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12 core Mac Pro 2012 or Imac 2015? need help

artoff

artoff

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 30, 2014
45
0
Armenia
Hello guys.

I need some advice.I have tower mac pro, I can sell it in 2 days with $4000

I'm using it only for Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro

The setup is
Mac pro 5.1 12 core
Cpu-2.4ghz E5645 12 core
GPU-gtx 980 4gb
SSD samsung 840 pro 512 gb connected with Syba Sata 3 controller.
HDD 4TB (2x2tb)
12gb ecc ram
Apple 27 cinema display.

I can upgrade the cpus to 2x X5690.

But i'm thinking to buy iMac with these parameters. In my Country it's Exactly $4000.
  • 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz (i7 6700k)
  • 16GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 8GB
  • 512GB Flash Storage
  • AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory
What you think 2x x5690 can be faster on video editing programs than the iMac i mentioned above?


Many thanks!!
 
The question here is can the higher clock speed / better IPC of the iMac offset the higher core count but lower speed / IPC of the Mac Pro. Does After Effects utilize all cores in your current setup?
 
Nope. It uses all cores only on specific rendering. Also On cc15 version the multicore function is doesn't exist.
But on premiere I can use all 12 cores.
 
When I'm rendering Ae project sometimes it uses 6 core, sometimes only 15-20%of all 12 core.
 
artoff said:
When I'm rendering Ae project sometimes it uses 6 core, sometimes only 15-20%of all 12 core.
Click to expand...
I can't say for certain but it sounds like, for your purposes, the higher clock speed / better IPC of the iMac will outperform the Mac Pro. Perhaps you can find some AE benchmarks for both systems.
 
Yes I think so. But thinking about upgrades which is almost not possible on imac. On the other side I'll get amazing display, thunderbolt, usb 3, faster Ssd speed.. It confuses me :))
 
Unless the software you use can take advantage of high core counts it's unlikely an upgrade to the Mac Pro is going to be beneficial. A this point you may break even. Unfortunately I cannot speak to this. My recommendation is to seek out an AE forum as see if you can get any direct advice from them. Perhaps you can run your work on an iMac? Doesn't Apple allow you to return a Mac if you're not happy with it?
 
Unfortunately in my country the reseller is not will agree with that kind of deal. Also I should sell my setup so I can try any other one, and I'm afraid to sell it. want to be 100% sure, that I can buy better device than my previous one, with the same price.

Thanks for your time. I'll try to find any comparison on Adobe forum. :)
 
Assuming the 2.5x faster single core performance is applicable in your situation (e.g. your workflow is not GPU limiting etc).

1 core in the 6700k = 2.5 core in X5690 (working at the same time)

So, 4 core in 6700k = 10 cores in X5690

Total processing power is not that far away from 12 cores X5690.

So, for single core performance is 2.5x faster. For multi cores performance is only 16.7% slower (assume zero thermal throttling). From your discription, you almost never able to fully utilise all 12 cores in the cMP. So, unless your workflow can highly benefit from the 980 but not the M395X, I can hardly see why the cMP can do better than the iMac in your case.
 
The real problem with the high end iMacs is that they can't dissipate the heat efficiently, there is not enough cooling capacity. With the current form/design there is only one fan and some boiling GPUs inside.
So for long heavy projects it's pretty sure that there will be throttling and some excessive noise, and too much heat built up most of the time results to GPU or other failures.

I don't know if the 395x is running really cooler than the 295x, but given AMD standards I really doubt it.
Be careful, an iMac is way more delicate than a MP for extended periods of processing, and you can't replace or upgrade a GPU or even install a second one or any PCIe cards internally. Also have in mind that you will have to buy an external 2 or 4 bay TB box to accommodate your 2 HDs.

You could upgrade your CPUs, add some more RAM and a good 4K display that you can use with any future system, all in ones have the danger that if one part is broken every other part is wasted too, including display.

Of course if you think that your workloads won't tax frequently for long periods the system, or you really like and can work with the concept of an all in one - non upgradeable system, by all means go for it.:)
 
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I went through the full 5,1 upgrade and upgraded everything in the system. Premiere runs super smooth and does utilize all 12 cores, which is really nice. I would stick with your 5,1. There's something about having all that expandability that makes it so good. Think about it... the fact that a 2010 machine still makes it questionable to update to a late 2015 machine these days speaks to its worth.

I use a SM951 PCIe SSD as my boot, and 2 Samsung SATA SSDs in RAID 0 on a PCIe card as media read and scratch. Along with the 3.46GHz 12-core processors and the GTX 980, and it runs really smoothly with 4K content for me.
 
