Mac Pro Buyer's Guide: Which Model to Choose

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

You have to remember for pricing it's SERVER parts which are priced way more than "consumer" parts. Then a bit of "Apple Tax" because it's super shiny.

The server parts are different, and, what people who run production computing want. They also support massive I/O if you need it. I've looked at buying Apple equivalent off-the-shelf configs, and, the Apple Tax wasn't as much as I thought it would be.

The video cards alone are an extra $1k. The GTX series are "consumer" cards. The drivers are deliberately crappy when running apps like Autocad or Photoshop..

Are you sure about that? (Source?) From what I read in the Sunday newspapers, Nvidia and AMD both provide different drivers intended to support max frame rates for games, with the pro drivers having different goals. They no doubt package the different drivers with the pro versions to help protect higher margins on the pro side as well.

This. I suspect my only slowdowns are from not running an SSD.

I'm not buying another computer without an SSD system disk. (vow)

User files are another matter. Are we talking 500 GB, or 10 TB?

That being said, I anxiously await the 2015 Mac Pro (they can't go for over 2 years without releasing one!) and am going to start doing a bunch of overtime to save up for it.

I use my Mac Pro for gaming and because I know, with a GPU upgrade, it'll last 5 years. Mine is going on 6 and can still play all of the latest games with 3-year-old budget PC GPU.

Dedicated gamers have convinced me that for gaming, it is more effective to just have a separate gaming machine-- Windows+Nvidia. No reason it can't share the same display(s).

I'm afraid that OS X and its inferior multitasking capabilities might be a showstopper...

Inferior to Windows? Do you have a source for that?

Linux? Sure. It would be nice if Apple upgraded some of the guts of OS X including the TCP code as well as scaling up multitasking to more cores.

Then again, it would be nice if they started selling 2-CPU-chip Xserves again also.

 

[thekev]

D700s are nothing more than a HD7970 with ECC memory. You can get HD7970s off eBay for well under $200.

The internals were already getting long in the tooth when this machine was released. PC world has already moved on to DDR4 and LGA2011-3 CPUs.

I do appreciate that the machine looks amazing and is whisper quiet, but its far from a good deal in 2015, and good looks dont pay the bills when i can get a far more powerful pc build for the same price or even lower. Hopefully they can put some more pep in the refresh and keep these machines competitive for the coming years. Really don't want to see another wait like we did between 5,1-6,1 Mac pros.

I'm pretty sure they don't use ECC memory or at least don't use any of its features. The D300s use a chip that doesn't support it, and Apple doesn't advertise it, which they would if it actually had ECC vram. Don't expect ECC vram on these. Think of them at 7970s with different drivers.

I remember a few tech site tried to build a comparable pc with the Mac pro when it came out and they concluded that the Mac pro is cheaper for the same performance. Did that change?

Never look at those comparisons, because they always make a lot of assumptions. They make assumptions about things they can't possibly know without valid testing. For example they have to assign some kind of market value to the gpus, as no retail parts use a 100% identical configuration and branding. They have to spec things similarly, yet even that is biased. Apple requires a certain minimum sale, so they spec their machines to something meant to justify that entry price. The others differ in this regard with more points of entry, but in either case if you spec things in a configure to order manner, you pay a much higher markup on the cto components. Much of the time the authors just choose whatever fits their agenda.

"software commonly used by videographers, photographers, animators, designers, scientists, and musicians."

Not if you have an Adobe based workflow such as After Effects. Adobe is all Nvidia based now and AE can't even use the dual AMD graphics cards so they have no use. Not to mention it isn't multithreaded and needs a single, fast core instead of multiple cores with slow clock speeds like the MacPro. And models with 256Gb storage? On a supposedly pro machine?

That's because CUDA was stable far earlier than OpenCL, which is still extremely annoying. Note that Apple isn't even bothering with OpenCL on the idevices. They wrote support for general computation into the metal framework, as well as an implementation of OpenGL compute shaders on both OSX and iOS.

 

[chirpie]

Honestly, as time marches on, it's the software that makes me less excited now about the Mac Pro more than anything.

