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Author Topic: New Mac Pro?  (Read 17272 times)

Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #80 on: June 05, 2019, 10:44:14 am »

Honestly the biggest speed up I had the past few months are two fold:

- The dual NV RTX 2070 were a massive speed pump in C1. I can seriously say there is no WAIT at all for raw processing. Even on 150MP files. Here C1 is just amazing as it actually scales nicely! Currently, I work only with one QUADRO RTX 4000 as I do more PS work and here I need the 10bit support. (I would love NV to make it possible to use "gaming" and pro cards in one system)

- m2 SSDs. I currently have 2x2TB SSD 970 PRO for short term storage and working files. the speed is incredible. Saving, loading, processing and even LR benefits. I would wish something like a 10-20TB SSD would be more affordable. The difference to my RAID10 (20drives) over 1010GbE and my internal RAID 10 with 16 drives is staggering.

In the end the details are important. Honestly the speed difference between my 16core, 12core and 8core CPUs isn't that important compared to the aspects above.
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Christopher Hauser
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kers

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #81 on: June 05, 2019, 12:25:44 pm »

Honestly the biggest speed up I had the past few months are two fold:

- The dual NV RTX 2070 were a massive speed pump in C1. I can seriously say there is no WAIT at all for raw processing. Even on 150MP files. Here C1 is just amazing as it actually scales nicely! Currently, I work only with one QUADRO RTX 4000 as I do more PS work and here I need the 10bit support. (I would love NV to make it possible to use "gaming" and pro cards in one system)

- m2 SSDs. I currently have 2x2TB SSD 970 PRO for short term storage and working files. the speed is incredible. Saving, loading, processing and even LR benefits. I would wish something like a 10-20TB SSD would be more affordable. The difference to my RAID10 (20drives) over 1010GbE and my internal RAID 10 with 16 drives is staggering.

In the end the details are important. Honestly the speed difference between my 16core, 12core and 8core CPUs isn't that important compared to the aspects above.

Completely agree about the NVME.
C1 uses the GPU and Lightroom the CPU.
In the latter case the amount of cores IS important. Then it develops more Raw images at the same time.
The new Macpro uses xeon cpu's - very reliable, combined with buffered RAM. but also very expensive and usually one generation behind the core i9 and i7 when it comes to speed.
If i did scientific work i would choose Xeons- but as a photographer i can do with the core i9.
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faberryman

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #82 on: June 05, 2019, 12:31:26 pm »

I would probably go for 16 cores, 192 GB, a duo of GPU and 4 TB SSD.... if I can afford it. ;)
Why do you need 192GB of RAM and dual GPUs?
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Christopher

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #83 on: June 05, 2019, 01:28:31 pm »

Why do you need 192GB of RAM and dual GPUs?

My guess because C1 uses two GPUs and he sometimes needs more memory for PS than 128GB ;)
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Christopher Hauser
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faberryman

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #84 on: June 05, 2019, 03:18:28 pm »

My guess because C1 uses two GPUs and he sometimes needs more memory for PS than 128GB ;)
Just because C1 can use two GPUs doesn't mean he needs two GPUs. What size files does he work on that need more than 128GB RAM?
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #85 on: June 05, 2019, 04:26:36 pm »

Just because C1 can use two GPUs doesn't mean he needs two GPUs. What size files does he work on that need more than 128GB RAM?

Indeed, C1 pro, as well as PTgui, make good use of all available GPU power and are simply in a totally different league performance wise compared to LR. Probably something like 5-10 CPU years ahead... just ridiculous.

The motivation for the amount of memory is 4 fold:
- more cores need more memory and I believe that with 16 cores 192GB is the bare minimum. That’s a fact of life some people dreaming of 32 or 64 cores AMD Threadripper machine are not always fully aware of... you would typically need at least 256/512 GB of RAM with those. You will have noticed that all Apple benchmark results were done on a pro with 384 GB ram. For the same reason I believe
- I currently use 128 GB with 8 cores and have run out of ram many times when working concurrently on raw conversion, stitching, dof stacking and PS
- since the CPU needs 6 modules the choice is btw 96 and 192 and 96 is too little with 16 cores (that’s only 6 GB per core)
- since ram is user upgradable, I expect OWC to come up quickly with much cheaper ram modules. As a result the amount of ram is likely to have a lower impact on price compared to other components

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: June 05, 2019, 04:54:00 pm by BernardLanguillier »
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32BT

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #86 on: June 05, 2019, 04:35:57 pm »


