Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

5k Retina iMac

Hi,

I'm interested for an Imac 5K, but i have read that it can't play 4K .r3d in full res. Is it true ?
 
Malik Tigrine said:
Hi,

I'm interested for an Imac 5K, but i have read that it can't play 4K .r3d in full res. Is it true ?
Click to expand...

To play back R3Ds you need super fast I/O such as a RAID system.

I wonder if the local (Flash?) drive can handle it?
 
Internal flash can handle it, but still best to run media I/O for editing, etc.. off dedicated/ external storage.

As for 4K R3D's, there's several flavors there. 4K from the RED One is easy. 4K from EPIC should work fine on the system as well, as I know 5K from EPIC-MX is do-able at full quality with a good amount of stuttering, at 1/2 it plays back fine. Better plan on doing actual editing at 1/4 or 1/8 though. Dragon 6K? Hmmm... That's a whole other level. 6K is nearly double the number of pixels as 5K and Dragon not only has more info, it sees more advanced compression to deal with. Half debayer out to 4K is do-able on an 8-core Mac Pro. Full quality out to 4K from 6K on a Mac Pro is almost reality, but it really needs a dual Xeon CPU or Rocket-X.
 
It has been unreal that no 4k and 5k Apple displays were made for use with the power Mac. We should be seeing $5000 55 inch 8k displays for photography by now, even $2000. They have to throw off the consumer electronic iron shackles to become a true professional computer brand again. It makes no computer market sense to hold back. As it is, you need a bigger IMac with power Mac performance, touch work slate too, and to hookup an top end IMac as a display and coprocessing solution to a power Mac. The power Mac would be better at 4 times the size, a server edition with the maximum server components, or double the dimension as a rectangle square based tower.
 
Wayne Morellini said:
It has been unreal that no 4k and 5k Apple displays were made for use with the power Mac. We should be seeing $5000 55 inch 8k displays for photography by now, even $2000. They have to throw off the consumer electronic iron shackles to become a true professional computer brand again. It makes no computer market sense to hold back. As it is, you need a bigger IMac with power Mac performance, touch work slate too, and to hookup an top end IMac as a display and coprocessing solution to a power Mac. The power Mac would be better at 4 times the size, a server edition with the maximum server components, or double the dimension as a rectangle square based tower.
Click to expand...

They will never "throw off the consumer electronic shackles" as that is where the money is.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they let the Mac Pro line whither on the vine, updating it only every 2-3 years, or outright discontinue it.

That's the direction they've been headed for the past 3-5 years to anyone paying attention.

As for the displays, that is assuredly due to Thunderbolt 2's limitations. Apple couldn't bear to allow 2 cables going from your Mac Pro to a display.
 
DJ, I'm not suggesting they get rid of consumer lines, but just ignore consumer electronic limitations in the pro lines.

Unfortunately you might be right about thrm letting the pro line dissapear DJ. There is money to be made selling millions of descent pro quality computers rather than expensive trendy computers. If you are going to sell something for a lot make sure it is ahead of the pack, not an :between machine. This means 8k+, 3D, bluray burner etc, whatever gets you the preferred grand to buy on use band performance. Apple has the clout to do it, they can use there clout in parts and manufacturing to get gest prices, and get custom parts, such as 8k displays. They really need to bring back Steve Wozinak to style a Wozinak special MAC block computer. Apple lost its original soul after Wozniak left. I don't suggest Steve is up to date to design the whole system, but he could be part of a team to examine how to spec it out and do work flow design of the layout, along with a trendy case of course, in the vein of, Ironically, the next computer, it the bigger cylinder, or square tower, but I have them thought last night a double cylinder case would be very trendy, n a sideways eight (infinity) configuration, 30-40cm high.

To sell as dual boot capable machines would further open the market for such machines, even as ultimate hard core PC game, worth probably upto a million extra machines a year which helps the bottom line and development.

The pro market is all about integrity on top of the required performance.
 
Forgot, TB2/3 has enough capacity for 4k (even tb1) and 5k. Unfortunately you have to use them as TB2/3 connections, rather than dudpkayport, which is hindered. So, a TB direct Pro display standmard is needed, but not too difficult for a company like that (TB is configurable to do something like this). This is the sott of simple (relatively) real things possibe once you ignore consumer constrictions.
 
Not enough bandwidth in TB2 to handle 5K @ 60Hz without compression. DisplayPort 1.2 signaling is supported over TB2 and while it has slightly less (19.2Gbps) of total bandwidth, is actually superior to what TB2 can offer. TB2 is theoretically 20Gbps, but all of Intel's TB hosts are allocated to sit atop PCIe v2.0 X4 links, which means a maximum of 16.4Gbps and real-world speeds closer to 14Gbps. So on that note, we actually get superior display signal bandwidth by pumping DisplayPort signals through the TB2 ports as they're not restricted by the PCIe interface.

