MP 7,1 MacPro 2019 for 3D work. Stability?

[innerproduct]

I am in the awkward situation that I would really need a powerful workstation for Houdini and 3D rendering but that also can do the basic adobe stuff and some simple 4k editing. I am Mac guy at heart so I am prepared to pay a lot extra for staying in the Mac workflow. Only issue is that the current MacPro was underpowered, used old tech and was overpriced already 2019 and I first had to wait for the 3D-renderers Octane X and Redshift to be released before I invested. It took one year extra but now we are here: RS and Octane X are ready and 11.4 even have support for the 6900xt. Currently I do most of my rendering on a Linux box with Nvidia cards (2080ti + 3090) and this will continue to render final frames in most cases. However, while designing, I much prefer to stay on Mac to have a good workflow between all my apps.

So: Are anyone using MacPro with some combo of cards in real production these days? Can I count on it being about as stable as on a PC? Experiences?

 

[rondocap]

I am in the awkward situation that I would really need a powerful workstation for Houdini and 3D rendering but that also can do the basic adobe stuff and some simple 4k editing. I am Mac guy at heart so I am prepared to pay a lot extra for staying in the Mac workflow. Only issue is that the current MacPro was underpowered, used old tech and was overpriced already 2019 and I first had to wait for the 3D-renderers Octane X and Redshift to be released before I invested. It took one year extra but now we are here: RS and Octane X are ready and 11.4 even have support for the 6900xt. Currently I do most of my rendering on a Linux box with Nvidia cards (2080ti + 3090) and this will continue to render final frames in most cases. However, while designing, I much prefer to stay on Mac to have a good workflow between all my apps.

So: Are anyone using MacPro with some combo of cards in real production these days? Can I count on it being about as stable as on a PC? Experiences?

I’m using a Mac Pro - currently testing two 6900xt in it, and it’s very capable. I have a Threadripper dual 3090 build too, but like you, prefer to stay in Mac OS.

No stability issues, works great with mpx modules or even off the shelf 6900xt.

if you have any specific questions or need any benchmarks let me know and I can try to answer.

in octane X, dual 6900xt got a time of 6 seconds vs 9 seconds on the Vega ii duo on the chess render pt, so very capable

 

[Gr1f]

I use C4d/Octane/Arnold too on mine but only with 5700. I look forward to getting my hands on a 6900.

C4d is stable, Octane crashes frequently but it goes with the territory with 3rd party render engines from what I can tell. Arnold more stable.

 

[rkruk]

I use Maya and Arnold non-stop rendering for the past 5 months, very stable setup with huge files and poly counts. I also use Vega II mpx module, it works flawless with adobe photoshop/after effects, even while rendering. Also ram is used effectively, I've used as much as 135 gigs in rendering frames (I have 384 gig at my disposal). I do use the cpu for rendering though. As for the gpu rendering, Maya I believe can only pick up one card, so 32 gig of ram (if the duo it doesn't see the 64 gig as one card, but only 32) Other programs of course for GPU rendering might be able to use the multi cards, for example at Lunar Animation they use multiple mpx modules to render insane fast on the GPU on a 28 core machine.

 

[goMac]

One thing that I’ve found is while the Xeon’s are probably overpriced, and not as fast as competitors, they’re still plenty fast. Especially if your workflow is heavy on the GPU. If you’re really CPU bound it may not be the best value. But I do a lot of CPU heavy tasks and I’ve never had a serious issue.

And if you’re bound to the Mac ecosystem, there aren’t really any good alternatives.

The tech isn’t old. In 2021 we’re looking at getting a newer Xeon. But it still supports stuff like AVX512 (which AMD doesn’t), has tons of memory channels, an Apple Silicon co-processor for some tasks, and MPX is pretty great. There was absolutely nothing old about it in 2019. Apple did a really good job building a modern platform with a merely ok Xeon CPU.