Mac Pro – Thoughts? Winner or Loser?

[Bobby Mosca]

Comparing this to what has been offered for years in the old chassis, I don’t see how this is a ‘fail’. We don’t know for sure about the GPUs. It doesn’t LOOK like they are interchangeable, but they are accessible front and center under the hood, which might mean something. (Maybe a special version just for this casing? Can’t tell.)

As far as everything else goes, no extra card slots and drive bays, and for that it stinks?

I liked some of FCP X, disliked a little more of it. That move is paying off with the giant deal in Creative Cloud. (I’m still trying to figure out the problem there. I’ll have to go ask them.)

I sympathize with a lot of the complaints, but I like more of what I’ve heard than what I dislike, so I’m looking forward to the release and will most likely get it.

And you can move this thing! I seen a lot of beat up Mac Pros in my day and those guys will be THRILLED.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Also, as someone who has put MacPros on airplanes, the overall size is very very nice. This is the most portable MacPro, ever.

DITs must be rejoicing all over the place.

[Michael Hadley]

Look pretty expandable via T-Bolt:

The next generation Mac Pro is the most expandable Mac® ever built. With six Thunderbolt 2 ports that can deliver up to 20Gbps of bandwidth to each external device, Mac Pro is perfect for connecting to external storage, multiple PCI expansion chassis, audio and video breakout boxes, and the latest external displays, including 4K desktop displays. Each of the six Thunderbolt 2 ports supports up to six daisy-chained devices, giving you the ability to connect up to 36 high-performance peripherals. Thunderbolt 2 is completely backwards compatible with existing Thunderbolt peripherals, and allows you to transfer data between Macs faster and easier than ever.

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/06/10Apple-Gives-Sneak-Peek-Into-the-Future-of-the-Pro-Desktop.html

[Nicholas Zimmerman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I am also curious about Resolve performance unless Adobe can get some serious Speedgrade workflow love going soon.”

I think Resolve is going to be one of my biggest reasons to get the new Mac Pro. At the moment I’m on a 3,1 8 core with a Radeon 5870 1GB, and I average between 10-20 fps, I’ve got no doubt that the new machine will absolutely blow that away.

The new machine really isn’t what I was hoping for, but I’m sure it will be fast enough that I won’t have any regrets. I am really glad I bought the Intensity Pro now, as I’m going to have to switch to TB I/O.

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Avid MC, PPro CS6, FCP7 – wasting away on my SSD.
I just can’t quit X.
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[Phil Hoppes]

Yea… 12 cores in a single CPU. I can build a board with 2 or 4 Xenon CPU’s depending on just how deep my pockets are. A single CPU with 12 cores has 24 threads. A Dual CPU board will have 48 threads. A Quad CPU will have 96 threads. I need all of the threads I can get. A single CPU does not cut it for what I do.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

From BMD forum:

“Hi,

We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this (the new Mac Pro) screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of.

We will have more details once the guys get back from WWDC and we get some more info from Apple on what we can talk about etc.

Overall we could not be happier!

Regards,

Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design”

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Nicholas Zimmerman] “I think Resolve is going to be one of my biggest reasons to get the new Mac Pro. At the moment I’m on a 3,1 8 core with a Radeon 5870 1GB, and I average between 10-20 fps, I’ve got no doubt that the new machine will absolutely blow that away.”

I’m sure it will be good too.

I am hoping, I can strap two of them together, turn them upside down, strap both of them to my back, run a series of batteries on a belt, and be able to take off from the cylindrical vortex created by the fans.

We will call it JetPacPro.

[Nicholas Zimmerman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “We will call it JetPacPro.”

Where do I put in my credit card number?

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Avid MC, PPro CS6, FCP7 – wasting away on my SSD.
I just can’t quit X.
————————–

[Steve Connor]

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “From BMD forum:

“Hi,

We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this (the new Mac Pro) screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of.

We will have more details once the guys get back from WWDC and we get some more info from Apple on what we can talk about etc.

Overall we could not be happier!

Regards,

Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design””

Then my answer to the OP’s question, at least for, me is winner!

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Robert Brown]

[Nicholas Zimmerman] “I think Resolve is going to be one of my biggest reasons to get the new Mac Pro. At the moment I’m on a 3,1 8 core with a Radeon 5870 1GB, and I average between 10-20 fps, I’ve got no doubt that the new machine will absolutely blow that away.”

I get around 70fps of 1080 on my 12 core with a GTX 570. And if you want even more then people are using external PCI boxes. Once again Apple has stepped away from the “Pro” world. I know people who hack sawed off the handles on a Mac Pro to rack mount them. What are people in on location type situations gonna do with this?

If I stay with OSX which I still like, then a Hackintosh will probably be the way I go whenever I look to buy a new machine. With the old Mac Pros you had an amount of flexibility as to what you put in there, I still find that to be important and don’t see the box type form factor as something that needed to be fixed.

Apple’s stock started slipping during the keynote. Can’t be good.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos