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Author Topic: New Mac Pro?  (Read 17271 times)

smthopr

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #60 on: June 04, 2019, 02:30:57 pm »

I'm not sure this new display will be good for photography or video work.  It gets it's high contrast from local LED dimming, and that might not produce accurate shadows, but might be fun for watching movies...But not for mastering them.
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D Fuller

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #61 on: June 04, 2019, 02:55:17 pm »

I think the biggest question is whether you need all “pro” features, otherwise you certainly can get similar performance for much less.

The question of whether you need all the features of this machine is a good one, but you cannot get similar performance for much less. You may be able to get performance that meets your needs for much less, but if you need massive multithreading, top level GPU performance, and lots of fast RAM, it's going to cost you.
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D Fuller

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #62 on: June 04, 2019, 03:29:30 pm »

Indeed, 12~16 cores, 128~256GB RAM, 1~2 high end GPUs, 2~4 TB SSD is probably the sweet spot here.

Yes, 2 TB/USB-C on top, 2 TB rear, 2 USB 3.0 rear and that's it.

To my eyes, the lack of USB 3.0 ports is the one screaming issue I see with the proposed specs. That will force the usage of a TB3 dock and my experience with those has been very poor in terms of stability. It also means that keyboard and mouse need to be wireless, and that is a major pain because they always run out of battery when you need them the most.

In the real world, all the time you gain with better performance can be killed with a single issue forcing you to re-boot your machine once or twice because the dock lost its connection.

Cheers,
Bernard

You could presumably add four more USB-A or C ports with an add-in board like the Sonnet Allegro Pro (if drivers are available by the time the thing ships) but it is a bit of a mystery why there are such a limited number of ports on the machine. After all, there are more on the Trash Can Mac Pro.

I'm fine with wireless keyboards, etc. But then, I have a pair of chargers with 32 AA rechargeables always available in my office.

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stevenfr

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #63 on: June 04, 2019, 03:52:11 pm »

BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #64 on: June 04, 2019, 04:01:40 pm »

The promise solution is pretty neat. I am very happy about my Pegasus2 and 3 TB Raid units.

Cheers,
Bernard

stevenfr

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #65 on: June 04, 2019, 05:05:06 pm »

Bernard

Will you get the new Mac Pro? Which configuration would you get if you decide to get it?

Steven

Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #66 on: June 04, 2019, 05:28:01 pm »

It sure depends on your own needs. I for one already know that my current workstation is as fast or even faster then most of the new Mac Pro options.

All I needed are 8/12cores, two pro NVIDIA cards and 128gb of memory. This gives me top performance in C1 and Photoshop, even though it’s sad how bad PS uses modern resources...

I do know that the benefit of 12 cores vs 8 is minimal more won’t do any good. (Always regarding the software I need to use)

The only drawback I have is no ECC memory. However, I can live with that.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #67 on: June 04, 2019, 05:58:41 pm »

Will you get the new Mac Pro? Which configuration would you get if you decide to get it?

I bought my current trash Pro 6 years ago and I find LR to be irritatingly slow on my Hasselblad files (LR issue obviously), so upgrading to a faster machine is appealing.

Assuming the workload won’t increase very significantly (resolution,...), a perfectly stable, fast and upgradable Pro is a tempting option that I could see myself using many years I have to confess. I am a bit disappointed the new pro isn't based on PCI 4.0, because that pretty much means the core components are already outdated the day the are released. It also looks like AMD may have been a better provider of high core count CPUs at a more competitive price point.

I would probably go for 16 cores, 192 GB, a duo of GPU and 4 TB SSD.... if I can afford it. ;)

On the other hand, I'll probably check in parallel what kind of discount I could get on an HP or Dell high end workstation...

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: June 04, 2019, 07:32:02 pm by BernardLanguillier »
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Chris Kern

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #68 on: June 04, 2019, 07:31:22 pm »

I bought my current trash Pro 6 years ago and I find LR to be irritatingly slow on my Hasselblad files (LR issue obviously), so upgrading to a faster machine is appealing.