The Dell 5K monitor requires dual DisplayPort v1.2 connections to drive its full 5K resolution at 50~60Hz. TB3 will fix this and so will the upcoming scalable USB spec that starts at 40Gbps and scales to 120Gbps. This is what the new Super MHL sits on top of and that spec allows for full 8K 3D (16 x 1080p at 120Hz).

We won't see a 5K stand-alone monitor from Apple until they can deliver it and a computer to drive it that interface with one another over a single convenient cable. Current Mac Pro cylinder owners are out of luck. Or they can buy the Dell and sacrifice two of their TB2 headers (4 out of the 6 TB2 ports) to drive the monitor at capacity.
 
Your posts, like David Newman's, are always worth reading Jeff.

I did say 5K, including p30, p60 us not do needed yet, so TB2 is a sort of lower spec (I thought dp over tb was restricted in bandwidth though. Plus, why dont they have a non daisy chained piont to point mode that can use full bandwidth, that could have been used instead, as error correction does not matter so much on displays? ).

Yes, TB3 is the one for higher end use, been waiting for it for so long. It is also the one that would be included in a new machine in the time frame I am suggesting.

We can only hope. HP should also be on this.
 
I forgot, is there another way around the Intel host issue, like another host part provider, or a graphics card with TB2/3? USNR agreggated buffering of PCI lines supported (or PCie 3.0). Seems TB gt bogged down from the beginning, backtracking on the original optical claims, before the rename. Will USB just kill it?
 
I've been using a Hackintosh for two years now. Served me well, but I have little issues here and there that keep it from really integrating into my Apple ecosystem. I think I'm going to go with a new iMac this year.

i have read that the '15 refresh will bring the new CPUs (broad well? Whatever it is...) and is likely worth the wait.

What say you guys? Wait and is the 5k retina okay for now?
 
BrandonChristensen said:
I've been using a Hackintosh for two years now. Served me well, but I have little issues here and there that keep it from really integrating into my Apple ecosystem. I think I'm going to go with a new iMac this year.

i have read that the '15 refresh will bring the new CPUs (broad well? Whatever it is...) and is likely worth the wait.

What say you guys? Wait and is the 5k retina okay for now?
Click to expand...


You really want the next-gen retina iMac, which will probably be unveiled in the late-Summer or Fall. They should be using the latest GPU tech in the next iMac and it will have AMD's HBM/Stacked Memory, which will allow for significantly better 4K-8K performance from the GPU. Plus, you'll most likely get DDR4 to boot, which also brings better performance with significantly larger memory capacities.
 
L. Langer said:
You really want the next-gen retina iMac, which will probably be unveiled in the late-Summer or Fall. They should be using the latest GPU tech in the next iMac and it will have AMD's HBM/Stacked Memory, which will allow for significantly better 4K-8K performance from the GPU. Plus, you'll most likely get DDR4 to boot, which also brings better performance with significantly larger memory capacities.
Click to expand...

Likely true, or close to it. My beef is that we never know when the new models will actually ship. I get the "big reveal" buzz factor Apple loves so much, but it sure makes planning a PITA. I have high hopes for a second generation NeoMP cylinder that properly supports the TB2 I/O with plenty of PCIe3 lanes, DDR4 RAM and more up to date GPUs. Just wish I knew when…

Cheers - #19
 
Skylake for the lower power desktops in 2 and 4 core variants is on track for the second half of this year, late in Q3 it looks like. At least as of Intel's info over the past few days. Next iMac will have DDR4 memory and a 14nm quad-core CPU. Most likely the the new AMD GPUs, but there is a possibility of nVidia as well. We should also see USB-C 3.1, possibly 3.5 and Thunderbolt 3.

To answer Blair's question above regarding Super-MHL from 2 months ago, it's coming with USB 3.5 and will scale up along with the USB spec. The 80~160Gbps speeds for SuperMHL won't be realized until USB 4.0~5.0 arrive to offer those speeds. Current USB 3.1 (USB-C connector) is 10Gbps per channel with the ability to host two channels -- no one is shipping controllers that support two channels though. Yet. USB 3.5 mandates the two channel implementation and allows them to be multiplexed. Essentially USB 3.5 becomes direct competition for Thunderbolt 2 in terms of bandwidth. Video over USB-C is run over separate channeling and as of v3.1 technically support DisplayPort connectivity up to 20Gbps v1.x in addition to the 10Gbps USB bandwidth and power.