- I currently use 128 GB and have run out of ram many times when working concurrently on raw conversion, stitching, dof stacking and PS
- since the CPU needs 6 modules the choice is btw 96 and 192 and 96 is too little with 16 cores (that’s only 6 GB per core)
- since ram is user upgradable, I expect OWC to come up quickly with much cheaper ram modules. As a result the amount of ram is likely to have a lower impact on price compared to other components

Cheers,
Bernard

So, the question basically comes down to this: how many mac minis can you have working for you for the price of that monster? If you want, I can always glue them into one chunk of aluminium casing. For a modest fee, of course. ;-)
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #87 on: June 05, 2019, 04:42:10 pm »

So, the question basically comes down to this: how many mac minis can you have working for you for the price of that monster? If you want, I can always glue them into one chunk of aluminium casing. For a modest fee, of course. ;-)

Do you provide the glue or should I procure it?

Cheers,
Bernard

faberryman

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #88 on: June 05, 2019, 04:45:49 pm »

So, the question basically comes down to this: how many mac minis can you have working for you for the price of that monster? If you want, I can always glue them into one chunk of aluminium casing. For a modest fee, of course. ;-)
The Mac Minis only have integrated graphics.
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32BT

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #89 on: June 05, 2019, 04:51:11 pm »

The Mac Minis only have integrated graphics.

Yeah, that was one downside. Plus, didn't they use shared memory for graphics?
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ColourPhil

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #90 on: June 06, 2019, 04:17:37 am »

Yeah, that was one downside. Plus, didn't they use shared memory for graphics?
They do indeed. I believe, could well be wrong, that there is only 1.5 gb used by the GPU, even if 64 gb is installed.
Phil

kers

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #91 on: June 07, 2019, 06:50:56 am »

Indeed, C1 pro, as well as PTgui, make good use of all available GPU power and are simply in a totally different league performance wise compared to LR. Probably something like 5-10 CPU years ahead... just ridiculous.

The motivation for the amount of memory is 4 fold:
- more cores need more memory and I believe that with 16 cores 192GB is the bare minimum. That’s a fact of life some people dreaming of 32 or 64 cores AMD Threadripper machine are not always fully aware of... you would typically need at least 256/512 GB of RAM with those. You will have noticed that all Apple benchmark results were done on a pro with 384 GB ram. For the same reason I believe
- I currently use 128 GB with 8 cores and have run out of ram many times when working concurrently on raw conversion, stitching, dof stacking and PS
- since the CPU needs 6 modules the choice is btw 96 and 192 and 96 is too little with 16 cores (that’s only 6 GB per core)
- since ram is user upgradable, I expect OWC to come up quickly with much cheaper ram modules. As a result the amount of ram is likely to have a lower impact on price compared to other components

Cheers,
Bernard

It is some programs- Photoshop for one- that are not very efficient in using RAM memory. Photoshop never releases RAM until you do it by hand. I guess it is all cache-memory it stores.
Ptgui is an example that releases RAM as soon as its no longer needed. It works very efficient. Photoshop could be so much more efficient (also on other fronts).
The people at Adobe neglect it since photoshop 3(?) Maybe because it is of no direct commercial value- or maybe they are afraid to open a can of old-software-worms...
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Rajan Parrikar

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #92 on: June 09, 2019, 07:58:28 am »

For photographic work and basic video editing, a 10 or 12 core iMac Pro packs a lot of power and is a much better value.

Dan Wells

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #93 on: June 10, 2019, 10:11:28 am »

The new Mac Pro, like all ultra-high end workstations, is a terrible deal in its base configuration, because so much of the base cost goes to support upgrades. The case and cooling system on that monster are probably $1000 on their own and the 1.4 KW power supply is at least another $500. A high-end Corsair 1.4 KW power supply for gaming systems is $500, and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple's using something a step above that. The motherboard has more expansion and features than a $1600 Asus Dominus Extreme that uses the same socket. There's half the cost of the base model with no CPU, GPU, RAM or SSD.

Every one of those "infrastructure" components is enormous overkill for the base 8-core system with 32 GB of RAM, one modest GPU and a 256 GB SSD. A $3000 iMac supports those specs just fine, and it comes with a nice display. What Apple's done with the base configuration is picked components that work for use cases that stress other parts of the system.

A high-end music production system might need a 28-core CPU and half a terabyte of RAM (the Mac Pro will swallow both easily), but the $200 GPU is just fine - it just needs to put the controls on the screen, and a Radeon 580X is fine for that even at high resolution.

