What I would like to see in New Mac Pros

[Just Switched]

This thread is not a speculation thread about when it will come out or complaining about why it's not out or rumors, real or not, about new mac pros. This is about what you'd like to see or need out of New Mac Pros.

If you have something to whine about do it on another thread. If you'd like discuss what some of the things that you either need or would like ot see included in new macs please chime in.

I would like to have more expandibility out of New Mac Pros. More space for hard drives and more memory slots more expansion slots etc.

I will leave the company name out as I don't want to give anyone free advertising or am I interested in buying a PC. I was recently asked to finish several commercials at a competing post production company as there Sr. Artist is having health issues and has been in the hospital for almost a week and some of there other artists are relativley young. Very talented but somewhat unexperienced. Thess spots where already started in there suite and they didn't wan't me or anyone else working on them outside of there offices. I was OK with that and decided to help as the offer was good. The workstation I was on had the following specs:

288 GB of ram.
Internal 48 TB raid array over 2000 MB/S read write. (24 internal 2TB drives)
Another couple of bootable SSD pci cards for the OS and scratch disks.
Dual 5680 xeons.
Dual Quadro FX5800 4GB ram graphics cards
Decklink HD card.
Fibre Channel card to attach there san so the various editors artists could share files

I've never seen maya and after effects render like this. Editing Red footage and rendering massive maya scenes and 1080p Ae comps like butter. Maya became fun to use and so interactive. The responsiveness of AE was incredible. Evrything just happened. The maya scenes where rendering out in seconds instead of minutes. Alot of this I think has to do with the massive overall through put of the system not just faster processors. I don't think this level of performance can be achieved by just slapping in a new motherboard and shiny new xeons.

I would really benefit from having this type of throughput and expandiblty on the Mac Pros. 32 or 64 GB of ram is nice but 288 is blistering fast. I don't think I could ever go back to windows and love OSX now even though it took a bit to grow on me. I would like to see apple come out with something that has lots 16 lane expansion slots, hard drive space, ram slots, more options for proffesional graphics cards etc. The amount of productivty that is gained would easily justify price tag on a system like this.

What would you like to see in New Mac Pros?

 

[Ravich]

On a serious note, what are the chances that the low end 2010 MP will have a 32GB RAM capacity?

 

[Hellhammer]

I hope you understand that something like that would cost nearly 100 000$...

I'm with you that Mac Pro could easily have more HD bays, maybe even 8. Otherwise, I don't expect or want anything else but new CPUs (Gulftown) and new GPUs. It just needs an update as currently it's very bad value. I really doubt Apple will do something revolutionary because pro market isn't the spot where money is made

On a serious note, what are the chances that the low end 2010 MP will have a 32GB RAM capacity?

It already has if you use 8GB modules (very expensive)

 

[Ravich]

8 slots then. What are the chances?

 

[mBox]

Just access to the best video cards for Maya or any openGL app.
Our fastest MP with 16GB RAM/FX4800 does not match up with the Boxx 8400s with FX5600. Now part of that could be software issues.
Im always blow away how fast my PC workstation is compared to the Mac but as far as getting things done and not having to deal with major IT (due to bugs and network issues), the MP holds well.
No one else here knows how fast the PC is compared to the Mac so really no complaints.
I have new budget for a few MP's and waiting till last minute to pull trigger.
I could easily buy another Boxx but I think Ill wait it out this time

 

[Just Switched]

I hope you understand that something like that would cost nearly 100 000$...

I'm with you that Mac Pro could easily have more HD bays, maybe even 8. Otherwise, I don't expect or want anything else but new CPUs (Gulftown) and new GPUs. It just needs an update as currently it's very bad value. I really doubt Apple will do something revolutionary because pro market isn't the spot where money is made



It already has if you use 8GB modules (very expensive)

I think you are correct but wouldn't that be worth it?

 

[mBox]

I hope you understand that something like that would cost nearly 100 000$...

I'm with you that Mac Pro could easily have more HD bays, maybe even 8.

Im not a big fan of multi drives in one box. I have an older Dell housing 4 huge drives. One of our MP's has a RAID backplane and 4 x 750GBs. Its too loud, too heavy and just plain heat-sink.
I like the drives sitting in another spot like the ones we use for Avid and OSX Server. We have em in Fibre.

 

[mcpryon2]

Built-in Fleshlight.

 

[Just Switched]

Just access to the best video cards for Maya or any openGL app.
Our fastest MP with 16GB RAM/FX4800 does not match up with the Boxx 8400s with FX5600. Now part of that could be software issues.
Im always blow away how fast my PC workstation is compared to the Mac but as far as getting things done and not having to deal with major IT (due to bugs and network issues), the MP holds well.
No one else here knows how fast the PC is compared to the Mac so really no complaints.
I have new budget for a few MP's and waiting till last minute to pull trigger.
I could easily buy another Boxx but I think Ill wait it out this time

That's Funny. I didn't want to say Boxx as again I 'm not here to give anybody free press but since you already mentioned it, it was a maxed out Boxx RTX24 8500. Drives are on the front of it. But any ways I've become a bit of mac fanboy and would rather give apple the money for such a system. OSX is cool. That being said I'm not stupid either. Computers are just tools and wichever ones gets the job done in the most productive manner is the one I want to get next time I buy. Right now my 2008 mac pro is getting the job done. Not as quickly as I would Like but it does get it done.

