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OT – is the “new” Mac Pro a failure
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[Herb Sevush] ” In the PC world, does a serious buyer consider a 2010 HP? I don’t think so.”
Oddly enough I was just doing that yesterday. Ebay does a roaring trade in refurbished z800s and there’s some damned deals out there. I was put onto this by someone else on the Cow though I forget who. In the end I decided to buy my own system because you don’t know exactly those z800s have been through over the years…
Slightly off topic- though it’s been touched on a few times through this thread- I think we conceed the PCs aren’t cheaper than Macs battle too easily. for $AUD2000 I get a PC with:
6 core i75820K
16GB of 2600 DDR4 RAM
4GB GTX 960 GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GPU
Samsung SSD and HDDs.On the other hand $2000 buys me a mac with:
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
8GB of onboard memory, configurable up to 16GB
1TB hard drive1
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
1920×1080 sRGB displayThose don’t seem very equivalent. Of course you get the monitor but I already use Dell Ultrasharps and wouldn’t swap for a Mac monitor. Having to purchase a new monitor every time you buy a computer seems insane to me btw. Just such a waste on several levels.
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It turned up too late for many and if people are now wondering what’s next then planned upgrades would make some nervous.
Personally I prefer to make my own PCs these days so I can do rolling upgrades to graphics cards like the Titan X when they turn up. I prefer the grandpa favourite axe approach. Many handles and heads later my twelve year old rack mount boxes are still in use and I get more than a few years out of i/o interfaces like my Blackmagic 4k PCIe card.
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[Gary Huff] “So what features does AMD enable on the D700 that makes it more than a Radeon?”
They usually have to do with clipping regions, buffering, hidden line removal, aliasing, and generally things that only 3D application card about. These are mostly enabled via the drivers. As I said, the game that they play is for their drivers to check a signature in the firmware of the card and refuse to install if it’s not the correct signature so you don’t get the benefit of the FirePro drivers with a consumer card like the 7970.
The cards are not completely identical either. The D700 has 6GB of RAM instead of 3GB in the 7970 and obviously if the TFLOPS are different there must be other differences between the cards. But that’s not the point. The point is that all FirePro’s are based on consumer cards and the difference is in the testing and tweaking of the drivers for professional applications.
[Gary Huff] “And why does building a Hackintosh with a 7970 in it make OSX identify it as a D700 automagically?”
Because the drivers are hacked to get around the signature problem.
I’ve done this. I had a GeForce that I converted to a Quadro card simply by changing 4 bytes in the firmware to have the Quadro signature. The drivers loaded. The new features were enabled. And the card performed like a Quadro because it had the same specs. Was it a Quadro? Hmmm… you tell me. I’d say it was a consumer GeForce card masquerading as a Quadro card because all Quadro cards use the same chips as the consumer cards. AMD is no different.
[Gary Huff] “And how does that negate my point in the first place? The point I made was that the hardware is still more expensive because the D700 is the 7970 hardware and not the FirePro”
Because the D700 is a FirePro because AMD says it’s a FirePro. You don’t get make that designation.
Here is the description of the D700 from GameDebate:
“FirePro D700 is a workstation Graphics Card based on the 28nm GCN architecture.
It’s based on the Tahiti XT GL (same used on Radeon HD 7970) and therefore offers 2048 Shader Processing Units, 128 TMUs and 32 ROPs, but on a 384-bit interface of fast GDDR5. The central unit is clocked 850MHz while the memory clock operates at 1375MHZ.It is thus considerably lower clocked and its gaming performance is even lower, as Radeon HD 7970 benefits from certified gaming drivers which unlock the GCN’s architecture potential while FirePro D700 is made for professional applications. Therefore, expect its performance to be similar to Radeon HD 7950 Boost Edition.“
Just because the D700 is based on the Radeon HD 7970 doesn’t mean it’s not a FirePro. My Radeon HD 7950 has the same specs as a FirePro W7100. Does that make it a FirePro? Can I load the FirePro drivers? Can I sell it as a FirePro and argue that the specs are the same therefore it should be considered a FirePro. I think not anymore that I can say that the FirePro W7100 is not a Firepro because it shares the same specs as my 7950. Specs don’t make it a FirePro. AMD makes it a FirePro by tweaking the firmware.
All FirePro’s have consumer card counterparts. You can hack the drivers to make them think a 7970 is a D700. That doesn’t mean you can substitute them in a build and call it a fair swap anymore that you can substitute a $200 AMD 8-Core for a $1,000 Intel 8-Core and call it a fair swap.
