Rick Lang
Forum Replies Created
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Trying to make sense of Aindreas’ last post, but it think he’s just about ready to buy the next round of beer so you wouldn’t want to miss that!
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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I can’t get the sound of Tim Cook’s voice out of my head as I imagine hearing him tell us that…
“innovation is never easy and it must be done right regardless of what it takes to achieve the perfection you expect and deserve from Apple… [excuse me! telephone call from the President conferencing with the NSA and Mr Putin] and that’s why our engineers are in lockdown until we can ship a machine that will forever change how you view your creative workstation architecture with a non-linear editor refresh that defines as possible everything you’ve believed was impossible at a price that will astonish. [excuse me! again: telephone call from the UN Security Council … Syria and Iran… ]. And one more thing, I’ll be right back with the release date as soon as I can; let me assure you, these products will be shipping, ah, as I have said earlier, ‘later.'”
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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The D700 compares to the AMD Firepro W9000 but there are many differences in that PC/Linux card compared to the completely custom designed card in the Mac Pro. I think it was Walter who originally pointed out, the memory in the W9000 is ECC while Apple doesn’t talk about the type of memory in their D700 so it likely isn’t ECC. That’s a significant cost savings. Although the bandwidth of both are the same, Apple’s card achieves 3.5 teraFLOPS while AMD’s card hits 4.0. Other differences include lack of Crossfire and I think I read at one point there is support for OpenGL 4.1 for Apple versus 4.2 for AMD but Apple include HDMI 1.4. And since this is a very custom card, we don’t know how much of the card was built by Apple and licensing the technology rather than buying the off-the-shell card that is built by AMD.
All in all, it does seem to be a very good deal on the Mac Pro.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Highly unlikely that there would be another OS upgrade, 10.9.2, before month end. I’m guessing there are going to be some people staying up to midnight on the west coast to check the Apple Store for the status of the Mac Pro order page.
’Twas the week before Christmas,
And all through the house,
Not a keyboard was stirring,
Not even a mouse…Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Walter Soyka] “Look at the Cinebench R15 benchmark results (fps) chart — the K2000 and the K4000 have the same reported frames per second, but bars of different length against the same axis.”
Just a typo I assume for the K2000 results, but I agree with your sentiments on all the hype that isn’t saying much clearly.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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I lean to agreeing with Marcus (again) that the trend is greater reliance on GPU for more uses. At this point a 6-core D700 looks worthwhile although a D500 could be the sweet spot in terms of value. If the applications that use the GPU are programmed to use what they can of the GPU (rather than assuming an arbitrary upper floor like 2 GB VRAM), then you’ll see real world benefits handling 4K and most anything with heavy calculations as previously identified. Even FCP X has had apparently almost all functions coded to take advantage of the dual GPUs and Apple has published some impressive performance improvements over a maxed out current generation Mac Pro.
As for those who don’t plan on doing 4K, if 4K proves to be very beneficial for keying, effects, improved detail and colour after downscaling to 2K or HD, you may find yourself working with 4K in post sooner than later. It does give you the option of delivering in 2K and HD, so don’t say your clients don’t need it: it may give you a competitive edge and that might accelerate your move to 4K. 4K is not 3D. By that I mean, 4K won’t make anyone feel disoriented, uncomfortable, dizzy or strain to find a good viewing angle. For your end viewer, 4K even downscaled is not going to be rejected if you offer it. Your downside will be more costly hardware and storage, but hopefully that’s offset by ‘more better’ clients who appreciate your work.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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The latest Geekbench 3 results running 64-bit Mac Pro 6,1 12 cores (maxed out): 33066
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/15/new-12-core-mac-pro-once-again-shows-up-in-benchmarks/Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Andre van Berlo] “I can imagine it it much harder putting 8 or 12 cores in such a small space which leads to higher manufacturing costs.”
I think the 12-core may be a somewhat differently architected chip as I recall, but I think the 4-core, 6-core, and 8-core chips may actually be the same chip. The 8-core just have zero problems and so all are enabled, the 6-core are failing tests in one or two cores and so those cores are disabled, the 4-core fails in three or four cores and so those are disabled. May not be right about it but your response and the others who answered my question are on the right track. The cost difference between the different options is not entirely influenced by hardware design as much as by the limited market for the highest core options and the frequency of core failures considering the transistor technology is very new and the densities are continuing to amaze. Thanks!
So I have a better understanding but will wait a month or two for benchmarks and feedback from the community to see if there’s a $1,000 of benefit to me going from 6-core to 8-core. If Peter Chamberlain from BMD draws the line in the sand for DaVinci Resolve 4K support at 8-core, well then that decision is easy.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Marcus Moore] “This is the question a lot of people want answered, and it will be really interesting to see the results across the spectrum of configurations.”
Very true, but looking at just the processor, it seems hard to believe that the performance of the 8-core CPU is worth three times as much as the 6-core processor. I know it’s complicated to answer when all the other variables are brought into play, but from Intel’s perspective, they think there is something in that processor that justifies the much higher price. Don’t know what it is when you examine Intel’s specs.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Bill Davis] “I’m ignorant of how “end of year” tax issues are structured in Beruit compared to Baltimore. Is Dec 31 the same thing everywhere?
I know that corporations are often decoupled from the calendar via “fiscal year” accounting – so Dec31 is just another date.”
Can’t speak for the world, but in Canada you can choose your fiscal year-end date for your business and it doesn’t have to be Dec 31st. Most people do choose a different date for obvious reasons. You can also change that date once by declaring a short year and then beginning a new 12 month fiscal year.
Notably, For Apple Inc, Dec 31st is the end of its first quarter so they aren’t under the same time pressure in terms of trying to meet that deadline as it has really no affect on their fiscal year performance.
Thinking about your original train of thought, the world outside the US now accounts for a majority of their revenue now and that may not be much different when it comes to Mac Pro sales either.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB