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8 core or 12 core?
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[Marcus Moore] “I’m sure I’ll get it someday…”
You’ll get it before we do!!! 😉
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Due to lease signing and the holidays, my order didn’t go in until the 26th. Ugh!
My shipping form still says February. That’s all I’ve got at this point!
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[Erik Lindahl] “I also think moving forward, … I think the main boost will come from GPU-acceleration.”
Erik,
While it’s good to hear about things like Red Cine X developing GPU support (if I read you correctly), it’s probably worth revisiting the GPGPU discussion around the MacPro for context.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/65215
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/two-steps-forward-a-review-of-the-2013-mac-pro/“Despite the hype, the GPU still plays second fiddle to the CPU, and that won’t change for most demanding creative applications despite Apple’s accomplishments with FCP X. A complete transition from CPU to GPU computing isn’t going to happen, … You can’t rely on a GPU the way you can the CPU, and developers already know this.”
[…]
“I have a deep understanding of how my hardware is used and what the limitations of the GPU are. Despite the accomplishments of Resolve and FCP X, this thinking about the GPU as a silver bullet for everything computationally intensive is actually waning. The inflexible and difficult-to-program GPU cannot replace the CPU for everything. While there are some exceptions that manage to tap both GPUs and the CPU for maximum output, those applications are not the norm.” (arstechnica)His concerns about development at Apple re: OpenCL are also of interest.
What I took away from that discussion is that a balanced system is still fundamentally important – CPU, GPU, and the software end that can use both efficiently. While the Mac Pro is certainly an interesting development, it isn’t clear what the trade-offs they’ve settled on will mean in the long run.
Seems like the system you want if you’re running FCPX, though.
Franz.
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I tested both a 12 core and an 8 core with Episode, an app that loves cores.
The 6 core converted an 60 min ProRes 1080i file to 720p60 xh264 in 75min
The 12 core did the same job in 57 min 25% faster
The last 2.93G 8 core Xserve did it in 94 min
John
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[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.
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).”
To me the ram, the SSD and the GPU’s were clear. The tough decision was the cores.
To me, the decision wasn’t between 8 or 12, it was between 6 or 8. In the end I went with the 8. It really is the sweet spot. So few programs can use 12 cores, and if they can’t, it’s the slowest in the bunch…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “[Darren Roark] “Looking at the price of the workstation PC versions of those cards it’s a steal.”
… and there’s the myth again.
Franz.”
The reviewer states “Interestingly the D700 (Practically a Rebrand) has not been physically disabled any further than the W9000 yet it gives about 0.5 TeraFlops less compute than the AMD FirePro W9000.”
So instead of 4 TeraFlops it does 3.5 which is a lot, otherwise it’s the exact same card that costs $6800 for a pair of them. Some theories are that the D700s are more like the gamer 7970 cards which still go for about $1000 for a pair of them. If you get applecare, you are covered on them for three years should they fail, so I’m guessing they must be pretty durable.
Since we have no idea what upgrade possibilities there will be in the future, the extra $600 for much better GPUs makes sense. Adobe, Apple, and Resolve keep increasing the importance of the GPU and I think it will gain even more importance in the next few years.
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I ordered my 6core D700 on the 19th and it has “shipping in february”
On January 30Th I got an email from apple(I was very excited to see that email!!) telling me it’ll probably be shipped in February and that they will give an exact date of delivery once it’s ready to ship.(but the happiness didn’t last very long…)
Don’t understand why they send me that email, as nothing changed in my status, is was “shipping in february” and still is…
Did you get an email like that?
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Nice. Video encoding can be very multithreaded. Was the above 12 core vs 8 core or 6 core?
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Ooops…
*6 core should be 8 core. We also have a 6 core but I did not set it.
Corrected below…
I tested both a 12 core and an 8 core with Episode, an app that loves cores.
The *8 core converted an 60 min ProRes 1080i file to 720p60 xh264 in 75min
The 12 core did the same job in 57 min 25% faster
The last 2.93G 8 core Xserve did it in 94 min
John
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[Darren Roark] “… otherwise it’s the exact same card that costs $6800 for a pair of them.”
Darren,
If you have more information (ie. that they’re “the exact same card”), please post. But I think less is known that what you assume. I’ll quote again from the previous thread:
I don’t know if anyone’s actually looked to see if the Apple FirePros have other FirePro specific features yet? Anandtech don’t go into things like 30-bit colour output (10-bit per channel, consumer cards can process this but won’t output it), Order Independent Transparency under OpenGL, ECC for onboard cache memory, EDC for memory bus protection, and various other FirePro only features.
(Rick Lang further confirmed that they 10-bit colour but since OS X doesn’t support 10-bit colour yet, you can utilize the 10-bit colour if you boot up under Windows.)
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/65215#65238
From your link (above), you can add the 7970:
D700
Stream Processors: 2048 SP
Memory Bus Width: 384 Bit
Memory Bandwidth: 246 GB/s
Compute Performance: 3.5 TeraFlop
VRAM: 6Gigs
Core: Tahiti XT7970
Stream Processors: 2048 SP
Memory Bus Width: 384 Bit
Memory Bandwidth: 246 GB/s
Compute Performance: 3.79 TeraFlop
VRAM: 3Gigs
Core: Tahiti XTI think the 7970 was released mid 2012, now discontinued, but it retailed for less than 500.00 I believe. The only differences between it an the D700 according to the chart are the performance and the VRAM.
I suppose you might be getting $6800.00 of GPU for about 1000.00. Or you might be getting something more like what you pay for.
Franz.
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