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Mac Pro or iMac 5k
- Thread starter aloshka
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If you liked the ACD 30, you might try the NEC PA 301W 2560 x 1600. Matte screen. Built in calibration. First rate for photo work.
I got mine directly from the Primate Labs website so I could get the multi-platform version for only slightly more, but yes, it's the same.
I will run benchmarks, etc, a little later tonight. Have to go volunteer at the animal shelter...
BUT... initial feelings/thoughts:
I don't think I need to say this as every single review in the world has said it. Screen is gorgeous. It's so sharp, that the text seems big for some reason. DPI on the 27 always felt like text was too small, on this one feels too big. But you can scale it down and use more space if you want to. Doesn't seem to impact performance at all. Second... smooth. No lag whatsoever. if there is lag (like when you open the app store), it happens on all Macs including the Mac Pro. Keep in mind, I'm comparing everything to the mac pro. But in general, switching spaces, etc, ultra fast & smooth.
The drive seems to be as fast as the one in the Mac Pro, but that's just based on copying (same amount of time estimated when doing a 150gb transfer of an SSD). So since it takes the same amount of time to copy from a TB2 dual RAID 0 PCI SSD (Lacie TB2 SSD). And the Lacie SSD is definitely not the slower one, as benchmarks actually put it faster than the internal SSD drive on both the iMac and Mac Pro. So I'd say they are crazy close. Keep in mind, I did all flash, no Fusion.
So far one thing that I noticed... noise. It does hum when it's on without any type of load. It's about the same hum and actually sounds exactly like if there was a 7200RPM drive in there. So very faint, but audible because you sit so close to the iMac. The Mac Pro makes a hum too, but because it's either behind or further away, you don't notice it at all. So a little louder than the Mac Pro.
Gaming: I tried WoW... at the lowest setting it goes about 60-80 fps full rez. Just about the same as the Mac Pro on a TB display believe it or not. Maybe a little slower (5-10 fps in certain situations). Have not tried downscaling yet. That being said... noise is loud when pushing video card. Lots and lots of heat expelled too. Mac Pro expels heat too, but it's almost inaudible under the same load.
So anyway, will say more when I get back.
BUT... initial feelings/thoughts:
I don't think I need to say this as every single review in the world has said it. Screen is gorgeous. It's so sharp, that the text seems big for some reason. DPI on the 27 always felt like text was too small, on this one feels too big. But you can scale it down and use more space if you want to. Doesn't seem to impact performance at all. Second... smooth. No lag whatsoever. if there is lag (like when you open the app store), it happens on all Macs including the Mac Pro. Keep in mind, I'm comparing everything to the mac pro. But in general, switching spaces, etc, ultra fast & smooth.
The drive seems to be as fast as the one in the Mac Pro, but that's just based on copying (same amount of time estimated when doing a 150gb transfer of an SSD). So since it takes the same amount of time to copy from a TB2 dual RAID 0 PCI SSD (Lacie TB2 SSD). And the Lacie SSD is definitely not the slower one, as benchmarks actually put it faster than the internal SSD drive on both the iMac and Mac Pro. So I'd say they are crazy close. Keep in mind, I did all flash, no Fusion.
So far one thing that I noticed... noise. It does hum when it's on without any type of load. It's about the same hum and actually sounds exactly like if there was a 7200RPM drive in there. So very faint, but audible because you sit so close to the iMac. The Mac Pro makes a hum too, but because it's either behind or further away, you don't notice it at all. So a little louder than the Mac Pro.
Gaming: I tried WoW... at the lowest setting it goes about 60-80 fps full rez. Just about the same as the Mac Pro on a TB display believe it or not. Maybe a little slower (5-10 fps in certain situations). Have not tried downscaling yet. That being said... noise is loud when pushing video card. Lots and lots of heat expelled too. Mac Pro expels heat too, but it's almost inaudible under the same load.
So anyway, will say more when I get back.
