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

[scottwaugh]

My mac pro 1,1 is upgraded from the original dual woodcrest xeons 3.0 Ghz (2cores)
To dual Clovertown 3.0 Ghz (4 core). People do it and really it was not that hard to do. So now I have an 8 core machine.

Very true (got a 1,1 myself), but its also true that the later Mac Pro's had CPU's without their integrated heat spreaders (that's normally part of Intel's CPU) - making it a little more dicey for upgrades - since the one's you can buy have the heat spreaders and its affects the height with regards to the heat sinks...can be done but not as easily as the early Mac Pro's.

For a variety of reasons, Mac Pro's, while they could be upgraded, were never as easy as doing upgrades on a PC where you could just slap in whatever video card you wanted and whatever CPU that worked with the socket/MoBo...only a limited selection of video cards would work with OS X (since they needed Apple to write the driver for it) and the particular Mac Pro version you had.

I don't see it being a huge change from that standpoint (before you could do some limited hardware upgrades - basically taking it to the high end options later if you wanted)...JMHO... Beautiful machine, can't wait to try and hear one at a Apple store. ;-)

 

[UNMENINU]

Keep playing with FCPX, but when you really need to edit something do it on a real editing software (Avid Media Composer anyone?)

Apple are trying to convince us that the Mac Pro is a Pro, although we all know it's just a Mac...

I think Media Composer 6.5 just added RED without transcoding. I prefer Media Composer but any editing fanboy has to be blow away not matter what they prefer to use. This Mac Pro clearly demonstrates the ability to be used professionally for many years, not that FCPX is superior. Who cares?

 

[LastQuadrant]

Keep playing with FCPX, but when you really need to edit something do it on a real editing software (Avid Media Composer anyone?)

Apple are trying to convince us that the Mac Pro is a Pro, although we all know it's just a Mac...

Really? They can dump Avid Media Composer on the same machine if they want to, it will run both.

 

[Exhale]

I'd say it'll be a more than decent gaming machine. I believe the new Mac Pro uses GPUs that are based upon the FirePro W9000 line, which, according to these benchmarks, are top of the line as far as game performance is concerned.

... why are you using a benchmark that doesn't include a single current GPU?
The W9000 is barely ahead of current mid-range cards (GTX 760 Ti / Radeon 280x), is outperformed by the high end (GTX 770/ Radeon 290) and is outclassed (>50%) by the very high end (GTX 780 / Titan, 290x)

Its not slow, but not exactly fast enough for 1440p gaming either.

 

[LastQuadrant]

You're right, no one on the planet uses FCP, and nothing about this is impressive in any way whatsoever.

Explain to me what separates your "real" editing from the pros that happen to use a different program that the one you prefer?

Not to mention that the onus to optimize software is on the developers end/

I think you are trying to rationalize with someone that isn't rational. Kind of difficult to argue with that mentality. It's like trying to explain to a Justin Bieber fan that Justin Bieber isn't that great of a singer. The JB fan won't listen to you, no matter what logic you apply, they lost that ability and they can't seem to develop the concept of logical thought processes.

 

[Illusion986]

I wanted Mac Pro....But after this article i realized it is suck an over kill for me it would be a waste of mac pro for me to own one.....This thing is a monster! Very impressive.

 

[chirpie]

My other complaint is that I'd like better integration with Logic. The XML round trip thing is akward.

I know XML got better with the latest update of Logic (Volume and pan automation is now included in XML interchange with Final Cut Pro X) but I agree there could be a better way.

 

[WaxedJacket]

So amazing in such a small power house that's nearly completely silent.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

Reality is that part of Apple's deal with AMD was to have proprietary daughter cards for the D300 and the D500 at those low price points.

 

[jt73]

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

My thoughts exactly. I want to justify it; can't; want.

 

[cbm]

Anyone else in my situation and/or have any ideas of external 'boxes' to take my drives? Any advice would be deeply appreciated.

Almost any box that will do JBOD will work for you. If the SSD is 2.5", it might be the trickiest to accommodate. I haven't used any of these, but I have looked into them all for future use.

I really like the features of the DAT Optic. It has Thunderbolt USB 3.0 and eSATA, and Firewire 800 can be added. it's also reputed to be very quiet. It's also a little spendy.

The OWC Mercury Elite Pro does not have Thunderbolt, but unless you are running a RAID, USB 3.0 is fast enough. It's also pretty cheap.

 

[wildmac]

... why are you using a benchmark that doesn't include a single current GPU?
The W9000 is barely ahead of current mid-range cards (GTX 760 Ti / Radeon 280x), is outperformed by the high end (GTX 770/ Radeon 290) and is outclassed by the very high end (GTX 780 / Titan, 290x)

Its not slow, but not exactly fast enough for 1440p gaming either.

However, how many Mac games use that horsepower? Blizzard games are mostly ram hogs.

 

[cosmicjoke]

I'm sure it's been said by now, but can it play Crysis (or whatever the new intensive title is) in 4k? Still have no idea what these uniquely named workstation gpus can do precisely... I somehow doubt they're a Titan though.

 

[thats all folks]

The trolls have nothing but the usual drivel.....
Third parties demonstrate mind numbing FCPX speed, so obviously FCPX is completely irrelevant.

