Mac Pro options

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Ignoring the whole Apple doesn't care about pros, PCs are faster and cheaper angle - in my world I need both, so let's get that out of the way.

My Mac Pro died and I need to replace with either a used or new one.

Checking the usual suspects for used I found:

USED "HARPERTOWN" MAC PRO QUAD CORE/2.8 GHZ
18 GB of RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1 GB Video
OS 10.6.8 installed
MacPro3.1

It's $1,700 w/90 day guarantee.

The lowest end "new" (hard to type that without retching... ) Mac Pro is a:

One 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor
6GB RAM (three 2GB)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5
OS 10.8.x

I hypothetically (freakin' lawyers) can get one for about $1,900 w/ 1 yr AppleCare

Which is the better deal? Assume I will add 3rd party RAM to the new option so that's another $200-400 so take that into the equation.

What I'm looking for is some sense of how much difference there would be between them for what we do based on clock speed, PCIe lanes, etc. I plan to put my Red Rocket and Quadro 4000 in it along with an HBA for SAS/eSATA and/or USB3.

Cheers - #19

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Blair, I'd keep looking. Neither of those are compelling options, IMO. If you want to save some money by going with a single processor Mac Pro, I would recommend the 6-core model. Reason being is that 3.2GHz quad core "new" one you have there is the same as the base config of new one you can buy now. It's using the lower-clocked 1066MHz interface, meaning the memory and CPU bus operate at the same speed as in the '09 3,1 "Nehalem" systems. The 3,1 model you have listed there is the previous "Harpertown" class Xeon, it's running its memory at 800MHz, IIRC. And was the slower bastard child option from early '09, like the 3.2GHz quad-core model is for the current "new" Mac Pro. So you definitely don't want that one.

To be blunt here, a new Macbook Pro or Mac Mini will smack those systems around! The new 3.4GHz iMac will just outright kick the ass of that "new" Mac Pro you have listed there. I would recommend going that route along with a Magma 3T or Sonnet Echo Pro expander. Unfortunately, that starts to get pricey and the new 27" is at least 4 weeks out if you order today.

I've seen used 6-core Mac Pro towers with 12GB RAM sell for $1500 and they're still covered under AppleCare for at least 6 months. Keep shopping.

If not for the crap GPU and the inability to use the Quadro 4000, I would recommend the new Mac Mini. You can buy it with 2.6GHz CPU for less than $900 before tax/shipping. Upgrade the RAM to 16GB on your own for about $100. Add the Sonnet Pro expansion box for about $750...


Mac Pro is a good option, but of the two configurations you listed, those are not the droids you're looking for.

 

[Matthew B]

If I had to buy one today, I'd buy a quad core 2010 model, (or six core if you get a deal) You can upgrade the CPU with minimal effort if you feel that in a few years it needs it.

I agree with Jeff -I have an 08 8 core and a 2010 quad core - the improvements in the chipsets over the 08 model are worth it.

The 5770 is a decent GPU, and like Jeff I would own a slew of mac minis if they had a dedicated GPU...

I am anxiously awaiting Intel to get the Xeon and thunderbolt thing figured out... Or for apple to cave in and just mac non-dual-cpu towers with the non xeon chips...

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Thanks for the notes.

Anyone want a lightly used PNY Quadro 4000/Mac GPU - its CUDAriffic ;-)

Cheers - #19

 

[Jason H]

could you but a PNY Quadro 4000/Mac GPU and a black magic card in the sonnet TB box or a magma3t(add a rocket card) for a on set laptop or imac davinci resolve? That would be the shit for on set dailies for any camera? Would that be as fast or faster than my tower. Alll I need is real time for most jobs. Would love to do the laptop route.

thanks boys,

j

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Just a word of my own on the high end versions...

I have a 12 core 2010 MP at home 48GB RAM, I think it's 2.66ghz. I just picked up the new MBPR, opted for the 2.7ghz, 16gb, 500gb SSD. I'm retouching 60 megapixel stills in my hotel room as I type this. The new laptop can't touch my old tower.

For post work I use a Rocket and a small pile of Nvidia cards. The ability to use a big expansion chassis makes life bearable. When people post about the great results they're getting with iMacs, Minis and laptops I'm left scratching my head.

CB

Maybe if I could get these two guys to play nice together...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

could you but a PNY Quadro 4000/Mac GPU and a black magic card in the sonnet TB box or a magma3t(add a rocket card) for a on set laptop or imac davinci resolve? That would be the shit for on set dailies for any camera? Would that be as fast or faster than my tower. Alll I need is real time for most jobs. Would love to do the laptop route.