The dual graphic cards is a great idea in theory, but how many apps under OS X take advantage of them besides Final Cut Pro X?

Anything in the pipeline? @_@

For Cinema 4D, seems like I'd be better off buying / building an extra tower or two with i7 Haswells in them and using team render instead of sinking a bunch of money into a $4,000 - $7,000 machine to speed things up.

Am I out of date thinking this?

 

[aloshka]

Speaking of software am I the only one having massive issues that it iOS 8 (screen won't rotate, crashes, keyboards not popping up, list goes on) and even more so with Yosemite. Continuity is almost worthless, as answering calls on the Mac, no one can ever hear you. Magic Mouse is so leggy, it's driving me insane. Still love osx but love dwindled down a little with all these issues.

 

[Keebler]

I'm happy happy happy

Hi folks,

I recently bought a 12 core refurb. Loving it!

I need processing power for conversion of footage to DVDs.

So I went to an Apple store with hard drive in hand. On it, I had test files.

I tried the stock iMac and the stock Mac Pro.

The iMac kicked it's butt for single core output because it utilized hardware acceleration. But for multiple instances in Compressor, using more cores, waaaaaaaaay behind even the stock 4.

I ran a series of SD files to DVD in Compressor with a 2 pass m2v output for each. I had changed the bitrate as well. I could provide those details, but let's just say I felt they were high quality files (well, as high quality as DVDs can get!).

There 9 full DV files, 14 hours worth.

With 5 instances in Compressor, they all finished in 1 hour 47 minutes.

The cores were running near 95% which was sweet.

But I normally use a 3rd party software called Bitvice for DVD files. It's always resulted in higher quality outputs than Compressor.

So I ran those files. It has 1 particular setting which I haven't found in Compressor called IntraDC.

I run 2 instances of bitvice with a batch set in each (4 in 1, 5 in the other). The beauty of BV (other than it's superior quality output) is that I've never had to beg it to use all cores. I've used it on my other 12 core 2010 Mac Pro and it just grabs them all going 'full speed ahead'

So with the higher quality settings plus ac3 audio file output (didn't take long in Compressor although I didn't write it down, but it was quick), they finished in just over 3 hours.

Even still, that's fine with me because the quality is noticeably different between the 2 files.

I will sit down and experiment deeply with Compressor 4.1.3 as Apple has made some solid changes with it so perhaps it's me needing more education on tweaking the settings.

In my unofficial summary:

1. if you need more processing, stick with the Mac Pro and get as many cores as you can afford. I waited about a month before I saw this one for $6200. Although, it only has 16 GBs of ram and I find I chew thru that quickly which is why I'll be upgrading to 32 GB soon enough.

2. I stuck with the D500s. For what I do, I was told the extra power of the 700s wasn't worth the cost as I'm not running high end graphic files.

3. heat dissipation. I don't pretend to understand computer engineering, but how they make this cylinder dissipate heat is, for me, similar to trying to understand how miles or km's it is to the moon. When I ran both of those tests, I had to put my hand pretty much on top of it to feel any real heat. It was incredible.

4. It's stupidly quiet. Another engineering feat afaik. Incredible again.

5. 1 benefit I hadn't really realized, but after having 3 Mac Pro towers, I now get it - desktop real estate is back! It's so small and takes up such less space that I get a large chunk of my desk back. Yes, I will have a few externals beside it, but they'll be closer and easier to use instead of slightly further away. Sounds stupid, but time is money and the less time I'm farting around with getting to stuff, it's less time wasted. A nice benefit overall.

5. a negative - breakout boxes or hubs are needed. I find it's hard to connect everything without needing them. I bought some esata to USB 3 cables from Startech so help connect older externals. I'll slowly transition to Thunderbolt drives because those are also incredibly fast

Hope this helps anyone else looking to make the jump.

The price made me gulp quite a bit, but this if for my business and after using it for a few days, I instantly realized my ROI will be achieved.

