5K iMac or New Mac Pro?

[M.Halsell]

Is the general expectation that the possibly forthcoming TB3 will allow Macs to excess an external GPU?

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The new chipset that supports TB3 signaling is also designed to support external GPUs. That said, it's hard to know just how long before it's all sorted out and optimized.

If I had to guess, I'd say we're a year or more away from seeing decent support across the Mac ecosystem (drivers, I/O, OS, etc).

Cheers - #19

 

[M.Halsell]

So, going forward, if Apple nor AMD is providing solid driver support and Nvidia presumably will no longer be available in upcoming models, where is the gain with an external GPU?

 

[Mike Halper]

The reason why stuck around Mac is clearly Prores. Resolve on Windows can't write it and it will never will.
BUT!
Now in 12.5 there is a new nugget, that allows you to kick off a Prores render FROM Windows. Luigi was first who tested it and I too now can verify, that it works very well. So, here are three avenues for action:
1. Stick with Mac. Pros. It's simple and it works. Pros. It's always behind technological curve, can't upgrade, it's underpowered and it's expensive.
2. Built Hackintosh. Pros. You can built very powerful computer for much less money. Cons. It's unreliable and it is PIA to maintain.
3. Get a PC with whatever hardware bells and whistles you wish. Get an old Mac Pro 5.1 with GTX 980. Get a second dongle ($300?) and set up a simple gE network. Do all your work on PC and Remote render to a MacPro.
Pros. You choose your own hardware and upgrade it as you wish. You save money on PC vs Mac. Cons. You need an extra Mac, another dongle and you need to set up a network.
Make your choice!

I strongly discourage the Hackintosh route. Not a quality solution. Breaks easily with OS upgrades, difficult to get to a stable build, industrial strength hardware drivers are difficult to source, network card goes offline at very inconvenient times or heavy loads. We have a few as render boxes. Obedient and do what they are intended for. But hardly a Kum Ba Yah feeling compared to using a real Mac.

We have a nMP next to the bagels with reduced-fat chive & onion cream in the conference room to impress the clients. Makes us look smart, meanwhile we are actively hacking together hardware solutions behind the scenes to get the job done

My kid built a HackinTosh that blazes for less than 1/2 the cost of a Pro Tower. Has cool gamer LED's inside also. I want LED's in my MacPro :-/

I've built 3 hackintoshes, and have never really had much trouble with them. Initially you'll have some headaches with install and configuration, but once you get it up and running it's pretty solid. The trick is carefully selecting the right components and turn off autoupdate. And currently updating is pretty flawless. The last 3 OS X updates I installed without needing to fix anything or reinstall any drivers.

Tonymacx86.com has a forum with user builds and is a great place to start. You can even copy someone's build and use their guide for a simple setup. My current build cost probably $3,000 and has a 28,000 Geekbench score (6 cores overclocked to 4.5GHz). Running El Capitan with no issues other than I have to replug my Bluetooth adapter when I turn it on and onboard USB 3.0 doesn't work (because of my motherboard and El Capitan) so I installed a couple USB 3.0 PCIE cards that got me more USB 3.0 ports than I had to begin with anyway. And both Premiere and Resolve render fast and without glitches.

I've thought about getting a Mac Pro just to get Thunderbolt (the only thing I'm missing) and have a more compact setup, but with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1 right around the corner I'm just going to hold off and build another new hackintosh later in the year once those are more prevalent and supported by OS X. The performance for the money, being able to choose your components and connectivity (especially the GPU), and also having OS X makes a hackintosh very difficult to pass up.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So, going forward, if Apple nor AMD is providing solid driver support and Nvidia presumably will no longer be available in upcoming models, where is the gain with an external GPU?

Thunderbolt 3 is gaining quite a following in the PC market due to external GPUs and the promises they offer. I would imagine that both nVidia and AMD would extend driver support to the Mac for the TB3 eGPU products, since the new Macs are going to have TB3 on them.

As for the Hackintosh thing... Biggest trick to making the best performing Hackintosh is to build it with hardware that OSX supports. This can be touchy at times with new hardware and chipsets. Some chipsets, like the X99 platform, are not fully or ideally supported since Apple doesn't offer any systems built on that platform. Just an example. But systems built on it do still work. If you build a Hackintosh, it's best to not rush into new updates and maintain backups for the ability to roll back when needed. Overall it's not a big deal. A bit more of a headache compared to using a real Mac, but arguably a lot less of a chore vs. keeping a Windows workstation up to date and running smooth. When it comes to running a Windows PC, both the best and worst thing about it is the Windows OS.

