New 12-Core Mac Pro Once Again Shows Up in Benchmarks

[handsome pete]

I'd take a system like that any day. Except that price is... out of my range. I value CPU speed far more than GPU. Why? Because Apple has made it perfectly clear they dont give a crap about proper GPUs. The only GPU need I've ever had was for gaming, and because of the limitations for so many years, I've pretty much abandoned all gaming on my computer.. which has now left me not giving a damn about the GPU. My work relies on Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and some After Effects. Not much of a need for two FirePro video cards or a FirePro GPU of any kind. An AMD 270X for roughly $200-$250 would be perfectly fine. Less heat too from a single card.

It should be mentioned that the FirePro D300, D500 and D700 all equate to roughly the W7000, W8000 and W9000 which, on Newegg.com each cost $700, $1,400 and $3,400 as a SINGLE card. Apple puts in two of each. Needless overkill.

Your work revolves around the Adobe suite and you don't see the benefits of the GPUs? Even after Adobe's commitment to OpenCL?


Also, even though the specs are similar to the W**** line! it's highly unlikely Apple is paying anywhere near those prices.

 

[iZac]

Two Mac Pro articles in a row!

I love seeing the Mac in Macrumours!

 

[prowlmedia]

Where do you people get this crap?

Er. Same place you get all your crap. Durp. Samsung for example are well known to operate paid commentors. So do all the other Eastern manufacturers. It's not seen as cheap and Tawdry. Just business. That said - The US seem to happily bash competitors in Ads and online. It's not really allowed in the UK to the same extent.

http://bit.ly/1k4ePvo


http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/24/5023658/samsung-fined-340000-for-posting-negative-htc-reviews

 

[mw360]

the benefit for having a Mac Pro is its expandability, the new design has made it very limited. It certainly has a cool look but when you hook multiple external hard drives with entangled cables all around on its side, it defeat the whole purpose. Most computing intensive users do not need two graphic card, and for a few who tap into GPU power by running a CUDA based software, FirePro is useless.

Yes, but things are due for change and it takes a bold move by somebody to set it in motion.

The benefit of the Mac Pro used to be expandability. Now everyone has that ability via Thunderbolt, and they don't need to know how to open up a computer in order to do it. Apple thinks you shouldn't need a gigantic, mostly empty box for the sake of one day, perhaps, adding some expansion.

And as somebody already said, if you've got a Mac full of add-on cards then you almost certainly already have a mess of cables out of the back, and few, if any of that mess of different cable types will work in daisy chain so actually nMP-plus-cables could actually be more tidy.

The new benefit of the Mac Pro is GPU power. Apple is betting on OpenCL uptake providing the power boost that CPU development no longer provides. There are signs they're not alone. Adobe and The Foundry are just two vendors. Before long the G of GPU will stand for General.

 

[calaverasgrande]

Well to be fair on this site there are an awful lot of paid trolls on here who get paid 5c per negative post. And they get paid more per thumbs up.

that may be the case on news sites. It is a verifiable fact that some right wing groups (Heritage foundation) have paid trolls. Check Yahoo news, any article about Obama for an example. Super obvious when you see the same exact post under a dozen different names. And it's a super vague anti-democrat post....that could apply to any story.

But who would be paying for people to troll a Mac fan boy site?
Microsoft? Google?
It makes no sense.

----------

Yes, but things are due for change and it takes a bold move by somebody to set it in motion.

The benefit of the Mac Pro used to be expandability. Now everyone has that ability via Thunderbolt, and they don't need to know how to open up a computer in order to do it. Apple thinks you shouldn't need a gigantic, mostly empty box for the sake of one day, perhaps, adding some expansion.

And as somebody already said, if you've got a Mac full of add-on cards then you almost certainly already have a mess of cables out of the back, and few, if any of that mess if different cable types will work in daisy chain so actually nMP plus cables could actually be more tidy.

The new benefit of the Mac Pro is GPU power. Apple is betting on OpenCL uptake providing the power boost that CPU development no longer provides. There are signs they're not alone. Adobe and The Foundry are just two vendors. Before long the G of GPU will stand for General.

I think the simpler truth is that probably only 10% of Mac Pro owners actually installed PCIe cards. And of those half of them were for functionality like fibrechannel or USB3.0. Fast interconnects that Apple would argue TB replaced.
Now of course TB2 may be faster than fibrechannel, but it is not a networkable protocol like fiber. But I guess the folks using fiber NAS for video or motion graphics are a smaller market segment still.
I guess you can hook up a fiber card using a $1000 PCIE to TB box. But man that is a price to pay.

 

[Gonk42]

It all hinges on GP-GPU

These results are really a reflection on the fact that CPUs have reached a plateau in terms of single threaded performance. As people have commented an increase of less than 20% after 4 years is not a major advance but this reflects more on the state of technology rather than Apple.

Apple is putting everything into the GP-GPU side of things and the fast SSD drive. So if your software makes use of this then the new MP will be fast and probably value for money.

On the CPU side, by going to one CPU instead of two the speed per core has had to drop which to some extent has negated the improvement in the chips themselves. They have also decreased the RAM slots even though the RAM interface is faster.

