New MacPro Processor Speeds

[joe hedge]

Wondering what people's thoughts are on this, MacWorld has run tests comparing the $4800 12-core 2.66GHz Westmere to the $3700 6-core 3.33GHz, and the 6-core came out faster. How would this apply to Red DIT/post workflow and applications - would RCX, Storm, the RedRocket, RAID 5, LTO etc run better with less cores and faster CPU's, or better with more cores and slower CPU's...

http://www.macworld.com/article/154729/2010/10/fastest_macs_2010.html?lsrc=top_1

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Very interesting! I suspect that few, if any, applications are currently written to properly take advantage of multi-threading across all 12 cores. Most apps available today will probably still benefit from the faster clock speeds, but theoretically, this should change over time as apps are written to better utilize more cores.

I need to buy a new system and am torn between faster performance today vs. potentially faster performance in the future. It's a really tough call! I'd love to hear your insights...

Best,

- Jordan

 

[David Collard]

My two cents based on the reported 12-core findings...
Save your money. Buy the 6-core 3.33Ghz with the 5870 graphics card and a decent raid. If you can afford an Atto raid card R380/R680 with your computer that would be a nice read/write solution for raid5. Also, the present Towers really could use more expansion slots. The higher end users usually go for an exterior one at a cost of around $2500. You might find you will require this. The savings above will allow you to purchase one.

 

[D Fuller]

My two cents based on the reported 12-core findings...
Save your money. Buy the 6-core 3.33Ghz with the 5870 graphics card and a decent raid. If you can afford an Atto raid card R380/R680 with your computer that would be a nice read/write solution for raid5. Also, the present Towers really could use more expansion slots. The higher end users usually go for an exterior one at a cost of around $2500. You might find you will require this. The savings above will allow you to purchase one.

If you read the article a little more carefully, you find that it's exctly the work we do -- the cinebench part of the testing -- where the 12-core shines. A good multi-threaded compression or transcoding app will sing with more cores.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Unfortunately, those benchmarks are not representative of a lot of real-world tasks, and in fact are rather misleading if you don't know what you're looking at, or if you just skim through the article. I have to give the article rather poor marks for testing here -- the tests (if plural should even be considered here) don't show the whole picture.

It's true that most all applications out there are not multithreaded well, or even at all. The few that are, will in most cases not scale well beyond a few CPUs. 3D rendering applications can benefit from more cores as rendering is one of those tasks that are easy to break up and localize pieces of a render onto individual CPU cores or nodes. The Adobe Mercury Playback Engine is multithreaded and seems to scale very well to about 10 or 12 CPUs. Virtual HT CPU cores help to stack up the load on processors as well, but we can still see noticeable falloff after 10 CPUs.

The tests performed here do nothing to analyze RAM throughput. Which is part of why this article is misleading. You cut your RAM capacity and throughput IN HALF when you buy a single-processor Mac Pro. Another big reason to not buy the single processor model is that if you decide you want to add that second processor latter, it's a real problem. Buying a CPU is easy enough, but it will cost you an arm and a leg (or a kidney, you choose) to purchase the CPU cooler, memory board and other necessary components from Apple Parts.

If you're performing operations that require the movement of large chunks of data in memory, thus making your RAM the primary bottleneck between CPU operations, you will want the dual processor system -- dual memory controllers, increased RAM throughput and capacity.

If most of what you do can be localized in RAM or even loaded into the CPU cache and crunched there. Especially if it isn't particularly well written to scale across multiple CPUs, yeah, that 6-core 3.33GHz option is going to be faster.

Simply telling people to save their money and buy the 6-core could be disastrous advice. People need to know what sort of work they will be doing most on their systems and whether or not they will need the extra RAM and internal bandwidth. For every benchmark you show me where the 3.33GHz 6-core system will be fastest, I can show you a benchmark that will show the 12-core 2.66GHz system crushing it.

With the way the hardware currently works, memory controllers integrated into the CPUs, etc.. I will not buy a single processor Mac Pro. I would be giving up too much performance for most of what I do on these systems to justify the little bit of money it saves. Not to mention, that 8GB modules are still expensive so placing 32GB of RAM in a single processor Mac Pro will negate any savings you might think you're getting there if you need that much RAM. If you're buying a new 12-core (24 cores virtual) 32GB RAM is highly recommended (by me, anyway).

I still think Apple has a gaping hole in their product offerings. They really need a "smaller" tower offering. Something between the Mac Pro and the iMac. Something that uses a single desktop CPU and (like a 6-core i7). A lot of people who buy the Mac Pro would be better served with a system like that and the lower price it should have.

 

[joe hedge]

Thanks Jeff

 

[Uli Plank]

I can only second this. If you need to save, go for a dual quad core instead and fill it up with RAM and a very good GPU, but don't go single processor. There are still very good deals for refurbs.

Even consider two machines if you need power, they are more flexible with todays difficult decisions regarding GPU and the limited number of slots. You won't like to swap cards all the time, do you?

BTW, it's not Apple asking that huge difference in price, it's Intel.

 

[joe hedge]

The thing I'm specifically wondering about is RedRocket transcoding, would having 12 cores with a slower (2.66GHz) processor really affect transcode times over having 6 cores with a 25% faster (3.33GHz) processor, wouldn't it still transcode in real time either way, given one has the storage bandwidth to begin with?

Reason I ask, refurb 3.33GHz 6 core MacPro's go for $3100 from the Apple store, and refurb RR cards for $2500 from Red, thats around $6 grand with tax, as opposed to $4.8k and $3.75k the new 12 core and new RR card, which is around $9 grand with tax...with that $3 grand you saved you could come close to getting another refurb 3.33GHz 6-core...

 

[shashbugu]

Unfortunately, those benchmarks are not representative of a lot of real-world tasks, and in fact are rather misleading if you don't know what you're looking at, or if you just skim through the article. I have to give the article rather poor marks for testing here -- the tests (if plural should even be considered here) don't show the whole picture.

It's true that most all applications out there are not multithreaded well, or even at all. The few that are, will in most cases not scale well beyond a few CPUs. 3D rendering applications can benefit from more cores as rendering is one of those tasks that are easy to break up and localize pieces of a render onto individual CPU cores or nodes. The Adobe Mercury Playback Engine is multithreaded and seems to scale very well to about 10 or 12 CPUs. Virtual HT CPU cores help to stack up the load on processors as well, but we can still see noticeable falloff after 10 CPUs.

The tests performed here do nothing to analyze RAM throughput. Which is part of why this article is misleading. You cut your RAM capacity and throughput IN HALF when you buy a single-processor Mac Pro. Another big reason to not buy the single processor model is that if you decide you want to add that second processor latter, it's a real problem. Buying a CPU is easy enough, but it will cost you an arm and a leg (or a kidney, you choose) to purchase the CPU cooler, memory board and other necessary components from Apple Parts.

If you're performing operations that require the movement of large chunks of data in memory, thus making your RAM the primary bottleneck between CPU operations, you will want the dual processor system -- dual memory controllers, increased RAM throughput and capacity.

If most of what you do can be localized in RAM or even loaded into the CPU cache and crunched there. Especially if it isn't particularly well written to scale across multiple CPUs, yeah, that 6-core 3.33GHz option is going to be faster.

Simply telling people to save their money and buy the 6-core could be disastrous advice. People need to know what sort of work they will be doing most on their systems and whether or not they will need the extra RAM and internal bandwidth. For every benchmark you show me where the 3.33GHz 6-core system will be fastest, I can show you a benchmark that will show the 12-core 2.66GHz system crushing it.

With the way the hardware currently works, memory controllers integrated into the CPUs, etc.. I will not buy a single processor Mac Pro. I would be giving up too much performance for most of what I do on these systems to justify the little bit of money it saves. Not to mention, that 8GB modules are still expensive so placing 32GB of RAM in a single processor Mac Pro will negate any savings you might think you're getting there if you need that much RAM. If you're buying a new 12-core (24 cores virtual) 32GB RAM is highly recommended (by me, anyway).

I still think Apple has a gaping hole in their product offerings. They really need a "smaller" tower offering. Something between the Mac Pro and the iMac. Something that uses a single desktop CPU and (like a 6-core i7). A lot of people who buy the Mac Pro would be better served with a system like that and the lower price it should have.

