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  • 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 :)

New Mac Pro

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Funny thing is, that was 4 or 5 months ago. Different story now. OpenCL in its latest incarnation is kicking ass and the AMD and PowerVR chips are doing well to support it. Resolve on W8000 and W9000 GPUs is smokin'!
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I'm looking for benchmarks on this. Anyone have any?

Is it faster than a Titan or a GTX 780 or 690 (both of which are a fraction of the price)?

How about against multiple nVidia GPUs? (since you can buy many for the same price as one W8000 or W9000)?

What happens when you start adding OpenFX plugins, stereo, etc?

When you start reading reviews, you get the picture of an overpriced last-gen chip that got not-so-hot reviews last year and which AMD might well be giving to Apple for cheap now since nobody wants it in the PC world.

"It’s unfortunate for AMD that the numbers don’t jump from last generation’s $700 card to this generation’s near-$4K card"
http://jonpeddie.com/reviews/comments/benchmarking-the-firepro-w9000

"To be perfectly candid, we found the W8000 and W9000's performance disappointing, and their proposed price/performance ratio isn't so hot either."
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMDs-New-FirePro-W8000-W9000-Challenge-Nvidias-Quadro/?page=1

And of course they got thrashed in this benchmark when it came to GPU rendering:
http://www.cgchannel.com/2013/11/group-test-amd-and-nvidia-professional-gpus-2013/
For interactive stuff Lightwave, Modo and Mari, nVidia is a lot faster and for Maya and C4D, AMD is faster. For now :)

Jeff Kilgroe said:
I totally understand all your dilemmas, Bruce. We face many of the same issues here. Predominantly our renderers we use most are Mental Ray, Modo and Lightwave. FWIW, the Mental Ray team is also dabbling with OpenCL.
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I know! But try V-Ray, man :) Not just for image quality. Simple things like Render Elements that work nicely... or being able to write custom metadata to your EXR (eg have embedded in each frame a link to the scene file that was used to render it... and a lot more).

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Not sure how you feel about it, since it's somewhat of an unknown factor at the moment, but the compactness of the Mac Pro and direct Thunderbolt integration are going to be huge. This is a computer designed for clustering. Apple even said that at WWDC, not in the keynote, but with their tech people talking. We can get the same CPU and GPU density out of the new Mac Pro systems as we can with dual Xeon + dual GPU 1U server "blades" and even with a single link, we have 20Gbps interconnect fabric. So, software dependent of course, if you find 1 x 8-core and dual GPUs to not be enough, set another Mac Pro next to your current system and link it at 20, 40, 60 or even 80 Gbps… Chew on that one for a moment.
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Agree... but I think 2 x new Mac Pros with 2 GPUs each will cost a lot more than 1 x computer with 4 GPUs.

That sounds like a good deal for Apple but not for me.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
When it comes to tasks like rendering, that are easily distributed, I think I would much rather go for a distributed and nodalized approach of one good CPU and a couple pretty good GPUs per node. This makes a lot of sense. Fill in the render farm with add on Linux or Windows PCs that can stack 2 to 4 CPUs and/ or 4 to 6 GPUs in a single box.
Click to expand...

If I'm building a render farm on Linux or Windows, I want my artist workstations to be Linux or Windows too. Our sister dept runs a Windows render farm and Mac OS X clients and the small incompatibilities just suck.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
You can drive the new Dell 4K displays at 3840x2160 8bit 30Hz via the HDMI port. If you want to do it at 60Hz, you will need a Thunderbolt-2 to DisplayPort 1.2 MST active adaptor. That adaptor does not exist yet.

IMO, these Dell displays are not a great fit for the new Mac Pro. :(
 
YOU'RE KILLING ME, SMALLS!

Blurgh!

Jeff Kilgroe said:
You can drive the new Dell 4K displays at 3840x2160 8bit 30Hz via the HDMI port. If you want to do it at 60Hz, you will need a Thunderbolt-2 to DisplayPort 1.2 MST active adaptor. That adaptor does not exist yet.

IMO, these Dell displays are not a great fit for the new Mac Pro. :(
Click to expand...
 
Isaac Marchionna said:
YOU'RE KILLING ME, SMALLS!

Blurgh!
Click to expand...