So everything hinges on how much software is able to actually use the GPUs.

 

[iZac]

The cards can be removed but they are non-standard so replacing them means you're replacing them with either a D300, D500 or D700 until 3rd parties make a replacment card which is unlikely.

I'd like to know as well - do we know if the GPUs are seated directly against the internal heat sink? If so there will probably be thermal paste application going on - and remember how hot some macbook pros ran with "incorrectly applied thermal paste" which proved that you can have too much of a good thing!

If this is the case, when people upgrade, one can expect it to be a warranty voiding replacement. Which isn't a big problem since by the time people get around to swapping out GPUs, the machine could likely be 3+ years old anyway, and I'm certain everyone here is capable of splurging some paste onto a heat sink, but it's something to consider none-the-less.

 

[argybargy]

But it could

It looks nothing like a Dalek.

But it could, with out much work.

 

[Thunderbird]

While I'll grant you that OpenCL is great for certain applications, it's implementation in audio/DAW remains to be seen. While OpenCL can do nothing to directly affect latency, it could be extremely useful for taming plugins. Of course, makers of DSP-accelerator cards will view it as a threat.

Unfortunately, many plugin makers out there are veeeeeeerrrrrryyyyyyy slow to update their plugs. Hell, there are still plenty of plugins out there that still won't run 64-bit native, and some of the ones that are took a LONG time to get there. So if developer apathy going from 32 to 64-bit is any indication, I wouldn't hold out much hope for OpenCL in professional audio, unless there is some sort of abstraction layer that can be built within the DAW itself and handle co-processing of plugs in a vendor-neutral type situation.

This has nothing to do with your post, but I love your avatar.

Does anyone know why the new Mac Pro is using old Ivy Bridge E5 Xeon processors and not the new E3 Haswells? Just curious.

 

[prowlmedia]

But who would be paying for people to troll a Mac fan boy site?
Microsoft? Google?
It makes no sense

I think the simpler truth is that probably only 10% of Mac Pro owners actually installed PCIe cards. And of those half of them were for functionality like fibrechannel or USB3.0. Fast interconnects that Apple would argue TB replaced.
Now of course TB2 may be faster than fibrechannel, but it is not a networkable protocol like fiber. But I guess the folks using fiber NAS for video or motion graphics are a smaller market segment still.
I guess you can hook up a fiber card using a $1000 PCIE to TB box. But man that is a price to pay.[/QUOTE

Macrumors is possibly the biggest Apple community outside Apple itself and Putting doubt and negativity in the minds of people is half of what inverse-Marketing is all about. Same with other tech sites like Engadget and Verge.

Defintely true about the PCIe cards. I've freelanced of the past 10 years and almost every Mac Pro has a mid rage or stock graphics card - no other PCIe cards / possibly a AV breakout. but hardly ever used and most telling only 1 Hard drive. maybe 5% had a second.

People with home / small office setups though max them out a lot more. My 2008 is Fullly loaded with max Ram a 285gtx - 2tb of SSDs 4x512 - but I still have 16TB in Synology drives.

you can get the Promise SANlink for $500 and sell your fibre card.

Thunderbolt is networkable. Supports ethernet over TB. Unless I am not getting your meaning?

 

[Simon R.]

How did you manage to interpret my comment as 'hate' ??

For one, I used to own a Power Mac as well as a Mac Pro. My complaints are completely legitimate... go into the Mac Pro forum and you'll see many others who share my thoughts.

I'm actually offended by your complacency towards Apple.

I am totally with you. I work as a composer and have no use or need whatsoever of that über-expensive gfx card.

Apple won't get my money this time, I will stick to my current 6-core Westmere.

Had they done a version with a standard no frills gfx card solution like my current Radeon which is more than enough for running Logic, and if that brought the price down by around $1000, I would think again and might buy into the new Mac Pro - even though I think it is stupid that I will then have to house DSP card(s) and storage externally. But the upcoming, seriously expensive solution with only marginal CPU performance boost, aimed at the gfx business? No thanks.

 

[Renzatic]

Well to be fair on this site there are an awful lot of paid trolls on here who get paid 5c per negative post. And they get paid more per thumbs up.

Name two.

 

[mtasquared]

I hate it when I pay $7700 and get $1800's in CPU, $6200 in GPU's, and another $1000 in ram and ssd.

This. It seems to me the new mac pro is cheaper than buying the components individually yourself. By a lot.

Add that to the fact that it is optimized for and runs OSX and it should be a stable, beastly, interesting looking workstation.

 

[MacSince1990]

The GPUs - D300 equate to W7000 which are $600 each approx so $1200 and the CPU is about
The CPUs are
$294 - 4core
$583 - 6 Core
$2614 - 12 core

http://architosh.com/2013/10/the-mac-pro-so-whats-a-d300-d500-and-d700-anyway-we-have-answers/

Thunderbolt 2 can transmit PCIe Along with Ethernet, video audio and other protocols.

Right. And external PCIe/memory/etc enclosures cost how many thousands of dollars versus a $100 mainstream video card?