The GPU won't run in the Thunderbolt expander. It will with Windows, not with OSX. And as great as Thunderbolt is, there's only one TB port on a Mac Mini and 10Gbps is really not enough for a Rocket when trying to work seriously with 5K footage, let alone if you're also trying to run an external RAID or other device through that same data pipe as well.

Just a word of my own on the high end versions...

I have a 12 core 2010 MP at home 48GB RAM, I think it's 2.66ghz. I just picked up the new MBPR, opted for the 2.7ghz, 16gb, 500gb SSD. I'm retouching 60 megapixel stills in my hotel room as I type this. The new laptop can't touch my old tower.

Of course the laptop isn't going to touch that tower. That's a whole different ballgame than what Blair was looking at above. If he's up for it, the 12-core is the way to go. But the one thing you have to consider, is when comparing the two Mac Pro models he listed, even thought he CPUs are older, yet still more powerful, the systems have a serious bottleneck in the RAM department. The 1600MHz RAM on the new Ivy Bridge MBP[r], iMac and Mac Mini systems is huge. On the new iMac, you can have a 3.4GHz quad-core i7 with 1600MHz quad-channel RAM. The thing is a frickin' monster. For apps using 4 cores or less and needing 32GB or less RAM, it will smoke a 2010 Mac Pro. Sad, but true. If we're talking Premiere, Resolve, etc.. the Mac Pro is going to wiin, at least yours is, because of the additional CPU cores, and more powerful GPU...

Knowing that there should be new Mac Pro systems within the next 4 to 6 months and knowing that they will come at some point in 2013, I don't think I'd be too eager at this point to drop $5K+ on a new 12-core tower. There's going to be a bazillion of those 6 and 12 core towers for sale here when the new ones get announced. And they're going to go cheap. I'd only do it if I absolutely just had to have one right now. Thankfully, I already have a 12-core Mac Pro that's pretty tricked out and it's been serving me well. If it dies, AppleCare will replace it. When I buy the new one that's coming out this next year, and I will buy one, probably two of them, I'll take my 2010 model and demote it to server duty.

 

[Matthew B]

Hi Jeff - Correct me if I'm wrong - but I believe the newer thunderbolt chipset has 2 10gb channels on the single port - I know this is the case on the newer macbooks, but haven't confirmed yet if this is the case on the minis.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

All Thunderbolt ports, even the one first released on the 2011 MBP and iMac, have two 10Gbps channels. There are some compromises though. The current Thunderbolt headers, back the ports with 4 lanes of PCIe gen2, which means you technically have a 20Gbps interface backed by roughly 16Gbps of throughput. Intel only allows Thunderbolt devices to use one of the two channels. This helps facilitate daisy chaining and bandwidth distribution. So when you connect a Thunderbolt PCI expander or Thunderbolt RAID or whatever, each of those units can only access one of the two channels, meaning that the PCIe cards in the expander or all the drives in the RAID are limited to a 10Gbps data pipe. The mini has one TB port, so you can realistically connect two full bandwidth devices. A PCIe expander and a Pegasus RAID would do fine. If you start to add more devices, then those subsequent devices will have to share channel bandwidth.

I know I'm delving deeper into this than I needed to, but that's pretty much how it works in a nutshell. The upcoming Falcon Ridge chipset, due by 2014, will enable all 4 possible TB channels per connector. Intel will also be upgrading the Thunderbolt PCIe topology to v3 at some point too, possibly with Falcon Ridge, which will give an 60% increase in bandwidth per channel when they do. When Falcon Ridge comes available, they should also allow devices to simultaneously access more than a single channel.

IMO, the new Mac Mini systems are nice, but the single Thunderbolt port is somewhat of a design flaw. They could have been built with two... Oh well.

 

[Sam Allam]

Hi Jeff, i just bought bought the BT Red One at its price, normally using 1080p Sony F3 footage with S-log - 422, i have a 2012, 2.5 quad core with 1GB graphics that i edit on right now. Im wondering if my machine will be powerful enough to just load the 4K footage from the RED and a decent redcode to convert to 1080p, I don't want to work in 4k, i just want to get it on the computer to covert/transcode to 1080p pro res, so i can work in 1080 on my computer with resolve and film convert. Will i be able to do this with my current model?.