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[Mercury]

I'm not buying another computer without an SSD system disk. (vow)

User files are another matter. Are we talking 500 GB, or 10 TB?



Dedicated gamers have convinced me that for gaming, it is more effective to just have a separate gaming machine-- Windows+Nvidia. No reason it can't share the same display(s).

I don't have an SSD system desk but I'd mostly be using the SSD for gaming apps, which might on average use about 10 GB of space.

As far as a separate system goes, I like playing my games in OS X. I like not having to switch computers, mice, keyboard, monitor, even if it's just switching the inputs. I don't want to have to upgrade two computers.

 

[gugy]

MacPro rocks, I have the 12 core 2011 model and still a beast for Photoshop.
I recently did the PS speed test on the MacPro forum page and the difference between my model and the nMP at similar configuration was just one second.

So if you have the money go for the MP, you won't regret. Add loads of RAM and you should be good for long time.

 

[lincolntran]

Hi folks,

I recently bought a 12 core refurb. Loving it!

I need processing power for conversion of footage to DVDs.

So I went to an Apple store with hard drive in hand. On it, I had test files.

I tried the stock iMac and the stock Mac Pro.

The iMac kicked it's butt for single core output because it utilized hardware acceleration. But for multiple instances in Compressor, using more cores, waaaaaaaaay behind even the stock 4.

I ran a series of SD files to DVD in Compressor with a 2 pass m2v output for each. I had changed the bitrate as well. I could provide those details, but let's just say I felt they were high quality files (well, as high quality as DVDs can get!).

There 9 full DV files, 14 hours worth.

With 5 instances in Compressor, they all finished in 1 hour 47 minutes.

The cores were running near 95% which was sweet.

But I normally use a 3rd party software called Bitvice for DVD files. It's always resulted in higher quality outputs than Compressor.

So I ran those files. It has 1 particular setting which I haven't found in Compressor called IntraDC.

I run 2 instances of bitvice with a batch set in each (4 in 1, 5 in the other). The beauty of BV (other than it's superior quality output) is that I've never had to beg it to use all cores. I've used it on my other 12 core 2010 Mac Pro and it just grabs them all going 'full speed ahead'

So with the higher quality settings plus ac3 audio file output (didn't take long in Compressor although I didn't write it down, but it was quick), they finished in just over 3 hours.

Even still, that's fine with me because the quality is noticeably different between the 2 files.

I will sit down and experiment deeply with Compressor 4.1.3 as Apple has made some solid changes with it so perhaps it's me needing more education on tweaking the settings.

In my unofficial summary:

1. if you need more processing, stick with the Mac Pro and get as many cores as you can afford. I waited about a month before I saw this one for $6200. Although, it only has 16 GBs of ram and I find I chew thru that quickly which is why I'll be upgrading to 32 GB soon enough.

2. I stuck with the D500s. For what I do, I was told the extra power of the 700s wasn't worth the cost as I'm not running high end graphic files.

3. heat dissipation. I don't pretend to understand computer engineering, but how they make this cylinder dissipate heat is, for me, similar to trying to understand how miles or km's it is to the moon. When I ran both of those tests, I had to put my hand pretty much on top of it to feel any real heat. It was incredible.

4. It's stupidly quiet. Another engineering feat afaik. Incredible again.

5. 1 benefit I hadn't really realized, but after having 3 Mac Pro towers, I now get it - desktop real estate is back! It's so small and takes up such less space that I get a large chunk of my desk back. Yes, I will have a few externals beside it, but they'll be closer and easier to use instead of slightly further away. Sounds stupid, but time is money and the less time I'm farting around with getting to stuff, it's less time wasted. A nice benefit overall.

5. a negative - breakout boxes or hubs are needed. I find it's hard to connect everything without needing them. I bought some esata to USB 3 cables from Startech so help connect older externals. I'll slowly transition to Thunderbolt drives because those are also incredibly fast

Hope this helps anyone else looking to make the jump.

The price made me gulp quite a bit, but this if for my business and after using it for a few days, I instantly realized my ROI will be achieved.

