Franz Bieberkopf
Forum Replies Created
-
[Darren Roark] “… otherwise it’s the exact same card that costs $6800 for a pair of them.”
Darren,
If you have more information (ie. that they’re “the exact same card”), please post. But I think less is known that what you assume. I’ll quote again from the previous thread:
I don’t know if anyone’s actually looked to see if the Apple FirePros have other FirePro specific features yet? Anandtech don’t go into things like 30-bit colour output (10-bit per channel, consumer cards can process this but won’t output it), Order Independent Transparency under OpenGL, ECC for onboard cache memory, EDC for memory bus protection, and various other FirePro only features.
(Rick Lang further confirmed that they 10-bit colour but since OS X doesn’t support 10-bit colour yet, you can utilize the 10-bit colour if you boot up under Windows.)
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/65215#65238
From your link (above), you can add the 7970:
D700
Stream Processors: 2048 SP
Memory Bus Width: 384 Bit
Memory Bandwidth: 246 GB/s
Compute Performance: 3.5 TeraFlop
VRAM: 6Gigs
Core: Tahiti XT7970
Stream Processors: 2048 SP
Memory Bus Width: 384 Bit
Memory Bandwidth: 246 GB/s
Compute Performance: 3.79 TeraFlop
VRAM: 3Gigs
Core: Tahiti XTI think the 7970 was released mid 2012, now discontinued, but it retailed for less than 500.00 I believe. The only differences between it an the D700 according to the chart are the performance and the VRAM.
I suppose you might be getting $6800.00 of GPU for about 1000.00. Or you might be getting something more like what you pay for.
Franz.
-
[Erik Lindahl] “I also think moving forward, … I think the main boost will come from GPU-acceleration.”
Erik,
While it’s good to hear about things like Red Cine X developing GPU support (if I read you correctly), it’s probably worth revisiting the GPGPU discussion around the MacPro for context.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/65215
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/two-steps-forward-a-review-of-the-2013-mac-pro/“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.”
[…]
“I have a deep understanding of how my hardware is used and what the limitations of the GPU are. 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.” (arstechnica)His concerns about development at Apple re: OpenCL are also of interest.
What I took away from that discussion is that a balanced system is still fundamentally important – CPU, GPU, and the software end that can use both efficiently. While the Mac Pro is certainly an interesting development, it isn’t clear what the trade-offs they’ve settled on will mean in the long run.
Seems like the system you want if you’re running FCPX, though.
Franz.
-
[Darren Roark] “Looking at the price of the workstation PC versions of those cards it’s a steal.”
… and there’s the myth again.
Franz.
-
[Simon Ubsdell] “My point was simply that volume of sales and market share in the professional NLE arena don’t necessarily correlate.”
Simom, Agreed.
[Simon Ubsdell] “I suspect on no reliable grounds that FCP X has had huge sales to the wider population – a population that is vaster by many magnitudes than the tiny professional editing community – that don’t necessarily reflect its penetration or lack of it in the professional marke”
It might be (we just don’t know), but iMovie (to take one example) is likely more widely used (not least because of the iPad) – so if your point is about the value of widely used software, iMovie is proabably a better example. When you don’t restrict yourself to Macs (which, after all, are still a small fraction of sales), the picture of which NLEs get used, and how, becomes more complex still.
Franz.
-
Simon,
You do realize that the numbers I posted weren’t from his user survey answers?
But, rather, let’s instead assume that all his charts and numbers are utterly unreliable – a not unreasonable position.
[Simon Ubsdell] “X’s total sales to date have surely got to exceed sales of all other NLE’s ever produced combined – times a large factor.”
This is an absurd statement that comes across as grandly myopic.
Franz.
-
[Steve Connor] “I would argue that FCPX market share is already considerably higher than Vegas has ever been”
[Simon Ubsdell] “X’s total sales to date have surely got to exceed sales of all other NLE’s ever produced combined – times a large factor.”
Steve, Simon,
… based on what?
The Dave Dugdale breakdown places it as the most popular NLE of the last decade (in terms of tutorials), and the third most popular tool for users of his site.
