As we get closer Mac Pro - peoples thoughts

[Jeff Kilgroe]

How about a black magic 4k card for editing and resolve?

You can use the UltraStudio which attaches directly via Thunderbolt.

Need 4K? Just wait for NAB... Kludgy PCIe expanders are not the way forward. Really.


GPUs and CPUs are removeable, as is the RAM and the PCIe flash storage. It's actually quite modular.

 

[John C Picking Jr]

GPUs and CPUs are removeable, as is the RAM and the PCIe flash storage. It's actually quite modular.

I think y'all are going to be quite happy about the upgradability of this computer. :yesnod:

 

[Bob Gundu]

Here's my big question:

6 core Mac Pro with RR-X
or
12 Core Mac Pro without RRX

 

[Chad Lancaster]

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/25...-red-mac-pro-for-product-red-charity-auction/

 

[Marie Turock]

As for 4k display options to use with the MacPro, hopefully something will come to market by December. Asus, Sharp, and Dell have displays in the works, with some models being sold now, and I believe LG has a 30" 4096x2160 display that just went into manufacturing, which may become the next Apple display. Whatever the case, this will significantly add to the overall system cost (for those of us who do not already have a 4k display).

 

[L. Langer]

I will be surprised if Jim doesn't buy that RED MacPro for himself since he loves Apple and owns RED.

 

[Pax]

Let's all hope for no gloss displays.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Interesting podcast on where Apple came from and where it's going:

http://gocreativeshow.com/hi-larry-with-larry-jordan-and-alex-gollner/

 

[toke lahti]

We have PCIe 3.0 now and it sure is fast, however there are no cards out there that can actually saturate a PCIe v3 X8 slot, let alone an X16 slot.
...
And then there are 6 TB2 ports at 20Gbps each. Roughly the equivalent of 6 x PCIe v2 X4 slots.

Why compare to PCIe v2? What new workstation model would have v2 in the year 2014?
PCIe v3 was finalized in 2010. Can't saturate it? Maybe not, but can benefit of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_3.0
:"AMD's latest flagship graphic card, the Radeon HD 7970, launched on January 9, 2012, was the world's first PCIe 3.0 graphic card.[29] Initial reviews suggest that the new interface would not improve graphic performance compared to earlier PCIe 2.0, which, at the time of writing, is still under-utilized. However, the new interface would prove advantageous when used for general purpose computing with technologies like OpenCL, CUDA and C++ AMP."
6 x 20Gbit/s in new mp's TB? Sure about that? Meaning that you could actually transfer simultaneously 15GB/s through TB?
My guess is that new MP will have 3 controllers, which have 4 lanes of v3. Max throughput of this is less than 12GB/s and then there will be overheads and latencies.
If nMP has 40 lanes and 2xGPU takes 16, TB takes 12, ssd maybe 4 and usb maybe 1-2, there will be 6-7 lanes totally unused.

I see bad cost efficiency if I need a video editing workstation, that will be unmoved in one room for its lifetime and I need to have 8-16TB storage space for editing and not needing dual-GPU, with nMP I have to pay double or triple price for getting the same thing than before.

 

[Will Keir]

Gotta have the RRX card my man.

You can always sell the 6 core and plug your RRX card into the second generation unit.

Here's my big question:

6 core Mac Pro with RR-X
or
12 Core Mac Pro without RRX

 

[Will Keir]

Damn. We've talked about it for years. Are we really going to be seeing 4k displays available at a fair price early in Q1 of 2014?

If so, how far out of 4k monitors with the ability to perform color critical applications?

As for 4k display options to use with the MacPro, hopefully something will come to market by December. Asus, Sharp, and Dell have displays in the works, with some models being sold now, and I believe LG has a 30" 4096x2160 display that just went into manufacturing, which may become the next Apple display. Whatever the case, this will significantly add to the overall system cost (for those of us who do not already have a 4k display).

 

[AndreasOberg]

What are peoples thoughts on the graphic cards. Will they be fast enough to do really well in Davinci, Neat Video and similar programs that use the GPU?

No doubt the graphics cards are fast, but they are "only" 2 of them where PC would let you use 3 or possibly more graphic cards.

Is Ram of 3GB enough for Davinci or similar programs? In Neat Video I often run out of memory with 2GB RAM and that is only working in 2k

I did a comparison of W9000, W8000 and W7900 that are similar to the D300, D500 and D700 in the Mac Pro.
And this is some of the benchmarks I have found (from Toms Hardware)

W9000. 56 20%
W8000 46
W7900 10


W9000. 167 19%
W8000 140 (45%
W7900 96

To me the D300 (W7900 ish) is not really an option since it has only 2GB of RAM. I also read that Davinci says you need 3GB for 4k editing. The D700 is very cool but MEGA expensive at something like $3300 for each graphic card. The tests shows that its about 20% faster than the D500 so the speed isn't that much better. However you get 6GB of Ram instead of 3GB.

I'm leaning a bit against getting a 12 core with 2x D500 with 64GB of RAM. Depends of course how much the 12 core is.


/Andreas