So playing further with the mac. Ran benchmarks back to back for about 30 minutes. First test was no different than the last test after running for 30 mins. So I do not think processor is throttled with heat, or heat disposition is very efficient. The fans run, but not as loud as they do when playing a game.
Also tried the same thing with a game. Played wow for a few hours, fans were spinning, tried benchmarks, similar numbers (within 1%). After quitting WoW the fans died down within 45 seconds. So cooling is clearly very efficient. I'd say Mac Pro takes longer to cool off.
Ironically the one thing that makes the fans spin like crazy is heavy wifi usage. No idea why. I have 802.11ac and when downloading something huge, the fans turn on.
So, it's pretty damn powerful. Not sure how it would hold up constantly being hot. I mean I'm sure it will hold up well, just not sure how the LCD will hold up. Although the screen does not really get warmer when the fans are running like crazy. The back heats up (the little grill where the memory is where the fan exit is).
So really, the decision right now is Mac Pro, quieter during gaming, etc but with crappy screens, or insanely beautiful eye cutting clarity and beauty of the iMac screen and similar/same performance but with fan noise and one point of failure.
Toughy, I won't lie. If it wasn't for the screen, I'd keep the Mac Pro. But that screen, jeez. Programming on it is a dream. I can preview apps that are in full retina quality in the emulator.
Another thing, if you run Parallels or Fusion, note that windows does not support 5k at all in a VM. If you resize window to something smaller, it works, as soon as you make it bigger it just keeps resetting the hardware and resolution over and over again until you reboot.
Also tried the same thing with a game. Played wow for a few hours, fans were spinning, tried benchmarks, similar numbers (within 1%). After quitting WoW the fans died down within 45 seconds. So cooling is clearly very efficient. I'd say Mac Pro takes longer to cool off.
Ironically the one thing that makes the fans spin like crazy is heavy wifi usage. No idea why. I have 802.11ac and when downloading something huge, the fans turn on.
So, it's pretty damn powerful. Not sure how it would hold up constantly being hot. I mean I'm sure it will hold up well, just not sure how the LCD will hold up. Although the screen does not really get warmer when the fans are running like crazy. The back heats up (the little grill where the memory is where the fan exit is).
So really, the decision right now is Mac Pro, quieter during gaming, etc but with crappy screens, or insanely beautiful eye cutting clarity and beauty of the iMac screen and similar/same performance but with fan noise and one point of failure.
Toughy, I won't lie. If it wasn't for the screen, I'd keep the Mac Pro. But that screen, jeez. Programming on it is a dream. I can preview apps that are in full retina quality in the emulator.
Another thing, if you run Parallels or Fusion, note that windows does not support 5k at all in a VM. If you resize window to something smaller, it works, as soon as you make it bigger it just keeps resetting the hardware and resolution over and over again until you reboot.
Another update if anyone still cares. iMac being returned. The screen is gorgeous but the fan turns on alot. Especially if you run thousands of things at the same time and have a second monitor hooked up. I am not sure how long this thing will last with so much heat. World is not ready for 5k or at least mobile video cards. Whatever Apple did with the custom timing thing makes the monitor feel more responsive than 4ks.
I am ordering dual u3014's because I do a lot of programming and that vertical space will be indispensable.
I am ordering dual u3014's because I do a lot of programming and that vertical space will be indispensable.
I'm glad this thread helped. I think a lot of people with Mac Pro's are in the same boat. Some guy Marco wrote a blog about it, except he did it based on specs. I have to admit, specs and real-life usage is definitely not the same.
But yeah, I'm back on my mac pro. My dual 30's come in tomorrow and I have to admit... maybe it's just in my head, but mac pro feels snappier. Most likely because I have 3 vm's running in the background and iMac probably didn't have enough cores.
Anyway, really happy about my decision. I think it's the right one. If/when Apple updates the Mac Pro to work with 5k's, I'll get two and move on. Resale value on the Mac Pro is better too.