 

[mBox]

That's Funny. I didn't want to say Boxx as again I 'm not here to give anybody free press but since you already mentioned it, it was a maxed out Boxx RTX24 8500. Drives are on the front of it. But any ways I've become a bit of mac fanboy and would rather give apple the money for such a system. OSX is cool. That being said I'm not stupid either. Computers are just tools and wichever ones gets the job done in the most productive manner is the one I want to get next time I buy. Right now my 2008 mac pro is getting the job done. Not as quickly as I would Like but it does get it done.

Dell used to compete as well as HP and Intergraph as far as windows workstations, but Boxx has been the killer for us here.
Im allowed one or two PC's every 3 years so its been Boxx for awhile.
Of course that pales in comparison to the 15 MacPro's im allowed every 5 years
So all I want is a faster better option for display cards.
It used to matter as far as PCI, but Avid/Protools has adopted simpler connectivity

 

[Just Switched]

Im not a big fan of multi drives in one box. I have an older Dell housing 4 huge drives. One of our MP's has a RAID backplane and 4 x 750GBs. Its too loud, too heavy and just plain heat-sink.
I like the drives sitting in another spot like the ones we use for Avid and OSX Server. We have em in Fibre.

The fibre channel system I'm currently using is from promax and maxes out at a little under 800 MB/S reads. If you are layering up uncompressed frame sequences that through put is quickly eaten up. I have not done the research and have not really kept up with computer tech since I bought in early 2008 but I didn't even know it was possible to get 2000 MB/S reads. I got that using the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. I too am a fan of having drives seperate but the way this was implemented was well done. Not silent or whisper quite for audio work but not distractingly loud either.

 

[mBox]

The fibre channel system I'm currently using is from promax and maxes out at a little under 800 MB/S reads. If you are layering up uncompressed frame sequences that through put is quickly eaten up. I have not done the research and have not really kept up with computer tech since I bought in early 2008 but I didn't even know it was possible to get 2000 MB/S reads. I got that using the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. I too am a fan of having drives seperate but the way this was implemented was well done. Not silent or whisper quite for audio work but not distractingly loud either.

Wow for audio? Im using a MaxUpgrades backplane thingy. Its overkill cause I stopped using that MacPro as an HD playback machine.
we just use MainConcept MPEG Encoder and output that way.

 

[REM314]

I would like to see a lower end consumer Mac Pro introduced with a quad core processor and a 1gb video card baseline for around 2k.

 

[Umbongo]

This thread is not a speculation thread about when it will come out or complaining about why it's not out or rumors, real or not, about new mac pros. This is about what you'd like to see or need out of New Mac Pros.

What would you like to see in New Mac Pros?

Not to take anything away from the hardware, but you should be aware that Maya and more so Nvidia's drivers are vastly superior under Linux and Windows.

From Apple it'll probably be some "crippled" system and options again. Even if they returned to how the 2008 systems were compared to the competition I guess you'd only see the maximum options being two 5680s, 9 memory slots and 4 internal drives with a high-end consumer card.

What I'd like to see is a full range of options at competative pricing, but that's not going to happen. If there is no way they are going to price them below the iMacs then I'd like to maybe see something like the base model being a W3680 for under $3000 and the other options being dual Xeon 5600 6-core models, with prices being similar to retail cost of components again.

 

[mBox]

I would like to see a lower end consumer Mac Pro introduced with a quad core processor and a 1gb video card baseline for around 2k.

I have the budget for 3 of those we havent jumped on the CS5 upgrade yet so we dont know if we need anything with crazy RAM.
we have a few here thats loaded to 16GB (considered Max back then).
Im sick to death of this2/3GB limit.
I had to upgrade my Boxx to Windows 7 so that I can render (Renderman for Maya) and utilize all cores/RAM.
During these posts (thread), I'm staring at a massive cloth playblast render
haha I guess not all computers can handle such a thing (cloth).

 

[Just Switched]

Dell used to compete as well as HP and Intergraph as far as windows workstations, but Boxx has been the killer for us here.
Im allowed one or two PC's every 3 years so its been Boxx for awhile.
Of course that pales in comparison to the 15 MacPro's im allowed every 5 years
So all I want is a faster better option for display cards.
It used to matter as far as PCI, but Avid/Protools has adopted simpler connectivity

Not that I'm thinking about switching back but it seems you're happy with Boxx? On another note, I was recently told I am working my way backwards by a friend of mine. I use to edit on avid mc back in the late 90s early 2000s. Switched to Final Cut then switched to Premiere. I am a one man shop and have noticed at least for me my money is not on what I edit on but what my graphics and composites look like. After having been on various edit systems I started noticing that cuts looked the same on Final Cut, Avid and Premiere. Really I like all 3 but use premiere because it's pretty much free if you're going to buy After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop anyways. Is there still a Avid is better than all the rest kind of attitude? I mainly deal with my clients and don't really interact with alot of people in the industry.

