New Mac Pro: Simultaneous Real-Time 4K Effect Rendering, +900MB/s Read/Write

[The Doctor11]

I have absolutely no use for the new Mac Pro, but dammit, I want one.

Yup me too. But I don't have a mac at all.

 

[wikiverse]

Has anyone else noticed the space on the second GPU board that would allow for the addition of a second SSD slot. Maybe in the next couple of generations we'll see an option for dual SSDs. I know pros aren't huge on internal storage. But imagine the speeds you could get from an internal Raid0 configuration. There are a couple ultrabooks with this option on SATA SSDs and they are incredibly fast at reading and writing.

Pro here, we use external storage because more than one person works on a job (assistant editor/editor/colorist/online/vfx etc.). Chances are, if you're starting and finishing a job in FCX on internal storage, you probably aren't working in 4k and you probably don't need this machine.

That said, fast internal storage is still beneficial when moving files around and rendering effects. The more the better. I would welcome it.

 

[richman555]

The real question is how many of these JJ Abrams is using in the production of the next Star Wars movie?

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

I guess I'll have to wait for the next generation Pro...I'm disappointed that this one isn't powerful enough to cure cancer and the common cold, or generate enough Bitcoins to end world hunger in a day, or figure out how to have world peace.

But, hey, in the mean time, we can watch 16 simultaneous 4K video streams!

(Wait! maybe if we daisy chain a bunch of these together via TB2...)

 

[akbarali.ch]

So, even a thrash can made by Apple can do so much

 

[Piggie]

Progress moves exponentially. I would like to know how it is going to be even in 25 years from now ....

Progress has slowed down year on year since the 1970's / 1980's

We were getting MASSIVE jumps with each new bit of kit, and amazing and exciting time

Now we wait a year or 2 to get a CPU that's 10% faster
or a GPU that gives 60 instead of 45 frames a second

They are getting lazy because the general public are happy enough

There is nothing to push

It used to be bring out a game that runs like crap, then wait a year or 2 before the hardware came out to match what the game needed.

Does not really happen now. Crysis was perhaps the last title that ran like crap on many computers. Games really pushed the hardware makers hard

 

[H2SO4]

I believe I was never asked either.

As you quoted that statement in your reply I thought you might address it.

 

[Parasprite]

Progress has slowed down year on year since the 1970's / 1980's

We were getting MASSIVE jumps with each new bit of kit, and amazing and exciting time

Now we wait a year or 2 to get a CPU that's 10% faster
or a GPU that gives 60 instead of 45 frames a second

They are getting lazy because the general public are happy enough

Considering the manufacturers are competing with each other, I wouldn't think it would make sense that they would just "get lazy" or "slow down" just to let another company pass just because they think the public thinks their other product is "good enough". The introductory parts of a good business course would make sure you know that, if not anything else.

 

[gotluck]

The SAD SAD thing about it all is that it wouldn't take much on Apple's part to correct this situation and make Mac gaming a reasonable alternative to Windows (and one can always use Boot Camp to correct everything above except the lousy GPU hardware). They should have a desktop Mac (even if it's a souped up Mac Mini) that is meant to handle gaming, even if this means a little larger case and an extra fan. You shouldn't need the top-end iMac to get something close to reasonable gaming performance. Not everyone needs a built-in monitor (and the bigger the monitor, the higher the native resolution and the more GPU power it would take to run it at that native resolution thus aggravating an already bad situation). Even an i5 mac Mini with a really good GPU could be offered at the $1200 range (same as a low-end MBP) and it would run well in OSX and great in Windows and you'd still have all that nice OSX OS goodness to work with when doing other things without having to resort to a Hackintosh.

So what's stopping Apple from offering a Mac Mini with a really good GPU or even a new Mac Pro case with a regular non-Xeon motherboard and a gaming type GPU at a more reasonable $2k type price? Stubbornness. They figure it might cannibalize top-end iMac or even some new Mac Pro sales even though they are really not meant for gaming either. And that's the problem with Apple's short-sightedness. They don't even WANT to develop a Mac gaming market. They couldn't care less and so the same-old same-old "Macs aren't for gaming" will continue on to infinity. Worse yet, they could get some serious gaming market going with an improved AppleTV plus a bluetooth controller (hell, PS3 and XBox controllers already work in OSX right out of the box). But no, Apple users don't game. You can tell that by looking at the App sales on iTunes....

