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Author Topic: iMac Pro  (Read 30603 times)

BJL

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #120 on: January 15, 2018, 10:06:19 am »

https://macperformanceguide.com/iMacPro_2017-Introduction.html

Frankly, reading this, the iMac Pro comes across as a good machine but with a poor cost/performance ratio compared to a high end iMac costing a lot less.

I only got through the first few pages, which just document the rather obvious fact that the benefits of higher core counts are limited for some tasks. (My work rarely benefits from more than two cores, so what I want is the best single core turbo boost!)

There is also the silliness of saying that on one test, 8 core is only 15% slower than 10 and suggesting that this is a case against more than 8 cores: even with perfect linear speed scaling, 8 cores would only be 25% slower than 10, so 15% in a real world test does not sound so bad.)

Does the article get down to specific tests relevant to photographic or video processing?
« Last Edit: January 15, 2018, 02:13:40 pm by BJL »
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DaveRosenthal

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #121 on: January 15, 2018, 01:07:06 pm »

... Any chance of telling me what upgrades you got to your machine, as what you have I think will be perfect for me as well

2TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 10-core (base video card). I tend to delete photos aggressively, just keeping the keepers; if I was a huge-volume shooter I probably wouldn't spring for the 2TB SSD, opting instead for external storage.

Apple does not say it is the last level cache... Apple says it is the cache of chip, as a marketing trick. A Xeon-W has three levels of cache, L1 very small, very few kilobytes, per core. An L2 level, of just 1 MB per core of the processor, and an L3 level cache, in the case of the 10 core processor of just 13.75 MB shared between all the cores of the processor. Apple is just saying in their marketing material that the processor has 13.75 MB + ( 10 cores x 1 MB ) = 23.75 MB of cache per CPU.

Damn, you must be right. That is confusing, as that's not a standard way of talking about cache size. Maybe it was wishful thinking of me, but somehow I assumed that they unlocked a bit more cache to offset the underclocking.
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davidgp

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #122 on: January 15, 2018, 02:42:04 pm »

Damn, you must be right. That is confusing, as that's not a standard way of talking about cache size. Maybe it was wishful thinking of me, but somehow I assumed that they unlocked a bit more cache to offset the underclocking.

Well, I don't have hard proof, but it matches nearly perfectly with the rest of the processors comparing number of cores + cache sizes in intel ark database of CPUs:

8 core, Intel says 11 MB, Apple says 19 MB (11MB +8 core * 1 MB)
14 core, Intel says 19, Apple says 33.25 MB (19 MB + 14 cores * 1 MB) (here I'm missing 0,25 MB...)
18 cores, Intel says 24.75 MB, Apple says 42.75 MB (24 MB + 18 cores * 1MB)

This for me it is more reasonable. Make a cache changes implies that Intel is making an specific design for Apple, that will make the processors more expensive and I don't expect Apple selling as many iMac Pros to compensate that. Underclocking the processor it is just change a bit the internal CPU firmware or maybe at EFI level in the iMac.

Regards,

David

BernardLanguillier

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #123 on: January 17, 2018, 07:11:03 am »

Does the article get down to specific tests relevant to photographic or video processing?

Yes, it does.

The table of content is pretty self-explanatory.

Cheers,
Bernard

kers

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #124 on: January 17, 2018, 10:48:15 am »

I think i wait till i know what the 2018 MacPro / MacMini (?) will bring.

The speed gains of the harddisks are impressive. It is one of the main reasons the imacPro is faster than the iMac.
I am on an old MacPro but with the latest processors and harddisks 2018 will be a good year to switch to something clearly more powerful.

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Pieter Kers
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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #125 on: January 17, 2018, 09:06:20 pm »

Interesting positive take on the iMacPro from a video pro

Kirk_C

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #126 on: January 17, 2018, 10:27:01 pm »

Interesting positive take on the iMacPro from a video pro

Yeah I'd say that's what you call a 'Fanboy' review.

quoted:

"So, rather unscientifically, I started editing a project I had logged on my MacBook Pro to see if I would immediately feel the difference.

I did. Oh, boy, did I feel it! I mean, this thing is just silly fast. "


You think ?

