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

[Michael Scrip]

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

It depends on how many of those video effects are GPU accelerated.

Some tasks actually rely more on the GPU than the CPU.

 

[Quu]

Besides the sweet new design and native PCIe SSD, what is better than the old one?

I just meant performance wise, it beats the old Mac Pro under OS X in performance.

Obviously upgrading the older model you can get significant performance improvements. You can even use a PCIe based SSD in the old Mac Pro that would be faster than the stick Apple is including in the new Mac Pro but that is all after-market upgrades and would drive the cost up significantly.

 

[MacLC]

It's expendable, though with a hefty price tag and less elegant way than in the past.

I believe the term is expandable with an extra 'a'. I sure hope it is not expendable.

For those looking to complain, please understand. Apple is using a $1000+ CPU in the higher end MP. The GPU is up there too. When you're already dealing with $1000 parts and a 2 year old motherboard design, it is very hard to upgrade.

Perhaps the question could be, "where is the PowerMac 7500?" That jack of all trades with upgradeable CPU and 50Mhz bus was relatively cheap at the time and certainly cheaper than the 8X00 machines while more powerful than 7200 and below. It was quite possibly the best Mac ever.

 

[philipma1957]

You can swap out the GPU's and CPU's its called buying a new computer.

So what are you saving by swapping out those critical components? The case?

read what 400 bucks did for a 2010 mac pro.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1122551/

this thread is one of the major reasons apple did a new design.

and there a a good thread on gpu upgrades.

 

[coolspot18]

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.

Are there benchmarks showing that OSX is far faster than Windows?

And OSX in my experience has not been all that stable - Finder for one crashes quite a bit. Safari from time to time too.

 

[lilo777]

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.

This just shows how starved for power Mac users are. There is nothing particularly "insane" about any of it. PCIe SSDs were introduced in 2007. PC users have been enjoying two socket (8 cores each) machines for quite a while. And these "monster" GPUs are yesterday's news in PC World too. But sure coming from iMacs with their mobile GPUs this machine looks like a monster It can even handle 4K video, wow! I wonder what did they use to produce 4K video so far? Probably regular PCs.

 

[LeandrodaFL]

Wow, and a lot of us tought MacPro was dead.

This beast is impresive...I would get one if it could run Snow Leopard.

 

[unplugme71]

People will always find a reason to complain.

The Mac Pro could be the fastest machine on the market - and maybe no competitor can even make one faster for the next 5 years. Someone will still find something to bitch about the Mac Pro.

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I won't buy one because my iPad Mini (1st gen) just works great for my needs.

 

[lilo777]

People will always find a reason to complain.

The Mac Pro could be the fastest machine on the market - and maybe no competitor can even make one faster for the next 5 years. Someone will still find something to bitch about the Mac Pro.

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I won't buy one because my iPad Mini (1st gen) just works great for my needs.

Instead they decided to make it the smallest workstation on the market (as if this is what people wanted). Typical Apple.

 

[Michael Scrip]

This just shows how starved for power Mac users are. There is nothing particularly "insane" about any of it. PCIe SSDs were introduced in 2007. PC users have been enjoying two socket (8 cores each) machines for quite a while. And these "monster" GPUs are yesterday's news in PC World too. But sure coming from iMacs with their mobile GPUs this machine looks like a monster It can even handle 4K video, wow! I wonder what did they use to produce 4K video so far? Probably regular PCs.

That's true. When you decide to become a "Mac user" you're dealing with a single vendor... Apple.

"PC users" have many more parts available to them. If there's anything you want... you can add it to your system.

But for some reason... people still like Macs.

And this IS a very fast Mac.

 

[cgk.emu]

Looks like a ridiculously nice single purpose machine. Extremely impressive 4k video editing capabilities. But...that's it. No small feat, sure, but the previous gen machine was more suited toward general workstation duties. Not saying that's good or bad, just making an observation. I won't be picking one up, sticking with my 4,1. I edit video, but certainly not 4k.

 

[j-traxx]

Impressive. It really is a neato machine, but unfortunately the lack of expandability in the long tern ruins it for me.


But I wouldn't say no if someone were to buy it me. I could use it as an ashtray too.

Everything that you would ever need to expand is able to be expanded with a thunderbolt expansion chassis. It's how we audio professionals get past the limitations of the current mac pros.

 

[proline]

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.

Great. In this entire thread there's all of one person who even claims to have upgraded a CPU. Apple should totally design their products around the needs of the one.

