Does This Kill The Mac Pro?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Philip Haynes] “2560 by 1600 is currently the output ceiling of a mac mini displayport/thunderbolt as it stands which is great for most folk.”

Is there anything higher? Just curious, I don’t really know.

I just went on Nvidia’s website and even their “ultra high end” GPUs max out at the same resolution. ATI seems to be the same.

So, is this really limited to a Mac, and a Mac Mini at that?

I know you can get 4k out of a Kona 3G and a RedRocket, but the display options are very very limited at this point.

Jeremy

[Philip Haynes]

really depends on your needs and workflow and how platform agnostic your workflow is.

For me and most of my clients the Mac is the cheap part of the environment, it is the software and the hardware that we use where the real expense resides, and the fact we have a stable and rugged workflow.

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Ha! I’ll take that as a humourous dig.”

Of course!

You and I have known each other and essentially “worked” side by side here for years. Let’s not let corporate decisions and indecision at Apple get under our skin so much that we can’t horse around about this stuff. Deal?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Luke Hale]

I have been jumping back and fort with operating systems for about a year. Different employers are requiring different workflows. I will tell you its not about fear of change, its just that macs work smoother and better. Comparable machines are no longer comparable when you have a different OS.

Im a lover not a fighter and I am certainly not a brand junky, but this is my experience.

Luke Hale
Producer/Editor BYU-I and Department of Energy
opticalsmarts.com (Just for fun)

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I think what Philip is talking about is the apparent limit of 10Gb on thunderbolt vs. Display Port’s 17.28Gb max.

Display Port supports up to QFHD (3840 × 2160) at 30bit and 60 Hz.

Obviously, this isn’t a problem at the moment.

One question I do have is whether Thunderbolt supports 30bit displays. All the good pro monitors from NEC, Eizo, etc. are 30bit now, but apple’s new thunderbolt display is still 24bit.

I don’t see why Thunderbolt wouldn’t be compatible with 30bit, but since it isn’t Display Port it doesn’t have to support any standards they don’t feel like supporting, and Apple has no personal use for 30bit color at the moment.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “I think what Philip is talking about is the apparent limit of 10Gb on thunderbolt vs. Display Port’s 17.28Gb max.”

Let’s also not forget that Thunderbolt is two channels of 10Gb, each way.

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “Display Port supports up to QFHD (3840 × 2160) at 30bit and 60 Hz. “

It does? Do you have a computer or graphics card that allows it or is that just the theoretical limit?

What Quad HD monitor are you using?

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “All the good pro monitors from NEC, Eizo, etc. are 30bit now, but apple’s new thunderbolt display is still 24bit. “

Be careful there. A lot of those are 30bit PROCESSING, not 30 bit display panels. Huge difference. Also, Thunderbolt in it’s current config is copper, once it goes optical, it will have more bandwidth.

If the GPU will send 30bit, so will Thunderbolt I imagine. Thunderbolt uses display port (and PCIe) protocols, as far as I can tell. There’s not a lot of true 30bit (or 10bit) panels out there at the moment, and not a lot of GPUs that will send 10bit. Just because a monitor has display port does not guarantee 10bit display.

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “I don’t see why Thunderbolt wouldn’t be compatible with 30bit, but since it isn’t Display Port it doesn’t have to support any standards they don’t feel like supporting, and Apple has no personal use for 30bit color at the moment.”

You do realize that Thunderbolt is intel technology, right? Apple just helped get it to market.

Bit depth in the display port sense, is GPU based. Thunderbolt is just the data transfer mechanism that handles the PCIe and DisplayPort protocols (again, as far as I can tell). So thunderbolt is in fact display port in part.

[Martti Ekstrand]

A.

I can’t see a iMac as a reliable option for me with long workdays of editing and rendering. My brother is on his third iMac for music production (with outboard Firewire soundcards), on both previous ones the motherboard died from heat exhaustion after a couple of months of instability. The enclosure is just too tight for sufficient cooling.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Let’s also not forget that Thunderbolt is two channels of 10Gb, each way.”

I didn’t forget. Don’t you forget that you can only have a max 10Gb in any direction for both DP and PCIe.
Marketing departments always want you to add both directions together, but that’s marketing.
Thunderbolt is a 10Gb a second connection. There is no way to send more then 10Gb of PCIe data and 10Gb of Display data at a time, in any given direction.

[Jeremy Garchow] “It does? Do you have a computer or graphics card that allows it or is that just the theoretical limit?”

The theoretical limit. At the moment you have to pay about 80 grand for one of those panels.

At the moment, Thunderbolt is more then capable of driving current displays, so that isn’t a problem.
However, it is not capable of replacing PCIe, and I hope to god that Apple understands this.

Cause if they don’t, we’re all screwed until 100Gb thunderbolt comes along, which won’t be for a few years.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “There is no way to send more then 10Gb of PCIe data and 10Gb of Display data at a time, in any given direction. “

Per channel. So, it’s 20 Gb total throughput, as far as I understand it anyway.

[John Davidson]

We literally just installed our first iMac edit system today. Pegasus 12Tb should be here this afternoon. Have to say I’m pleased and a little excited about it. It already seems swifter than our 12core mac pro. Probably won’t be so great on big AE renders though.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.