That seems odd.  I'm also using a 2013 Mac Pro as my primary platform for photography (six-core 3.5GHz Intel E5, 64 GB memory, upgraded third-party 2 TB SSD), and consider the performance still to be acceptable on Fuji X-T[12] and Nikon D800E files.  Rendering is quick, slider performance is responsive, and even computationally-intensive functions such as Dehaze (only slightly more latency than the other sliders) and Enhance Details (typically about 15 seconds to render) perform quite well.  Some third-party apps that demand a lot of graphics accelerator compute cycles—e.g., Topaz Gigapixel—are quite sluggish, but I don't use them very often so they wouldn't justify upgrading to a machine with more powerful GPUs.

Seems to me the 2019 Mac Pro is a product designed for commercial video production and parallelized or graphics-intensive scientific applications—which, no doubt, is how Apple defines its "pro" customer base.  I'm sure they'll sell a lot of them since many of these potential purchasers (1) have UNIX dependencies or (2) have applications that don't run on Linux or (3) can't abide MS-Windows.

But to return to your original comment, my feeling is that either there is something strange about the way Adobe handles Hasselblad files, or something unusual about your software environment.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2019, 07:39:51 pm by Chris Kern »
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #69 on: June 04, 2019, 07:35:31 pm »

But to return to your original comment, my feeling is that either there is something strange about the way Adobe handles Hasselblad files, or something unusual about your software environment.

That may be case. LR is faster on D850/Z7 files (although I still find it pretty slow), the move to 100 megapixels per file seems to be pretty impacting.

I am also used to C1 Pro that is much faster on my system (export time is probably 3-4 times faster thanks to a great GPU implementation) so that may explain also different expectations.

Cheers,
Bernard

Chris Kern

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #70 on: June 04, 2019, 07:47:21 pm »

That may be case. LR is faster on D850/Z7 files (although I still find it pretty slow), the move to 100 megapixels per file seems to be pretty impacting.

Where is the delay?  Rendering?  I don't think the difference between ~40 and ~100 Mpx files should be very significant.  How much main memory in the box?  SSD for all files?

stevenfr

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #71 on: June 04, 2019, 07:57:40 pm »

Thank you Bernard and Christopher for your thoughts.

I don’t find my mid 2010 tower all that slow with my Phase One IQ4 150 camera using Capture One and PS. I use PTGui for the stitching. Ptgui is a bit slow stitching the 150 MP files. I only have 24gb of ram. The old tower is a 6 core 3.33ghz.

Steven

Kirk_C

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #72 on: June 04, 2019, 08:06:57 pm »

I am a bit disappointed the new pro isn't based on PCI 4.0, because that pretty much means the core components are already outdated the day the are released.

Seriously ?

The new MacPro will be so ridiculously fast I think you should just buy one and enjoy it.

Besides the fact that the PCIe 5 spec is going to be ready before PCIe 4 has even launched.



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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #73 on: June 04, 2019, 09:31:38 pm »

Seriously ?

The new MacPro will be so ridiculously fast I think you should just buy one and enjoy it.

Besides the fact that the PCIe 5 spec is going to be ready before PCIe 4 has even launched.

Interesting read, thanks.

I should just buy it then.  ;D

I was looking at the price of HP Z4 G4 or Dell Precison 7820 for the kind of configuration I have in mind, and they go for around 30,000 US$...  ;D ;D ;D

Cheers,
Bernard

BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #74 on: June 04, 2019, 09:33:22 pm »

Where is the delay?  Rendering?  I don't think the difference between ~40 and ~100 Mpx files should be very significant.  How much main memory in the box?  SSD for all files?

Everything is low from rendering to export. Files are on an external Raid 6 TB3 enclosure converted to TB2 with read speed measured at around 400 MB/s, so file loading should take less than 0.5s. Ram is 128GB.