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PowerMike G5 said:
I went through the full 5,1 upgrade and upgraded everything in the system. Premiere runs super smooth and does utilize all 12 cores, which is really nice. I would stick with your 5,1. There's something about having all that expandability that makes it so good. Think about it... the fact that a 2010 machine still makes it questionable to update to a late 2015 machine these days speaks to its worth.

I use a SM951 PCIe SSD as my boot, and 2 Samsung SATA SSDs in RAID 0 on a PCIe card as media read and scratch. Along with the 3.46GHz 12-core processors and the GTX 980, and it runs really smoothly with 4K content for me.
Click to expand...

Wow. how much your geekbench 64bit score with your setup? and is there any way to see the disk read write speed on your SM951. i think yes. keeping the 5.1 is more reasonable. but i would like to compare the the results like yours with new imac, because if i don't sell my machine i will probably upgrade like exactly what you have now.
 
I agree with the other here who say keep the MP. It sounds like, performance-wise, you will only get close to the MP performance (w/x5690's) and you will certainly miss the ability to upgrade over time, which you cannot do with the iMac.

Like others have said, upgrade to the x5690's, put in 64GB RAM, buy a nice 4K (Dell P2715Q is really nice for the price), and switch to a PCI-e SSD. Sure, you miss out on TB, but USB 3.1 is right around the corner and that will be cheaper and almost as fast.
 
artoff said:
Wow. how much your geekbench 64bit score with your setup? and is there any way to see the disk read write speed on your SM951. i think yes. keeping the 5.1 is more reasonable. but i would like to compare the the results like yours with new imac, because if i don't sell my machine i will probably upgrade like exactly what you have now.
Click to expand...

My geek bench for multi-core is a bit over 32000, while single core runs a bit over 2800. So while the new iMac will beat the cMP handily in single-core performance, it still won't get close to the multi-core performance of the cMP. And since you are using software that scales with the cores you have, the cMP is better for you. Read/Writes with the SM951 are around 1300MB/s, while my RAID 0 Media Read/Scratch hovers around 950MB/s. If you upgrade to the 512GB SM951 (I have the 256GB version), you should hit more around 1500MB/s.

What's so great about this setup is you can utilize multiple high speed drives within the cMP internally to maximize performance for video editing. So my boot drive and Adobe CC run off the SM951, while reading my large media files off the SSD RAID running on the other PCIe slot. I use the internal SATA for a large 16TB media storage system for easy access of other media to pull onto the SSD RAID. I maximize RAM amounts to Premiere when editing (I allocate 28GB to the program when using it). And the GTX 980 you have is much better than the graphics card in the new iMac, which Adobe CC uses a lot as well for accelerated rendering, etc (and opens the option for using CUDA rendering with the Mercury Render Engine with Adobe CC). Furthermore, I have an AJA I/O card to feed 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 10-bit video out to monitors for critical monitoring and grading, etc.

Video editing is all about power, but balanced power. The idea is to not have a bottleneck somewhere that slows down the speed of the other components (an example being having the fastest 4.0Ghz i7 CPUs but reading/writing of a 5400rpm HDD - your system will only be as fast as that drive!). My gripe about something like an iMac is you'll always be stuck with the graphics card, cpu, etc. For example, your current GPU in your MacPro is already faster than what's in the new iMac. With all the other upgrades I've mentioned, you'll be editing real smoothly as you'll have a lot of speed spread out throughout the entire chain of your hardware... which is highly important!
 
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PowerMike G5 said:
My geek bench for multi-core is a bit over 32000, while single core runs a bit over 2800. So while the new iMac will beat the cMP handily in single-core performance, it still won't get close to the multi-core performance of the cMP. And since you are using software that scales with the cores you have, the cMP is better for you. Read/Writes with the SM951 are around 1300MB/s, while my RAID 0 Media Read/Scratch hovers around 950MB/s. If you upgrade to the 512GB SM951 (I have the 256GB version), you should hit more around 1500MB/s.

What's so great about this setup is you can utilize multiple high speed drives within the cMP internally to maximize performance for video editing. So my boot drive and Adobe CC run off the SM951, while reading my large media files off the SSD RAID running on the other PCIe slot. I use the internal SATA for a large 16TB media storage system for easy access of other media to pull onto the SSD RAID. I maximize RAM amounts to Premiere when editing (I allocate 28GB to the program when using it). And the GTX 980 you have is much better than the graphics card in the new iMac, which Adobe CC uses a lot as well for accelerated rendering, etc (and opens the option for using CUDA rendering with the Mercury Render Engine with Adobe CC). Furthermore, I have an AJA I/O card to feed 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 10-bit video out to monitors for critical monitoring and grading, etc.

