Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: jerryrock on December 18, 2013, 07:25:03 pm
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The 2013 Mac Pro will be available to purchase on December 19, 2013.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/12/18All-New-Mac-Pro-Available-Starting-Tomorrow.html (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/12/18All-New-Mac-Pro-Available-Starting-Tomorrow.html)
I ordered the base configuration of the higher end model, 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory, Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each, 256GB PCIe-based flash storage. I also ordered the Promise Pegasus2 R4 8GB Raid Storage and a 2 meter Thunderbolt cable. The total with tax came to $5,979.96.
The MacPro does not ship until December 30 with a delivery date of January 7, 2014. There is no expedited shipping option.
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We will finally get to see what some of the upgrade pricing will be and how long the ship time will be also.
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OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1866-memory) already has after market RAM pricing on their website for the new Mac Pro.
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OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1866-memory) already has after market RAM pricing on their website for the new Mac Pro.
Yes, but contrary to earlier claims, it is only up to 64GB and not 128GB...
Besides, it may not be that much cheaper compared to the Apple pricing if rumors are correct.
We'll know in a few hours.
Cheers,
Bernard
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We know now!
NB: Oz pricing.
What I'm after - 4 core BTO:
3.5GHz – 6 core
32GB RAM ($600.00 - which is less than $100 over the OWC price)
512GB flash
Apple Care
Total = $5,887.99
Which is pretty much what I paid for my 2008 MacPro back in the day. I'm a happy boy!
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Yes, but contrary to earlier claims, it is only up to 64GB and not 128GB...
Just one of the reasons I opted for a late 2012 8-core Mac Pro (which CAN take 128 GB of RAM); which I picked up a month ago for a bargain price of $2000 with an Apple RAID Card. I put 64 GB of memory in it and it owes me 3k. I have no requirement to purchase expensive external thunderbolt drive chassis either...
I just priced up the new machine equivalent and its over $8,800 here in Australia before I add an external Thunderbolt 2 Chassis....
There is smart money spent.. and then.. well you get my drift... ;D
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Hey Josh... I've got a nice new EOS 1D MkIV here if you'd like to buy it! ;)
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Hey Josh... I've got a nice new EOS 1D MkIV here if you'd like to buy it! ;)
LOL I have a 1DS MK3 here I am still shooting with! (its my 1DX back up :-)
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LOL I have a 1DS MK3 here I am still shooting with! (its my 1DX back up :-)
That's my set up as well.
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What are you all doing for connections and what other drive enclosures are you going to use.? There is some concerns if OWC memory voids the apple support for the computer. At least my apple var tells me so. I am going with the 8 core for some video work we do.
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I'm planning on a couple of these (which are listed to be available as bare enclosures here):
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/Elite-Dual-RAID
And one of these to connect my existing FirmTek 4 bay enclosure:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/thundertek/pxq6g/
The price difference (with exchange rates etc) is small enough that I'm actually ordering it with 32GB of Apple RAM!
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The first shipments of The 2013 MacPro have arrived earlier than expected. While higher end units (8 and 12 core Xeon E-5 processors) were seeded to businesses for beta testing and marketing, the stock versions, ($2,999 4 core 3.7Ghz and $3,999 6 core 3.5Ghz) have not yet been available until now for testing or reviewing.
Reports of first shipments being received before the Christmas Holiday are now appearing.
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/24/first-mac-pros-begin-arriving-ahead-of-christmas/ (http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/24/first-mac-pros-begin-arriving-ahead-of-christmas/)
Apple also upped my delivery date from January 7 to January 3rd.
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I was curious to try to figure out what the premium is for the Mac Pro after reading the New York Times article today. I got the specifications from the Apple Website and priced components out for a DIY build (though obviously without Apple OS) and it looks like for the high end: Xeon 12 core CPU, 64GB RAM, double AMD GPU (though not the one Apple has in the Mac Pro as I'm sure that is sourced to their own specifications rather than what is available to consumers), etc and I get a parts cost of just under $5K versus a retail price of over $9K as outlined in the NYT article. I'm sure the the mark up is more than that given Apple is surely getting hefty discounts from AMD, Intel, and whoever manufactures the RAM. I'm also interested in how they cool the Mac Pro and keep the weight down to 11 pounds. My current build weighs over 20 lbs and doesn't include nearly that computing power.
