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Mac Pro – arstechnica Review
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/two-steps-forward-a-review-of-the-2013-mac-pro/
He seems to feel it’s a good video editing machine, and is otherwise “cautiously optimistic”.
There’s some interesting perspective on power on the final page (7):
“… if you work with Final Cut Pro X or Da Vinci Resolve, these are exceptional workhorses. … Apple has changed FCP to leverage dual GPUs and created a powerful dual-GPU workstation to push a narrative that says “the GPU is the future of computing.” … 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.”
[…]
“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.”
[…]
“If Apple tries to drive a wedge between the kind of creative pros it wants and the kind it doesn’t, then the company could find itself losing ground as things change. You can’t say “yes, run Mari” but “no don’t render on the Mac because we don’t do dual Xeon anymore”—it’s all or nothing.”On GPUs:
“As for the physical GPU—3D and OpenCL video users cannot be stuck with the same GPUs for the roughly four-year lifecycle of many workstations, so there needs to be some sort of upgrade plan. A GPU is very different from a CPU this way, and these expectations will not change. Having two of them is nice, but a competing dual Xeon workstation can accommodate four of the latest GPUs at PCIe x16, and the current Mac Pro design can only use one for all six displays. The need for mid-life upgrades will only increase as OpenCL takes over more of our creative content workloads. For all scenarios where the GPU matters, it makes no sense to have it be the same for the life of this machine.”On CPUs:
“This is the first generation of Mac Pros that didn’t match competing workstation machines at the high end for multithreaded work.”
[…]
But bring back dual-socket CPU options for people who absolutely need them. We won’t flinch at the higher sticker price—we just need the power. I know that these dual-CPU machines likely make up a small portion of Mac Pro sales, but they are crucial for many creative workflows. I’m not asking for my old tower back, but throw me a bone here—I just paid $6,500 for the same render speeds I had three years ago. That’s not revolutionary from any angle.”Franz.
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49 Replies
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “I just paid $6,500 for the same render speeds I had three years ago. That’s not revolutionary from any angle.”
This comment seems to make the point that he wants the Mac Pro to be a Batch machine. Sorry for the 70s mainframe throwback. There are better ways to spend $6,500 for example, a Mini render farm… Keep the interactive devices for realtime interaction.
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A render farm does’t always do the trick though. After Effects for example is a pain to run in a multi-machine setup.
On the flip-side, After Effects is again a software that scales very unevenly with a multi-core or multi-machine setup. RAM-previews are still not distributed for example.
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“I’m not asking for my old tower back, but throw me a bone here—I just paid $6,500 for the same render speeds I had three years ago. That’s not revolutionary from any angle.”
So he’s talking about dual cpu computer and also about that he doesn’t mind the higher price,… Then why did he spend ‘only’ $6500 on his mac pro? I would have understood what he was saying if he had bought the maxed out version. Or is a 12 core D300 $6500? (not sure about that, don’t know the prices by heart and the apple store is down for maintenance)
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A base 12-core machine costs $6500 yes. It should also handily beat any previous Mac. However, Arstechnica is very correct in the fact that the 2013 MacPro can’t compete with the higher end PCs.
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“Arstechnica is very correct in the fact that the 2013 MacPro can’t compete with the higher end PCs.”
do you mean similar spec’d pc’s or simply because the higher end pc’s can have multiple cpu setups?
I’ve tried to setup a similar pc at digitalstorm but couldn’t get it cheaper, but you can however get much more cores.
I don’t know if you can connect 2 mac pro’s and have them work as 1, in that case you could go up to 24 cores for 13k. But I don’t know how that compares to what you would pay for a highend pc.
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Per dollar the MacPro 2013 is competetivly priced but you simply can’t get a dual CPU (24 core) machine with 512 GB of RAM and four GPU’s. Heck, you can’t even get a MacPro with nVidia GPU’s.
Then again you can’t get a PC with the specific size and spec the MacPro holds. In general these are huge systems.
The theory of connecting multiple MacPro’s via TB2 would be interesting but as far as I know TCP/IP over thunderbolt is very unreliable. But the idea of a main machine and offload machine could be interesting for a certain audience.
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[Erik Lindahl] “The theory of connecting multiple MacPro’s via TB2 would be interesting”
Surely you would hit that 10/20Gbps limit really fast once you got past one or two though.
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Depends on what you do. Realtime FCPX-work it might not be optimal or work at all. However, imagine being to send off a comp in AE or a cut in FCPX where the secondary station does all the work. The only thing that would affect the main station is i/o.
For me having that type of setup would be optimal IF it actually worked and wasn’t a setup nightmare.
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[Jack Zahran] “This comment seems to make the point that he wants the Mac Pro to be a Batch machine. Sorry for the 70s mainframe throwback. There are better ways to spend $6,500 for example, a Mini render farm… Keep the interactive devices for realtime interaction.”
One point of a powerful workstation is precisely that — better interactivity. A 3D or comp artist should not have to throw a frame off to the farm every time they make a tweak in order to evaluate it.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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It used to work just fine. Not anymore. Previous versions of Qmaster could hand AE render jobs to clusters and other machines. In the latest version of Compressor (and Qmaster) Apple have killed all that functionality. It’s gone.
You now would need a seperate render manager (such as Squid etc.).——
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