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

wikiverse said:
As a professional you need predictability and consistency - two things apple have proven not to be when it comes to FCP and MP. Avid users on the other hand wondered what all the fuss was about.
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Considering Avid didn't post a profit for nearly a 5 year stretch there, there's always the possibility your tool of choice could disappear...

Also, I disagree about the support jerkaround being the reason an editor would leave FCP. I think it's way more about how much of their work flow they need to retool and the money/retraining involved. I think an "all's forgiven" situation is not that hard to imagine if a person could see a reasonable path forward.
 
chirpie said:
Considering Avid didn't post a profit for nearly a 5 year stretch there, there's always the possibility your tool of choice could disappear...
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Avid's software won't be disappearing anytime soon. Even if the company goes bankrupt, someone will buy Media Composer and Pro Tools; too many professionals use those tools. I think it would be interesting if Blackmagic Design bought the software if Avid went bankrupt. They turned DaVinci Resolve around and further developed and improved the software. So I could maybe see that happening. But Media Composer won't just disappear if Avid goes under.
 
What is such a dam shame is Apple will NOT EVER make a machine many people would want as it would hurt the iMac and hurt the Mac Pro.

Perhaps we can get Samsung to copy the basic MacPro design and actually make what many would love.

Take a Mac Pro, thow in say 16GB or 32GB of,. what we call normal high speed RAM, a couple of Nvidea Titans linked together and a high end (not stupid overpriced) Intel CPU, and say two 256GB SSD's and sell it as a screaming Games machine.

Probably half the price of the high end Mac pro.

But Apple will never make it.
 
I thought this was a fairly even handed look at what it would take to recreate the MacPro with off the shelf parts. It points out both sides: that the MacPro is fairly priced for what you get, and that you could go with lesser (cheaper) components and make something cheaper with the same or better performance.

The advantage that the PC world has is that there are enough different products out there to put together just about anything, so if you don't need the security of ECC RAM, etc. you can come out cheaper. If you use the same workstation-class components, it's going to cost about the same as the MacPro, which is reflected in the prices of the higher end HP and Dell workstations.
 
0x0x0x0 said:
Do you seriously think that AMD would open up the spec to Apple (so that effectively they could just copy it and fab their own chips) to enable Apple to write the drivers :confused: I suspect AMD write the drivers for OS X...
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I'm sure there's a fair bit of collusion but (and I'm only responding to a portion of your post).... AMD have jumped many legal hurdles and been rather generous with gfx documentation over the last year or so. They've been selectively hiring prominent oss graphics developers and the results have been incredible. The oss drivers are arguably better than fglrx for the majority of users and things are only getting better.

There isn't going to be much shying away from high prices at launch but everyone should give Valve all of their money. They're the ones changing the landscape and deserve it infinitely more than any of the other big corporates, it's better for everyone (/hippy-hand-holding) - Apple's (leeching and lagging) graphics stack will benefit directly proportional to directx loosing ubiquity :)
 
Renzatic said:
If you've really been to the future, then you should know everything will be wireless in 3 years time. I don't think you're truthin' here. :mad:



I should've added an /s to my post.

While I can see that Thunderbolt could potentially possibly replace PCIe at some point, and a future where everything is modular, and no one has to spend any time goofing around with screws or trying to fit little cards into tight spaces is kind of appealing, we're nowhere near that point now.

TB doesn't come anywhere near being able to match the bandwidth of an internal PCIe bus. Right now, the up and coming can only provide 20 Gbps. That's a little b, people. A bit, not a byte. That means that the actual max throughput of Thunderbolt is 2.5GB a second. PCIe 3.0 can provide 1GB per lane, upwards of 32GB per second on a 16 lane bus. That's...considerably faster.

I'm wondering how anyone could honestly claim PCIe is becoming a bottleneck. Hell, I think the only thing faster in a computer is the bandwidth between your northbridge and CPU.
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What peripheral exists out there that is saturating a PCIe 3.0 bus, much less a thunderbolt 2 one?

It seems to me that folks are having a theoretical discussion about bandwidth rather than real-world use. What peripherals exist that actually USE 32GB per s data transfer? If it or they exist, how much time is saved when performing a given function or operation, and how will that translate into more money and/or better quality of user experience with a given software app?
 