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I was curious to try to figure out what the premium is for the Mac Pro after reading the New York Times article today. I got the specifications from the Apple Website and priced components out for a DIY build (though obviously without Apple OS) and it looks like for the high end: Xeon 12 core CPU, 64GB RAM, double AMD GPU (though not the one Apple has in the Mac Pro as I'm sure that is sourced to their own specifications rather than what is available to consumers), etc and I get a parts cost of just under $5K versus a retail price of over $9K as outlined in the NYT article. I'm sure the the mark up is more than that given Apple is surely getting hefty discounts from AMD, Intel, and whoever manufactures the RAM. I'm also interested in how they cool the Mac Pro and keep the weight down to 11 pounds. My current build weighs over 20 lbs and doesn't include nearly that computing power.
After trying to match as closely as possible the specs of all the the Apple-sourced components in the top-of-the-line $9.6K Mac Pro configuration, including the GPUs, AppleInsider came up with a retail parts cost for a comparable MS-Windows configuration of $14,309: http://tinyurl.com/mrvyt24. Aside from the microprocessor, the items dominating the aggregate cost were the GPUs and the 1 TB flash drive—precisely the items which Apple, as a volume special-order purchaser, is ideally positioned to acquire premium components at a price unavailable to consumers.
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@Kris - Thanks for the link. You can get the CPU and memory for less than they did and I'm really questioning whether one needs to spend that much on the dual GPUs (I couldn't find these for sale and chose the the newest AMD GPUs which had less RAM per unit. OCZ is now bankrupt and owned by Toshiba so it's questionable whether that flash drive is still available or even needed. I'm still curious how Apple cools the unit with that CPU and dual graphics cards. Certainly in the PC DIY community we spend a lot of time and effort figuring out the best way to cool the systems (though gamers worry about this far more than those of us who just do photo editing). I'm still comfortable in saying that for just photo editing one can build a system that will run LR and PS just fine for a lot less money (video editing is another matter entirely). The only thing one cannot get at this point is Thunderbolt compatible motherboards for the Xeon CPU; they are available for high end Haswell CPUs right now but one would drop down the number of cores but it's still questionable whether most of us would really see the difference.
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What the Mac Pro has to be compared with are workstations from Dell and HP, not home made boxes.
Apple has obviously spent more engineer CPU time than any other workstation manufacturer when designing the new Pro. I would dare to say that this is pretty much the only innovative desktop computer north of year 2000. That must have a significant cost but it doesn't seem to impact too much retail pricing compared to parts list prices. It simply makes to other WS look way overpriced in my book.
There are many things Apple does I do not like, starting with the accelerated pace of OS upgrades, but the new Mac Pro gets my bravo!
Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.
I used to do that, now I'd rather spend time in DxO or PTgui. ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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I'm still curious how Apple cools the unit with that CPU and dual graphics cards.
Long ago, and in a galaxy far away, I had a conversation with a thermal design engineer for DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation (remember them?), about how to cool minicomputers composed of zillions of discrete components. His prescription was counterintuitive: "pack the circuit boards tightly." The objective was to permit the fans to move air very rapidly directly across the components. He argued that "empty space is the enemy of heat dissipation. You wind up creating little eddies and pockets of stagnant air that actually trap heat."
He was a member of the team that worked on the VAX 11/780, which was probably the best-known of the 32-bit systems of the minicomputer era. Also one of the noisiest. A couple of VAXen in a small machine room sounded like a pair of jet engines throttling-up for takeoff. (Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.)
Anyway, the heat-dissipation model of the Mac Pro appears to follow the principle explained to me by the DEC engineer, but not the example of the 11/780; according the the early reviewers, the machine is almost silent—even during operations that require high CPU and GPU utilization.
