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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

how much for the 64 gig Ram?
 
Just under $900 from both OWC and Crucial for 64GB. Hey, just noticed that OWC gives $10 off if you pay with Amazon. ;)
 
sweet man that is great news!!!!
 
http://www.usbtalk.net/2009/09/nand-flash-chip-grades-explained/

Couldn't find a doc explaining Dram specifically but NAND is similar in grading.

I will have to ask my TW ram engineer contact on what the Number scale before the letter means to them since they use 1A and so on.

The Grade level decides the speed and latency timings available for those chips but by itself does not determine a performance difference. However it does directly relate to Failure rate ie quality. Unfortunately the Dimm Manufacturers don't tag the grade levels on the Dimms. The only way try and determine is the Speed, Latency, and price. For example 1600+ is higher grade. Registered ram is higher grade. The Higher speed with lower latency is higher grade. The Higher the Density ie 16GB Registered at CL11 requires higher grade because that latency is Jedec for 8GB. As Jeff states normally registered from Samsung and Micron/Crucial is Grade A. Kingston depends on who they use at that time. When it's Elpida then it's Grade A. If they use PSC then I would not suggest it. Also Dimm's made over sea's are far more likely to be lower grade since they are more price aggressive and less concerned with failure.
 
As we have seen with the Mac Pro being built in the USA, we don't have the product leaks like we do with Asian contract fabricators. If Apple moves pro/ cinema display production to the US, we won't know anything until they tell us.

That said, someone is buying up a large number of 4K LG/ Hitachi panels and there are no products yet on the market to account for that. It makes me have theories, but no way to substantiate. I would not be shocked at all if Apple drops a 4K display bomb tomorrow with the Mac Pro launch. I also wouldn't be shocked if it takes them until June to launch one...
 
http://www.usbtalk.net/2009/09/nand-flash-chip-grades-explained/

Couldn't find a doc explaining Dram specifically but NAND is similar in grading.

I will have to ask my TW ram engineer contact on what the Number scale before the letter means to them since they use 1A and so on.

The Grade level decides the speed and latency timings available for those chips but by itself does not determine a performance difference. However it does directly relate to Failure rate ie quality. Unfortunately the Dimm Manufacturers don't tag the grade levels on the Dimms. The only way try and determine is the Speed, Latency, and price. For example 1600+ is higher grade. Registered ram is higher grade. The Higher speed with lower latency is higher grade. The Higher the Density ie 16GB Registered at CL11 requires higher grade because that latency is Jedec for 8GB. As Jeff states normally registered from Samsung and Micron/Crucial is Grade A. Kingston depends on who they use at that time. When it's Elpida then it's Grade A. If they use PSC then I would not suggest it. Also Dimm's made over sea's are far more likely to be lower grade since they are more price aggressive and less concerned with failure.

Thanks for update ... so what's your recommendation based on what you know ... stick with 64 GBs of Apple RAM or go with OWC or Crucial?
 
So far in all the testing I have done Crucial 16GB Registered has been excellent both with compatibility, performance, and reliability. If that will work on the Mac Pro board then I would recommend go for the Crucial. However keep in mind unless it's certified by Apple or a Mac reseller then you are taking a chance it wont work on their EFI. Apple ram is always the safe bet early if you cant wait for certified status of others.
 
Yep, looks like a midnight (Pacific Time) release.
 
How many hours to go for the release, Jeff?
 
What model/specs did you go for Isaac?

Currently on my phone, so will post the full list and prices as soon as I get home from driving.

But 8 core, 512gb, upgraded GPU, stock ram (replacing later). Hold tight and will update in 30-45 minutes as I'm loading up some camera gear from a friend.
 
How many hours to go for the release, Jeff?

1 - ish... maybe. If nothing else, it should be live on the store by 8AM Pacific, or just a bit less than 8 hours from this post. I guess I'll wait for it, can't really sleep. Hah.

I was going to order with my business rep, but he didn't get all the pricing and CTO option info before they closed for the day. So I'll just order when they go live on the store and then give him the order # and he can give me my 5% discount. ;)

My plan is to go for dual D700 GPUs, 1TB PCIe storage, minimum RAM (unless the RAM is reasonably priced) and pricing will determine if I get the 8-core or 12-core CPU. Quite honestly it's a toss-up for me and most of my usage. I'm expecting a $1600 price difference between the two options. Real-world pricing is about $1050 between the two.

12-core maximum speed under load for all cores is 2.9GHz via turbo. 3.4GHz for all 8-cores on the E5-1680 CPU. 8-core has more L3 cache in relation to cores. Either are a fine choice. Wish I could justify buying both and benchmarking. I will probably opt for the 12-core in the end as it will be useful for 3D rendering and Resolve even though it may not give me the same overall kick or responsiveness in less multithreaded apps.

I guess what I'm saying is that if people need to trim the budget a bit, dropping from the 12-core they're wishing for to the 8-core isn't a bad decision at all. For many people, it may actually be the better choice.
 
The 12-to-8 decision was one I wrestled with, but I ultimately opted for faster cores than more slower cores. The painful part is if this ships this week I won't get to use it till after the christmas break (spending it out of state for 2 weeks). Oh well.
 
Thanks Jeff! 12 core with dula d700 64gbram will be more than enough for all 4k real time grading/editing and monitoring in resolve and premiere pro? Your advise please.
 
It will chew through 4K files just fine, 5K will be fine once we see better R3D related GPU support come along in applications, especially multi-GPU support. DaVinci Resolve and SpeedGrade will benefit from the 12-cores over the 8-cores, even though they are clocked slower. Premiere and AE are a toss-up between the two CPUs for most things. Rendering in AE, Nuke or various 3D apps will benefit more from the 12-cores.

Now when it comes to editing 5K footage, especially Dragon stuff coming up, there isn't a system on this planet that is going to do it all in real-time. For a compact desktop workstation, this Mac Pro will do an admirable job. But don't get your hopes up in regards to working in native 4K just yet. The jury is still out on that to some extent. And a lot has to do with waiting for the software to catch up to the hardware. We also don't have a comprehensive 4K monitoring solution just yet either. The Decklink 4K solutions are buggy and don't play nice with all apps. 4K monitoring pipeline out of Premiere is quirky to non-working, depending on your output hardware or monitoring path. I think we'll see a lot of display solutions at CES in a month from now. NAB should bring us the intermediate hardware.

That said, I think one of these new Macs will do quite nicely. Will probably have to had a Rocket-X to the mix in a TB2 enclosure to really make things cook. Otherwise the solution would be to go to a dual or quad CPU PC with more GPUs and try to plow through the footage with extreme brute force. In many ways, that's just throwing more hardware at a software problem, but sometimes that's what we have to do while we wait for the software to catch up.
 
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