Cheers,
Keebler

Thanks for an incredibly informative input! This make buying a Mac Pro (for me at least) an easy choice instead of a pile of trash with ugly components and noisy operation.

 

[fuchsdh]

"software commonly used by videographers, photographers, animators, designers, scientists, and musicians."

Not if you have an Adobe based workflow such as After Effects. Adobe is all Nvidia based now and AE can't even use the dual AMD graphics cards so they have no use. Not to mention it isn't multithreaded and needs a single, fast core instead of multiple cores with slow clock speeds like the MacPro. And models with 256Gb storage? On a supposedly pro machine?

Adobe flat out gave up on the only thing I'm aware of in CC that required CUDA, which was raytracing in After Effects, which only lasted two versions (and was only slightly better than useless anyhow). OpenCL is an option alongside CUDA in every other instance in Premiere and After Effects.

I'll agree with you that fewer faster cores is better with Adobe, but that's because After Effects is a frankly embarrassing piece of software from a performance standpoint, and I usually leave it running without multiprocessing because it's often slower turning it on. That's not Apple's fault, that's Adobe. They *should* be leveraging multiple GPUs and better threading, but they aren't. The hardware is there on both the PC and Mac sides. So criticizing the Mac Pro for failings out of their control is weird.

 

[bart4u]

I need to see proof of how a 2008 graphic card is performing better than the new ones in the Mac pro. I know it doesn't have the best but to say it's not better than a 5 years old card is impossible. Could it be that the old software is not taking advantage of the new hardware features?

I have a program called Aerofly 5 and my new Mac Pro does not run the flight simulator correctly. I wanted to buy Aerofly FS and I talked to the manufacture and gave them my upgraded graphics card in my 2008 computer information and I gave them the dual 500 cards in my new Mac Pro and the manufacture said my cards are not powerful enough to run the program and not to throw my old computer away. I them did a Google search about this issue and many other modern games and flight simulators cannot run correctly off of the new Mac graphics cards. Just Google game play on the new Mac Pro and you will see what I mean.

 

[merlinmage]

Since it's introduction the nMP has pushed OpenCL support and performance in various applications, such as the Adobe Suite, Resolve, Foundry products and a few other ones.

There was a really long post about "if you go high-end, you go HP anyway". As a current nMP owner, I often look to the WIndows side if things, especially since Win7/8.1 are the most stable OS I've come across. When it comes to my job, which is video post production, I also wish sometimes that I had a HP Z840, BUT:

with Dual Xeons or one Quadro card in the Z840 that has about the same raw performance as the HD7970s/D700 in my system, the price goes up really fast in the above 10 grand direction. I make my living out of the nMP, but I couldn't afford that expensive cost of a workstation. Also, a lot of little tools are only available for Mac and there is always native ProRes Encoding, which cost pretty much on the Windows side (look up the Assimilate Scratch prices).

I won't upgrade to the 7,1 Mac Pro and will wait for the 8,1. Especially that I want TB3, HDMI 2.0 and Displayport 1.3 or even 1.4. And Nvidia cards would be nice, Apple

 

[Boske]

Repair Program MacBook Pro

So sorry about my MacBook Pro 2013 with bad soldered video card.

 

[winston1236]

Adobe flat out gave up on the only thing I'm aware of in CC that required CUDA, which was raytracing in After Effects, which only lasted two versions (and was only slightly better than useless anyhow). OpenCL is an option alongside CUDA in every other instance in Premiere and After Effects.

I'll agree with you that fewer faster cores is better with Adobe, but that's because After Effects is a frankly embarrassing piece of software from a performance standpoint, and I usually leave it running without multiprocessing because it's often slower turning it on. That's not Apple's fault, that's Adobe. They *should* be leveraging multiple GPUs and better threading, but they aren't. The hardware is there on both the PC and Mac sides. So criticizing the Mac Pro for failings out of their control is weird.

You're reading me wrong, I was criticizing the article which stated how it was a great choice for videographers. For editors its great, motion graphics artist not so much. Also I think some outreach by Apple would help, maybe they did and Adobe didn't want to cooperate who knows. I'm more bitter that its a such a powerful computer that I can't buy because I wouldn't gain anything for my workflow.