Explain to me how the $3000 price tag of the 4-core MP = the $300 CPU and the GPU..? It's another $1k in the leap to the hexacore.. representing a less than $300 increase in CPU price, btw.

 

[cgc]

How did you manage to interpret my comment as 'hate' ??

For one, I used to own a Power Mac as well as a Mac Pro. My complaints are completely legitimate... go into the Mac Pro forum and you'll see many others who share my thoughts.

I'm actually offended by your complacency towards Apple.

By calling you a "hater" he can pigeonhole and berate you...makes him feel better about himself. It seems we can't disagree about something in this world without being labelled. It's akin to bullying in a way...try to force conformance by calling you names.

 

[cube]

Two Mac Pro articles in a row!

Two EXPENSIVE Mac Pro articles in a row.

I'd rather have no news but reasonable prices.

 

[SeattleMoose]

These results are really a reflection on the fact that CPUs have reached a plateau in terms of single threaded performance. As people have commented an increase of less than 20% after 4 years is not a major advance but this reflects more on the state of technology rather than Apple.

Apple is putting everything into the GP-GPU side of things and the fast SSD drive. So if your software makes use of this then the new MP will be fast and probably value for money.

On the CPU side, by going to one CPU instead of two the speed per core has had to drop which to some extent has negated the improvement in the chips themselves. They have also decreased the RAM slots even though the RAM interface is faster.

So everything hinges on how much software is able to actually use the GPUs.

Bingo! Precise and concise assessment of the situation. Will be interesting to see if Apple's own "Pro" software line is updated concurrently to take full advantage of the nMP's full processing power. As a Logic user it would help justify paying for more than just "potential".

 

[Parasprite]

Name two.

OO! Pick me! Pick me!

 

[Renzatic]

OO! Pick me! Pick me!

olol ur a shill how much doez Samedung pay you 4 b-ing a hater olol.

...wait. March '13 sign up date? You actually could be...

 

[Cory Bauer]

Right. And external PCIe/memory/etc enclosures cost how many thousands of dollars versus a $100 mainstream video card?

Explain to me how the $3000 price tag of the 4-core MP = the $300 CPU and the GPU..? It's another $1k in the leap to the hexacore.. representing a less than $300 increase in CPU price, btw.

The $3,000 model seems overpriced, I'll give you that. But regarding the price difference between the pre-configured 4-core and 6-core models, note that $1,000 gets you the $300 CPU upgrade, $1,200 in GPU upgrades in the D500s, and $75 extra in RAM. So, not bad.

 

[tkatz]

Personally I wouldn't buy one because it isn't expandable enough for me but I do think it's a really cool product and I'm eagerly awaiting reviews.

I'm really looking forward to its expandability. Granted, it will cost more to add things such as drives and what not since they would have to be in either USB3 or TB enclosures but just the thought of not having to go through the crap that I have with 3rd party pcie cards not working right, drivers causing crashes, etc…. it will be well worth it. The Promise TB2 drive array looks to be one of my first accessories. The D700 cards should last quite a while before they become really outdated. Will be interesting to see if something like the Cubix enclosure comes out with TB support.

It would have been nice to see a dual chip configuration (ie 2x12c chips). Knowing my luck, as usual, I'll go buy a fully configured BTO nMP and 6 months later a dual processor version will come out. Really fighting the good 'ole "never buy a rev a mac" thoughts floating around in my head.

 

[fastlanephil]

Well to be fair on this site there are an awful lot of paid trolls on here who get paid 5c per negative post. And they get paid more per thumbs up.

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Well if that's the case then some enterprising company should get in there and clean up and make 64bit and OpenCL audio plugins. But given the minuscule bandwidth of Audio compared to Video it probably doesn't matter? Surely any modern CPU can easily handles scores of layers of uncompressed audio?

It really depends on the type of work you are doing with audio. Orchestral plugin work using several tracks can over work a modern CPU.

Check out the parts list under show more for this master/slave PC DAW solution build video. I think this is probably over kill but for how long. Some of the current LASS instruments require an SSD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Wb_9UcZXY

 

[prowlmedia]

Right. And external PCIe/memory/etc enclosures cost how many thousands of dollars versus a $100 mainstream video card?

Explain to me how the $3000 price tag of the 4-core MP = the $300 CPU and the GPU..? It's another $1k in the leap to the hexacore.. representing a less than $300 increase in CPU price, btw.

That has the d500 GPU which cost a lot more...plus more ram etc. Plus the ram ssd case psu motherboard etc

 

[riggles]

Wonder if Apple will develop a slightly lower-powered version as kind of a mid-pro horse. It's an awesomely designed system and could be a great alternative to the iMac if it could hit sub-$2,000. Basically something to split the middle of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. If you dropped $1,000 on one of those Apple displays, you don't need to drop the money on the built-in iMac display.

The slightly lower powered version of the nMP is the 4-core nMP.

 

[69650]

It must be Monday morning in Australia and New Zealand. Has it launched there yet? If the rumours are true I hope it's in the Apple Store asap as I'm dying to see what it looks like the flesh so to speak.