Thanks Jeff, Good insight. We are about to buy two new systems for stand alone grading and finishing. Thanks for clarifying the differences.

 

[Andrew T Foster]

Hello,

I agree with Jeff on the gaping hole issue in the line-up. I think it's partially a matter of personal taste on the part of the CEO for a mid-range tower system. I "fondly" remember Steve coming up to us at NeXTWorld 1993 and looking around at all the NeXTSTEP 486 clones declaring that they needed to be slimmed down and to "dump all the slots. I hate slots!" This was after they had dumped the all the "black" hardware (sob) and started selling NeXTSTEP 486.

Haha.. comedy.

Best!

A

 

[N_Villers]

The thing I'm specifically wondering about is RedRocket transcoding, would having 12 cores with a slower (2.66GHz) processor really affect transcode times over having 6 cores with a 25% faster (3.33GHz) processor, wouldn't it still transcode in real time either way, given one has the storage bandwidth to begin with?

The whole advantage of the RR card is to take the job away from the cpu and send it to dedicated hardware. This relieves most of the load on the Processors and benifits from high bandwidth.

Jeff is right an older 2-core with lots of RAM and very fast storage will I think be your best bet.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Buying a single processor (6-core or quad-core) Mac pro is just shooting yourself in the foot, IMO. Go with an 8-core or 12-core.

For RED Rocket transcodes there are three places where you will see bottlenecks.

1> Storage -- Make sure you can read and write your files as fast as needed. You need a *MINIMUM* of 250MB/s sustained write ability if you are generating 2K DPX sequences in real time. This is over and above any requirements for reading in the R3D files. R3D files work best if the system can read them faster than the native data rate. 100MB/s is an ideal minimum for current R3D rates for read-in.

2> RED Rocket -- the card itself can only process so much. It's good for 4K RC36 MAX up to about 30fps or so. Back in the day, Jim said it would do 5K at 25fps. We'll see if that actually holds true when we start seeing Epic footage.

3> Third-party encoders. This is a big one. All the processors/cores are not going to help you if you're transcoding to ProRes. ProRes is essentially locked to one master thread on a single CPU. It's an abomination of modern codec and renderer engineering. Apple should be embarrassed in how inefficient their encoder truly is, when they manufacture and sell systems like the Mac Pro. WTF... 2K ProRes transcodes can't quite get to real-time on my 8-core 2.93GHz tower. That primary CPU is pegged and the rest of them sit idle.

@ Andrew. It's no secret that Jobs has never liked slots or system expandability. There is a certain logic to that and for the majority of users out there, this approach is just fine. The problem is the top 5% of the market, us. We who need more than any of their stock configurations can offer. I think most of us would be fine with 4 slots in the Mac Pro, if the system already had a decent SAS/SATA RAID host and 10G ethernet built in.

 

[PatrickW]

I still think Apple has a gaping hole in their product offerings. They really need a "smaller" tower offering. Something between the Mac Pro and the iMac. Something that uses a single desktop CPU and (like a 6-core i7). A lot of people who buy the Mac Pro would be better served with a system like that and the lower price it should have.

Ah, the fabled "xMac" concept. Something that is upgradable and affordable enough for gamers/creative pros on a budget. Its basically a powermac cube for the intel genration. I see the need for a cheaper that a mac pro solution for someone who doesn't need a whole mac pro but for whom the iMac just doesnt cut it. I dont know why we haven't seen this, maybe over fears of hurting the highend imac and mac pro sales.

6 Ram Slots and 3 PCIe Slots... i7 CPU with 5 drive slots (BluRay Superdrive + SSD + 3 HDD in Raid) Starting at $1500 or so for the box, and it would sell like mad.
This lets you have a basic upgradable system for video cards for gamers and capture/raid cards for creative pros. Make it small and rackable (2 per 4U?) and it would be great on set.

 

[AnthonyFlores]

Jeff,

Wow, you are a stud. Thanks for the info -- you can't find this kind of help anywhere else.

I'm in the market for a Mac Pro and RedRocket this year, and will keep your points in consideration.

Thanks!

Anthony