I'll move on to NFS performance.
Ideally I'd like to have iSCSI but I don't want to spend $$$ on a commercial variant unless I knew I could make it work well with my iSCSI target (which I haven't determined yet... possibly FreeNAS in a VM).
I have 2 VMware ESXi servers with dual 40Gbit (yes!) but running at 10Gbit into a Ubiquiti XG switch, which is 12 ports SFP+ (i.e. removable transceivers using either optical or DAC cables) and 4 ports 10GBASE-T, which is 10Gbit over twisted pair.
My first test will be to run iperf in a VM on one of the hosts to see what I can get the network performance up to without the storage side of the action. If I can't make iperf work I have other things going wrong. After iperf gives me good performance, I'll move on to NFS performance.
Ideally I'd like to have iSCSI but I don't want to spend $$$ on a commercial variant unless I knew I could make it work well with my iSCSI target (which I haven't determined yet... possibly FreeNAS in a VM).
There are a very few devices out there for consumers to use. The only reason for one would be if you wanted to host to your network internally via iMac Pro(imp(. 1Gbps here via cable runs $1500/mo(let alone 10) I’m fine with 250. Basically, the internal would normally be 1Gb split among every device transmitting to the iMac. Your iMac would be the limiting factor, whereas the IMP won’t be.
I just did a quick and dirty test, I imported some 4k video from a Mavic Pro, and exported it.
It used less than 2 cores, one for iMovie and one for a background processor.
I'll dig into this tomorrow, I wasn't trying to optimize anything and I didn't actually edit the file.
I will NOT be happy if the iMac Pro is no better than my iMac for video processing. It IS great to see the whole 4k image and have it be very responsive while I'm in there. I'd hate to have to go up to more of a pro software tool to take advantage of more cores.
A quick web search shows people complaining of the same thing on older versions of iMovie, yet I see other people saying that they were getting about 5 cores working.
Hummmm
![Screenshot 2017-12-25 22.15.19.png]( "Screenshot 2017-12-25 22.15.19.png")
[doublepost=1514262464][/doublepost]
No. You are limited by the wire speed on both sides and in between.
It used less than 2 cores, one for iMovie and one for a background processor.
I'll dig into this tomorrow, I wasn't trying to optimize anything and I didn't actually edit the file.
I will NOT be happy if the iMac Pro is no better than my iMac for video processing. It IS great to see the whole 4k image and have it be very responsive while I'm in there. I'd hate to have to go up to more of a pro software tool to take advantage of more cores.
A quick web search shows people complaining of the same thing on older versions of iMovie, yet I see other people saying that they were getting about 5 cores working.
Hummmm
[doublepost=1514262464][/doublepost]
No. You are limited by the wire speed on both sides and in between.
Correct, you need a router or switch with a greater than 1GB port
OK, first test was done with all export settings at default except for resolution (4k).
This time I bumped it up from High Quality to Pro-Res and I'm getting enough cores active. Whew!
5min7sec video export, source was 4k h.264 (compressed), output is 4k h.264
iMac Pro: Default with 4K, Quality High, Compress Faster: 4:02, used 2 cores
iMac Pro: 4k, Quality Pro-Res, Compress Best Quality: 2:55, used ~10 cores
NO elevation in fan speed noticed at all.
![Screenshot 2017-12-25 22.29.25.png]( "Screenshot 2017-12-25 22.29.25.png")
Will try it on my 3.4GHz 2012 iMac here shortly, same content.
[doublepost=1514264366][/doublepost]Interesting stuff! The 2012 iMac pushed 3 cores on the first setting.
iMac 2012 3.4GHz: Default with 4K, Quality High, Compress Faster: 4:50, used about 3 cores.
iMac 2012 3.4GHz: 4K, Quality Pro-Res, Compress Best Quality: 7:09, used just under 7 cores for all three processes
Fan speed up to 2646rpm, fairly noisy.
This time I bumped it up from High Quality to Pro-Res and I'm getting enough cores active. Whew!
5min7sec video export, source was 4k h.264 (compressed), output is 4k h.264
iMac Pro: Default with 4K, Quality High, Compress Faster: 4:02, used 2 cores
iMac Pro: 4k, Quality Pro-Res, Compress Best Quality: 2:55, used ~10 cores
NO elevation in fan speed noticed at all.
Will try it on my 3.4GHz 2012 iMac here shortly, same content.
[doublepost=1514264366][/doublepost]Interesting stuff! The 2012 iMac pushed 3 cores on the first setting.
iMac 2012 3.4GHz: Default with 4K, Quality High, Compress Faster: 4:50, used about 3 cores.
iMac 2012 3.4GHz: 4K, Quality Pro-Res, Compress Best Quality: 7:09, used just under 7 cores for all three processes
Fan speed up to 2646rpm, fairly noisy.
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If anyone has a good, easy to build (i.e. "configure, make") LARGE open source package that I can download from Github and bench against, let me know. I don't want to spend all day adding dependencies, but I'm willing to see how quickly different projects build.
(only suggest if you know it's easy to build. I've already tried some out there like handbrake, which builds fine on my new iMac Pro but has some broken dependency on my well-used 2012 iMac.)
(only suggest if you know it's easy to build. I've already tried some out there like handbrake, which builds fine on my new iMac Pro but has some broken dependency on my well-used 2012 iMac.)
Curious to hear if this settled or if you still experience the lag?
Strangely enough yesterday for the first time I had serious lag on my external keyboard connected to my 2015 MBP. Had to reboot the MBP.
?
I've been using my 2017's iMac bluetooth keyboard on my 2007 iMac & haven't had any lag. I may be concerned, but I do have a backup if need be. My 8c makes it in today!