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Author Topic: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8  (Read 22995 times)

BernardLanguillier

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Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« on: March 04, 2014, 05:57:29 pm »

Hello my friends,

I am glad to report that the new system is finally getting together following the arrival of the Mac pro 2 weeks ago and the set up of the Promise Pegasus2 R8 32GB.

- mac pro 2013 specs: 8 core, 1GB SSD, 64 GB ram, 2xD700
- promise pegasus2 R8: 8x4TB configured in Raid6 (24TB usable)
- nas Qnap 4 drive: 4x4TB in Raid 5.

The system seems much faster per the first tests I am doing, in particular on the disk side compared to my previous NAS solutions.

A quick check with Blackmagic Disk speed tests shows:
- NAS from Mac pro 2013: write speed around 90 MB/S, read speed around 100 MB/s
- Pegasus2 from Mac pro 2013: write speed around 550 MB/S, read speed around 500 MB/s
- Internal SSD Mac pro 2013: write speed around 960 MB/S, read speed around 900 MB/s

I did try to open a few 2+ GB files in PS6 and I get open times around 5 seconds that seem aligned with the benchmark disk speed. Opening the same file from the NAS took about 25 sec.

I am glad to see these results, because the analysis of my workflow crearly shows mass storage disk access speed to be the main bottleneck in terms of time spent waiting:
- generation of raw previews,
- open/save of large files in PS,
- open/save of raw/computed files in pano softwares,
- ...

Thunderbolt does seem to deliver on its promises in terms of real world speed. It had been 6.5 years I had not changed workstation, although I had upgraded the previous mac pro little by little.

More simple tests to follow including an end to end back from a shoot till pano completion time comparison with previous setup.

Some other comments:
- Full initialization of the 24TB Raid6 partition on the Pegasus2 took nearly... 24 hours...
- By default, the pop up blocker is activated in the latest version of Safari shipping with OX 10.9, which prevents the promise utility from reporting on successful completion of the initialization process. Since the initialization does not include a partition formating, the disk can still not be seen by OSX even after a successful initialization... which led me to mistakingly think that the initialization had failed. Just a warning for Promise users.  ;)

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: March 05, 2014, 02:00:16 am by BernardLanguillier »
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Manoli

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2014, 06:32:49 pm »

Bernard,

Interesting -  FWIW
I just ran the same test, out of curiosity, on a mac-mini i7 2.6 (2013) - 256 ssd - 16mb ram, connected via thunderbolt to a lacie 4TB raid1

raid - write speed around 140 MB/S, read speed around 144 MB/s
ssd - write speed around 410 MB/S, read speed around 455 MB/s

That's almost a 4x increase on the external RAID and double on the internal SSD!
Enjoy the new babe !

All best
M
« Last Edit: March 04, 2014, 06:51:18 pm by Manoli »
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2014, 03:15:00 am »

Bernard,

Interesting -  FWIW
I just ran the same test, out of curiosity, on a mac-mini i7 2.6 (2013) - 256 ssd - 16mb ram, connected via thunderbolt to a lacie 4TB raid1

raid - write speed around 140 MB/S, read speed around 144 MB/s
ssd - write speed around 410 MB/S, read speed around 455 MB/s

That's almost a 4x increase on the external RAID and double on the internal SSD!
Enjoy the new babe !

Interesting. You are probably limited by the speed of individual drives in raid 1.

Cheers,
Bernard

jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2014, 05:11:18 am »

I'll be curious to see how you get on with your new kit Bernard. Though having been extremely impressed by the speed of the recent MacBook Pros when doing heavy duty video editing, I'm wondering what the point of the new Mac Pro is for many people is.
For me, my MacPro's main advantage is that it neatly contains six hard drive and is expandable via PCI slots. Plus it functions as a handy foot rest for my standing desk :) - [which I also sit at]. But it's actually slower than my very slightly younger MBP despite having six more cores and 3x the memory, both are upgraded as much as they can be.
Functionally, there's not much difference between a Mac laptop, a Mac Mini and a Mac desktop any more, other than speed/power as there's no expandability in them. So I'm going to wait for the next MBP upgrade and see how they stack up for my needs Vs the new MP.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2014, 05:42:35 am »

I'll be curious to see how you get on with your new kit Bernard.

Functionally, there's not much difference between a Mac laptop, a Mac Mini and a Mac desktop any more, other than speed/power as there's no expandability in them.

Yes. For me RAM and GPU are the main reasons for going with the pro, but I tend to handle larger files than average, so my needs are pretty specific.

I was already not using the internal disks of my Pro 2,1 besides one for scratch, and the new SSD of the Pro should be much faster even when shared with the book drive.