BTW, you might get a kick out of reading this PDF file from HP:
https://www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA5-0490ENW.pdf“>The professional advantage: Quadro versus GeForce
It attempts to explain why you should pay 3x the price for a Quadro over the exact same game card and all they focus on are the drivers, testing, and support because there are no “technical” difference. 😉
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
[John Rofrano] “[Gabe Strong] “Nvidia has made available web drivers so that you can install newer and much more powerful GPU’s in your old Mac Pro’s. How powerful? How about a GTX 980 Ti(6GB)? Or a Titan X (12GB)? Two of the most powerful single cards available. And they work just fine with the available power from the old Mac Pro’s.”
I wasn’t aware that any of the modern cards had a power requirement low enough to be used in the 2010 Mac Pro. That’s good news. Do these cards have the Mac EFI so that they work at boot time? I have a triple boot system so I need to be able to hold the Option key and boot into multiple partitions.~jr
https://www.johnrofrano.com
https://www.vasst.com“Yeah both the 980Ti and Titan X will work. Both connectors (6 to 6 pin and one 8 to 6 pin
adapter) are used, plus the slot supplies 75w. You CAN get Mac EFI on the card. You must
either be a computer specialist of the highest degree to write a Mac EFI for the card, or
you can buy a Mac EFI card from MacVidCards. Or you can send a PC version of one
of those cards to MacVidCards and he will flash it to the Mac EFI
for $180.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Gabe Strong] “you can buy a Mac EFI card from MacVidCards.”
Cool, I didn’t know about these guys. That’s something to consider. Thanks!
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
The Cinebench 15 database (cbscores link posted below) isn’t a perfect fit for everybody, as we have a wide variety of creative professionals here, but it might be useful for some. Workstations are benchmarked in terms of CPU and GPU performance, then the digits are stored online for comparison.
Worth a mention that the top render score from all workstations running OSX is listed as a Xeon X5680. If I am not mistaken, dual X5680 CPUs in a Mac … is probably from a common upgrade kit circa 2009-2012. There were (and still are) vendors offering to upgrade an 8 core “Nehalem” into a 12 Core “Westmere” at 333-3.46 GHz.
Jack Battiste
http://www.BattisteCreative.com
Retouching, Illustration & CGI -
[John Rofrano] “Because the drivers are hacked to get around the signature problem.”
No they are not. This is what Yosemite reports, there was no hacking of any drivers. It automatically reports the 7970 as the D700.
[John Rofrano] “BTW, you might get a kick out of reading this PDF file from HP:”
It’s all marketing that you’re assuming is absolutely true…but it’s marketing.
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[Bob Zelin] “The threat that in 2017, Thunderbolt 3 will be on these machines, making these expensive boxes (obsolete)”
so no early 2016 update that will include thunderbolt 3/usb-c?
That’s the MacPro I’d like.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Gary Huff] “No they are not. This is what Yosemite reports, there was no hacking of any drivers. It automatically reports the 7970 as the D700.”
That’s interesting. I wonder if OS X is making a best guess based on specs and not checking the firmware. It won’t be the first time OS X got the name of a graphics card wrong that it didn’t expect to see. It doesn’t help the Windows build because when you add the 7970 to the Windows build, it will not use the FirePro drivers. So you can’t substitute it when comparing systems.
[Gary Huff] “It’s all marketing that you’re assuming is absolutely true…but it’s marketing.”
Exactly! That was my point. There is no “technical” difference between a GeForce and a Quadro or a Radeon and a FirePro. The difference is that they use different drivers that have been tested and tuned for a specific set of 3D applications and given a “Pro” designation and better support. Those are the only differences.
The D700 is a FirePro because AMD has designated as such and it will use the FirePro drivers and get FirePro support from AMD. The Radeon HD 7970 is not.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
[Bob Zelin] “What DON’T I like about the 2013 6,1 Mac Pro ? The threat that in 2017, Thunderbolt 3 will be on these machines, making these expensive boxes (obsolete) (remember that all “old” Mac Pro’s are now obsolete).
“Why will they become obsolete Bob? I thought that thunderbolt 3 was going to be compatible with thunderbolt 2 peripherals – the only thing you couldn’t do is use a thunderbolt 3 peripheral with a thunderbolt 2 port….? I’ve possibly misunderstood this…
We’ve spent way more on thunderbolt peripherals than we have on 3 new Mac Pro’s, so having them useful for as long as possible is something we are very keen to do….
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk
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