Conversely, a 3D modeling system might do all the work on the GPUs - the CPU really just runs macOS and displays the interface. An 8-core CPU can handle that just fine, and twin Vega II Duo GPUs are what's doing the work.

There are even some applications that don't need much RAM (small, fast scientific or financial models that run largely in the processor cache). They want high-cache multicore processors and sometimes powerful GPUs as well, but not RAM - SSD requirements vary.

For Hollywood-level editing, a 28-core system with half a terabyte of RAM and quad GPUs makes sense - but the lead actors make more than the cost of a lead editor's workstation in a day of shooting.

The one configuration that doesn't make sense is the base configuration - it's a $6000 computer that performs like a $3000 computer, because it contains $3000 worth of "plumbing" to support upgrades. HP's Z8 comes in an even more absurd base configuration - they'll sell you a $3000 computer that performs like a $500 computer. It has a slow quad-core processor, 8 GB of RAM, some GPU even slower than Apple uses and a 1 TB hard drive. Any desktop Core i3 box is faster - but the Core i3 can't take all the upgrades.
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hubell

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #94 on: June 10, 2019, 10:52:54 am »

Can the video cards in the 2013 Mac Pro be upgraded to work with the new 6K Mac Pro Display XDR? I gather that the Mac Mini will not support a 6K display. Or, is the new Mac Pro the only Apple computer that will drive the new Mac Pro Display XDR?

Dan Wells

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #95 on: June 10, 2019, 11:09:14 am »

Apple really doesn't even want to sell Mac Pros, but they have a small group of influential customers (probably in Hollywood) who want to buy them. They'd much rather sell you an iMac, because they're easier to support.

The rule about Apple towers for 20 years or so has been "you'll never see one that could hurt sales of any iMac". The cheapest tower has always been more expensive than the most expensive base iMac, and there has never been any configuration that is cheaper in a tower. If there's an iMac that can get there, it'll get there for less. The tower is only economical in configurations that nothing else can reach. When iMacs used laptop CPUs, there were towers with desktop CPUs, but now that you can get an iMac with an 8-core 9900K or even an 18-core Xeon, the tower has retreated into more exotic territory.

This is frustrating for photographers, who often prefer desktop or tower computers to use with our Eizo and NEC monitors, but whose performance needs are nicely handled by iMacs and even top-end MacBook Pros. We aren't the people Apple is trying to frustrate, though. Their goal is to frustrate gamers! Apple doesn't want to support often unstable gaming hardware, nor to provide the APIs games need, which are a major source of instability in Windows.

The best illustration of this is nearly 20 years old - Microsoft released the relatively stable Windows 2000, then the very buggy initial version of XP a year and a half later. Windows 2000 had essentially no game support at all beyond Solitaire and Minesweeper, while XP was pretty much 2000 with a better user interface and all the gaming APIs bolted on. It took four or five years and three service packs to get XP's stability to where 2000 was. That wasn't all games, there were driver problems as well, but a whole lot of it was games...

Apple has decided not to provide hardware that will attract gamers to the Mac, thereby washing their hands of all the support issues. Any midrange tower will attract gamers - GeForces will show up in any PCIe slot that isn't impractically expensive, and they'll demand support for them. Apple is very happy with their in-house AMD graphics driver, which is closer to a workstation driver than a gaming driver in stability, and either can't figure out how to write its equal for NVidia or simply don't want to put in the time. By releasing only gamer-frustrating hardware, Apple has forced this support-intensive market segment to Windows.

The other half of this strategy is to keep making iMacs more and more attractive to non-gaming audiences. I suspect we're getting the new display on the next iMac Pro, perhaps as early as this fall! While the pricing may seem not to work, they could actually do it.

The standalone Pro Display is probably a 50% margin item - Apple will take a margin that high on expensive accessories that don't sell a lot of copies. That gives them $2500 to get the parts at wholesale. $500 of trhat is probably the case, power supply, Thunderbolt controllers, etc., leaving $2000 or so as their cost for the panel.

The other key to how to fit the panel's cost in an iMac Pro is that Apple will sometimes take a low or even zero margin on the display (only - they take their customary margin on the rest of the computer) in an iMac at first. They use the same screen for years, and the cost always drops, but they make a splash by releasing an iMac with an impossibly expensive screen. They did this both with the original 27" iMac (a $1799 computer when their 27" Cinema display with no computer cost $1000 and nobody else sold a decent 27" display for less) and later with the 27" Retina iMac - any display with that resolution was selling for more than the whole iMac.