I want to buy the MacnonPro too. My thinking is they won't build it because it would slaughter the iMac. Macs could be just fine for gaming totally agree, I don't even mind having to boot camp, just sell a consumer desktop gpu, please!


ios is a shining example that apple can handle gaming. I'd love to see enhanced focus on it in osx as well. Blows my mind how apple seems to largely ignore it.

 

[wiz329]

Progress has slowed down year on year since the 1970's / 1980's

We were getting MASSIVE jumps with each new bit of kit, and amazing and exciting time

Now we wait a year or 2 to get a CPU that's 10% faster
or a GPU that gives 60 instead of 45 frames a second

They are getting lazy because the general public are happy enough

There is nothing to push

It used to be bring out a game that runs like crap, then wait a year or 2 before the hardware came out to match what the game needed.

Does not really happen now. Crysis was perhaps the last title that ran like crap on many computers. Games really pushed the hardware makers hard

Where's the downvote button when you need it ...

There's just so much wrong with this post. While I'm tempted to point out each and every error here, I'll restrain myself to just one point.

The only reason you say that progress has "slowed" dramatically, is because you are already describing improvements in terms of percentages. By that logic, the economy of developed countries are actually growing "slower" each year as growth rates fall (following initial development).

Even if the percentage growth rate is decreasing, we are still "progressing" at an ever increasing rate (exponentially). In other words (for any math geeks), the absolute computational power function is convex -- it is increasing at an increasing rate as a function of time.

----------

Thats a shame. Nowadays hackintosh's are pretty much as stable as a real mac. I have my CPU over clocked to 4.3GHz and ram to 2133MHz, and it runs amazingly. It has frozen on me a couple of times (rarely), but thats because my over clock is not 100% stable, OSX has never had a kernel panic the computer just locks up compete,y so its the motherboard that's stopped everything to prevent damage.

Going to chime in here. I also have a Hackintosh, it is nowhere close to as stable as original Apple products.

It does the job fine, but it does KP much more frequently than my MBP, though I'm not sure if that's due to hardware choice, specific kexts I've installed, or just buggy software. Bluetooth is also pretty spotty.

It could be because I haven't had the time to update to Mavericks (it could be that Haswell support in 10.8.5 isn't quite as robust), or properly work out all the kinks (bluetooth, HDMI audio in particular), but the fact remains that Hackintoshes are not nearly as stable (in my admittedly limited experience, and from others that I've been in contact), and require much more attention and maintentance.

Examples from my experience:
- BIOS the board shipped with was not up to snuff. It had to be updated to the most recent one in order to load the installer
- Haswell and Sandforce 1xxx compatability issues (although this is more of an Intel problem than OS X)
- Bluetooth won't "hotswap". Haven't been able to get the native BT to work, so I installed a USB adaptor. It doesn't work 100% of the time. Reboot sometimes fixes the problem. I suspect it is a sleep issue.
- HDMI audio doesn't currently work.
- Failure to set EFI partition as active (not sure where the fault lies on this one).

There are fixes (I'm sure) to all these stability issues -- they don't HAVE to be long term. However, they're just a pain in the butt to deal with, and require a good amount of online troubleshooting.

 

[MuckSavage70]

Going to chime in here. I also have a Hackintosh, it is nowhere close to as stable as original Apple products.

I guess it's your definition of "stable" but the hackintoshes I have built (3 so far) have been very stable. I have only seen issues when getting the boot loader set up, but if you can get it to boot, there are few issues you run into. Granted it all depends on the hardware, but I've found it to be a relatively pain free experience.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

for that whole plan to work out, the computers have to be upgradable.. most of the the tinkerers buy used/refurbs and replace the GPUs and sometimes the CPUs..
a three year old mac pro isn't going to be worth much on the used market if it's stuck at the original configuration.

You realize that the target market of this machine generally leases their equipment. The idea of this buy/upgrade/ebay cycle is laughable.

----------

Well that cleared that up.

My original point being was that if you didn't want/need two GPU's for the work you wanted to do then you still have to pay for them. You also can't change them or swap them out. The NMP is just biased towards video editors and graphic designers, Apple seem to have forgotten about the audio guys (unless they somehow update Logic Pro X to take advantage of OpenCL, but I don't really see that happening)

Your assumption is that the manufactures of audio software aren't going to move away from dedicated hardware to OpenCL.

 

[Mike777]

Apple leasing is very limited though. You end up with the option to buy or carry on leasing. The option to carry on leasing doesn't really make much if any sense though given you've practically bought it by that point.

 

[LordQ]

Now, if only James Cameron would use this baby to convert Titanic to 3D and re-release it to theatres...

 

[Owensmouth]

Now, if only James Cameron would use this baby to convert Titanic to 3D and re-release it to theatres...

I think he's done that already

 

[iChrist]

Apple has clearly abandoned the professional market!

/s

Yeah. Might as well buy one now. It will be another 3 years before the next minor spec bump.

 

[thekev]

Base model is $4400 and comes with a quad core cpu, 16gb ram, 7200 rpm hdd, and a single 3gb quadro card… and people are complaining about the lower end mac pro's?

I know I know.. the HP is upgradable. And I see you can get a dual 12c for $10k, with 16gb ram, 240gb ssd and no video card. I understand the upgradability part, but the price… how is that better?

Edit: Sorry I see the base model is $2400, with 4gb ram ….

HP workstations are actually one of the more expensive ones. It's important to note that, and that this one is really designed as a dual socket type. Note the use of 2600 parts even in base configurations. I wouldn't necessarily argue that Apple is priced out of market on higher end configurations. It's usually when you're closer to their base configurations that they are significantly higher than windows oems. GPU is also somewhat difficult to compare here. I assume you meant the Quadro K4000. I have no idea whether that one is worth it, and NVidia is being a stingy bastard on memory there. If the primary purpose was computation, a tesla is probably a far better choice. This assumes CUDA is a necessity.

 

[Max(IT)]

Man I'd love to buy one of those to edit family videos on but I know that would be such a waste on powerful machine. I'd be embarrassed to use iMovie on it lol!

I wonder if the 6 core model is even overkill for a professional photographer...

I think it's overkill for almost everything right now, but when you buy something like that you are probably going to keep it for a while...

----------

This is a workstation. Most people do not replace hardware in the machine, the machine gets replaced. You stick with the turnkey system for stability.

What hardware do you want to replace, or perhaps install, in the machine if you could?

This is what most of the people here can't understand.
They keep reasoning like kids swapping CPUs and GPUs on their gaming machine to play the latest game at higher settings.
When you buy a workstation you are going to keep it for several years (not one or even two) and then you buy another one. You are looking for productivity and so stability is paramount.
There are people that lease this kind of workstation for a period of time instead of buy one.

 

[padapada]

Progress has slowed down year on year since the 1970's / 1980's

We were getting MASSIVE jumps with each new bit of kit, and amazing and exciting time

Now we wait a year or 2 to get a CPU that's 10% faster
or a GPU that gives 60 instead of 45 frames a second

They are getting lazy because the general public are happy enough
...

Intel is not lazy, it's just pretty damn difficult to beat the laws of physics. We are at the point where it's up to the software engineers to give us speed increases by using design patterns (sequential memory reads/writes, single writer principle, apply SIMD where applicable, ...) which tap into the enormous parallel processing capacity available. The point is not every problem is easily decomposed into parallellizable parts.
It is pretty clear from the nMP design that Apple is betting on OpenCL mainly to serve the needs of their target audience. It's up to software guys/girls to make it happen: tap into OpenCL.
From this perspective it's funny to see the Geekbench score discussions. IMHO they are largely irrelevant as opposed to proper software architectures utilizing all that parallel power.

 

[Max(IT)]

So cnet has a review up and under "the bad" they say:


This makes no sense to me. That's like dinging an HP workstation because it doesn't appeal to a Chromebook buyer. Plus it's not like Apple doesn't offer computers for home consumers (iMac, MacBook Air/Pro, Mac Mini come to mind). Why are some tech sites treating the nMP as if it's something that should be suitable (and thus cheaper) for the average Joe who owns an iPhone or iPad? To me this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel to try and come up with something negative.