 

[Just Switched]

Wow for audio? Im using a MaxUpgrades backplane thingy. Its overkill cause I stopped using that MacPro as an HD playback machine.
we just use MainConcept MPEG Encoder and output that way.

I don't do audio other than what most video editors are expected to do. I am not an audio engineer, sound designer, music producer etc. My comment was just to say that you may not want that machine in a dedicated audio suite.

 

[mBox]

Not that I'm thinking about switching back but it seems you're happy with Boxx? On another note, I was recently told I am working my way backwards by a friend of mine. I use to edit on avid mc back in the late 90s early 2000s. Switched to Final Cut then switched to Premiere. I am a one man shop and have noticed at least for me my money is not on what I edit on but what my graphics and composites look like. After having been on various edit systems I started noticing that cuts looked the same on Final Cut, Avid and Premiere. Really I like all 3 but use premiere because it's pretty much free if you're going to buy After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop anyways. Is there still a Avid is better than all the rest kind of attitude? I mainly deal with my clients and don't really interact with alot of people in the industry.

Whatever works for you. I deal with a lot of different folks in my trade. I also teach at a local college so I meet people that work in the industry and just needs to take a refresher
Yep we have the Master Collection for a few systems here and have never opened Premiere. I used it back in v.2.0 to 7. Missed the whole Pro phase
Yes Im happy with my Boxx but I rarely use it for After Effects.
Its my Maya go to Boxx (pardon the pun).
Avid was here before I got hired so I dont have say in that.
I use Final Cut Studio, Maya, After Effects for almost everything else.
Avid for final output.

 

[Topper]

...a 1gb video card

I see you and raise you 2GB.

 

[mBox]

I see you and raise you 2GB.

ahem...8GB

 

[SmilesLots]

Realistically I'd like to see esata 3 gb min, maybe 6.
Agree with more HD spaces.
6-12 core
slots and support for 64 GB ram
Final Cut multi-processor support
USB 3
3 optical bays
Still quiet

On another note an observation:
there = here, there, everywhere - a place
their = possessive pronoun = belonging to them

 

[Just Switched]

Not to take anything away from the hardware, but you should be aware that Maya and more so Nvidia's drivers are vastly superior under Linux and Windows.

From Apple it'll probably be some "crippled" system and options again. Even if they returned to how the 2008 systems were compared to the competition I guess you'd only see the maximum options being two 5680s, 9 memory slots and 4 internal drives with a high-end consumer card.

What I'd like to see is a full range of options at competative pricing, but that's not going to happen. If there is no way they are going to price them below the iMacs then I'd like to maybe see something like the base model being a W3680 for under $3000 and the other options being dual Xeon 5600 6-core models, with prices being similar to retail cost of components again.

Wow! I wonder how much of it was a hardware difference and how much of it was a software difference? I assumed the massive amount of system ram and and the ram on the dual Qudro FX5800 hundreds was the main reason. Not having to read back and forth from disk. So is maya generally faster on a windows system than a mac even if they have the same hardware?

 

[Umbongo]

Wow! I wonder how much of it was a hardware difference and how much of it was a software difference? I assumed the massive amount of system ram and and the ram on the dual Qudro FX5800 hundreds was the main reason. Not having to read back and forth from disk. So is maya generally faster on a windows system than a mac even if they have the same hardware?

No doubt the hardware removed a lot of the bottlenecks people would normally experience, I mean you essentially had the best of the best without overclocking. To get a Mac Pro to perform like that you'd need to see software development from some of Autodesk, Apple, Nvidia and AMD and as it hasn't happened yet probably won't.

This link highlights some of the differences:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...t-the-nvidia-quadro-fx-4800-mac-edition.ars/2

 

[Umbongo]

8 slots then. What are the chances?

0%. Single socket models only support a maximum of 6 memory slots. Apple gimped the 09 model to make the dual socket ones more attractive. Unless they move to 9 or 12 slots on the dual socket model then they will probably stick with 4.

 

[Just Switched]

No doubt the hardware removed a lot of the bottlenecks people would normally experience, I mean you essentially had the best of the best without overclocking. To get a Mac Pro to perform like that you'd need to see software development from some of Autodesk, Apple, Nvidia and AMD and as it hasn't happened yet probably won't.

This link highlights some of the differences:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...t-the-nvidia-quadro-fx-4800-mac-edition.ars/2

Thanks for the link. That was quite an eye opener. Depressing but good to know none the less. It would be difficult not to consider this when time comes to buy again. I hope apple, nvidia and autodesk can figure out a solution to this. I know they can I guess it's up to them if they want to or not. I would have hoped mac users would have received more love than this but I guess the windows users are getting the attention.