If they set out to make a $6000 iMac Pro with the new display, they might be willing to subtract the $2000 panel right off the top at zero margin, leaving $4000 for the rest of the computer. 40% of that $4000 is margin, so they can buy $2400 worth of components at wholesale - enough for a nice base configuration, and they can actually fit a little more in due to the Apple Tax.

Since iMac Pros are hard to expand, most customers buy overpriced RAM and storage from Apple (at 60% margin?). 64 GB of RAM and a 2 TB drive are $1000, while 128 GB of RAM alone is $2000. If the average customer buys $1500 in RAM and storage, they have an extra $300 from that 60% margin sale, allowing them $2700 in components at wholesale before the upgrades.
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Chris Kern

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #96 on: June 10, 2019, 11:54:17 am »

Every one of those "infrastructure" components is enormous overkill for the base 8-core system with 32 GB of RAM, one modest GPU and a 256 GB SSD. A $3000 iMac supports those specs just fine, and it comes with a nice display. What Apple's done with the base configuration is picked components that work for use cases that stress other parts of the system.

Excellent point!  It reflects the requirement that an engineered workstation—as opposed to one that is simply thrown together from discrete components—must attempt to minimize bottlenecks.  Or, more accurately, to balance the inevitable performance limitations so that multiple components max out simultaneously rather than having the entire system bog down when a single component reaches its limit.

This is frustrating for photographers, who often prefer desktop or tower computers to use with our Eizo and NEC monitors, but whose performance needs are nicely handled by iMacs and even top-end MacBook Pros.

An acquaintance, a graphics artist who doesn't do video, told me the other day she has no interest in the new Mac Pro.  She has a couple of large Eizo monitors attached to her late-model MacBook Pro, and is quite comfortable with the performance.  No interest in an iMac, however—at least not the current models: she can't stand the displays.

Apple really doesn't even want to sell Mac Pros, but they have a small group of influential customers (probably in Hollywood) who want to buy them. They'd much rather sell you an iMac, because they're easier to support.

I suspect it's more accurate to say that Apple really doesn't want to sell Mac Pros in small quantities.  I think the kind of customers Apple is targeting—the ones the company was talking to when they were developing the specs for this new box—are those which are likely to make quantity buys.  And I wouldn't underestimate the market for high-performance workstations in the scientific community: that's why the likes of HP and Dell need to support Linux.

Dan Wells

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #97 on: June 10, 2019, 01:18:11 pm »

The point about small quantities is an interesting one - they probably don't mind having Mac Pros out there in large organizations with substantial support resources. What they don't want is to have to see them at the Genius Bar. They are much harder to support at the Genius Bar (or even at Apple service depots) than anything else, because of the variety of configurations.
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Rajan Parrikar

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #98 on: June 10, 2019, 03:13:46 pm »

...she can't stand the [iMac] displays.

That's a prejudice I had, too. Until I started working with the 2017 iMac Pro. I can't say I miss my NEC.

FabienP

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Re: New Mac Pro?
« Reply #99 on: June 10, 2019, 05:43:40 pm »

(...)

Their goal is to frustrate gamers! Apple doesn't want to support often unstable gaming hardware, nor to provide the APIs games need, which are a major source of instability in Windows.

The best illustration of this is nearly 20 years old - Microsoft released the relatively stable Windows 2000, then the very buggy initial version of XP a year and a half later. Windows 2000 had essentially no game support at all beyond Solitaire and Minesweeper, while XP was pretty much 2000 with a better user interface and all the gaming APIs bolted on. It took four or five years and three service packs to get XP's stability to where 2000 was. That wasn't all games, there were driver problems as well, but a whole lot of it was games...

Apple has decided not to provide hardware that will attract gamers to the Mac, thereby washing their hands of all the support issues.

(...)

Windows 2000 had full support for games using the DirectX API. You must be thinking about NT4 which had only limited support for the API. The difference was that Windows 2000 was never advertised by Microsoft as a gaming operating system and had a different user base.

Windows 2000 and XP had the same problem that a driver crash would trigger a kernel crash and take the whole machine out. This was only resolved in Vista when GPU drivers were splitted in a kernel and user mode part. The operating system could then recover despite a user mode crash.

I would argue that Apple do not need to scare gamers: not many game developers seem to bother with releasing their games for Macs, given the small user base and different APIs.

Anyway, I agree with you that not having games is a good thing for professional users. For instance, the recent Windows 10 1903 build was delayed due to incompatibilities with games running digital restriction management (DRM) tools which could crash the machine (like before!). Not something you would want to have on that workstation running serious stuff...

Cheers,

Fabien
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