Again, sorry i'm posting so much. But definitely stick with your mac pro. I was dumping stuff off the iMac so I can return it, but decided to compress all the virtual machines first so I don't have to copy 400gb+. It takes about an hour for a 250gb one. Fans spun really loud for the first 30 minutes, then the iMac locked up completely. No mouse cursor, fans stopped, no kernel panic, just dead on the same screen.
Never had that issue on the mac pro and I've done larger jobs. So I think the iMac is a great machine for most any tasks, but if you run the processor for a long time, definitely need the cooling/power of the mac pro.
Never had that issue on the mac pro and I've done larger jobs. So I think the iMac is a great machine for most any tasks, but if you run the processor for a long time, definitely need the cooling/power of the mac pro.
Very interesting - thanks for all the updates. It's good to hear Apple does a pretty good job on cooling (and not quickly throttling) the i7-4790K on the iMac, but it's just not as robust a processor. In fact, maybe they should be throttling it a little bit (in order to avoid lockups!), based on your experience.
Based on my recent experience, I know I'll have a hard time choosing anything less than a socket 2011-3 processor the next time I need to build a Windows machine - the i7-5820K turned out to be so much more robust (and faster) for the same price as the "consumer-grade" 4790K. Both it and the i7-5960X easily hum along at 4GHz. In post production, the 8-core 5960X renders video over twice as fast as anything I've previously used. The only downside is that they lack the internal graphics and Quick Sync - but perhaps that's part of what keeps them more robust (at least they don't generate more heat running GPU tasks as well). They also won't fit into quite as small a form factor because of the need for external video cards. But the extra ~$100 for the motherboard is negligible, and the slightly more expensive DDR4 RAM more than compensates for its price by giving back in better performance.
I sure hope Apple puts these new processors into a Mac Pro refresh next year. A 30-50% performance boost for no increase in price is pretty good these days. It'll require a new mainboard, but if they do this they probably won't have to do any significant redesigns for a while. I'm know some people wouldn't mind seeing nVidia graphics options as well.
It sounds like you're still running a pro computing environment, which still requires a Pro Mac.
Based on my recent experience, I know I'll have a hard time choosing anything less than a socket 2011-3 processor the next time I need to build a Windows machine - the i7-5820K turned out to be so much more robust (and faster) for the same price as the "consumer-grade" 4790K. Both it and the i7-5960X easily hum along at 4GHz. In post production, the 8-core 5960X renders video over twice as fast as anything I've previously used. The only downside is that they lack the internal graphics and Quick Sync - but perhaps that's part of what keeps them more robust (at least they don't generate more heat running GPU tasks as well). They also won't fit into quite as small a form factor because of the need for external video cards. But the extra ~$100 for the motherboard is negligible, and the slightly more expensive DDR4 RAM more than compensates for its price by giving back in better performance.
I sure hope Apple puts these new processors into a Mac Pro refresh next year. A 30-50% performance boost for no increase in price is pretty good these days. It'll require a new mainboard, but if they do this they probably won't have to do any significant redesigns for a while. I'm know some people wouldn't mind seeing nVidia graphics options as well.
It sounds like you're still running a pro computing environment, which still requires a Pro Mac.
Apple will only put Xeons in the Mac Pro. Isn't i7-5960X a consumer/prosumer processor?
Marketing-wise I believe it is, but in terms of design and performance it's more like a Xeon. The changes with this new generation make it an appropriate time for Apple to change this practice, unless Intel's providing them with a special pricing structure which incentivises them to stick with only Xeons. But either way Apple should leverage the advantages of the new generation.
Yeah this has been discussed too many times and I just don't see apple making two versions of it. Unless the consumer processors will come in 12 cores as wel, don't see it.
I thought 12 core is insane and no one would buy it, but now I know 7 people that bought it out of 10. I know it's a bad sample set, but sounds like there is demand for 12
I guess I've missed those discussions, but for example Gigabyte supports both the i7s and Xeons (up to 18 cores!) with the same motherboard, so I don't see why Apple couldn't do the same: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=5123
And this isn't an exotic or expensive motherboard, either.
