-
1,000 days since the last Mac Pro update
-
[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?”
[Jeremy Garchow] “This is the age ole question. I know I have asked it, I know others have. What constitutes fast?”
Fast equals acceptable image quality, divided by the time left to deliver the project – the less time left to deliver, the higher the tolerance for lower quality. ?
Seriously though, it IS a good question. For me, 30 seconds per frame seems really fast some days, on other days it seem like an eternity… one thing if for sure though, it’s NEVER fast enough.
[Jeremy Garchow] “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.”
AE’s render isn’t exactly a mulit-threaded champ, so I can see how a faster, single processor machine can outperform a slower dual processor machine on the same project – I think the PC would have been faster than the nMP if it had been equipped with the same processors. But I agree with you on everything else – AE’s renderer is ancient, I know they’re working on it, but it can’t come soon enough.
Shawn
-
We are a PC house for editorial and ingest although I am a Mac guy so it stings a little bit. I ran the test in the hopes that the Macpro would be scorching fast to maybe justify switching over to Mac for editorial…but alas, the is zero chance our engineering department would switch over to Mac for such little gains. Was it a fair comparison? No. But I would expect a “year old” new Macpro to perform much better than the 4-5 year old workstation. We do a ton of 4k work in AE so that’s where we need it to perform.
We’ll probably end up dropping $10-15k a piece on the latest HP workstations and NVIDIA graphics cards so I’d hope that we would get some nice gains there…and these “old” workstations can be used elsewhere or as render nodes.
-
I’d guess the z800s are closer to 5 years old and were built to Avid specs back then, but the fact that Apple is still selling the macpro with the old hardware is ridiculous. Maybe they are waiting on intel/chipsets/TB3 latest hardware to come out?
Pulling and rendering to ISIS is another factor but can’t imagine that is the bottleneck. Obviously working off a dedicated Raid you could achieve faster speeds but that doesn’t work with our workflow.
AE really needs to implement an easy way for network rendering using available or idle workstations without collecting files beforehand.
-
[Tim Wilson] “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.”
When we need true 3D, our vendor renders everything in the cloud. They may need faster machines for previews, but for the most part, the previews are wireframe, or super low res. Once everything is done, to the cloud it goes. Things get recomposed downstream, but at that point, processing is relatively light.
[Tim Wilson] “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?”
It hasn’t been a problem for us. To your point about i/o, thunderbolt 2 has been the most dramatic shift in our workflow. It’s great, and I don’t want it to go away. Since we are on FCPX, the new MacPros churn through 4k work, and I rarely render in X. I don’t feel like the MacPro is old tech at all, and I miss them when I am not editing on the desktop, but rather a laptop. Do Pr users feel the same way? If they do or don’t, why?
I wonder, if Apple did update the MacPro, say, to the newest Xeon processor, what would the day to day gains be? Would it be worth dropping another $10+k per machine? If I am already working without doing much rendering, how much faster can I go? I think these are the types of questions that Apple engineers, marketers, and execs ask themselves. Is it worth it for us to do an incremental upgrade?
By the way, have you used the new Resolve? Sometimes the renders go so fast, I think that there’s a problem and that the program isn’t working correctly when in fact it’s working, just really really fast. Obviously, the new MacPro’s standard dual GPUs help in regards to Resolve, and Blackmagic seems to be keen on building applications for the Mac (and perhaps other modern architectures).
I have never have this “problem” in After Effects. I always know how hard it seems to be working. Always. Especially when it crashes, which is a lot these days.
-
[Shawn Miller] “Fast equals acceptable image quality, divided by the time left to deliver the project – the less time left to deliver, the higher the tolerance for lower quality. ?”
Ha! I like that view on the pick two from the cheap, fast, good, equation.
-
[Kevin Johnson] “Maybe they are waiting on intel/chipsets/TB3 latest hardware to come out?”
That would be my guess. The eGPU tests with TB2 and Sierra have been pretty impressive despite the slower I/O so I’m hopeful.
-
[Kevin Johnson] “Maybe they are waiting on intel/chipsets/TB3 latest hardware to come out?”
I’ve been running my WIN 10 PC on the latest chipset intel USB-c/ TB3 MOBO for three months. The tech is already out. No reason to wait.
-
[Michael Gissing] “The tech is already out. No reason to wait.”
There is in the sense that Apple makes their own boards using chips from their vendors. One of the AMD engineers told me at NAB “We give Apple the GPU chips, and then we find out what they get used for the same way the general public does.”
Is TB3 officially released yet?
-
[Darren Roark]”Is TB3 officially released yet?”
Yes. I’ve had it on my mobo for months and there are peripherals available including a TB2 to TB3 converter which I have. Importantly USB-c uses the same connector and auto switches. Apple would have had access to the chipsets and TB3 for as long as Asus or any of the many MOBO manufacturers who have had these MOBOs out for many months.
So I don’t see why Apple would wait until the other manufacturers had a six month lead if they wanted to release a grunt machine. It’s hard to see any reason to lag. I have heard of Hackintoshes using these MOBOs in the wild.
-
[Michael Gissing] “there are peripherals available including a TB2 to TB3 converter “
But there are no video periphs available, form the likes of AJA or Balckmagic. So while it may be ready, it might not be ready.
AS a litmus, do a search for Thunderbolt 3 at B&H. You don’t get very far without running in to Thunderbolt 2.
Now do a search for USB-C. Most of the stuff is adapting you to USB-3.
The cart is a little before the horse. It happened with TB2 as well.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up