New Mac Pro: What it means for Phase, Leaf

[GrahamWelland]

You can put 16 gig modules in the current Mac Pro and certainly the new one would support at least that size, but 32 gig modules are available. If it supports those that means your limit would be 128GB of ram.

Well in my experience the limits to MacPro expansion tend to be my wallet rather than the architecture of the machine.

p.s. I WANT ONE. My poor 2008 fully spec'd 8 proc MacPro feels like a boot rom compared to these new beasts.

pps. I see that it's built in the USA too! :thumbs: However, that probably means that it'll be $10k by the time we see one and Apple have paid their taxes :facesmack:

 

[Kolor-Pikker]

What a beast of a machine, and in such a tiny package! Me want.

Hi,
My concerns are:

1. Are the graphics cards user upgradable? This is very important because we are finally getting Nvidia to create native drivers for Mac OS X for cards like the gtx 780 and the K5000.

Looks like everything that isn't the flash storage and ram is soldered onto the core.

2. The selection of fireGL cards, this will probably rise the price big time, but more important, for adobe users, adobe applications are optimized for CUDA. OpenCL will work, but it's not as fast.

Mostly just Adobe though, Black Magic and other video-centric apps are quickly switching to OCL and there's a quote from a Davinci Resolve dev going around the net, saying he's never seen Resolve run so fast on an early Mac Pro that he's received.

Considering that they are claiming that three 4K displays can be run at once, while playing back 4K footage AND rendering in the background, "not as fast" is more like "not so fast" until we start seeing some hard numbers when these things start hitting the test benches.
This is well more power than most people will ever know what to do with for a long time.

3. Whats with only 4 RAM slots? is the machine is a 12 core single ship? If so, I am concerned about clock rate.

As someone wrote above: "The 4 RAM slots worries me, but then again they make 16GB ram per stick now." I don't think Apple would have all this time and all those engineers on their hands just to release a flawed product. Who the needs more than 64GB ram unless you do some insane pano stitching or run several video apps?

4. Some people need high performance cards from AJA and the like, but they seem to work fine with Thunderbolt 1. It seems to me that Apple and Intel want to do, with Thunderbolt and the Mac Pro, what apple did with USB1 and the iMAC. If they want to succeed price is key.

If I think of my normal use, my only concern will be price, and long time upgrades.
I really don't need the PCIe slots. In my opinion they should have target a machine a tittle bigger and gave people an open PCIe slot even a half size one, but that is what I will do.

Best regards,
James

TB2 is claimed to be somewhat faster than PCI-E, so with proper hardware support, there is no reason to ever keep expansion cards in-chassis anymore.

Even with a second enclosure that can house things like PCI cards and card readers and drives and what not, at 1/8th the size of the old MPs, it's still a heck of a lot smaller and lighter. You could fit it in a backpack with accessories.

 

[MGrayson]

A discussion on cgsociety.org suggests convincingly that nothing is soldered in. The GPUs may suffer from a new form factor, but they, the RAM, the SSD, and the CPU will all be upgradeable. The insane horsepower of this machine (as tricked out - I assume that that's the high-end version) is, for the first time in my life, more than I can think of utilizing. But I don't do video or 3D rendering.

I don't know if or when I'll get one, but I'm deeply happy that Apple is making it.

--Matt

 

[Guy Mancuso]

I think for many folks its on the wish list. Dante will strike with vengeance. LOL

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Look at this headline on the MBA and its flash. I am around 500 with the fastest SSD drive you can buy.

MacBook Air's PCIe-Based Flash Storage Approaches 800 MB/s Read and Write

 

[tcdeveau]

800 MB/s is pretty nuts. I get ~400+ MB/s with the stock apple SSD in my 15" Macbook Pro Retina (2.7ghz i7/16gb RAM) and ~550 MB/s with the Pegasus R4 (RAID 5).

Definitely interested in the new Mac Pro although my current setup handles my D800/H4D-40 files without a hiccup. It slows down a little for panos but I don't do many. I'm really curious about the fan setup of the new Mac Pro. My old Mac Pro (quad G5 tower) sounds like a freight train and heats up the room, so a quieter/cooler machine with lots of power is certainly welcome. I'm waiting for a price to decide if it's worth it for me personally but I will say that this is the first Apple product I've been excited about in a long time.

 

[stephengilbert]

Why Wanting Expensive Things Makes Us So Much Happier Than Buying Them - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

 

[mmbma]

I disagree. GAS has made me a lot happier

 

[dougpeterson]

Mostly just Adobe though, Black Magic and other video-centric apps are quickly switching to OCL and there's a quote from a Davinci Resolve dev going around the net, saying he's never seen Resolve run so fast on an early Mac Pro that he's received.

OpenCL is also very useful to Capture One. In both processing and responsively. So still-only guys will also see a lot of benefit.