“Tutorials online numbers:Sony Vegas pro tutorial 41m
premiere pro tutorial 34m
final cut pro tutorial 17m
Avid Media Composer tutorial 892k
Grass Valley Edius tutorial 35k”https://www.learningdslrvideo.com/nle-market-share-breakdown/
It seems to me that the “bottom-up” revolution in NLEs could well be Vegas.
Franz.
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “would you buy one yourself franz?”
Aindreas,
My workflows tend more to the offline/online model (or cutting copy / neg cut if you prefer) so I’m not really one to get hyped about GPUs as a priority.
On the other hand, I’m exploring a native RED workflow as an option. (The alternative being ProRes transcodes, or such).
I’ve no plans to spend that kind of money on my cutting machine in the immediate future, and no such recommendations to the people I work with. None of my needs are pressing, though, so I’m not really “in the fray” on this.
I’m interesting in where this all leads in the next five years, though.
Franz.
-
More discussion of GPUs, commenter Haravikk (page 4 of arstech):
“Re: Apple’s D-branded FirePros are actually Radeons, not FirePros
I’m not sure this is true; just because they don’t have ECC enabled doesn’t mean they’re not FirePros. … and besides which it’s not really a feature that most people need anyway.
I don’t know if anyone’s actually looked to see if the Apple FirePros have other FirePro specific features yet? Anandtech don’t go into things like 30-bit colour output (10-bit per channel, consumer cards can process this but won’t output it), Order Independent Transparency under OpenGL, ECC for onboard cache memory, EDC for memory bus protection, and various other FirePro only features.
Even if feature wise these cards are closer to Radeons than FirePros, they should still be rated for 24/7 workloads, which is most important of all.”
(Note this is mostly out of my league of understanding, so again, posting for comment)
But as a general perspective, there’s also this on Anantech, which seems to concur (though in less harsh terms) with the arstechnica conclusions:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/9“Since Final Cut Pro 10.1 appears to be a flagship app for the Mac Pro’s CPU + GPU configuration, … Final Cut Pro’s division of labor between CPU and GPUs exemplifies what you’ll need to see happen across the board if you want big performance gains going forward. … your applications will have to take advantage of GPU computing to get significant speedups. … A huge portion of my workflow in Final Cut Pro is still CPU bound, the GPU is used to accelerate certain components within the application. You need the best of both to build good, high performance systems going forward.”
Franz.
-
[Walter Soyka] “I guess they’re FirePros if AMD says they are, whether or not the match the specs of the other FirePros. … However, I’d argue that in this context, the name is just marketing anyway.”
Walter,
Yes, it’s just interesting to me that they’ve successfully generated a certain perception of the hardware, centred around the “FirePro” branding (before any specs were even known), and continuing even now.
June speculation:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/55178December effect:
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “The new rumors seem to be pointing to only $600 for the D700 upgrade, which assuming this meant both cards would be only $300 per card. The PC equivalent of this card is $3,500 and Tim Cook really focused on how good of a deal Apple got from AMD on these cards.”
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/62694#62694Another topic: did you read (at arstechnica) the discussion of OpenCL and Apple’s support?
Franz.
-
On the GPUs, there’s a good comment (first, I think), from user InfernoBlade challenging the popular characterization of Apple’s D-branded GPUs as FirePros; he claims they’re better described as Radeons (cheaper by almost an order of magnitude):
“Apple’s D-branded FirePros are actually Radeons, not FirePros. They don’t have the ECC memory enabled that is fairly key to FirePro vs Radeon with extra RAM, and oddly enough, they do have CFX support which the FirePros don’t.
6 GB GDDR5 Radeon 7970s don’t actually exist, but that’s what a FirePro D700 actually is, and the 3 GB variants are $300 cards now (well, when the miners haven’t bought all of them).
I don’t actually think the Mac Pro is an expensive unit, not with the PCIe SSD and Xeon E5 CPU stuffed in it. But pointing at $3400 GPUs that have ECC memory and top-end qualification isn’t really fair, not when Apple’s shipping $400-500 GPUs with the wrong label on them since OS X’s drivers have never actually cared about the ECC RAM and other FirePro/Quadro features. The W9000 is a very expensive part because of the niche features like ECC RAM in it.”
I don’t have enough knowledge to follow the comparison (thus posting here for comment), but if accurate it’s another bit of interesting marketing.
Franz.