New Xeons for next year

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Clint Wardlow] “You are actually right about that. I think I was more irritated by the notion that I was able to buy a mac get five or six years (or even longer out of it) but Apple may be putting an end to that.

I know for a lot of folks on here constantly updating hardware is a something they have to live with (and their big bitch about the Mac Pro is that it hasn’t given them a decent upgrade in years). However for a small potatoes guy like me, having to upgrade hardware every two years is a killer.”

I don’t get it. Why can’t you get 5 or 6 years out of a Mac that you buy today?

And why do we have to upgrade every few years?

I’m a pro and I don’t upgrade every few years. 3 years is usually the norm. Sometimes longer. In the case of our MacPros, it’s going to be longer as I am trying to hold out for this MacPro replacement, whatever it may be. If worse comes to worst, we’d probably get fully loaded iMacs and deal with it for a while. I can buy Thunderbolt enclosures for my PCIe cards and limp through and those enclosures won’t go to waste.

It is becoming more and more clear that the software is demanding new hardware, whether that’s Adobe CS, Autodesk Smoke, FCPX, almost everything (except FCS3) besides Avid MC. If I am going to stick with FCS3, there’s plenty, and I mean plenty, of certified used computers to buy for a fraction of the price of a new machine. How am I losing out here?

On the consumer side, my phone contracts don’t let me update but once every few years without a huge cost premium.

So, let’s say that Apple DID launch a MacPro this year with newer Sandy Bridge procs. Then, not one year later, the new version of the “MacPro” came out with USB3, Thunderbolt, and holographic cloud fibre channel storage whizbangs. Wouldn’t I have been silly to not wait? This is the tough decision that I believe Apple has made.

Apple has actually given a modicum of a roadmap. We don’t know exactly where that road is going, but something is coming. That is a relatively new practice for Apple in telling their customers that something new is coming a whole year in advance, don’t you think?

If we can all remember to back when there was the PPC to intel switch.

What came first? Laptops and iMacs. The desktops came just under a year later.

Plus, nanotubes.

[Craig Seeman]

[Herb Sevush] “my next computer purchase will be in about 2 years, by which time I would imagine the Xeon Tbolts will have come out, and, if the market supports it, will be in use by everyone. Apple’s 1 year advantage will be long gone.”

I can’t predict the future (although you know I try) but things seem to be moving slowly on Windows TBolt. Those that have them (Lenovo) really aren’t promoting it. Maybe they’ll be a critical mass acceleration by then… maybe not.

I’m not sure how you can predict your next purchase when Apple hasn’t even released its box yet. It’s comparing nothing to nothing. You won’t know if you’ll like what Apple does until you see it… unless you feel either mine (or someone else’s) prediction on form and function are likely accurate.

[Herb Sevush] “This past summer I bought an overpriced 2010 MacPro out of necessity”

Not an enviable position to be in for sure.

[Herb Sevush] “But instead I was forced, with a dead computer and no options, to buy a replacement with 3 year old technology at no price reduction – the single most overpriced piece of shit computer I was ever stuck with. “

No argument from me there. I would have hunted around for a used/refurbished genuine 2010 model for less than the revisionist 2012 model with 2010 technology. If you’re using cross platform software that might have been the time to move to Windows (at least for that one box).

All my recent Macs are Bootcamped because I often need to use Windows software and sometimes it’s easier to with certain workflows. While that doesn’t give you the hardware flexibility of the PC (and that’s a major downside of the 2010/12 MacPros) but it certainly more cost effective for me to have boxes that run both OSs.

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] ” I would have hunted around for a used/refurbished genuine 2010 model for less than the revisionist 2012 model with 2010 technology.”

I’m not quite stupid enough to get one of the 2012s. I bought a refurbished 2010 from Apple – still around 3K that I would rather have put towards the 5-6K machine that I wanted.

If next year’s MacPro offering wows me, I’ll consider it, but it would have to be much better than any comparable PC or the single vendor factor will have me looking elsewhere.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Clint Wardlow]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t get it. Why can’t you get 5 or 6 years out of a Mac that you buy today?

And why do we have to upgrade every few years?”

Well, it is my hope that I don’t have to. But from your post (and I may have misunderstood), you seemed to infer that one of Apple’s tactics may be to eliminate the user that squeezed 5 or 6 years out of the same computer.

I have to upgrade because of bad timing on my part. I bought an i7 imac a year before they released Thunderbolt. This would be fine, but noe that I have gotten more heavily into AE, I am finding that complex compositing is pushing my system, even with 16 gigs of ram, to its limit. So I want to upgrade (better graphics card that takes advantage of Cuda and more RAM).