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What the Mac Pro has to be compared with are workstations from Dell and HP, not home made boxes. . . .
Apple has obviously spent more engineer CPU time than any other workstation manufacturer when designing the new Pro. I would dare to say that this is pretty much the only innovative desktop computer north of year 2000.
Dell and HP boxes aren't so much designed as specified with the components required for assembly, and badged with the manufacturer's logotypes. That's the great strength, and greatest weakness, of the WIntel machines. Because they're composed of commodity parts, at a given price-point they're all pretty much the same. But also because they're composed of commodity parts, selective upgrading is essentially trivial.
Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.
Well, I agree with your second proposition. I'm not sure about the first. I have a strong software background, but know very little about computing hardware. Still, I had no difficulty assembling several generations of Intel-based machines. (Mostly to run UNIX, but they all worked fine with MS-Windows.) The only real difficulties I encountered involved getting the high-tolerance mechanical parts to fit together neatly. The electronics always fired up the first time power was applied, and rarely experienced any failures.
For me, at least, the real issue is the operating system. I'm partial to UNIX—and, although Apple's variant has some attributes that irritate me, I find it a lot more congenial than any rev of MS-Windows I've ever run.
Although I also confess to deriving some esthetic pleasure from using Apple hardware.
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Long ago, and in a galaxy far away, I had a conversation with a thermal design engineer for DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation (remember them?), about how to cool minicomputers composed of zillions of discrete components. His prescription was counterintuitive: "pack the circuit boards tightly." The objective was to permit the fans to move air very rapidly directly across the components. He argued that "empty space is the enemy of heat dissipation. You wind up creating little eddies and pockets of stagnant air that actually trap heat."
LOL! When I was a post-doc at Cornell in the late 1970s we had a DEC PDP 11 in the lab with a basic teletype (the DecWriter dot printer had not yet come out) and this thing was loud. It also took time to boot it up each morning as you had to go through a bunch of toggle switch addresses and feed in punched paper tape instructions. To optimize things programming was done in assembly language and it was a PITA to do even basic things. I venture to say, modern desktop units have much more computing power!
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Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.
Not really. I can build a top end desktop PC in about 90 minutes and get it up and running in 1/2 a day. OS installation and configuration takes the most time. Once it's up and running it's pretty much maintenance free. I only use top end parts and in over a dozen builds (computers for friends & family) I've only had one defective motherboard at installation. I don't have to pay any money for a service contract (not that I've needed any, I can't remember and part failures in built systems). I've only done a little bit of pano work but my i7 build seems to handle stitching just fine. It's not clear in terms of how Adobe has optimized PS and whether the top end Mac Pro with 12 cores is needed.
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Some reviews are online now and as it appears to me the new Mac Pro is a mayor improvement for people working with video, especially 4K video.
The GPU power in this system is not yet used to its benefits by most software ( like premiere) except for ... Final Cut PROx.
For photographers there seems to be not so much gain over the 'old' Mac Pro. Only some programs use all the cores. Also you need to invest a lot of money just to get were you were before.. and gain maybe 10-50% speed.
A fully loaded iMac is almost as fast at much less cost ( core I7 4771,3.5 GHZ) -It also has thunderbolt so expansion will take the same route as the new Mac Pro ...Only i do not need the screen...
(http://www.macworld.com/article/2082515/mac-pro-late-2013-review-apples-new-mac-pro-really-is-for-pros.html)
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Not really. I can build a top end desktop PC in about 90 minutes and get it up and running in 1/2 a day. OS installation and configuration takes the most time. Once it's up and running it's pretty much maintenance free. I only use top end parts and in over a dozen builds (computers for friends & family) I've only had one defective motherboard at installation. I don't have to pay any money for a service contract (not that I've needed any, I can't remember and part failures in built systems). I've only done a little bit of pano work but my i7 build seems to handle stitching just fine. It's not clear in terms of how Adobe has optimized PS and whether the top end Mac Pro with 12 cores is needed.
I believe you, but at the same time you mention and I7. Building a Xeon computer with dual workstation graphic cards and PCIe SSD is not the same. Not all the component vendors carry them a so you need to add some extra minutes ordering :).