Wow very cool. Gigabyte is a great company but obviously xeon boards are still created withstand large amount of CPU power. Then again, maybe that's just an old way of thinking since a lot of games push the motherboard (NB specifically) and GFX cards to the limits.
Didn't know these boards existed though. I wonder if it's the same architecture or they have some switching mechanism (although I don't see how). I also don't see how they can share the same NB. Do they accept registered dimm's?
These boards only support the brand new processors and the new socket. I'd have to do more research to get more specific, but the game has changed a little with this new generation. I'm not sure how much this has affected the architecture, but it certainly has affected the price/performance available. So not all the old limitations necessarily apply.
Well, this is the last update if any of you are still subscribed. I decided to keep the iMac. When I was boxing it up, I decided to check out the screen one more time and at that time OWC memory came in (which I already had RMAd). I put in the memory to see how much of a difference it would have in even basic benchmarks (8gb vs 32gb). I am so glad I did that... read on.
Outside of running games that made the fans spin, I found out it was lack of memory that made it hot before. Upgraded to 32gb and ran more benchmarks and this thing is good. Fans would barely speed up then slow down during benchmarks, otherwise I have yet to hear them speed up. Obviously have not tried a 6 hour render job. And if you run 6 hour render jobs, you NEED a mac pro and should stay put if you already have one.
Since I deal 90% in mostly virtual machines, I decided to run benchmarks in the virtual machines themselves and compare to the Mac Pro. What I found out, the iMac actually outperformed on ALL tests. 2d, 3d, cpu, memory, IO. Sometimes by a lot, sometimes just about the same.
I even thought maybe CPU core sharing would be a problem. So I launched 3 virtual machinesall windows 8.1 64 bit, 8gb of ram each and 4 cores assigned to each machine via Parallels. I ran benchmarks on one while the other three ran. Then I shutdown two and reran benchmarks. They were the same which was a huge surprise.
So what I got from it all is that, A) I guess I'm one of the people that never needed the Mac Pro to begin with. Just needed a more powerful iMac. B) I need a perfect screen. I sent back the dell U3014's.. something about them was blurry and the text (clock on the upper right side), when inactive and transparent looked insanely jagged under any/all color profiles. Anything outside of 5k now is awful, blurry and pixelized. C) Parallels is very well optimized and it's requirements are not as high as I thought. D) Much/most of what I do is single core processing. Even though assigning more cores the virtual machine made it faster, assigning less but faster cores made a 3x difference in performance. D) Even though the iMac is technically "less powerful" than the Mac Pro, something about it feels snappier. Obviously that's a matter of opinion, but just something I noticed.
I did not even take into account the cost difference. I realize that what I need/do is not really what everyone else does. But hey, if you don't render 24/7, by all means an iMac can replace a Mac Pro.
Outside of running games that made the fans spin, I found out it was lack of memory that made it hot before. Upgraded to 32gb and ran more benchmarks and this thing is good. Fans would barely speed up then slow down during benchmarks, otherwise I have yet to hear them speed up. Obviously have not tried a 6 hour render job. And if you run 6 hour render jobs, you NEED a mac pro and should stay put if you already have one.
Since I deal 90% in mostly virtual machines, I decided to run benchmarks in the virtual machines themselves and compare to the Mac Pro. What I found out, the iMac actually outperformed on ALL tests. 2d, 3d, cpu, memory, IO. Sometimes by a lot, sometimes just about the same.
I even thought maybe CPU core sharing would be a problem. So I launched 3 virtual machinesall windows 8.1 64 bit, 8gb of ram each and 4 cores assigned to each machine via Parallels. I ran benchmarks on one while the other three ran. Then I shutdown two and reran benchmarks. They were the same which was a huge surprise.