Who is the genius that wrote that review ?
It sounds like "this Ferrari is a great car, but it's a pity I can't fit the stroller in the trunk"

----------

And how many people with old Mac Pros upgraded the CPU ?

I've heard dozens of people on MacRumors say they're still using a 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro today.

So why don't they just pop in a 2013 CPU and be done with it?

I agree... CPU upgrades matter... but I haven't heard much about them actually being done.

In the real world (out of this kind of forum) ? NONE.
After 3 year or more, most of the times the new CPUs are not even supported by the motherboard.
Forums like this tend to distort reality. An average professional users buy one MP in the configuration that fits his needs, work on it for a while and than swap it for a new one (when performance of the old machine are not enough for the new tasks required).

 

[Max(IT)]

You are assuming we all have an six year amortization on our equipment. I know professional VFX guys that expect to cover the cost of the new Mac Pro in less than a year based on increased deliverables of works for clients.

Six years are a bit long in the tooth, but 3-4 years are a reasonable figure. So the lack of upgradability is just an excuse to criticize it.

----------

Why would you need Crossfire/SLI when OpenCL will already use all capable GPU's in the system?

Isn't Crossfire/SLI specific to gaming? This isn't designed to be used specifically for gaming.

This is the problem here .... People speaking about a workstation as it was a game machine ....

Crossfire and SLI ....

 

[Max(IT)]

Something like copy/compress/decompress 6GB folder, iMovie, ITunes encoding? BTW, according to MacWorld new 8 core MacPro is slower at these tasks than 15" MBP and quadcore iMac

Are you trolling for the sake of it or do you have reasons ?
The article says a totally different thing and the reviewer was impressed by MP ....

Don't waste your time with a reply: you are a very well known apple basher in this forum.

 

[Max(IT)]

And what is not to understand about the fact that it costs too much for me and I'd much prefer a machine with internal expansion? Apparently saying that is pissing on your parade and whining and I should 'do you a favour' and stop. Now you're telling me I'm the irrational one that isn't making sense because I defended my right to post my opinions on a public forum?

Well... whatever. You quoted me first.

I do respect your opinion, but if you say that you like customization and a machine with internal expansion, I think you are on the wrong forum.

One can like it or not, but Apple is not about customization and internal expansion ....
In this particularly case, the Mac Pro, they decided on purpose to have external expansion. It's apple's philosophy, you don't have to like it.

----------

Negative!? Have you even read my posts? :S

So what you're saying is... I'm only allowed to post if I'm actually going to buy the product in question? Total nonsense. Especially the car analogies. I own Apple products and even them who don't have a full right to be here and to express their opinions on what is going on. That is what this forum is for.

Oh, would you look at that, we have contradictory opinions on what you can or can't post on a forum it seems. What a surprise.

You said you can use a Mac Pro as an ashtray ....
That wasn't an opinion, was a flame bait ....

----------

A Mac Pro IS a PC...... (According to WiKi: A personal computer (PC) is a general-purpose computer, whose size, capabilities and original sale price makes it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator).

Actually is more a workstation ....

 

[VoR]

This is the problem here .... People speaking about a workstation as it was a game machine ....

Crossfire and SLI ....

Games, 3d rendering and physics simulation for real men (and kids)!
If apple had used amds latest generation of gpus, crossfire is done straight through pci-e (not that that really matters with a proprietary setup like this)

Actually is more a workstation ....

Workstations, the definition of form over function? - It looks like they compromised a hell of lot to squeeze it into a little can that looks good in glossy mags and cinema trailers.
External expansion might just be a bit more costly and unsightly for some circumstances, but what about the actual machine and the silly power and thermal restrictions they've imposed.
Silly compromises for a machine that people love to shout about being a 'workstation' or 'pro' - It seems 'good enough' rather than 'the best', and that's very boring to me

 

[Max(IT)]

I'm not using the "pro" definition, cause I think it's silly.
But this is an Apple Workstation, and it definitely is the BEST Mac so far, so in my opinion is exactly what it was meant to be.

Btw I'm not going to get one, as it is way beyond my needs (and budget).