Well, there is a slight chance that they included DP 1.2 MST support into the TB2 output stream on the new Mac Pro, meaning no adapter will be necessary. I'm hopeful, but as of this moment this is not an inclusion in the Thunderbolt 2 spec. There's also a chance that Apple will offer the adapter if it's needed. But Thunderbolt 2 has been out for a bit on the MacBook Pro and no adapter just yet. TB2 ports on the MacBook Pro do not support 4K 60Hz via MST. Needs the yet-to-exist adapter. Or perhaps it can be added with a firmware update… don't know.
 
Question...

I don't really understand the role that the L3 Cache plays in day-to-day performance, especially in respect to DaVinci Resolve. I'm considering a 6 Core for the higher clock speed, because I'm thinking it could possibly be just as good as the 8 core in respect to DaVinci Resolve...

The L3 Cache options are different for each CPU configuration on the new mac... The 6 Core has a 12MB L3 Cache, the 8 Core has 25MB L3 Cache and the 12 Core has a 30MB L3 Cache.

What does this mean in terms of performance? Will a 6 core be noticeably slower than an 8 Core due to the MB L3 Cache difference?

Thanks!
 
So if I'm basically just doing 4 or 5k in premiere and that's mainly it (I rarely use After Effects), how much does ram play in these days? I'm planning on going 8 core with the 700's, but I can't decide if 32gb of ram is ok or if I need to spring for 64?
 
I'm just stepping into this thread. What's the minimal setup you guys recommend for a render station? I won't be needing this computer to do heavy work, just for rendering grades overnight. I have a RR with a Sonnet Thunderbolt enclosure. With these towers about to launch, seems silly to buy a laptop for $2,500 when even the lowest configured Mac Pro tower could be much, much better.

Thoughts?

Basically, for what I need...could I get away with a 4 cores? Or is 6 cores just so much better it's dumb not to?
 
Jeff,

Your posts are always helpful but these Mac Pro posts, in particular, have been incredibly useful. Just wanted to drop a note and say thanks. This nMP situation is a bit of a mess but you've helped clear up a few blank spots for us over the last many weeks. Good stuff.
 
Rob Anderson said:
Jeff,

Your posts are always helpful but these Mac Pro posts, in particular, have been incredibly useful. Just wanted to drop a note and say thanks. This nMP situation is a bit of a mess but you've helped clear up a few blank spots for us over the last many weeks. Good stuff.
Click to expand...



+1!
 
+1 on all of Jeff's, as well as other's, help.

A question on what Jeff said earlier concerning combining Mac Pro compute via TB2. Would this apply for all TB2 (and possibly TB1) systems? If I have any Mac Minis, MBPs, rMBPs, iMacs, etc... sitting around, can I connect them together for Apps that are capable of utilizing Thunderbolt over IP?

They obviously aren't on the level of power the new machines can put out, but every little bit helps right?
 
Maybe they can't believe it's really here. Hope you guys get yours for Christmas!

Jeff Kilgroe said:
No official word on CTO pricing or the systems going online on the Apple Web store. Indicators seem to be saying tomorrow or thursday.


…Just thought y'all should know. MacRumors and similar news sites are failing on this. Sad, really sad.
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Jeff Kilgroe said:
So, I think for me and most R3D related workflow tasks or general workstation use. The 8-core is going to be the sweet spot. With 1TB PCIe storage, dual D600's and 64GB for me.
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Jeff, could you elaborate what you would say to the budget minded about the Quad and 6-core in terms of a R3D workflow?
Since it is possible to work on 4K with an imac, how do these compare to an i5 Quad config? Equal, below or above? With a bit of longterm thinking I'm pretty sure that 8-core is a wise decision, but still it's money well spent on a LG "REAL 4K" (4K-FF RED-Standard) Thunderbolt2 IPS Monitor. Maxing out (or 32GB) of RAM and the D700 as GPU makes a lot of sense to me. Does that apply to CPU processing power as well?

If this has been mentioned before, please anyone point me to the post :)
 
Fully spec'd 6 core for $6,216... fully spec'd 8 core for $7,650

I'm happy with these prices.
 
Do we have any guesses how much faster the new Mac Pro will be than previous builds? (5,1) and (4,1)?

Seems like we should create a GROUP BUY for Mac Pros. We probably have a good chunk of the market. I'd think 100 units easy?
 
Justin Quinn said:
Fully spec'd 6 core for $6,216... fully spec'd 8 core for $7,650

I'm happy with these prices.
Click to expand...


How are you getting these pricess?
I cant see a configurator on both US and Canadian site?

I just sent our Apple Business guy what we want.

Its loaded :)

But harsh realities on pricing could kill that :(
 
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