Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register 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 :)

Buying Mac Pro today

I understand intel is the hold up and that thunderbolts current incarnation is a bottleneck, but how come the mbp's can get a tiny half baked update (like the new ones did) and its a big deal if the workstations do the same thing? i mean had apple a year ago bumped the specs slightly on the workstations and added thunderbolt at the very least it would make thunderbolt devices uniform for every model, even if the specs weren't necessarily that big an update for the cpu's of the work stations. perhaps drop the 4 core entirely, and sell a 6, 8, and 12 with thunderbolts, at prices that reflect the cpus current pricing? i mean obviously now its a little late to do something like this assuming intel isn't bluffing this time on the new chips.... honestly it wont surprise me if they EOL it now and don't release another, being that all mac desktop models are only 6 percent of apples revenue and i simply cannot imagine the mac pro taking a lions share of that 6 percent. ipad accessories are making them more money then workstations, that just seems sad, its a different world these days. post pc era, maybe not for us 5k editors but i think the rest of the world is really starting to go that route...i imagine as mobile devices get more powerful its going to get harder for power users to get these monster workstations at all. we are becoming more and more of a niche and sadly i think the power users will soon find less and less high end options as the world changes to a mobile orientated society
 
Last edited:
We also made up our mind about a Hackintosh. But as more time passes we think about "normal" PC because the reasons for the OSX plattform are drifting away. Resolve, CS5, RedcineX,... are available on PC. Even Resolve uses ProRes (as I read in this forum). So why wasting time in this dilemma?

Cheers
Thomas.
 
Brian Merlen said:
I understand intel is the hold up and that thunderbolts current incarnation is a bottleneck, but how come the mbp's can get a tiny half baked update (like the new ones did) and its a big deal if the workstations do the same thing?
Click to expand...

The laptops still exist in the same form factor, so a change to a board that will still be around for two or three more cycles is a no brainier. If the system you are updating won't be around in six months let alone three years, then the investment makes little sense.
 
Brian Merlen said:
I understand intel is the hold up and that thunderbolts current incarnation is a bottleneck, but how come the mbp's can get a tiny half baked update (like the new ones did) and its a big deal if the workstations do the same thing? i mean had apple a year ago bumped the specs slightly on the workstations and added thunderbolt at the very least it would make thunderbolt devices uniform for every model, even if the specs weren't necessarily that big an update for the cpu's of the work stations. perhaps drop the 4 core entirely, and sell a 6, 8, and 12 with thunderbolts, at prices that reflect the cpus current pricing? i mean obviously now its a little late to do something like this assuming intel isn't bluffing this time on the new chips.... honestly it wont surprise me if they EOL it now and don't release another, being that all mac desktop models are only 6 percent of apples revenue and i simply cannot imagine the mac pro taking a lions share of that 6 percent. ipad accessories are making them more money then workstations, that just seems sad, its a different world these days. post pc era, maybe not for us 5k editors but i think the rest of the world is really starting to go that route...i imagine as mobile devices get more powerful its going to get harder for power users to get these monster workstations at all. we are becoming more and more of a niche and sadly i think the power users will soon find less and less high end options as the world changes to a mobile orientated society
Click to expand...

Yes, they could have refreshed it earlier in 2011 - even if Intel held their schedule. 6% may not sound like much... Mac Pro may be 1% of Apple's revenue but that is still worth $1 billion annually! I don't think they make much profit out of it, but it is essential to keeping the content ecosystem alive for iOS devices. Apple believes in the Post PC era, but I am 100% behind Microsoft's philosophy - PC Plus era. Personal computers aren't going away for decades to come - merely evolving and complementing mobile devices. You can do a lot on a tablet or smartphone, but try building Burj Khalifa or Millau Viaduct on your Post PC device. Yup - can't do that without powerful PCs and workstations. Neither can we finish 5K material.

Here's a look at the PC Plus era - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0. Every technology in that video is already under development or developed. There's no fantasy or fiction in that video. There are plenty of other Future Vision videos, all fascinating.

Thomas Pohl said:
We also made up our mind about a Hackintosh. But as more time passes we think about "normal" PC because the reasons for the OSX plattform are drifting away. Resolve, CS5, RedcineX,... are available on PC. Even Resolve uses ProRes (as I read in this forum). So why wasting time in this dilemma?

Cheers
Thomas.
Click to expand...

Like the old saying goes - "Once you go Mac, you cannot go back." It's more of an emotional choice than a rational one. Its Unix roots are an advantage for some and unlike Linux distros its app ecosystem is relatively well developed. E.g. there's no Adobe CS for Linux. I do believe with the right motivation it is really easy to be platform agnostic.
 
Oh yes - the religious aspect of technology....I can't count all the money I spent in the last 20 years in Mac products. I always felt a little bit (ridiculous) superior, cooler,... however. After what happend in the last time with Mac (beneath scandals in China) I hope to become a clear head again ;-)

Cheers
Thomas.
 
Good idea to wait for Thunderbolt.
 
My first computing experience was creating a graphic via the command line. It was an exercise in inefficiency; a colossal waste of time. The first time I saw a GUI on a Mac I was hooked on it's brilliant simplicity. I thought, "You could just draw with this thing." Microsoft was running DOS. For more than a decade I listened to those folks talk about how superior they were, because the command line gave them access to the inner workings of the system. I was glad not to have to bother with it. I didn't want to tinker with the system, i wanted the shit to work. I wanted it to work for me rather than me working for it. I wanted to get shit done. It's a feeling that has never changed.

I'd buy a new Mac today if it were still going to be a new Mac tomorrow or in a few months, but by that time it will be a dinosaur. I'm for waiting just a little while if you can.
 
Last edited:
Confusion between Sandy Bridge-EP, Ivy Bridge and Ivy Bridge-EP. Ivy Bridge (upto 4C) will go into Macbook Pro and iMac in Q2. Sandy Bridge-EP is 8C / 20MB L3, releases in March, and will go into Mac Pro in Q3. Ivy Bridge-EP is 10C/30MB L3 and isn't coming before 2013. Once we swap "Ivy Bridge" with "Sandy Bridge-EP", the rest of the report seems quite credible.
 
I,m not waiting until Q3 for a new MAC...
I just ordered $17,000 worth of MAC PRO 2 days ago! It's a "Ferrari" system, upgraded to the max, in every way. I have 2 RED ROCKETS coming and 2 Nvidia 4000 graphics cards, inside of a cubix expansion bay, and a 32TB MAXX Digital Raid Array. Altogether.... $32,000, yay!
 
Jon Jones said:
I,m not waiting until Q3 for a new MAC...
I just ordered $17,000 worth of MAC PRO 2 days ago! It's a "Ferrari" system, upgraded to the max, in every way. I have 2 RED ROCKETS coming and 2 Nvidia 4000 graphics cards, inside of a cubix expansion bay, and a 32TB MAXX Digital Raid Array. Altogether.... $32,000, yay!
Click to expand...
...

Jesus.
 
Sadly, even the fastest possible Mac Pro is a Ford Mondeo from 2010 at best. And really, even a $2500 PC with a single GTX 580 powered by Sandy Bridge-E will be faster in many situations.

Even a 40 core system with 6 Quadro 6000s doesn't seem Ferrari territory in the grand scheme of things.
 
Subhadip Sen said:
Sadly, even the fastest possible Mac Pro is a Ford Mondeo from 2010 at best. And really, even a $2500 PC with a single GTX 580 powered by Sandy Bridge-E will be faster in many situations.

Even a 40 core system with 6 Quadro 6000s doesn't seem Ferrari territory in the grand scheme of things.
Click to expand...

I hardly believe so... one Intel Xeon X5670 processor which is 6 cores with 12 threads cost $1442.00: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-NA-_-NA

So two of those would be $2884.00. So from a processing point of view alone a 12 core Mac Pro which comes with two of those processors is pretty powerful for rendering and many video related features.

The increase in Sandy Bridge performance clock to clock over Nehalem processors is only 11.3%. With no way to configure the 3960X on a dual socket motherboard you can't get a 12 core system with 24 threads. So easily a Mac Pro 12 core with 24 threads defeats a six core Sandy Bridge in multicore task performance. Now we can have another discussion when the server class Sandy Bridge processors come out with dual socket capability.
 
Andrae Palmer said:
I hardly believe so... one Intel Xeon X5670 processor which is 6 cores with 12 threads cost $1442.00: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-NA-_-NA

So two of those would be $2884.00. So from a processing point of view alone a 12 core Mac Pro which comes with two of those processors is pretty powerful for rendering and many video related features.

The increase in Sandy Bridge performance clock to clock over Nehalem processors is only 11.3%. With no way to configure the 3960X on a dual socket motherboard you can't get a 12 core system with 24 threads. So easily a Mac Pro 12 core with 24 threads defeats a six core Sandy Bridge in multicore task performance. Now we can have another discussion when the server class Sandy Bridge processors come out with dual socket capability.
Click to expand...

