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The Cheese Grater is back
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[Bernard Newnham] “And Pixar might not be interested as it has no CUDA.”
You could always find out.
“We are thrilled to announce full Metal support in Hydra in an upcoming release of USD toward the end of the year. Together with this new release, the new Mac Pro will dramatically accelerate the most demanding 3D graphics workflows thanks to an excellent combination of memory, bandwidth and computational performance. This new machine clearly shows Apple is delivering on the needs of professionals at high-end production facilities like Pixar.” — Guido Quaroni, vice president of Software Research and Development, Pixar -
Some rational analysis.
Max Yuryev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Z4mM3wofwLinus Tech Tips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPiEpSMkzoo&feature=youtu.be– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Regarding i/o. The base model has similar i/o to the iMac Pro. It includes 4 TB3/USBC-style ports on the GPU card, but those are DisplayPort, not Thunderbolt, so they can only drive a display from these. You have to upgrade the GPU option to get more Thunderbolt 3 plus HDMI on the GPU card. The computer itself offers 4 TB3/USBC and 2 USB3 (USB connectors) between the back and the top. But Apple doesn’t specify how many TB buses from what I can tell. And two 10GigE ports.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Actually, the reactions from the target audience of this new MacPro are very positive. I have been making some calls since the announcement, and the vast majority of the people I know have told me they are going to buy a number of these machines once they are available. This morning, I got an e-mail from a friend in Cape Town who handles the post-production of BBC Wildlife in SA. Tons of footage, mostly 6K and beyond, with heavy grading in Resolve and audio sweetening in ProTools. I will quote his message: “The New Mac Pro is beautiful and everything you said it would be. As soon as it’s out in September we will be buying two of the maxed out models… FINALLY… it was worth the wait.”
This is not Pixar, nor a national broadcaster. It’s a high-end post boutique that is very successful. And he knows his clients are happy to pay a bonus for the best possible quality and performance. There are many studios like this one and, for them, 30 or 40K for a real powerhouse is perfectly acceptable (he currently uses 2 Linux machines that cost more than this).
So, before assuming that no-one will buy this MacPro just because you don’t need it, it would be best to realize that there is a very vast world outside everyone’s little neck of the woods.
I have watched the videos from Max Yuryev and Linus. I find Linus’s video quite rational indeed. I had not expected this kind of objectivity from him as he is a DIY guy who constantly bashes anything Mac related. Not really, this time. Max caters for the lower-end pros who will never need a system like this, not even the base model. So I don’t find his video surprising, nor adequate. A few months ago, I had a conversation with him because he pretended that 40K for a server is way overkill and that no-one would ever spend that much money on a NAS. Which made me burst out in laughs because I have clients who have bought +500K systems from Lumaforge because they found the price tag very acceptable compared with the competition. As I said: there is a very vast world outside everyone’s little neck of the woods.
– Ronny
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[Ronny Courtens] “As I said: there is a very vast world outside everyone’s little neck of the woods.”
Great post Ronny, Apple did something totally unexpected and amazing with the new Mac Pro and it’s good to get a view from a higher level 🙂
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But it’s nice to see that it still has a headphone jack ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Martin Curtis] “[Shawn Miller] “This is why so many motion graphics and 3D artists have left the Mac platform… for Redshift, Arnold, Octane and other Nvidia or CPU hungry applications.”
Mac’s back.????
“… The new Mac Pro graphics architecture is incredibly powerful and is the best system to run Cinema 4D.” — David McGavran, CEO, Maxon
“… Mac Pro is like nothing we’ve seen before in a desktop system…” — Jules Urbach, CEO and founder, OTOY”
Sometimes, I wonder if Apple writes these press releases themselves. Aside from the gag worthy marketing hype, I think this is good news for Mac users who were reluctant to switch OS’s to run these applications. However, I do wonder how many people will be willing to pay double to run C4D, Redshift or Octane on a Mac Pro instead of an Nvidia based workstation. ☺
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “However, I do wonder how many people will be willing to pay double to run C4D, Redshift or Octane on a Mac Pro instead of an Nvidia based workstation. ☺”
I am trying to figure this out. Are you suggesting a similar 28 core Windows workstation with 4 top spec NVIDIA GPUs, a similar computer monitor, and all the SSDs and RAM is going to be half the cost? That’s truly crazy if it’s true. “No one” will buy this Mac Pro, if you need all that power. It just doesn’t make sense.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Shawn Miller] “However, I do wonder how many people will be willing to pay double to run C4D, Redshift or Octane on a Mac Pro instead of an Nvidia based workstation. ☺”
I am trying to figure this out. Are you suggesting a similar 28 core Windows workstation with 4 top spec NVIDIA GPUs, a similar computer monitor, and all the SSDs and RAM is going to be half the cost? That’s truly crazy if it’s true. “No one” will buy this Mac Pro, if you need all that power. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Nope, I’m not suggesting anything of the sort. To get near or equal performance out of a GPU bound raytracer like Redshift or Octane, you don’t need a machine as highly spec’d as the new Mac pro. I run Redshift, Octane and Arnold on three machines; one with dual 20 core Xeons, one with dual 8 core Xeons and one with a single 4 core Xeon. The two dual proc machines have identical graphics cards, so Octane, Redshift and Arnold GPU (beta) perform more or less the same, even though one has more CPU cores and faster SSDs. The single core machine has an Nvidia M3000M so runs the same applications slower. I guess we’ll have to see how these renderes run Metal vs Cuda, but for around $3k US, you can build or buy a very fast workstation for GPU rendering. If you’re doing CPU bound rendering, you’ll still have to pay a premium for high core count Xeon processors, but on Windows and Linux you can at least get dual processors.
Shawn
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for those of us who write and edit for a living, a useful keyboard is essential – when you’re just typing how great FCP is, it may not be as important.
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852
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