Back to the price issue:
People keep comparing build boxes with Xeon workstations. Normally is less expensive or competitive to buy from Hp, Dell or Apple that buying shipping and build the a Xeon workstation.
Also in the case of high end CAD you simply need supported configurations (you pay a lot for support, I am talking NX or Catia not autocad) .
Now if we are talking about a i7 box with a generic mother board and a GTX card …
Here is a compromised but comparison (they are an apple oriented site and did not mention about the performance difference of the ssds):
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/24/apples-new-mac-pro-a-better-value-than-the-sum-of-its-parts
And here other calculations, under the pressure of Slashdot :
http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/
Notice that this person does not use PCIe based flash but it's able to match the performance of the Mac by using RAID 0 (I am not sure about I/O per second).
I will not be surprised if buying Dell is better that buying the components too (or even better than the mac).
At today prices It makes no sense to build a workstation from components (for pricing, it could be that the person need something especific that Dell, HP and Apple do not provide) . Now, who needs a certificated hi performance workstation with Dual Cards?
I continue to believe, as you, that for most people an i7 and a high performance array and a pro monitor will do. Few people (audio pro, Red camera owners by example) actually buy PCIe cards (not talking about graphics).
Buying a good computer and changing more often is a better investment normally. You buy the old one to pay for the new and since your data is on the array switch time is not an issue. External arrays nowadays are faster than internal drives (and in the case of the old mac pro crazy faster than it) and have big capacity at low cost (use HD not SSDs).
So : It seems that the mac pro cost a lot of money but it's not that expensive, even more so if we factor the form factor (not because is great but because it's a custom tour of force)
Best regards,
J. Duncan
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LOL! When I was a post-doc at Cornell in the late 1970s we had a DEC PDP 11 in the lab with a basic teletype (the DecWriter dot printer had not yet come out) and this thing was loud. It also took time to boot it up each morning as you had to go through a bunch of toggle switch addresses and feed in punched paper tape instructions. To optimize things programming was done in assembly language and it was a PITA to do even basic things. I venture to say, modern desktop units have much more computing power!
In those days, we measured computing power in MIPS (millions of instructions per second). A top-of-the line PDP 11/70 was a 0.4 MIPS machine. A VAX 11/780 (the model I referred to in my earlier post) was the canonical 1 MIPS machine against which everything else was measured.
Comparisons between hardware of the minicomputer era and modern microprocessors are a bit dicey—and it's questionable whether "instructions/second" is still a valid metric—but one reasonable estimate I've seen pegged a 3.0 GHz core at between 1000 and 1500 MIPS. Your cellphone probably has a lot more raw compute cycles than the PDP 11 you used in Ithaca.
(And yes, we're veering waaay off-topic.)
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Some reviews are online now and as it appears to me the new Mac Pro is a mayor improvement for people working with video, especially 4K video.
The GPU power in this system is not yet used to its benefits by most software ( like premiere) except for ... Final Cut PROx.
For photographers there seems to be not so much gain over the 'old' Mac Pro. Only some programs use all the cores. Also you need to invest a lot of money just to get were you were before.. and gain maybe 10-50% speed.
A fully loaded iMac is almost as fast at much less cost ( core I7 4771,3.5 GHZ) -It also has thunderbolt, so expansion will take the same route as the new Mac Pro ...Only i do not need the screen...
(http://www.macworld.com/article/2082515/mac-pro-late-2013-review-apples-new-mac-pro-really-is-for-pros.html)
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Hi,
Yes and also the iMACs do have an NVIDIA GPU. Of course when software gets optimized the mac pro it will ibe far faster, but I am not sure how many really need the extra speed.
Final cut pro is a good example of what the machine can do, but we need to see how well Apple can move the other vendors to optimize.
I hope that Aperture is next on the optimization schedule, just to pressure Adobe.
OWC got there hands on the new Mac Pro. It seems that the CPU can be upgraded:
http://blog.macsales.com/22108-new-mac-pro-2013-teardown?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+owc+(Other+World+Computing+Blog)
At this moment is not cost effective (see my previews post, Apple component prices are super competitive with the exception of RAM).
Best regards,
J. Duncan
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The product information guide for the 2013 MacPro is available online and suggests that the solid state drive as well as memory is upgradable. It states you should disconnect the power cord when adding memory or SSDs. I assume any other upgrade would void the warranty.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1668/en_US/mac_pro_late-2013_ipig.pdf (http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1668/en_US/mac_pro_late-2013_ipig.pdf)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5_-sYIOD6M is a tear down of the new MacPro. It's a relative short video and shows what a nice job of industrial engineering and design with this product. The way they have designed the cooling is particularly nice and it's the first time that I've seen a computer build without a direct cooling fan on the CPU. From some of the technical sites I regularly visit there is a lot of discussion about whether Apple have intentionally underpowered the two video cards. The power supply unit in this computer likely is not strong enough to power it at a full load based on the specifications of the two GPUs and the CPU. However, that is likely only to impact projects that run at full load which would not be any type of photo editing. It's nice that they have designed it so that RAM and CPU can be upgraded easily. The highest powered MacPro is probably not needed for normal photo editing and at $9K one can do much better with a Windows computer in terms of the cost/performance ratio but that's just my opinion.
The only issue that I see is Apple's decision to go with AMD GPUs whereas I believe Adobe optimizes for NVIDIA.
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If you read this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/photoshop-cs6-gimp-aftershot-pro,3208.html
At page 7, Russell Williams answers questions about Adobe's view on OpenGL and OpenCL and how they use it.
Jim
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Jim, thanks for posting the link; I missed it when it came out. Also here is a rather lengthy discussion about the merits of NVIDIA vs AMD: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2253643 Personally I put an NVIDIA card in my most recent build because of previous bad experiences with AMD drivers.
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Alan, thanks for posting that discussion. I figure that since Apple has put AMD in the MacPro, it is in their best interests to make sure AMD handles everything as effectively as possible or it will negate one of Apple's big selling points for the computer.
With so many configuration options, thee are countless messages asking which configuration to buy or which configuration other people bought. From what I have read so far, 6 or 8 cores is recommended along with 512 flash, 32 or 64 RAM and the D700. The determining factor seems to be how much the software one uses will saturate the cores - not enough cores or too many cores will cost performance. Wish software specs actually listed how many cores are optimal.
Jim
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My stock 3.5 GHz 6 core machine arrives January 2nd along with 64GB of OWC ram. I already received the Promise Pegasus2 R4 raid storage. I also ordered the Seagate Backup Plus 3TB Thunderbolt desktop drive because you can use its Thunderbolt console to attach the internal SATA drive from the old machine for fast data transfer.
Anandtech's full 2013 MacPro review.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013)
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Jim, thanks for posting the link; I missed it when it came out. Also here is a rather lengthy discussion about the merits of NVIDIA vs AMD: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2253643 Personally I put an NVIDIA card in my most recent build because of previous bad experiences with AMD drivers.
Well: it's been found that luckily the new Mac Pro is dead easy to unassemble, repair and upgrade. Sure there's a reason behind the choice of a brand for the GPU compartment. Other than commercial aspects, I mean.
I don't know whether the new GPU connector could be freely licensed to nVidia or others, but ultimately the goal is to provide the better performance to the professional. Apple almost lost the Pro base. I bet they won't make the same mistake twice in a short time. :)
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The determining factor seems to be how much the software one uses will saturate the cores - not enough cores or too many cores will cost performance. Wish software specs actually listed how many cores are optimal.
Jim
It's going to be more complicated than that since the software will also have to take advantage of the two GPUs and it's not just the CPU cores that's important. I'm just a novice programmer and don't know how well the software that's important utilizes the GPU versus the CPU. The anandtech review that is cited in jerryrock's post above does cover some of this and maybe we will be seeing more improvements in software coming out. Not to open a can of worms but maybe one of the advantages of the Adobe CC subscription is to get timely updates to optimized software.