 

[Ed Hurst]

Re. being able to fit RAM above 32GB, my concern was based on a text of Apple's specs associated with their press release stating that 32GB is the max. But maybe that depends on using official Apple parts rather than larger RAM. As long as the machine recognises them...

 

[Ed Hurst]

By the way, the reason I am interested in ridiculously large amounts of RAM is that I do insane stitches and absurd numbers of file stacks (for star trails)... My pano record so far is 67 40MP files. Star trail stacks are often in the range of 1200 - 1400 16 bit files layered. It simply won't run without loads of RAM (I previously had 16GB, and the computer would come up with error messages due to lack of RAM). Even with the 32GB RAM set-up I currently have, those large stitches can literally take days. So lots of RAM (and a number of ports for them to allow optimal usage) are personal priorities.

That said, I am delighted that this new Mac Pro has been developed. Suggests that Apple may still have an eye on their traditionally core offering.

 

[RVB]

There are a few issue's (ram slot's,upgrading GPU's and methods of expandability)with this new Machine but overall it's pretty good and the best news is that apple is not throwing the towel in with the mac pro,so aside from this all new machine (which most of us are happy to see and many of us thought we would never see)we can also look forward to the next version,Apple are in this for the long haul...

I'll be ordering mine asap... ;-)

 

[jduncan]

Hi,

Did someone get any info from today's presentation around the Mac pro performance ?

I have seen no news about it, not even blogs.

Best regards,


James

 

[pyrojim]

Dear phase one: thunderbolt 2. Please and thank you.

 

[Bob]

The new MacPro reminds me of this
Only updated with new tech and a whole lot faster

 

[Bob]

Dear phase one: thunderbolt 2. Please and thank you.

No need for an interface faster than the ability to read the sensor
-bob

 

[jduncan]

No need for an interface faster than the ability to read the sensor
-bob

The new MacPro reminds me of this
Only updated with new tech and a whole lot faster

Hi Bob,

Maybe this one is even closer:

That's the Cray 2 and it has to be one of the more beautiful computers of history. Not only because of ehat we see , but because of the amount of creativity and ingenuity that in embodies. Freon coolant, symmetric design for performance, massive memory (2GB) and clock rate (250mgz) and state of the art SMP (4 hugh performing cpu).

Suit old times

 

[ondebanks]

Star trail stacks are often in the range of 1200 - 1400 16 bit files layered.

Wow Ed...you must be using "short" exposure times (like 30 sec or less) for each exposure? Well, you can't be going to 1 minute because that would amount to 20-28 hours [even without darkframes]...and outside the polar regions, nights are not that long!

But you're using a Pentax 645D, if I'm not mistaken? So why not shoot 5 or 10 minute stretches of startrails?

Ray

 

[Richard Osbourne]

It's the PCI-e flash drives that interest me - up to 1250MB/s! I've got an i7 quad-core iMac which is ok but the key to getting to decent performance was an OWC SSD - 550MB/s - for the main system drive. With the Pegasus R6 in RAID 5 (about the same speed), this system handles 4GB stitched panoramas from the P45+ quite well. Could always do with faster read / writes especially if an IQ180 or 260 comes my way!

The video cards - supporting up to 3 x 4K displays - will be interesting too, as I can never see my panoramas at a decent size and resolution, despite using a 30" monitor besides the 27" iMac.

Doug, any idea when Eizo or NEC will bring out 4K reference monitors? They only seem to be downsampling at the moment: EIZO ColorEdge CG276 to Offer Input Support for 4K x 2K | EIZO

And here's something we'll be able to buy soon (though I'm not sure what the quality will be like): Asus' $4,000 4K monitor goes on sale this month, pushes Retina MacBook to its breaking point | The Verge

 

[dougpeterson]

The video cards - supporting up to 3 x 4K displays - will be interesting too, as I can never see my panoramas at a decent size and resolution, despite using a 30" monitor besides the 27" iMac.

Doug, any idea when Eizo or NEC will bring out 4K reference monitors? They only seem to be downsampling at the moment: EIZO ColorEdge CG276 to Offer Input Support for 4K x 2K | EIZO

And here's something we'll be able to buy soon (though I'm not sure what the quality will be like): Asus' $4,000 4K monitor goes on sale this month, pushes Retina MacBook to its breaking point | The Verge

Current Eizo monitors:
- downsampling (real time) with CG276 [advantage: relatively inexpensive, monitor is also an excellent stills monitor and has Eizo-grade quality, 5 year warranty, color space and evenness disadvantage: not true 4k]
- Eizo's air traffic control monitor [advantage: true 4k, available today, high redundancy. Disadvantage: color space is not as good as photo/video market monitors, expensive]

The Eizo engineers are actively exploring a photo/video market true-4k monitor. But I wouldn't look for one this year. They are rarely the "first to market" instead favoring prioritizing quality/reliability over release-speed.*

*that's not saying other solutions that come out first won't be excellent, just explaining Eizo's corporate mindset.