8 core or 12 core?

[Erik Lindahl]

[Oliver Peters] “Or, if you don’t believe in the future of 4K mastering and don’t use FCP X near-exclusively, you could go with the 6-core and D500. Faster processors than the 8 or 12-core.”
This isn’t really true. Even if it gets a bit messy with base clock and turbo clock speed of the new MacPro’s it virtually looks as follows:

If 1 core is used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 90% CPU speed

If 2 cores are used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 97% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 103% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 86% CPU speed

If 4 cores are used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 97% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 95% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 86% CPU speed

If 6 cores are used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 146% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 138% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 122% CPU speed

If 8 cores are used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 146% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 184% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 162% CPU speed

If 12 cores are used
– 4-Core = 100% CPU speed
– 6-Core = 146% CPU speed
– 8-Core = 184% CPU speed
– 12-Core = 243% CPU speed

The 8-core will perform similarly to the 4- or 6-core offerings. There might be cases where the 6-core is faster than the 8-core but quite seldom.

The 12-core will only be fastest if 10 or more cores are fully saturated. This is quite uncommon in most tasks but for example video encoding or 3D-rendering can, with relative ease, saturate the machine I think.

Price / performance I think the 6-core probably beats the 8-core but on the 8-core you have similar performance in most tasks and decent multithreaded tasks should be upwards 25% faster.

[Erik Lindahl]

[Mark Dobson] “I’m still waiting for a New Mac Pro vs a topped out 2012/13 27” iMac comparison. “
We have a pretty much maxed out 8-core MacPro on order I will test against a MacPro 2008 that it replaces as well as an iMac 2012 I use at my home studio. Sadly this will be weeks or even months away seeing how Apple is having some production issues with the new MacPro.

[Erik Lindahl]

[Ben Mullins] “I noticed that too, that the more cores you want the slower the processor speeds are. Why?”
Basically each CPU as a threshold of how much power (W) it’s allowed to use before it starts to damage the system. Hence a 12-core machine has to be clocked lowered than a 4-core machine.

However, all CPU’s have the option of using their “turbo boost” feature which will change the picture above quite a lot.

4-Core Machines scale from 3.9 Ghz with 1 core to 3.7 Ghz with 4 cores active
6-Core Machines scale from 3.9 Ghz with 1 core to 3.6 Ghz with 6 cores active
8-Core Machines scale from 3.9 Ghz with 1 core to 3.4 Ghz with 8 cores active
12-Core Machines scale from 3.5 Ghz with 1 core to 3.0 Ghz with 12 cores active

As I wrote in another reply, the 4, 6 and 8-core machine will be very similar when 1-4 cores are used. The 6-core will have a slight edge at 6-core activity, the 8-core at 8-core. The 12-core machine will only be favorable when 10 or more cores are being used.

[Ben Mullins]

Ah OK, thanks Erik.

[Marcus Moore]

Well, I haven’t seen my ship date slip from February yet. But I also haven’t heard that people who managed to order earlier than me have started to receive theirs yet either.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Erik Lindahl] “Price / performance I think the 6-core probably beats the 8-core but on the 8-core you have similar performance in most tasks and decent multithreaded tasks should be upwards 25% faster.”

Thanks so much Erik. The barefeats tests are what’s most confusing to me, but there early isn’t a straight comparison of 6 ,8, and 12 cores with either D700 or D500 in all of them. But the 6 core D500 is faster than the 12core D700 in the tests they performed with FCPX/Motion. I never use the water pane effect, so I don’t really know what those tests mean to me.

https://barefeats.com/tube05.html

Anandtech’s review only had a 12 core.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/6

I need a jack of all trades machine, meaning it needs to do a little of everything (GPU/CPU/Both) and it sounds like the 8 core might be the best bet, although I’m sure the 12 core isn’t a slow machine and should hopefully be faster than our dusty cheese graters. As time goes on, and perhaps programs get updated for the newer Mac hardware, maybe the 12 core will be the better long term investment? Am I just lying to myself with that statement? I’m torn, and actually stymied. I have been sitting on this purchase for three weeks.

Jeremy

[Erik Lindahl]

Well, mutli-threading has always been a problem. A lot of apps don’t scale well or scale to 3-4 cores. Here the 12-core machine will suffer.

What’s more, currently the multi-core machines take a bigger hit in general performance due to poorer base and turbo speeds per core.

I’d say the 8-core is the current-gen sweet spot if you can afford it. Otherwise the 6-core. The D700 are a given to me as well as at least 32 GB of RAM (we went with 64).

[Jeremy Garchow]

I am planning on maxing out everything else (RAM, GPU, etc).

The 8 core does seem to be the sweet spot today, and Anandtech had the same conclusion.

Thanks for your insights.

Jeremy

[Erik Lindahl]

No worries. I also think moving forward, even if we get better threading in apps (RAM-previews in AE or dynamic link rendering in PrPro CC are a joke today) I think the main boost will come from GPU-acceleration. In video-land FCPX, PrPro CC and Resolve have shown this clearly.

Moving on things like RAW-decoding will move to the GPU I’m quite sure of. Already today RED CINE-X has support for this for RED RAW (given it’s still BETA) as well as Resolve has GPU-support for Sony F65 decoding.

Other features should also move there in due time. That’s where by far you can get the biggest boost in performance. Even a maxed out wintel-Xeon today might have 2X the CPU power than a maxed out MacPro 2013 in an optimal multithreaded scenario. If you instead run computational tasks on the GPU’s you’re talking multiple times greater increase in performance. It won’t work for everything but it does work for a lot.

[Marcus Moore]

8-core, otherwise maxed out is what I went with as well.

I’m sure I’ll get it someday…