Cheers,
Bernard

Manoli

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2014, 12:24:42 pm »

Bernard,

Am I right in assuming the Pegasus 2 has it's own built-in raid controller and how many of those disks, in your configuration, are striped - 5 ? Also, in your opinion, how much of a difference in throughput is due to Thunderbolt2 v 'plain old' Thunderbolt.

All best,
M
« Last Edit: March 05, 2014, 01:20:33 pm by Manoli »
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jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2014, 08:10:06 pm »

The R/W speeds of your setup do look wonderfully fast Bernard.
How much of a difference is there in real world usage, compared to your previous setup?
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2014, 08:41:28 pm »

The R/W speeds of your setup do look wonderfully fast Bernard.
How much of a difference is there in real world usage, compared to your previous setup?

Seems much faster (Helicon, C1 Pro,...), but I need to put a figure on that.

However I am running into problems under 10.9.2 with my 2 screens set up, cannot get OSX to set the Dell 30 inch at full resolution... :-(

Cheers,
Bernard

jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #8 on: March 05, 2014, 09:28:08 pm »

I had heard there are issues with the new MP, in particular with monitors. I can't link to the review from the UK's Mac Format magazine as it's not online yet.
But it was very critical for a Mac magazine and basically said to wait for issues to be sorted before buying, but then gave it 4 stars. !?!
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2014, 07:54:17 am »

I had heard there are issues with the new MP, in particular with monitors. I can't link to the review from the UK's Mac Format magazine as it's not online yet.
But it was very critical for a Mac magazine and basically said to wait for issues to be sorted before buying, but then gave it 4 stars. !?!

In fact, the problem was probably me not using the right kind of mini-display port -> DVI adapter. I had not realised that a powered dual link adapter was required.

I do now have one on order, I hope it will fix the issue.

Cheers,
Bernard

Christopher Sanderson

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2014, 10:43:17 am »

Could you post a link to that powered adapter?

jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2014, 03:30:08 pm »

I've been wondering how to do Thunderbolt to dual DVI monitors. Not been able to find anything online as of yet.
Surely that is what you need as there is no minidisplay port?
Or do you have to go TB to MiniDisplay to DVI?

BTW the power buttons location seems really dumb and awkward to access. I find the old one a bit tricky as I have my MP sideways under desk and there's not enough tactile feedback to find it easily by touch.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2014, 07:04:50 pm »

Could you post a link to that powered adapter?

I bought the apple one: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B001IF252C/ref=pe_492632_159100282_TE_item

It seems that there were early report of issues, but it seems more recent versions are ok. I'll let you know whether it works with my Dell 3007 or not.

It will soon be my second screen since I have just ordered a Nec PA302W-BK.

Cheers,
Bernard

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #13 on: March 06, 2014, 09:14:42 pm »

Any links in English. I've forgotten my katakana and never got around to learning kanji.  :)
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2014, 10:44:18 pm »

Any links in English. I've forgotten my katakana and never got around to learning kanji.  :)

Pfff... I had placed such high expectations on you... ;)

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MB571Z-DisplayPort-Dual-Link-Adapter/dp/B001IF252C

Cheers,
Bernard

jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2014, 05:31:38 am »

Pfff... I had placed such high expectations on you... ;)
I did learn to write and write katakana in a week along with some basic Japanese. Which was surprisingly easy, albeit with the aid of the best language book I have ever come across.  :)
But that was a long time ago and I didn't use it for long enough for it to stick. :(
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2014, 06:58:24 am »

I did learn to write and write katakana in a week along with some basic Japanese. Which was surprisingly easy, albeit with the aid of the best language book I have ever come across.  :)
But that was a long time ago and I didn't use it for long enough for it to stick. :(

Nice effort! :)

Yep, Japanese is in fact pretty easy to learn.

Cheers,
Bernard

jjj

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2014, 08:22:59 am »

Easy to learn, but very hard to master I gather.
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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2014, 12:19:05 pm »

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MB571Z-DisplayPort-Dual-Link-Adapter/dp/B001IF252C
Yes, I purchased one of those but did not look at the specs carefully enough. I thought 'Dual Link' meant that there were two DVI ports - thus allowing what I wanted: a single TB port/connector that would drive two monitors via DVI connections. Alas, that is not the case, the duality is: one DVI port and one paltry USB2 port  :'(

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Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2014, 05:23:15 pm »

I think a lot of people have been caught out by that Chris.
Apple's ever changing video connecters are a joke that is not particularly funny.

The Lightning connector isn't much better as attaching my 17 month old iPad to things is still tricky. And apparently they are starting to have corrosion problem too. Not sure why Apple cannot make good cables, particularly at the prices they charge.

Saw this the other day in article re corroding connectors.

« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 05:31:04 pm by jjj »
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