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One thing that looks promising is the fact that there are more standard parts (connectors and screws, etc.) so maybe there will be more upgradeable parts in the future for this computer.
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It's going to be more complicated than that since the software will also have to take advantage of the two GPUs and it's not just the CPU cores that's important. I'm just a novice programmer and don't know how well the software that's important utilizes the GPU versus the CPU. The anandtech review that is cited in jerryrock's post above does cover some of this and maybe we will be seeing more improvements in software coming out. Not to open a can of worms but maybe one of the advantages of the Adobe CC subscription is to get timely updates to optimized software.
Yes, it gets very confusing. Are real and virtual cores considered equally efficient by the software (e.g. if PS were to use 10 cores, are you better off with a 6 core using 4 virtual cores or the 8 core using 2 virtual cores)? You have three levels of GPU but how much parallelism is required by the software? From what I have read, one GPU is dedicated to displays and one to computations. If you get a less powerful GPU pair, can any overflow in computations be shifted over to the display GPU?
Jim
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One thing that looks promising is the fact that there are more standard parts (connectors and screws, etc.) so maybe there will be more upgradeable parts in the future for this computer.
From the tear down pictures and the reviews, the only things that are easily upgradable are the CPU, RAM, and the SSD. The twin GPUs are part of the triangular central core along with the CPU board so it's not likely that these are user replaceable (plus I think they are custom designed for Apple); thus these would need to be upgraded by Apple.
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OWC confirmed today that the MacPro CPU is indeed upgradable as they sucessfully swapped out the CPU for a version that Apple does not even offer.
http://blog.macsales.com/22188-owc-confirms-mac-pro-2013-processor-upgradeable (http://blog.macsales.com/22188-owc-confirms-mac-pro-2013-processor-upgradeable)
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OWC confirmed today that the MacPro CPU is indeed upgradable as they sucessfully swapped out the CPU for a version that Apple does not even offer.
http://blog.macsales.com/22188-owc-confirms-mac-pro-2013-processor-upgradeable (http://blog.macsales.com/22188-owc-confirms-mac-pro-2013-processor-upgradeable)
We have the announcement of replacements for the PCIe base flash from OWC, not ready yet buy coming:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7673/owc-to-bring-aftermarket-sf3700-pcie-ssd-upgrades-to-2013-macs
From the design of the Mac Pro it seems that having dual PCIe flash units was on the drawing board. It's not possible with the current xeons (just 40 lanes of PCIe) and will never be possible with the current mac pros (never say never, but I want to stress that there is no connector) it will be nice to have in a future upgrate.
Right now is swapping. What we continue to miss is higher density DIMMs maybe in the middle of the year.
Best regards,
J. Duncan
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To my eyes, the main value of this would be to enable instant swap of boot drive in case of SSD failure.
Is there an external thunderbolt enclosure fitted with the same type of connector?
This could be used as boot back up drive and replace the internal SSD as a permanent solution after a failure occurs.
Cheers,
Bernard
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To my eyes, the main value of this would be to enable instant swap of boot drive in case of SSD failure.
Is there an external thunderbolt enclosure fitted with the same type of connector?
This could be used as boot back up drive and replace the internal SSD as a permanent solution after a failure occurs.
Cheers,
Bernard
Hi,
No that I am aware of. Normally I use Carbon Copy Cloner for "instant recovery" but from an array. With 6 thunderbolt 2 ports the performance hit will be mixed, some extra latency but with higher bandwidth than the internal SSD on the mac pro :http://www.barefeats.com/hard179.html
I believe that the external box with the same connectors is a great idea. I will love for it to be something like the drobo (self configuring) so that we could not only prepare swappable SSDs in case of failure but also use the lower capacity SSDs when we but a new one.
Best regards,
J. Duncan
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I played with a new Mac Pro with a 4k display yesterday. I am impressed with the screen, but opening 300mb TIFFs and 70mb 3FR files, it really had a hard time rendering. Watching it render in blocks, and that was off the internal SSD drive, but I wager Preview isn't the best judge of performance.