So what I got from it all is that, A) I guess I'm one of the people that never needed the Mac Pro to begin with. Just needed a more powerful iMac. B) I need a perfect screen. I sent back the dell U3014's.. something about them was blurry and the text (clock on the upper right side), when inactive and transparent looked insanely jagged under any/all color profiles. Anything outside of 5k now is awful, blurry and pixelized. C) Parallels is very well optimized and it's requirements are not as high as I thought. D) Much/most of what I do is single core processing. Even though assigning more cores the virtual machine made it faster, assigning less but faster cores made a 3x difference in performance. D) Even though the iMac is technically "less powerful" than the Mac Pro, something about it feels snappier. Obviously that's a matter of opinion, but just something I noticed.
I did not even take into account the cost difference. I realize that what I need/do is not really what everyone else does. But hey, if you don't render 24/7, by all means an iMac can replace a Mac Pro.
Thanks for the final update.
I know Apple has been optimizing OS X to use memory more efficiently, and SSDs mitigate the problem a little bit, but running out of memory is still a cardinal sin in computing.
Running multiple VMs is a scenario where RAM is usually going to be more important than even CPU power. 16GB is generally a minimum requirement here, since each OS instance should normally have at least 4-6GB of RAM.
I'm glad you figured it out. Thanks for updating us on the facts too. I didn't realize you were testing it on 8GB and running into virtual memory problems!
I know Apple has been optimizing OS X to use memory more efficiently, and SSDs mitigate the problem a little bit, but running out of memory is still a cardinal sin in computing.
Running multiple VMs is a scenario where RAM is usually going to be more important than even CPU power. 16GB is generally a minimum requirement here, since each OS instance should normally have at least 4-6GB of RAM.
I'm glad you figured it out. Thanks for updating us on the facts too. I didn't realize you were testing it on 8GB and running into virtual memory problems!
You guys are going to find this funny, but I just shipped out the iMac 5k today to an ebay buyer. Yup! Sold. On my mac pro right now with dual 30's (u3014) and finally happy. I think you can't really make a decision until you actually use something for a while (while being more than a few days)
All I can say is Mac Pro is quieter.. And nothing slows it down, ever! When I was compiling huge projects, on the iMac while running some basic encoding, I started seeing stuttering. And it only did that when the fans were on; so I can only assume that it is throttling. I know that seems a bit oppossite of what I said earlier, but keep in mind this is hours and hours of work and not 30 or even a few hours running nothing but benchmarks.
In my decision, I even went and tried a PC. It's amazing how used to Mac you get (even though I use PC's in VMs). Felt like I had to make extra steps to do anything. I have mapped keys for pretty everything in OSX, and contuinity is something I already got used to as well. Just everything works together.. And somehow Parallels brings windows into that mix too, but windows by itself felt so manual. But you already knew that, you are on Mac rumors. But it's a gaming machine now, so that is great.
Sorry for the bombarding the information yet again.
All I can say is Mac Pro is quieter.. And nothing slows it down, ever! When I was compiling huge projects, on the iMac while running some basic encoding, I started seeing stuttering. And it only did that when the fans were on; so I can only assume that it is throttling. I know that seems a bit oppossite of what I said earlier, but keep in mind this is hours and hours of work and not 30 or even a few hours running nothing but benchmarks.
In my decision, I even went and tried a PC. It's amazing how used to Mac you get (even though I use PC's in VMs). Felt like I had to make extra steps to do anything. I have mapped keys for pretty everything in OSX, and contuinity is something I already got used to as well. Just everything works together.. And somehow Parallels brings windows into that mix too, but windows by itself felt so manual. But you already knew that, you are on Mac rumors. But it's a gaming machine now, so that is great.
Sorry for the bombarding the information yet again.
Yes, it is funny!
It sounds like finally finding the right monitors was a big part of it (you said screen quality was your initial objective), but frankly I was still shocked when I looked back and saw how close your final solution was to my initial post. This helped confirm what I've observed, even though my application is very different from yours.