Video editing is all about power, but balanced power. The idea is to not have a bottleneck somewhere that slows down the speed of the other components (an example being having the fastest 4.0Ghz i7 CPUs but reading/writing of a 5400rpm HDD - your system will only be as fast as that drive!). My gripe about something like an iMac is you'll always be stuck with the graphics card, cpu, etc. For example, your current GPU in your MacPro is already faster than what's in the new iMac. With all the other upgrades I've mentioned, you'll be editing real smoothly as you'll have a lot of speed spread out throughout the entire chain of your hardware... which is highly important!
Click to expand...
Thank you so much :)
 
PowerMike G5 said:
My geek bench for multi-core is a bit over 32000, while single core runs a bit over 2800. So while the new iMac will beat the cMP handily in single-core performance, it still won't get close to the multi-core performance of the cMP. And since you are using software that scales with the cores you have, the cMP is better for you. Read/Writes with the SM951 are around 1300MB/s, while my RAID 0 Media Read/Scratch hovers around 950MB/s. If you upgrade to the 512GB SM951 (I have the 256GB version), you should hit more around 1500MB/s.

What's so great about this setup is you can utilize multiple high speed drives within the cMP internally to maximize performance for video editing. So my boot drive and Adobe CC run off the SM951, while reading my large media files off the SSD RAID running on the other PCIe slot. I use the internal SATA for a large 16TB media storage system for easy access of other media to pull onto the SSD RAID. I maximize RAM amounts to Premiere when editing (I allocate 28GB to the program when using it). And the GTX 980 you have is much better than the graphics card in the new iMac, which Adobe CC uses a lot as well for accelerated rendering, etc (and opens the option for using CUDA rendering with the Mercury Render Engine with Adobe CC). Furthermore, I have an AJA I/O card to feed 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 10-bit video out to monitors for critical monitoring and grading, etc.

Video editing is all about power, but balanced power. The idea is to not have a bottleneck somewhere that slows down the speed of the other components (an example being having the fastest 4.0Ghz i7 CPUs but reading/writing of a 5400rpm HDD - your system will only be as fast as that drive!). My gripe about something like an iMac is you'll always be stuck with the graphics card, cpu, etc. For example, your current GPU in your MacPro is already faster than what's in the new iMac. With all the other upgrades I've mentioned, you'll be editing real smoothly as you'll have a lot of speed spread out throughout the entire chain of your hardware... which is highly important!
Click to expand...
I got another question. Is there any way to get more than 1500mb/s on tower mac pro with Sm 951? also how long it takes to turn on your mac with current settings.
 
I'm testing uncompressed 4K playback on iMac, nMP, and cMP X5690 today and the rest of the week for a production company. It looks like for smooth playback and editing a single core performance makes a bigger difference than graphics card. A new Skylake iMac would kill any other Mac.
 
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artoff said:
I got another question. Is there any way to get more than 1500mb/s on tower mac pro with Sm 951? also how long it takes to turn on your mac with current settings.
Click to expand...

There is almost no difference between boot up time on SATA2, SATA3, XP942 or SM951. As long as it's a good SSD then all the above launch OS X in about 12 seconds. I also created a triple RAID SM951 drive as a performance test and there was no practical use for it in anything.

I'm testing uncompressed 4K videos right now and the bit rate is easy for SATA3 to handle. Single core performance is very important though. So get a Skylake or the last best Haswell along with a beefy 2GB 850 EVO. Forget about SM951 (unless it's built in the iMac). The price is high, capacity not optimal, speed not even used.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
There is almost no difference between boot up time on SATA2, SATA3, XP942 or SM951. As long as it's a good SSD then all the above launch OS X in about 12 seconds. I also created a triple RAID SM951 drive as a performance test and there was no practical use for it in anything.

I'm testing uncompressed 4K videos right now and the bit rate is easy for SATA3 to handle. Single core performance is very important though. So get a Skylake or the last best Haswell along with a beefy 2GB 850 EVO. Forget about SM951 (unless it's built in the iMac). The price is high, capacity not optimal, speed not even used.
Click to expand...
In some parts i agree with you . I think nowadays Single core performance is more important than the multicore performance, even for "pro" apps. After effects not using multi core i'm sure, i spend on tests a lot of time. the only thing is "keeping" me to sell the mac pro is the thermal problem on imac, and future upgrades like GPU which is possible for me because i'm using "cuda" almost always.

Your skylake iMac have the 6700K cpu?
 
artoff said:
I got another question. Is there any way to get more than 1500mb/s on tower mac pro with Sm 951? also how long it takes to turn on your mac with current settings.
Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of. It seems to max around there (and oddly enough you have to use it in PCIe Slot 3 or 4, which has x4 speed. The x16 slot 2 caps around 795MB/s for some reason with this SSD.

It's boot up is pretty instant, but as mentioned, seems in-line with any other SSD.
 
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