If we make a few assumptions about the application - 1) is perfectly multithreaded and scales linearly to 24 threads, 2) is bottlenecked by the CPU with 100% CPU usage (or at least ~80%) over 24 threads, 3) no inter-socket bandwidth bottlenecks, 4) minimal GPU usage, 5) no AVX acceleration. Among other minor things like not limited by memory bandwidth, cache size, cache latency, etc.

Then yes, a 2P Gulftown will outperform a Core i7 3960X. But we know these situations are not as common as we would like them to be. The reality is that in heavily GPU accelerated applications like Davinci Resolve or Sony Vegas, a single GTX 580 is simply faster than 2 x Quadro 4000s. Sandy Bridge-E's extra PCIe lanes also means lesser bandwidth bottlenecks (even less so if used with PCIe 3.0 GPUs). Premiere Pro, the debayer doesn't seem to scale too well past 16 threads and since it can only use 1 GPU for Mercury, a single GTX 580 is 3 times as fast as Quadro 4000. In the real-world, both systems will get you 1/2 res real time preview for 5K footage. Only difference is the 2P Gulftown will get you there with lower CPU usage. As for rendering, the Lanczos scaling function is very GPU hungry - especially for 5K footage - and likely to be a bottleneck with the quite slow Quadro 4000.

Note that I am still not saying "every situation", but "many situations". There will be usage scenarios out there that meets all of the above assumptions and is indeed noticeably faster on a 2P Gulftown system. I can think of one relevant to our usage - X264 encoding. Even in this case, since X264 uses AVX, the 2P Xeon X5670 would not be more than 20% faster.

In any case, the central argument is that 2P Gulftown systems are simply not worth it anymore, especially with 8C Xeon E5s in 2 weeks.
 
For my workflow with Davinci Resolve which included a 12 core Mac Pro, Quadro 4000 and "no" RED Rocket card... Davinci Resolve was CPU debayering the footage live at 1/2 Resolution... so I had realtime playback at a very good display quality. This is not possible with a core i7 3960X. This realtime debayering via multithreaded CPU optimization is also possible in Premiere Pro at 1/2 Res. I preferred that workflow rather than purchasing a RED Rocket card.
 
5K 1/2 res debayer is very comfortably performed by Core i7 3930K. Or even a Core i7 970 or a mildly overclocked Core i7 2600. There are several reports here from members that confirm the same. 1/2 res playback is easy. Full-res - 3K is real-time and 4K is about 15fps. Also, Quadro 4000 is quite insufficient for intensive grading at 5K. Like I said before, a single GTX 580 is three times as fast as Quadro 4000 (except vector graphics or double precision, neither of which is relevant to us).
 
Can you link me to a few reports that confirm that 5k/4k footage can be played back at 1/2 resolution in realtime (say 24fps) via a six core processor?

-----

I've found the reports from Jon Thomasberg: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?68524-Workstation-Benchmark-Rankings

Over clocking the 3930K to 5.0GHz with liquid cooling is interesting... albeit he did report pulling it back to 4.9GHz for stability concerns. The problem is that we don't know what issues the CPU will have at sustained max usage at that over clocking speed. Still interesting none the less. Has anyone else reported realtime performance on a six core system at 1/2 res debayer of 4k/5k? also what over clocking is necessary for realtime 4k/5k? I'm wondering if it has to go to 5.0GHz to have sustained realtime playback at 1/2 res.
 
There are quite a few reports all over the forums. A quick search got me two such reports of Sandy Bridge-E on Premiere (and from my initial tests, Resolve is even faster. RC-X is slow however). Here, on an i7 3930K build - http://reduser.net/forum/showthread...hmark-Rankings&p=897319&viewfull=1#post897319. And here - http://reduser.net/forum/showthread...s-F-amp-*-*-K!&p=930422&viewfull=1#post930422, the relevant bit is in the 4th para. If I am not mistaken, Jeff's build uses Core i7 3960X and it handles not 1 but 2 streams of 5K footage at 1/2 res just fine. There are a couple of Resolve oriented reports in the Davinci forum too. And reports from Core i7 2600 4 core from the last year or so. Unfortunately I can't find these using a quick search. But rest assured, 1/2 res is not a big issue. In Jeff's above post, he predicts that the soon-to-release (2 weeks) 2P Xeon E5 8C systems will get you full res playback at a lower cost than Rocket, and I wouldn't bet against it. However, the step up to full res has proved challenging thus far on anything short of Xeon E7 systems. Certainly, 1/2 res is no problem these days - even for overclocked quad core systems.
 
Thank you for informing me of the developments with the Sandy Bridge processors. It's really incredible performance at low price points. How fast things change.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top