10 Core Xenon vs a dual core i5. One would hope it's silly fast by comparison.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2018, 10:30:38 pm by Kirk_C »
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BJL

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #127 on: January 18, 2018, 09:15:42 am »

Yes, it does.

The table of content is pretty self-explanatory.
Ah yes, now I found the tiny TOC pop-up amidst the vast blitz of advertising links! And the answer to one of my questions is that there is no testing of software for video editing (or audio or virtual reality processing), because despite the general sounding site name "macperformanceguide.com", this is a still photography only site.

And the testing might fairly reflect the current state for still photography, and maybe the future too, if most or all of those tasks inherently have little capacity to use so many cores, or are limited by other factors like mass-storage communication speed.

Two questions remain:
- Which if any of these apps is adapted to make use of so many cores?
- In cases where they are not (yet), what is the potential for such updates in the future?

Still, it seems that my first thought could be correct: the high core count of the iMac Pro and these new intel Xeon processors is far more relevant to video, audio and virtual reality processing than for still photography.
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kers

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #128 on: January 18, 2018, 10:03:26 am »


Two questions remain:
- Which if any of these apps is adapted to make use of so many cores?
- In cases where they are not (yet), what is the potential for such updates in the future?

12 cores date back from 2008 so nothing new...
As i read and notice myself photoshop is still using only one core in many situations where it is easy to use all cores...
for instance;
If i do some action involving many hundreds of photographs it often uses one core at the time to do one image at a time...
So there is potential, but with adobe it will be 2030 i guess... or they have wake up to find out people are moving away from photoshop.

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Pieter Kers
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BJL

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #129 on: January 18, 2018, 12:25:01 pm »

12 cores date back from 2008 so nothing new...
As i read and notice myself photoshop is still using only one core in many situations where it is easy to use all cores...
for instance;
If i do some action involving many hundreds of photographs it often uses one core at the time to do one image at a time...
So there is potential, but with adobe it will be 2030 i guess... or they have wake up to find out people are moving away from photoshop.
Yes, there are some obvious cases for multiple core usage, like batch conversions. Could it be that, even with high core-count processors having been around for a while, rather few Photoshop users have been on such gear—or that Adobe mistakenly believes this to be the case?
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Kirk_C

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #130 on: January 18, 2018, 11:38:51 pm »

Could it be that, even with high core-count processors having been around for a while, rather few Photoshop users have been on such gear—or that Adobe mistakenly believes this to be the case?

Adobe has little to gain in market share and doesn't care about the limited number of users with machines using more than 2 cores. You can probably thank Apple for that point of view.

I've sat in meetings were managers and engineers weigh the added development cost vs the increase in subscriptions. That discussion takes about 5 minutes before they move on.
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D White

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #131 on: January 20, 2018, 06:09:36 pm »

I ordered a 10 core with 4TB SSD and 64 RAM and have had it since Dec 28th.

Disappointingly, a number of my image processing work flows are not much faster if at all over a 2014 iMac. Further, I am struggling trying to keep a stable network connection to my two Drobo 810n NAS units; a problem isolated to my iMacPro and not my Macbook Pro or older iMac. Apple is trying to help sort this out but no success yet.

It does save way faster and handles multiple open applications better. I guess it depends how a particular application utilizes the cores.
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Kirk_C

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #132 on: January 22, 2018, 03:48:27 pm »

Another speed test / review of the iMac Pro
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davidgp

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #133 on: January 29, 2018, 12:24:30 pm »

For those with an iMac Pro and so many cores, looks like Lightroom 7.2 will make better use of them: https://www.dpreview.com/news/6947305878/adobe-is-preparing-a-major-lightroom-classic-performance-update-and-we-got-to-try-it

Kirk_C

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #134 on: January 29, 2018, 11:26:34 pm »

The only notable improvement they found was in file export and not even close to the improvement Adobe claimed. Let's hope this is just the first step of re-writing LRC code to use modern computers.
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Neil Williams

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Re: iMac Pro
« Reply #135 on: January 30, 2018, 05:13:54 am »

I just had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who has run a small apple franchise in Phuket for over 15 years. He recommended getting a PC built just for photoshop and use MBP for everything else.
I will check and see what is recommended by the geeks as I am not a compute wiz kid
Neil
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