Cheers,
Bernard

Joe Towner

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #75 on: June 04, 2019, 10:51:59 pm »

The Promise drive thing is a joke - really, who purchasing this is box is going to wait for platter hard drives?  I'm not joking, take the 16x PCIe slot, put in a PCIe bridge (switch) and give it 8-12 NVMe slots.  Or do it with SATA 2280 drives & put in a RAID controller.  It be a Vega II Duo card, plus a solid state SAN inside.  Ala https://www.amazon.com/High-Point-SSD7101A-1-Dedicated-Controller/dp/B073W71K4Z but with 3-4x the cards.

The size of the box means it's most likely going to be tucked under a desk or behind the monitor.  We've all become adept at doing the USB-C to USB-A hubs, so for most accessories, it'll plug into something plugged into the back of the monitor.  Apple is anti-port - just look at the MacBook or MacBook Air - and just know what you're getting into.  Remember that for every TB3 port they put on the machine, that's 4 PCIe lanes they've given up elsewhere. Xeon's have more lanes than the i series, but there is still a limit.
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Chris Kern

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #76 on: June 04, 2019, 11:21:50 pm »

Everything is low from rendering to export. Files are on an external Raid 6 TB3 enclosure converted to TB2 with read speed measured at around 400 MB/s, so file loading should take less than 0.5s. Ram is 128GB.

I assume your LR catalog(s) is (are) stored on the local SSD, correct?  That's about the only thing I can think of that might account for the performance problems you're experiencing.  I guess there could be some sort of Adobe pathology in processing the Hasselblad files, but that wouldn't explain your issues with files from the D850 and Z7.  I don't experience any behavior I would describe as slow with D800E files on my 2013 Mac Pro.

I had quite a bit of experience—admittedly quite a few years ago now—doing performance tuning on large multiuser UNIX machines.  Throwing more hardware resources at a bottleneck sometimes helped, but only if it was possible to identify a particular constraint that was causing a problem and resolve it with a targeted upgrade.  I would be surprised if additional CPU cycles or beefier graphics hardware would significantly speed up your rendering and export issues.  I'd be more inclined to look for a problem with the TB i/o channel.

BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #77 on: June 05, 2019, 12:20:15 am »

Thanks Chris, that makes sense, I’ll look into it.

Cheers,
Bernard

kers

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #78 on: June 05, 2019, 06:24:58 am »

I am using LRcc on a 10 core i9 processor at 4.5 gigaHZ. ( hackintosh - overclocked within limits and watercooling on the processor)
LR uses only the CPU but to the max and with hyperthreading- I read a use of 1900%.
Since more cores lowers the gigahertz there is an optimum- now- on year later- i thing i would buy a 12-14 core i9.
That speeds things up. Also i use the NVME 2TB for caching and storage of my ongoing work. the samsung can do about 2500Gb/s - Photoshop files are stored at about 1gb/sec
for archival purposes i use platter harddisks.
I have 32 gb ram- for my use 64 would be optimum-( photoshop with large files and ptgui) more would only be cache. ( maxed out = 128gb)
On other thing i could do to make my work faster is to have two NVME as a raid0- but have not tried that yet.
My system is now on an SSD but could also go to NVME. Apart from a faster GPU that would max-out the speed of my machine.
This whole system is beneath 4000€- it is the macpro we could use as a photographer but Apple will never make this.
PS
Hackintosh is not for everyone- there will always be some little problems...but for me it works.
Since the imac 2019 has arrived this would be a very good choice too... but you get the screen with it.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2019, 06:28:54 am by kers »
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Chris Kern

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #79 on: June 05, 2019, 08:51:29 am »

LR uses only the CPU but to the max

Don't read too much into the reported CPU utilization by the MacOS Activity Monitor or the command line top(1) utilities.  On UNIX systems such as MacOS, 100 percent CPU utilization does not necessarily mean the host system has insufficient compute cycles to process the load it is under.  The system's process scheduler will always try to maximize the use of the CPU.  One hundred percent utilization is more likely to be an indication that the system is efficiently using the available processing power than that it doesn't have enough of it—especially on a desktop or laptop system with a single user.
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