Meanwhile, back in reality it turns out that a computer is actually a CPU, GPU, motherboard, RAM, and I/O. Upgrading one part without the rest has minimal effect, while individually upgrading everything is no cheaper than a new machine. For as long as the components of a machine age at roughly the same rate, as they currently do, there just isn't much point upgrading them individually.

 

[lilo777]

Everything that you would ever need to expand is able to be expanded with a thunderbolt expansion chassis. It's how we audio professionals get past the limitations of the current mac pros.

And how would I add a real workstation video card? Something like this:

 

[Michael Scrip]

Looks like a ridiculously nice single purpose machine. Extremely impressive 4k video editing capabilities. But...that's it. No small feat, sure, but the previous gen machine was more suited toward general workstation duties. Not saying that's good or bad, just making an observation. I won't be picking one up, sticking with my 4,1. I edit video, but certainly not 4k.

Of course people tested its 4K video editing capabilities as soon as they got their hands on it. But it is far from a single purpose machine.

What are general workstation duties?

This is a Mac Pro that runs OSX and Mac software just like any Mac Pro before it.

 

[flat five]

this machine looks like a monster

holy crap, you're right!

 

[Burnsey]

Can it play Battlefield 4 on Ultra settings at 1440p and 60+fps?

 

[AppleScruff1]

And how would I add a real workstation video card? Something like this:

Image

Or this? It's only $8100.

 

[chirpie]

And how would I add a real workstation video card? Something like this:

Image

This is outside my realm of expertise a bit... but I assume something like this for TB2 could be forthcoming some day...

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2698168/msi-GUS-II-external-thunderbolt-gpu-enclosure

I just think it'd be cool that you could use something like that for your tower AND your laptop. No one else likes thinking about this stuff? ^_^;

 

[portishead]

Wow, forget the benchmarks, this machine is even faster than I thought. There's going to be a lot of quiet haters in the Mac Pro forums now.

 

[hpe]

for all of those screaming that they want to be able to upgrade their system. It is a fair point but let be describe a scenario first to set the stage for my question.

You buy a computer for say 2000. 2 years dow the line you swap out the CPU and RAM only finding out you need a new motherboard as well. Thankfully your old graphics is still PCI xpress 16x so your upgrade is about 1000. A further 2 years down the line you swap your HD to a faster SSD and replace the GPU. Another 1000. Giving your computer another 2 years. That is 4000 over 6 years. Let's for arguments sake say that you then repeat from start.

Apple's suggestion: Buy a computer now for 4000 that should last 6 years.

The real difference between these scenarios, or offerings if you so will is that in the first scenario you have an adequate, but not great system and it keeps being adequate. At no point in time will you have a great system.

In Apple's suggestion you will have a great system in the beginning, an adequate system half way down the line and a less than adequate at the end.

So, finally to my question, is it really such a big difference? Isn't the real win with upgradeability that you get to spread out your spending and never have to deal with the lows?

Consider that you can most likely reduce the 6 years in Apple's suggestion by selling your old system before buying a new one and still stay at the 4000 / 6 years, while upgrading by replacing your entire system every 5 or even every 4 years.

Thoughts?

really, no answer?

 

[lilo777]

Or this? It's only $8100.

Image

Just trying to put thing in perspective

 

[chirpie]

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.

True, but these are prelims. I'll assume the 4 year old PC doesn't have 1GBs write speeds. Does it have server class chips or ECC ram or 12GB of VRAM?

I actually think that playing back 16 streams of 4k in multi-cam view was more impressive than the 18 effects while editing, but I don't know what type of video codec bit rate it was either. Too many unknowns. So far though, at least it isn't a chump.

 

[michaeljk]

Think of it like this. It's really fast, and you won't be using half of what it offers. But if you get one, you won't have to upgrade for YEEEAARRRSS.

And unlike an iMac, if your screen goes bad, you don't have to buy another $2000+ computer. Just another $300 - $500 monitor.

That's pretty much why I ordered the Mac Pro today ( the standard 6-core config, but upgraded to 512 GB SSD). I don't need all this power, but I do need a new desktop, don't want an iMac because of the monitor, and I really do believe this computer will last me for 5-7 years or more based on my current and likely future needs and the ease of expanding its capabilities with all those Thunderbolt ports, whereas the iMac I'd want to buy might meet my needs from 3-4 years. Also, pricing out the iMac, it seems I'd be paying about $700-800 for a monitor I don't want or need, and I'd rather spend that money on compute capabilities.

Oh, and this thing looks so cool and seems like just all around brilliant engineering, I knew I would always wish I had one if I had purchased an iMac. Now there's no need to look back.

 

[Terrin]

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.

Justin who? #