I'm glad you found the right setup. Thanks for posting your final solution for everyone. It's helpful for us to keep in mind that the Mac Pro simply handles a compute-intensive situation better. Whether the CPU/GPU is already saturated (as in your case) or compute headroom is a necessity (e.g. to avoid video stuttering), a true "Pro-level" machine like the Mac Pro is often the only solution.
It sounds like finally finding the right monitors was a big part of it (you said screen quality was your initial objective), but frankly I was still shocked when I looked back and saw how close your final solution was to my initial post. This helped confirm what I've observed, even though my application is very different from yours.
I'm glad you found the right setup. Thanks for posting your final solution for everyone. It's helpful for us to keep in mind that the Mac Pro simply handles a compute-intensive situation better. Whether the CPU/GPU is already saturated (as in your case) or compute headroom is a necessity (e.g. to avoid video stuttering), a true "Pro-level" machine like the Mac Pro is often the only solution.
Yeah, it's pretty much right on what you said, but I guess i had to find out for myself. Thanks again for all the advice, it was actually extremely useful, even if I had to test everything myself.
In-store, they might not have the top-end BTO version (depends on the store, of course).
For your use-case, you want the top-end i7 all-SSD version or it will lack seriously.
Also - for your use-case - the MacPro (with ECC!) is really much, much better suited.
GPU is wasted, of course.
In your shoes, I'd even look for a way to get the 12-core CPU.
Your work-load should profit immensely from it.
It will have to be seen how well the cooling of the iMac works when under full load for a longer time.
Now I'm thinking I'm just mentally ill. Reconsidering an iMac yet once again. Miss that insanely beautiful screen. I mean nothing beats it. Tried 4k screens on the Mac Pro but scaling is awful. On a 22-24" double resolution makes sense. On a 27" 4k is not double, it's a weird-ass stretch that is actually quite visible.
The problem that makes this so much harder is that it's no longer about the money. I have dual TB's, etc. If I were to go down the iMac route one more time, I'd come out exactly the same amount of money than if I stayed with the Mac Pro. Now that I sold the original iMac I had, it's a bit of lost money. But since computers are my hobby, life & work, I want the best and can easily justify it all.
So now the choices boil down to:
* Mac Pro 1TB SSD 6-Core (already have this)
* Dual apple TB displays (already have this)
or
iMac (would need to sell MP, etc)
* Lacie 1TB dual SSD (actually came in faster than the 1TB SSD on the mac pro. benchmarks I ran show 980/995 for mac Pro read/write and 1100/1200 for the Lacie 1TB TB2 SSD)
* iMac 5k 4.0 (would need to buy)
* Memory upgrade 32gb (would need to buy)
* Probably would sell / return the second TB display to make it even, but might keep it as well as the second one is starting to show it's age and was bought when they first came out
I've already got a buyer for the Mac Pro (albeit a bit low and another huge loss of money $4500 cash on pick up).
If you guys got to choose either, and you didn't have to pay. Which route would you go? I think I'd be happy with both, just still thinking grass is greener on the other side. Is it?
Didn't you report throttling-issues with the iMac?
I'd say stick with the nMP you have (though I wish I had your kind of money to burn for displays...never mind the nMP).
BTW: What happened to the U3014s?
If you like the riMac-display that much, I can't do anything about that.
But your tests (and anecdotal reports from others) suggest it's not a work-horse for the kind of stuff you do. Later revisions might fix that - or not (big surprise), as it's Apple after all.
Wait it out for now until all the GPUs and display-port standards have caught-up with those 5K displays.
I'd say stick with the nMP you have (though I wish I had your kind of money to burn for displays...never mind the nMP).
BTW: What happened to the U3014s?
If you like the riMac-display that much, I can't do anything about that.
But your tests (and anecdotal reports from others) suggest it's not a work-horse for the kind of stuff you do. Later revisions might fix that - or not (big surprise), as it's Apple after all.
Wait it out for now until all the GPUs and display-port standards have caught-up with those 5K displays.