 

[fuchsdh]

You're reading me wrong, I was criticizing the article which stated how it was a great choice for videographers. For editors its great, motion graphics artist not so much. Also I think some outreach by Apple would help, maybe they did and Adobe didn't want to cooperate who knows. I'm more bitter that its a such a powerful computer that I can't buy because I wouldn't gain anything for my workflow.

Ah, I understand your view now. Apologies.

From my perspective as a motion graphics designer, it's certainly true I wouldn't see a big benefit from the second GPU outside the fact that I do spend time in an NLE fairly often. But a new pro Mac of any stripe is still a significant upgrade to the 2007/2008 Macs our shop uses, still works in that role better than an iMac or Mac mini, and could still justify its price quickly.

 

[Michael73]

Why is it that reviewers always ignore how well the Mac Pro can run virtual machines? Yes, I run professional level software but there are also some core programs I use that just aren't made for a Mac so I have a Win7 VM with Fusion and within that sort of workflow an iMac can't keep up.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

They've been doing that for years. The old towers were frequently featured.

I'm somehow grateful to know that I don't watch that show enough to have ever seen one on.

But your whole world lies waiting behind door number three...

 

[MacEyeDoc]

Why is it that reviewers always ignore how well the Mac Pro can run virtual machines? Yes, I run professional level software but there are also some core programs I use that just aren't made for a Mac so I have a Win7 VM with Fusion and within that sort of workflow an iMac can't keep up.

Great point and the primary reason I am getting a nMP. On an 8-core 64 Gig RAM, can allocate 4 cores and 32 Gigs RAM to VMW Fusion, and still have 4/32 for everything else. Just not possible with an iMac.

 

[bloodycelt]

For what is worth... there is one game optimized for mac pro.

I haven't seen benchmarks, but Civilization V was updated to take advantage of the D300/D700 cards in the Mac Pro.

My G4 MDD lasted me 7 years, and my current Mac Pro (2008) is seven years old, and still runs most of what I need. (I did get upgrade to a GTX 680, and moved my hard drives to ssd.)

I plan to wait for the next refresh, and consider a new mac pro then.

 

[Michael73]

Great point and the primary reason I am getting a nMP. On an 8-core 64 Gig RAM, can allocate 4 cores and 32 Gigs RAM to VMW Fusion, and still have 4/32 for everything else. Just not possible with an iMac.

I'm pretty sure you'll love how smoothly your VMs run. I also have a 2011 MBP (quad core) that I use when I'm on the go which is almost a mirror of my nMP. Using a VM on the nMP and then using the one on the MBP is downright painful. It's difference between a Porsche 911 Turbo and a Chevy Malibu.

My only comment would be the amount of RAM you're considering...I'm really quite happy with 32GB and even when it's split between the machines I notice no meaningful difference in performance.

 

[paulsdenton]

I bought a basic model ($2,999) when it first came out and thus far it has been more than adequate for anything I've thrown at it.

It handles CS6 apps without any trouble at all. Mostly Illustrator, InDesign and PS.

I use it for FCP 10.1 and Compressor, and for file conversions in Handbrake. Stuff that used to take hours is done in minutes.

The device is totally silent and the only time I feel any detectable warmth at the top is when doing batch file conversions.

The only thing I would advise any potential purchaser is to get the 1TB drive, or at least the biggest you can afford. The 256 that came with the basic model is not adequate for any serious work use. Even offloading all the data files to the Pegasus RAID still leaves a lot of stuff taking up space on the unit's drive.

 

[shaunp]

Depends what card you have. The D300 is not great. The D700 is insane. Also depends if the flight sim (which one?) is compatible 100% / takes full advantage of the card?

But it's certainly cheaper to build a great gaming PC Than a Mac Pro. But well I'd happily do that for games. I certainly wouldn't want to work in windows.