Apple moves back and forth between AMD and nVidia for GPUs. Lately it seems AMD has been able to negotiate better deals with Apple. I suppose it sucks for the consumer on the pro end of things as nVidia would be better for us. But for 99% of their customers, the GPUs they've been using in the MacBook Pro and iMac are just fine, actually quite good for that level of system.

The Mac Pro cylinder had a ton of promise and is still a nice and capable workstation. I think Apple goofed up though and should have gone with i7 CPUs instead of Xeons and more mainstream GPU chipsets. I would love to see them refresh it with more consumer-friendly GPU chipsets and an i7 CPU at a much lower price point. Then give the pro market something with a bit more meat to it. I'd love a dual Xeon box with 6 double-spaced PCIe X16 slots. That translates to quad GPUs with a nice RAID adapter and video I/O or other interface card. Combine that a modern solid-state PSU, no external drive bays and trays for 6 internal 3.5" / 2.5" hybrid (12 X 2.5" devices), and it would still fit in a smaller space than the old tower Mac Pro. Could be made nicely rack-mountable too.

I'm hoping that the current VR trend will help push Apple in the right direction here. High-end content creation seems to have lost its appeal for them. Although once again we're talking about a very small percentage of users.

 

[M.Halsell]

Why a Hackintosh is not a real mac

Why a Hackintosh is not a real mac

The cost savings and performance of a HackIntosh are undeniable. I would never be critical of anyone with a HackIntosh under thier desk.

But just to note, there are a variety of essential professional pieces of hardware dangling off a Mac, RAIDs, NAS, control surfaces, cameras, IO devices, etc. There may at times be a key piece of equipment malfunction that demands a driver/firmware or OSX update that possibly diminishes or breaks the system. At that point the situation escalates to tech support, which in turn will inquire about the OS version and machine type to help work thru the problem. Often, if not on a supported hardware type, tech support can elect not to provide any further assistance.

So, there are plausible considerations of a real mac vs a HackIntosh. There a number of unforseen caveats that could have unforeseen impact on your production.

 

[M.Halsell]

Thank you Jeff, your technical vantage points are always appreciated.

 

[Joe Taylor]

I've got a decked out 5k iMac and it's the best all around machine I've ever used. Run the full Adobe CC Suite daily and it handles 4k R3D footage pretty easily. However, if I was grading every day, I'd probably build a Hackintosh or PC. The graphics cards on a real workstation are just so much better.

HEAR! HEAR! I just took delivery of maxed out 5K iMac and this beast COOKS! Raid 0 configured Thunderbolt 2 drive and I'm editing 4K footage with ease. I'll be comfortable with this system for the next few years.

 

[Sergio Perez]

I own the new imac maxed out, and had the opportunity to work on a project were quick return, conform and edit was needed.
In the same room we had 2 maxed out Macpro trashcans.

All worked fine. The Macpro's didnt require a rocket at all for everything. The iMac needed a rocket X to play nicely and fast with 2 or 3 streams of Dragon 6K footage.

If you don't need ultimate performance, the iMqc is great. But I really felt the speed difference vs the Macpro.

 

[Andrew Stone]

Aside from the platform decision this year will be a very large shift in new levels of computing in several major components that go into a PC (Mac, Windows or Linux). One is on the CPU front. Intel is issuing new CPU's with big jumps in computing power. New Xeons just issued, new i7 processors for Haswell-E coming out in the next few weeks or maybe month or two. There will be another round or Intel CPUs coming out in the late fall that will be aimed at Pro Workstation as well. On the GPU front both NVIDIA and AMD are issuing new cards. Round one in a few weeks and round two late in the year. Larger SSDs coming out in a month or two as well. Look out for 2TB SSDs becoming commonplace and 4TB being at the higher end where 2TB are now. Guessing they will be a bit more expensive than the 2TB SSDs were a couple of months ago.

New Macs will definitely be coming out with all this new and more powerful tech coming out and new mainboards will be coming out to harness the extra lanes of PCI that will be available... and TB3.

I wouldn't buy a Mac or put together a PC right now. I would wait a bit and see how things settle out.