Details about Thunderbolt 3 are sketchy, but its advantage over USB-C is that it's a PCIe topology interface and a single TB3 port should split out into dual USB 3.5 type C connectors via a relatively inexpensive converter or to dual TB2 ports via a super-cheap adapter.

I'm expecting the next iMac to have dual TB3 and dual USB 3.5 type C ports. Possibly a legacy USB 3 port as well, but knowing Apple they like to dump the legacy baggage and sell us adapters.

Next Mac Pro will probably arrive in about a year with the next Xeon iteration -- DDR4 memory, USB-C 3.5 and TB3 ports. Shifting to 14nm Broadwell (or possibly SkyLake as Broadwell seems to be MIA) Xeon CPUs will allow them to move back to dual-CPU in the current cylinder design -- the space is already there for it on the logic board, they just have some extra stabilizer points and ground clips, you can actually see the mount points for the secondary CPU socket as the logic board was designed initially or at least in part to accommodate. That will also increase PCIe lanes and allow for additional SSD storage internal to the system. I think it will be awesome... but expensive. Really expensive.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Likely true, or close to it. My beef is that we never know when the new models will actually ship. I get the "big reveal" buzz factor Apple loves so much, but it sure makes planning a PITA. I have high hopes for a second generation NeoMP cylinder that properly supports the TB2 I/O with plenty of PCIe3 lanes, DDR4 RAM and more up to date GPUs. Just wish I knew when…

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Apple needs to hold back on another NMP release. They are good to go for a new iMac because eDP is where it needs to be for 4K-8K panels - which is what we expect the display options to be on the next-gen iMac and MacBook products - and the relatively standardized design of an iMac lends itself to being easier to put out quickly than the NMP, which requires heavy customization and R&D efforts. VESA really needs to push out another DisplayPort revision to add the compression and signaling tech from eDP to DP in order to get things where they need to be for another NMP release to complement higher-resolution external displays that will need those advances. I can see a 2016 release of a NMP revision with updated CPU, DDR4 RAM, TB3, and perhaps 3 dedicated DisplayPort outputs with a revised version of DP.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
(snip) To answer Blair's question above regarding Super-MHL from 2 months ago, it's coming with USB 3.5 and will scale up along with the USB spec. The 80~160Gbps speeds for SuperMHL won't be realized until USB 4.0~5.0 arrive to offer those speeds. Current USB 3.1 (USB-C connector) is 10Gbps per channel with the ability to host two channels -- no one is shipping controllers that support two channels though. Yet. USB 3.5 mandates the two channel implementation and allows them to be multiplexed. Essentially USB 3.5 becomes direct competition for Thunderbolt 2 in terms of bandwidth. Video over USB-C is run over separate channeling and as of v3.1 technically support DisplayPort connectivity up to 20Gbps v1.x in addition to the 10Gbps USB bandwidth and power. (snip)
Click to expand...

I suppose it's just wishful thinking that SuperMHL, backed by 8 dedicated lanes of PCIe3, will appear on next gen Macs… DP1.3 is probably where we're headed, and if I'm reading Jeff and L. Langer's notes correctly, TB or USB protocols will be used to bridge from the mobo to the display which will essentially cap bandwidth.

Let's cut to the chase - I want 4K60P 12bpc and UHD120P 10bpc signaling support - how much bandwidth will that take and when might we see widespread support for those data rates. Carnac?

Cheers - #19
 
Not still going on about this mediocre Macintosh I thought, if they had a touch 42 inch 3D I Mac with the parts of the MacPro plus expansion capacity, now that would be significant. As is, none of the current lineup I regard as really significant. Even 32 inch would be an improvement.
 
Now Blair, I did not bother answering before, as from memory I was sick and had a lot on (plus when I see this thread I have a tendacy to mentally roll my eyes and ignore it).

But it is obviouse, when they talk about these great data rates they are talking about down the line, and that other interfaces will also upgrade their speeds. I thought TB just was still a superior interface to USB3.x (as FireWire was to USB). All these things are just the same spoiler announcements to bolster lacking interfaces and or hamper the market penertration of better ones. Plus, a portable interface tends to have less physical capacity than a desktop interface to carry data. So on a doller for doller basis for production costs, at the same time the desktop interface should be far ahead of the portable interface (unless there is a desktop version). I say doller for doller, because if you spent the money on more advanced technologies you could possibly match the desktop on the portable wire, until the desktop interface is capped and the portable catches up. However, there is need for multi terrabit interfaces, so we may see something past 100Gb/s someday.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top