0x0x0x0 said:
Do you seriously think that AMD would open up the spec to Apple (so that effectively they could just copy it and fab their own chips) to enable Apple to write the drivers :confused: I suspect AMD write the drivers for OS X...
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They aren't getting the driver certification that comes with the windows drivers for the firepro graphics cards. That's why the firepros are so expensive.
 
mrhick01 said:
What peripheral exists out there that is saturating a PCIe 3.0 bus, much less a thunderbolt 2 one?
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TB2 could probably be saturated with a good RAID setup. It'd take a bit of effort to do, though. PCIe 3.0? I'm sure there are some outlier situations where it could happen, though they'd be few and far between. We're talking about a situation where a GPU could process the contents of 64GB of ram in 2-3 seconds. If you're in a situation where you have to work with that much, if not more raw data, you'd end up being bottlenecked by even the fastest SSD RAID long, long, LONG before you'd start experiencing hiccups and lag due to the bus being too slow.

You're basically making the same point I was. Guy said that PCIe is a terrible bottleneck for people editing 4k video in realtime, and other people are saying it's not. It's nowhere near.
 
Asclepio said:
wow 0,02% of film production
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coolspot18 said:
Apple should put more resources into improving the stability of OSX - like preventing Finder from hanging if the front UI process has hung.

Or even just improving Finder Folder Explorer... making it comparable to the power of Windows Explorer.

Better networking support - iSCSI perhaps?
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Apple is working on that! That is going to come with the next major release of OS X that will work like iOS! :eek: :D :cool: /s

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ersatzplanet said:
For those missing the old style and drive bays, just get a old used mac tower and gut it, leave the power supply and drive bays and do this:
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Is that to scale? It looks like you could fit 2 or 3 Mac Pro's in there! :eek: :cool:

No really, is that to scale?
 
Piggie said:
What is such a dam shame is Apple will NOT EVER make a machine many people would want as it would hurt the iMac and hurt the Mac Pro.

Perhaps we can get Samsung to copy the basic MacPro design and actually make what many would love.

Take a Mac Pro, thow in say 16GB or 32GB of,. what we call normal high speed RAM, a couple of Nvidea Titans linked together and a high end (not stupid overpriced) Intel CPU, and say two 256GB SSD's and sell it as a screaming Games machine.

Probably half the price of the high end Mac pro.

But Apple will never make it.
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they already sell that.. or they're available at least..

mac_pro.jpg
 
SirHaakon said:
Even more impressive when you consider the newest Red Rocket actually costs $6.7K.

http://www.red.com/store/products/red-rocket-x
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I wonder if someone is going to compare the MacPro variations against one with a Red Rocket to see what the limitations are between the two.

It would be interesting to figure out what circumstances one would actually need a Red Rocket card. If it isn't needed, then it isn't needed.
 
Konrad9 said:
Have you not seen any pictures of the insides of this machine?

It's easier to upgrade a Mac Mini.
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I have upgraded just about every Mac you can think of over the last 20 years. I am a former repair technician. While I have not had my hands on one of the new Mac Pros in order to actually take it apart, I have viewed all the the available photos ect. I can tell you right now without the slightest doubt a MacMini is far more difficult to upgrade than this new MacPro at least in terms of taking it apart and getting to the parts you want to upgrade. Once you take off the cover of this new MacPro everything is readily available. Of course in order to upgrade it you have to have parts to upgrade it with. This Macpro is a unique and original feat of engineering. If you enjoy upgrading all the components of your computers over a period of years then buy a PC or build a Hackintosh. This is a great little machine and will serve millions of customers very well. ;)
 
Neat said:
It seems most people here are divided into a couple of camps

1)those absolutely enthralled with the Mac Pro
2)complaining about its "expandability" in a very general way
3)people who like new things (Whatever that means)
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I am getting away from the mentality of internal storage. I just bought a Drobo Mini with 4 - SSD drives and it's great. I'm just hoping they update the Firmware so we can set it up as a boot drive with Thunderbolt.

The reason is when you move up from one base system to another, you don't need to transfer the data from a bunch of drives, or dig inside to move the drives. Plus we don't have to pay for the additional power, bigger chassis and additional cooling internal to the box when we want buy a base unit.

I only wish Apple would come out with a box that's priced right in the middle of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro and put in TB 2, HDMI, up to 1TB of 1250Mbps SSD, up to 32GB of RAM, high end i5/i7, a single D300 with several G of VRAM, and cater to the prosumer that wants a nice fast workstation but price it where a fully loaded version with 32GB RAM, 1TB super fast SSD, and top end i7 was $3000 $1500 for the base version with 8GB RAM, 256G super fast SSD, i5 and less of a GPU. That way the prosumers wouldn't have to be stuck with an iMac or having to save money to buy something that's beyond what their needs/budget. Plus, I'm sure there would be plenty more people opting for this machine. As much as I like the iMac, I think it's a little underpowered for the prosumer workstation class system. I think it's just a great all in one desktop, some of us just want a faster SSD, HDMI, Thunderbolt 2, USB, etc. in a small box and then we can buy whatever monitor we choose.
 
parker612 said:
A well said and excellent point. I'm not sure of anyone moving back to lightworks though, but I do know of and have heard of several editors and post houses going back to Avid or moving to Premiere, from FCP 7.
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The mac version of lightworks is not yet available. It will be released in 2014 and I imagine a lot of current fcp7 users will choose it over premiere or even avid.