 

[jake blackstone]

We can be rest assured, that the new MacPros will come with all new tech as much as the sun will rise in the morning. Also, we can be sure, that they will be very expensive, it will continue to be a rats nest of TB wires and they will not be upgradable...

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I don't doubt reports that the iMac is slower than the trashcan in heavy lifting situations. That said, if heavy lifting is the goal, there are better options.

I stand by my note that buying any new hardware in 2016 that doesn't have USB-TypeC ports - with enough lanes to back them - is going to reduce the useful life of your investment.

Cheers - #19

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I don't doubt reports that the iMac is slower than the trashcan in heavy lifting situations. That said, if heavy lifting is the goal, there are better options.

I stand by my note that buying any new hardware in 2016 that doesn't have USB-TypeC ports - with enough lanes to back them - is going to reduce the useful life of your investment.

Cheers - #19

Fortunately I was able to make the iMac pay off on one job, so now it will hold me over until the dream machine comes out and then I'll use it as a nice display for that.

 

[Eric Bowen]

SSD Memory endurance rating ie lifetime expectancy and warranty is decided by the type of NAND used ie TLC versus MLC and Grade level of the NAND. Interchangeable packages versus permanently mounted ie soldered on does not change this at all. It's strictly down to Grade, Technology, and refinement. The current MLC is around 320TB endurance rating and 7 to 10 years life ie warranty. The next MLC may very well increase that significantly since the last did. We should know sometime soon.

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

Looking forward to what new (if any) desktop hardware Apple drops this summer/fall.

Currently considering upgrading my 6core nMP to a 10 core (through the OWC CPU trade in program) w/ 64GB RAM + adding a Dell 4K monitor, and using my existing dreamcolor for playback with a BM mini monitor and getting 10bit output on both screens with OS X 10.11 (currently on yosemite, too scared to update and mess up my workflow but the 10bit is worth the risk).

However, hoping to see if there is a new 2016 mac pro w/ the AMD polaris GPU's and TB3, with a matching new 5K TB3 display. Would definitely go for that instead.

 

[Marc Wielage]

We can be rest assured, that the new MacPros will come with all new tech as much as the sun will rise in the morning. Also, we can be sure, that they will be very expensive, it will continue to be a rats nest of TB wires and they will not be upgradable...

No rat's nest of Thunderbolt wires here. I'm just running 3 Thunderbolt RAIDs, and they're OK. I do have a 10-port USB3 hub, and that is a rat's nest. I have yet to visit a busy color bay in my life that didn't have some degree of rat's nest syndrome going on.

I hope when Apple does come out with the new machines they aren't as poorly tested and glitchy as the last batch. I'm getting by, but it's a little like a space shuttle launch (particularly the ones that blow up).

I don't doubt reports that the iMac is slower than the trashcan in heavy lifting situations. That said, if heavy lifting is the goal, there are better options. I stand by my note that buying any new hardware in 2016 that doesn't have USB-TypeC ports - with enough lanes to back them - is going to reduce the useful life of your investment.

That makes sense to me as well. What also may cinch the deal is how well (or badly) external GPUs work in a Thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis. If that actually works, that could make the new Mac Pros screaming fast. But as Jake notes, they won't be cheap.

 

[jussi rovanpera]

Regarding the Mac Pro gpus: Resolve can only use memory of 1 gpu card, so 2 x 6gb is 6gb in resolve. It can use the processing power of the 2 cards.

 

[Eric Bowen]

Keep in mind TB3 is just a PCI-E 3.0 4X slot. That means external GPU's would have a very limited highway to handle all the data they normally handle with current GPU acceleration models. I would not suggest planning on that as a viable alternative to actual PCI-E slots.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Keep in mind TB3 is just a PCI-E 3.0 4X slot. That means external GPU's would have a very limited highway to handle all the data they normally handle with current GPU acceleration models. I would not suggest planning on that as a viable alternative to actual PCI-E slots.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 4x PCIe3 equivalent to 16x PCIe2? Not saying there's no bottleneck there with the latest GPUs, just that saturating 4 lanes of PCIe3 is a pretty serious amount of bandwidth. I concur with Eric's preference for real PCIe3 slots over any external bus attachment, but how often will that be the critical bottleneck? Looking forward to seeing tests of eGPU vs slotted GPU with Pascal cards on typical media creation tasks.

Cheers - #19

 

[Eric Bowen]

Each standard doubles the previous so 4X Gen 3 would be an 8X Gen 2.