For those of us not using FCPX, it is irrelevant. For those of us using a dozen different pieces of software to maximize the potential on each, the performance of one less than respected app on a completely unproved OS on a machine with no track record...

We want to see real world performance using some other benchmark. We want to see meaningful comparisons with the previous Pro. Alright with you?

 

[Exhale]

However, how many Mac games use that horsepower?

Easy example: Civ 5.

 

[thats all folks]

Think outside your regular TV. Many devices have a larger resolution than 1080p. (Every 27inch iMac for one.) I for one would like having the higher resolution higher bitrate options available today, even if they're not full 4K yet. (1,440p is a nice inbetween option for a lot of monitors when watching from the web.) I'm glad companies like Netflix is delivering House of Cards in 4k next year. I think it makes sense to have content before the device. No one buys a video game system with only 5 games to buy. ;-)

It might feel like it's a long ways off, but for someone buying a computer that's supposed to last a few years, it'll be just about right.

Yes. 4K is poised to be the next 3D. We should look forward to similar adoption rates and growth in content. Bring it!

 

[djdj]

People keep acting like being able to edit 4K video is impressive. Sorry to break it to you, but my 4-year old Windows PC which only cost $2000 to build easily handles 6 layers of 5K RED RAW (native, not transcoded) with 3D motion, color correction, and effects simultaneously in Premiere Pro without breaking a sweat. Being able to process 4K video isn't anything new or that hard to pull off. And to top it off, when I need extra storage I just throw another hard drive in the machine, something this machine just can't do.

The new Mac Pro looks pretty great, and Apple has certainly done some cool things with the engineering of the product, but from a technical point of view it really isn't that impressive. PCs with similar capabilities have been around for quite a while.

 

[puckhead193]

is this due to the 8 cores, D700s cards or the ram.

 

[winterspan]

While that is nice and all, i would like to see how it performs against an older Mac Pro with dual 6-core Xeons and either a third party PCIe SSD or a few SSDs in raid.

The new CPU architecture should help, but the older dual-CPU machine would have more cores, with each core running faster because they are only 6-core CPUs (essentially you have twice the power envelope versus a single 10/12 core Xeon)

Although this machine is certainly impressive for its size, I think the older Mac Pro would still have more raw power, particularly in CPU constrained applications

 

[Quu]

People keep acting like being able to edit 4K video is impressive. Sorry to break it to you, but my 4-year old Windows PC which only cost $2000 to build easily handles 6 layers of 5K RED RAW (native, not transcoded) with 3D motion, color correction, and effects simultaneously in Premiere Pro without breaking a sweat. Being able to process 4K video isn't anything new or that hard to pull off. And to top it off, when I need extra storage I just throw another hard drive in the machine, something this machine just can't do.

The new Mac Pro looks pretty great, and Apple has certainly done some cool things with the engineering of the product, but from a technical point of view it really isn't that impressive. PCs with similar capabilities have been around for quite a while.

This guy speaks the truth and I can confirm. The fact is the new Mac Pro under OS X is better than the previous Mac Pro. But compared to Windows systems it's just catching up to what was already there. I'm not framing this as a Mac vs PC thing it's just it is what it is, the truth.

 

[NewbieCanada]

That is not a troll but a damn good question. Of all the reviews read so far, there hasn't been a single one looking at Boot Camp and Parallels running on the Mac Pro. I'm sure the Parallels folks are working hard on a release for the Mac Pro due out before the end of the year.

There's nothing about the Mac Pro that requires a new release of Parallels - it still runs Mavericks like every other Mac

 

[bobobenobi]

Most of the applications here have been doable on Windows since 2011...so Apple has caught up with 2012/13. Yawn.

Please provide a link to workstations that can do 18 effects against 4K RED RAW video in real time. Addintonally, provide the model names of machines that could do this two years ago.

 

[Michael Scrip]

is this due to the 8 cores, D700s cards or the ram.

I'd say it's a combination of all of those things... and software that is optimized for this hardware.

The latest Final Cut Pro X update takes advantage of the new dual GPUs in the Mac Pro... that's huge.

So there are 8 cores of CPU and two monster GPUs chewing through that video. Oh... and an insanely fast SSD.

It all adds up to incredible performance.

 

[winterspan]

This guy speaks the truth and I can confirm. The fact is the new Mac Pro under OS X is better than the previous Mac Pro....

Besides the sweet new design and native PCIe SSD, what is better than the old one? I think with a couple SSDs in Raid 0 or a proper PCIe SSD (not sure if any third parties make one for the old Mac Pro) the old one would be faster than the new one in the dual CPU configuration.

I WANT to love this new machine. And if they would have kept it dual CPU (with or without dual GPUs) I would buy one. While OpenCL and other mechanisms for GPU computing are coming along, it is still very early and having a second CPU would likely benefit more applications than the second GPU. Although obviously if we could have both it would be even better!

Too bad they don't keep around the old Mac Pro and upgrade it with new CPUs. You could have a 20-core OSX workstation!

 

[puckhead193]

I'd say it's a combination of all of those things... and software that is optimized for this hardware.

The latest Final Cut Pro X update takes advantage of the new dual GPUs in the Mac Pro... that's huge.

So there are 8 cores of CPU and two monster GPUs chewing through that video. Oh... and an insanely fast SSD.

It all adds up to incredible performance.

i wonder how the performance would be on a 6 core machine...