I've used the windows version. It's incredible. Fast, light, stable. It's what fcp8 should have been. Plus, it's free for the basic version, $60/yr for the pro version.
 
wikiverse said:
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.
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You're right and I recognize and respect that. Regardless, as far as fundamental operations are concerned, faster SSDs can add just a little bit more speed to every task.
 
Konrad9 said:
Have you not seen any pictures of the insides of this machine?

It's easier to upgrade a Mac Mini.
Click to expand...
Yes I have seen the inside and I must say it's an improvement on all points. Upgrading and expanding will be ten times more enjoyable. The naysayers on this forum will tell u different.
 
parker612 said:
Avid's software won't be disappearing anytime soon. Even if the company goes bankrupt, someone will buy Media Composer and Pro Tools; too many professionals use those tools. I think it would be interesting if Blackmagic Design bought the software if Avid went bankrupt. They turned DaVinci Resolve around and further developed and improved the software. So I could maybe see that happening. But Media Composer won't just disappear if Avid goes under.
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That's just it in a way! If the software itself is truly useful with a decent market penetration, it wouldn't be long before something rose up to take it's place.

Frankly, the picture you paint makes me wish a new blood company could take a crack at Media Composer. ;-)
 
wikiverse said:
No professional is going to use FCX. Ever.

Why? Because look at what happened with FCP. Apple dropped all support for FCP7 overnight with no warning.

They decided that they were going to reinvent the wheel and created a new Final Cut that could open iMovie projects but not old fcp ones. You couldn't organise files or move a project to another editors machine, or export to XML.

Apple are not in the film business. They can drop support for FCX tomorrow and claim the nMP is not selling and drop that too. Who knows? They've done it before.

Avid and adobe are in the film business. Their entire business revolves around editing, sound, graphics and compositing. You know that they will have legacy support for old projects in any upgrade and that they will continue to provide support.

Film projects involve dozens, if not hundreds of people working together simultaneously. Avid is build for this FCX isn't. If anything the remaining fcp7 users will start migrating to lightworks this year. It was the first NLE and now it is $60/yr for the pro version.

As a professional you need predictability and consistency - two things apple have proven not to be when it comes to FCP and MP. Avid users on the other hand wondered what all the fuss was about.
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But how long will Avid be around? That is a question ANY pro should consider. For example, simply look are Revenue data:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=avid+revenue

it is on a constant decline in a period FCPX was (supposedly) so horrible every one dumped it and shifted to Avid. This revenue makes even the profit of the company sad:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=avid+income

It has (almost) been 7 years since the company has shown any Net profit. At least Amazon has growing revenues.
 
Games consoles built like a Mac

Piggie said:
I think it's quite accurate really to call it a computer built like a games console

Think about a PC.

A computer built, from a variety of parts perhaps by the owner picking items, running an OS which has to be able to handle a MASSIVE mix of hardware, and then run on it some software made by someone else, again designed to run on a MASSIVE array of hardware.

That is a normal general computer PC that the vast majority of the world uses.

A Games console, is also a computer. but a custom designed one by one company. The games console runs a OS finely tuned for it, to get the best out of it. The Console itself is pretty custom also, May contain some stock parts but put together in a very specific way to maximize performance.
The the same company has their own software that again is tuned and tweaked to run at it's best of the machine.

End result is a more custom, more closed down system, but one that gives better performance than a general open system running a more general open array of soft and hardware.

Seems quite a reasonable analogy to make.

One could say anyone COULD make a ultra fast PC is they specifically designed it to be from the ground up and controlled the software/OS for it (again like a console)

Not means to be a put down, just how it it.
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What you've just described above is a Mac! :)
In fact you've described every Mac ever made! :)

"A custom design by one company. The games console/Mac runs an OS finely tuned for it, to get the best out of it. The Console/Mac itself is pretty custom also, may contain some stock parts but put together in a very specific way to maximize performance.
The the same company (Apple) has their own software that again is tuned and tweaked to run at it's best of the machine".

Yep, congratulations on describing every Mac.
If anything it would be more accurate to say games consoles have copied Apple's design model. :)
 
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