1,000 days since the last Mac Pro update

[Andy Field]

Is it possible that anemic sales convinced Apple there’s not enough of us power users out there to make an update profitable?

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Shawn Miller]

[Kevin Johnson] “or what it’s worth, I have a 4 year old HP Z800 with 24GB of RAM, and a crappy nvidia 3800 with 1GB of video RAM. I was hoping my coworkers year old macpro would help with some after effects rendering. 4K comp all greenscreen footage from the Sony F55-hundreds of layers. I was expected the macpro would crush my old PC. They rendered almost exactly the same speed. Really bummed me out.”

Wow, which processor(s) is in your z800… is it a dual or single processor machine?

Shawn

[Warren Eig]

Cuda?

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: info@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.BabyBoomPictures.com

For Camera Accessories – Monitors and Batteries
website: https://www.EigRig.com

[Kevin Johnson]

Dual Xeon 2.67- Windows 7.
Macpro was 3.5ghz 6 core, d500’s, 64 GB ram

I was rendering 20 frames per minute on the PC, 22fpm on the Macpro (10% faster).
The macpro SSDs were much faster, when rendering internally instead of ISIS, it was 22fpm (pc) to 28fpm (Mac, +27%)

[Shawn Miller]

[Kevin Johnson] ”
Dual Xeon 2.67- Windows 7.
Macpro was 3.5ghz 6 core, d500’s, 64 GB ram

I was rendering 20 frames per minute on the PC, 22fpm on the Macpro (10% faster).
The macpro SSDs were much faster, when rendering internally instead of ISIS, it was 22fpm (pc) to 28fpm (Mac, +27%)”

Yeah… time for an upgrade. How long are you willing to wait for the next nMP before considering another PC?

Shawn

[Jeremy Garchow]

A single 6core MacPro was 10-27% faster than a similar vintage CPU dual Xeon.

That’s not nothing.

Also, Ae is glacial with 4K renders, but I digress.

[Lance Bachelder]

I just did the same! My “new” 2012 12-core 3.46Ghz arrives tomorrow! It was about 25% the cost of a nMP 12-core and about 90% of the performance though no Thunderbolt of course. Hoping Apple offers more cores on new iMac in the future… an 8 core iMac with 64GB RAM would be nice.

It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Shawn Miller]

[Jeremy Garchow] “A single 6core MacPro was 10-27% faster than a similar vintage CPU dual Xeon.

That’s not nothing.”

Sure, but didn’t the PC have two much slower processors, less than half the RAM and an ancient video card?

Shawn

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Shawn Miller] “Sure, but didn’t the PC have two much slower processors, less than half the RAM and an ancient video card?”

This is the age ole question. I know I have asked it, I know others have. What constitutes fast?

The PC was stated to be “4 years old”. The MacPros, have “old technology in them” (3+ years old), yet the Mac still outperforms on less processors of a similar vintage. As far as I know, Ae does not render on the GPU for most of the work, so we can probably not focus on that aspect. We can see that the PCIe SSD seems to speed up the Ae renders.

And I’ll say it again, Ae is reaaallllyy slow at 4k. Is this a problem with the hardware? I don’t really think so. I think it has to do with how Ae is built and what it’s built for.

And they might as well hang the “Page under construction, check back soon!” sign on Ae until they are done fixing whatever it is they are fixing. I think they are trying to fix speed by separating the UI from the render function, but I don’t really know anymore, don’t really care, but I wish it was fixed.

[Tim Wilson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I know I have asked it, I know others have. What constitutes fast?”

In general, I think this is why there haven’t been many updates of much of anything on either platform. The answer is, “They’re all pretty damn fast.” And to your point about AE and 4K, the real bottlenecks aren’t always, or often, in hardware.

That said, this does NOT apply once you get up to the realm of sizzlecore and dedicated 3D/CG machines. But in the realm that most of us live in most of the time, what are we looking for? New IO, really, and even that can be a PITA as often as not.

So I don’t think the issue is that Apple doesn’t care enough about the Mac Pro market, or that the market is too small to motivate Apple to prioritize it, or anything else. HP has a dedicated workstation unit that bigger than the entirety of Apple….but they’re not rushing out new stuff either. The chip guys aren’t turning the crank that often either.

I think we’re in a transition that’s characterized by nothing moving. LOL

There’s little we DO, actually DO, that REQUIRES the kind of increases we used to demand just to keep up with our work. But now, honestly, we can make do with older machines. We know this, because we are.

So there’s my semi-rhetorical question for you. Is any of this really a PROBLEM-problem for you folks in your day-to-day, or more of an itch that isn’t being scratched?

Not to trivialize itches that need scratching. New gear is fun, and I’m starting to itch for a new point-and-shoot for personal use just because I don’t need a new car, a new TV, a new phone, or a new computer. Got my new Kindle (Paperwhite ftw), a coupla new Roku sticks to go with my Chromecast, Amazon Echo is more than I need right now, so what else is there? LOL