Well it might be compatible with 5k monitors - people have tested them an the current ones cheat. They require 2 thunderbolt cables direct from a machine as the monitors have 2 controllers and create a dual screen on a single if that makes sense. The retina iMac has a special controller they built as no single fast controller existed.

I suspect the 2015 Mac pros will be 5k compatible and there will be some 5k screens... Hopefully 30" !

I can second what you are saying about the nMP for games. It's a great everyday workstation, but for games there are much cheaper and better options. I have a 6-core with D700's and when playing skyrim at 1440p it struggles, I have to turn down the detail and it still struggles. Maybe it's the game, or the drivers. With a core i7 PC running a GTX 780 skyrim flies, at the same resolution with all the settings turn up high - I can't remember if they were on 'ultra' or not.

We are moving house soon so I'll be able to set up a proper 'man cave'. At the moment I have my PC in storage as it takes up too much room, so I run of the nMP for my every day stuff - VMware, Lightroom, etc. Once I get the said man cave thought the PC is coming out again for games as it is soooooo much quicker than the Mac for this.

----------

I'm pretty sure you'll love how smoothly your VMs run. I also have a 2011 MBP (quad core) that I use when I'm on the go which is almost a mirror of my nMP. Using a VM on the nMP and then using the one on the MBP is downright painful. It's difference between a Porsche 911 Turbo and a Chevy Malibu.

My only comment would be the amount of RAM you're considering...I'm really quite happy with 32GB and even when it's split between the machines I notice no meaningful difference in performance.

It depends upon how much RAM your VM's need. I can do most of what I want in 16GB most of the time, but some of the labs I have need around 40-50GB, so 64GB is a must.

 

[diipii]

This is the only Mac that wont boil itself eventually when watching HD videos on YouTube.

 

[wideEyedPupil]

.

 

[wideEyedPupil]

Questionable Value
Since almost every pro app we use is OS agnostic (Avid/Pro Tools/Unity/Adobe/Maya), I go with HP to give users the most power. Given what Apple has done to Shake, Color, and Aperture, I’m not sure why professionals are still loyal to OSX. I’m not an Apple hater, as I buy their hardware often.

I'm an Apple fan and I agree. Add Quartz Composer to the list, which is still notionally supported now that Facebook have taken half the QC team are made the Origami patch for QC. All these billions in cash just sitting around looking for something useful to do and they continue to hobble their own software and screw-over 3rd party devs who want to extend OS X applications. Having Adobe lock onto NVIDIA for CUDA/Mercury and then switch all your GPUs to AMD is pretty frustrating too. I bought a brand new MBP for over A$3000 at I can even have raytracing on the GPU in after effects or video encode/decode on the GPU in Premier, I hope Adobe supports OpenCL some day for OS X users, hey they were even at the Apple Keynote this year so anythings possible in love and war.

It's like Apple decided to be so un-microsoft they've become just as frustrating to the professional user base as a result.

 

[wideEyedPupil]

Adobe flat out gave up on the only thing I'm aware of in CC that required CUDA, which was raytracing in After Effects, which only lasted two versions (and was only slightly better than useless anyhow). OpenCL is an option alongside CUDA in every other instance in Premiere and After Effects.

I'll agree with you that fewer faster cores is better with Adobe, but that's because After Effects is a frankly embarrassing piece of software from a performance standpoint, and I usually leave it running without multiprocessing because it's often slower turning it on. That's not Apple's fault, that's Adobe. They *should* be leveraging multiple GPUs and better threading, but they aren't. The hardware is there on both the PC and Mac sides. So criticizing the Mac Pro for failings out of their control is weird.

Thanks, I was looking at Project Settings in AE CC and asking myself where the greyed out RayTrace options are that some old blog is telling me to look for. I just shelled $3000+ on a MBP (already have external monitors and drives) and was pissed I have to settle for bad AE and Premier (not my day to day apps). AE is an embarassment but if you aren't full time VFX moving to nodal is a big learning curve, even for me and I write video effects in Apple's Quartz composer Visual Programming app which has a nodal graph (plus OpenGL and JavaScript/Lua scripting).