The delay in a decent upgrade to Mac Pro has left me in a quandry. Do I stick with mac, suck up that my imac under-performs in AE, and hope that next year I am getting the Mac Pro update I desire? Or do I just jump ship and eat the relicensing fees on Adobe (or move to Cloud)?

Either way I know it’s going to be costly and am hoping my next purchase will last me 5 or 6 years. But your points about software –plus a move towards 4K in video production– has me left me with some doubts. Maybe it is just the nature of the modern beast.

[Shawn Miller]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Well, what would OS support from Apple look like?

I was talking more about hardware support, like, “my computer exploded into a ball of fiery bits, send me a new one” type of support. ;)”

I was also thinking of the computer meltdown scenario.. if you take your machine to a shop in the Windows world, the first thing a tech wants to know is if you have a legal copy of Windows. If not, they won’t do more than replace faulty hardware or format your system drive. I was wondering if it was the same on the Apple side. If your Hackintosh goes South, can you still have it serviced by an Apple certified repair shop?

[Jeremy Garchow] “Have a look at the Psystar case.

In a place like Germany, it’s OK to sell a non Apple branded computer with OSX due to a EULA loophole in German law:

https://pearc.de/ueber-pearc-eng-1?parentid=72&parentname=ueber-pearc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PearC“

Interesting stuff, thanks for the links.

Shawn

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Clint Wardlow] “Well, it is my hope that I don’t have to. But from your post (and I may have misunderstood), you seemed to infer that one of Apple’s tactics may be to eliminate the user that squeezed 5 or 6 years out of the same computer.”

Me? When did I say that?

Let’s work backwards.

It is now October 19, 2012.

The computers that were released in October of 2006 were:

https://www.everymac.com/systems/by_year/macs-released-in-2006.html

If using your machine as a professional with people in the room, chances are, you probably aren’t using one of these machines. You could be, but you probably wouldn’t be.

But what is different about those computers than what Apple is selling today on the Apple store? Not a whole heck of a lot. The MacPro is virtually the same with more advanced components. The iMac is the same, except it now has a much faster i/o capability in Thunderbolt.

The MBPs are pretty much the same but limited to 15/13″ screens, but now have Thunderbolt

You have other options in the Air (which I would not consider a “production” machine, but it has Thunderbolt) and the Retina.

The Retina is locked down similar to an iMac but it also comes with the most amount of RAM available from Apple in a laptop to date, and also comes standard with fast SSD storage, as well as faster more plentiful connections in both two thunderbolt ports and USB3 as well as new display technology for Mac computers.

So why, all of a sudden, is this news to long time Mac users that Apple does not offer upgrade options to offer every single GPU/CPU option available on the market today? Leaving Thunderbolt out of it, their product line looks very very similar to six years ago.

Adding Thunderbolt back in, that connection offers a tremendous amount of capability/connectivity to machines that didn’t have those options six years ago.

And of course Apple wants people to buy more products, name me a company that doesn’t want you to buy more products. I want my paying clients to come back early and often, don’t you?

[Clint Wardlow] “I have to upgrade because of bad timing on my part. I bought an i7 imac a year before they released Thunderbolt. This would be fine, but noe that I have gotten more heavily into AE, I am finding that complex compositing is pushing my system, even with 16 gigs of ram, to its limit. So I want to upgrade (better graphics card that takes advantage of Cuda and more RAM).”

I’m sure you knew that when buying an iMac, there are few upgrade options and that even at that time, there was no CUDA support. Right?

An iMac is a locked down machine and always has been. Ae is not a speed demon, either. RAM will help, but the only thing that helps Ae render more quickly is raw CPU speed. Also, there is not a ton of GPU accelerated options available in Ae CS6. Ray tracing is one, GPU previews is another. A bulk of the rendering, is CPU. Perhaps an i7 is not enough, maybe you need more. You might find this problem on a PC as well.

[Clint Wardlow] “The delay in a decent upgrade to Mac Pro has left me in a quandry. Do I stick with mac, suck up that my imac under-performs in AE, and hope that next year I am getting the Mac Pro update I desire? Or do I just jump ship and eat the relicensing fees on Adobe (or move to Cloud)?”

Moving to the cloud would probably be your best bet. It is platform agnostic. It is a great value.

Why not buy one of those cheap PCs you were talking about? It will still be the same CPU as your iMac, or very similar. Maybe Ae runs faster on PCs, I don’t know.

[Clint Wardlow] “Either way I know it’s going to be costly and am hoping my next purchase will last me 5 or 6 years. But your points about software –plus a move towards 4K in video production– has me left me with some doubts. Maybe it is just the nature of the modern beast.”

Absolutely, Clint. These types of problems are not unique to Macs, although this forum seems to demonize Apple for some reason. I would have them look at the competition and realize things are just about the same, technology moves faster and faster, computers get old. A six year old intel PC would have just as much “trouble” running Ae CS6 as a six year old Mac.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Shawn Miller] “If your Hackintosh goes South, can you still have it serviced by an Apple certified repair shop? “

You aren’t going to get warrantied Apple support and replacement, no.

You don’t get the one year warranty, and you can’t buy AppleCare protection plan on a Hackintosh.

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So why, all of a sudden, is this news to long time Mac users that Apple does not offer upgrade options to offer every single GPU/CPU option available on the market today? Leaving Thunderbolt out of it, their product line looks very very similar to six years ago.”

I think there are a couple factors here: the Mac Pro update that wasn’t an update, and the recent rise of the GPU.

Apple was not selling eight-year-old processors six years ago. Until this year, hasn’t Appe offered the best of the current generation of Intel CPUs at each Mac Pro refresh? Apple has not done all the minor revisions, but they’ve never skipped a major Xeon revision before. Apple chose to sit this round out, and I don’t think it’s hard to see why people — long-time customers — who were hoping to upgrade this year might be upset about their options.

GPU matters way more now to editors than than they did in 2006. GPGPU (general purpose computing on graphics cards) didn’t exist before, so if Apple only offered crummy cards, the only folks who would really notice were 3D artists who could actually benefit from better OpenGL performance. There were a handful of GPU-processing systems in 2006 (this was one of the things I liked best about Motion!), but the majority of video processing was happening on the CPU (and Apple offered competitive CPUs).

[Jeremy Garchow] “Ae is not a speed demon, either. RAM will help, but the only thing that helps Ae render more quickly is raw CPU speed. Also, there is not a ton of GPU accelerated options available in Ae CS6. Ray tracing is one, GPU previews is another. A bulk of the rendering, is CPU. “

After Effects does need RAM. Gobs of it. 2-4 GB per CPU core. Without a load of RAM, Ae can’t feed all those sizzle cores fast enough.

With 16 GB for a quad-core, Clint is in fine shape. However, as he adds more CPU cores, he also needs to add more RAM.

You are absolutely right that Ae itself is still largely CPU-oriented, but if you do use the ray-tracer, the speed difference between CPU and GPU is enormous. Also, there are a few really important plugins that leverage the GPU: GenArts Sapphire (CUDA), Video Copilot Optical Flares & Element 3D (OpenGL), Mettle ShapeShifter AE and FreeForm Pro (OpenGL & OpenCL). I have been advising Ae artists to ignore their GPUs for years, but that’s shifting now and I think the importance of the GPU in this context will continue to grow over foreseeable future.

To Craig: workstations aren’t just about sizzle cores. They need to be balanced systems to operate efficiently. Fast CPUs are worthless without fast RAM and fast disks, and now fast GPUs. Fast RAM and fast GPUs require physical space and cooling. Miniaturization is difficult. Expansion slots are not the only thing that make workstation boxes big.

[Jeremy Garchow] “These types of problems are not unique to Macs, although this forum seems to demonize Apple for some reason. I would have them look at the competition and realize things are just about the same, technology moves faster and faster, computers get old. A six year old intel PC would have just as much “trouble” running Ae CS6 as a six year old Mac.”

Jeremy, I agree 100%. PC workstations are not cheaper, and they become outdated just as fast. Apple workstations have offered good value (prior to the current generation). You do have additional options available on the PC side, like faster components and better support, but technology change is cross-platform, and your hardware “investments” will depreciate fast no matter what you buy.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Craig Seeman]

[Walter Soyka] “To Craig: workstations aren’t just about sizzle cores. They need to be balanced systems to operate efficiently. Fast CPUs are worthless without fast RAM and fast disks, and now fast GPUs. Fast RAM and fast GPUs require physical space and cooling. Miniaturization is difficult. Expansion slots are not the only thing that make workstation boxes big.”

This is where I expect Jonathan Ive and Apple engineering to do their miracle work. My prognostication but only geeks will get what they’ve done when they release the box. Their approach to cooling will be the kicker.

[Craig Seeman]

[Herb Sevush] “I bought a refurbished 2010 from Apple – still around 3K that “

Hmm why not hunt for a used box on the market? Granted there’s risks with that. Given the number of people and facilities shifting to Windows (as people claim) there should be many boxes being dumped onto the market.

Apple’s prices are sick when it comes to MacPros given their age.

I think the issue is compounded in that even the iMacs are now aging. Some hope that changes on Tuesday.

It may depend on what one does but I’d imagine a 2011 iMac with quad i7 and passible AMD with 2GB might be a competent machine. Add PCIe chassis (cost depends on what cards you’re trying to rescue from a dead MacPro), one could have a reasonable box for under $3k including monitor. While it might not be a “lead” machine, it could get one through a year while one decides what to do about Xeons.