ADM Radeon Pro 580

[jjjoseph]

Curious, what programs did the majority of users migrate to(in your area)? Adobe Premiere and After Effects?

Apple SHAKE went to The Foundry's NUKE, but at the time it was still owned by Digital Domain. After Effects is not a replacement for a NODE BASED compositing system. After Effects is more geared to motion graphics and animation. After Effects can do some low end VFX, but for high CG integration After Effects is too cumbersome, slow in 32Bit or Float, and has network render limits.

Final Cut Pro went mostly to Adobe Premiere, and a lot of studios are still AVID, so they didn't ever need Final Cut. AVID is pretty slow to move forward with technology, over priced hardware, and a somewhat closed system, but very solid and reliable. Because Premiere is owned by ADOBE, which does have some video experts in the company somewhere, it is mostly a company of general tech engineers, and every release our bug list can be pretty big. I've also seen one of our editors on the phone with an Adobe Engineer arguing about something not working or crashing in Premiere, and we realized no one helping with our problem Edits, knows how to Edit, or even knows much about what editing entails. Adobe tries, but they aren't just committed to one app, but the whole suite. If you don't need to worry about any that level of reliability for broadcast related stuff, QC, tape layoffs, edge code, anything like that.. I would just use Premiere, even with its quarks, because you probably won't notice them or can work around them. If you have the whole suite, the Premiere to AE if pretty easy. Though I wouldn't use that workflow for high end vfx tv or film work, for generalist stuff I totally would, and AVID for broadcast.

 

[fathergll]

Apple SHAKE went to The Foundry's NUKE, but at the time it was still owned by Digital Domain. After Effects is not a replacement for a NODE BASED compositing system. After Effects is more geared to motion graphics and animation. After Effects can do some low end VFX, but for high CG integration After Effects is too cumbersome, slow in 32Bit or Float, and has network render limits.

Final Cut Pro went mostly to Adobe Premiere, and a lot of studios are still AVID, so they didn't ever need Final Cut. AVID is pretty slow to move forward with technology, over priced hardware, and a somewhat closed system, but very solid and reliable. Because Premiere is owned by ADOBE, which does have some video experts in the company somewhere, it is mostly a company of general tech engineers, and every release our bug list can be pretty big. I've also seen one of our editors on the phone with an Adobe Engineer arguing about something not working or crashing in Premiere, and we realized no one helping with our problem Edits, knows how to Edit, or even knows much about what editing entails. Adobe tries, but they aren't just committed to one app, but the whole suite. If you don't need to worry about any that level of reliability for broadcast related stuff, QC, tape layoffs, edge code, anything like that.. I would just use Premiere, even with its quarks, because you probably won't notice them or can work around them. If you have the whole suite, the Premiere to AE if pretty easy. Though I wouldn't use that workflow for high end vfx tv or film work, for generalist stuff I totally would, and AVID for broadcast.

Interesting. So with Premiere taking over Final Cut, Foundry Nuke taking over Shake and Avid maintaining the same footprint I wonder how much of the market has or is moving from OSX because the lack of CUDA/Nvida GPU cards being shipped with Apple hardware(eGPU not the most ideal option for most).

 

[jjjoseph]

Interesting. So with Premiere taking over Final Cut, Foundry Nuke taking over Shake and Avid maintaining the same footprint I wonder how much of the market has or is moving from OSX because the lack of CUDA/Nvida GPU cards being shipped with Apple hardware(eGPU not the most ideal option for most).

In my industry a lot of studios took the leap from OS X to PC, especially if you work in a network render environment or you use a few specific programs. An Animation studio that I help setup for OS X years and years ago has is now 100% PC, they had to go through one to many upgrade cycles that Apple couldn't deliver on. Of course every single artist has an iPhone and MacBook or MacBook Pro, but when they sit down to work, its all Windows. Software was After Effects, Nuke, Premiere and 3D Max, mostly windows, a few Linux for the tweekers...

A lot of high end studios that where on Linux had OS X heads all over, for a small period of time you could compete with 3D Max or Maya with OS X hardware... That competing level of hardware left with MacPro being slowly choked to death. MacPro 6,1 was ill-conceived for our market, and a bit buggy.

The CUDA problem obviously isn't an issue on Windows or Linux, since you have a GPU choice when building, so the CUDA problem is only an issue on OS X, and it is/was a huge problem. In the previous setups I mentioned NVIDIA was always the choice over AMD. Their where a couple expensive FireGL cards that had tons and tons of memory and where great for 3DMax or Maya, but I don't see much of those around anymore, not sure where AMD is at on top of the line video cards for CG.

I give Final Cut Pro X a lot of crap, mostly geared at Apple for taking a working tool, destroying it, then turing it into something else, but the Final Cut Pro X workflow works if your in the OS X micro verse and don't need CUDA. That market is obviously not the high end market anymore since Apple killed SHAKE and Final Cut.

Pro users moving to windows or linux from OS X is a combination of hardware and software. I think having a CUDA enabled card in OS X would be great, but I highly doubt they would use the top of the line Nvidia card, and in the only computer they seem to update on any frequency, the iMac, again, great!, but they would never have a CUDA core monster.. I think the biggest problem for my market was the death of the MacPro, since I think we could be cruising along fine if we had a Cheese Grader MacPro like the 5,1 with modern hardware, so we could choose and video cards we want.

 

[koyoot]

Pro users moving to windows or linux from OS X is a combination of hardware and software. I think having a CUDA enabled card in OS X would be great, but I highly doubt they would use the top of the line card, it would always be an upgrade. I think the biggest problem for my market was the death of the MacPro, since I think we could be cruising along fine if we had a Cheese Grader MacPro like the 5,1 with modern hardware, so we could choose and video cards we want.

CUDA is great when you have no alternative in software, ergo, you have devs that are lazy, incompetent, or you do not want to pay more than 4 cents for software development. The problem you get is that you are vendor locked. Metal is actually much better API for software. Easy to program, powerful, very optimized for Apple hardware ecosystem, and is not vendor locked. It can be used on Intel, AMD and Nvidia GPUs.

Ask devs to program for Metal, rather than CUDA.

 

[jjjoseph]

CUDA is great when you have no alternative in software, ergo, you have devs that are lazy, incompetent, or you do not want to pay more than 4 cents for software development. The problem you get is that you are vendor locked. Metal is actually much better API for software. Easy to program, powerful, very optimized for Apple hardware ecosystem, and is not vendor locked. It can be used on Intel, AMD and Nvidia GPUs.

Ask devs to program for Metal, rather than CUDA.

Yeah, totally, honestly I don't care who or what makes the hardware work, as long as it does what it is supposed to and it kicks ass, i am fine. My job is/was to make **** look correct and/or pretty. I used to use Autodesk and Quantel systems, all proprietary software/hardware, and for the time, they where awesome. So if some METAL based Program is amazing, I would definitely check it out.... Maybe one day METAL will unseat CUDA, but right now, that is not the case. So as great as METAL is and can be, it can't replace CUDA as of yet.

On that note Apple missed a huge opportunity to push METAL and OpenCL into the high end, if Apple would have kept high end Applications on their roster, SHAKE, Final Cut, Aperture, Logic Pro, we might have seen some really cool things, and really showcased METAL/METAL2. Apple abounded that high end software and that market. As much as a super fast Final Cut Pro X, using METAL2 and AMD VEGA, would be for the prosumer market, it won't do much to help the Professional arena. I feel Apple is going to do a lot of VR demos in the coming years.. A lot..

 

[koyoot]

Maybe one day METAL will unseat CUDA, but right now, that is not the case. So as great as METAL is and can be, it can't replace CUDA as of yet.

You have NO OTHER OPTION on Mac. Metal is the way to go.

I am sometimes baffled by people who do not see that CUDA on Mac is not going to happen any more.

 

[jjjoseph]

You have NO OTHER OPTION on Mac. Metal is the way to go.

I am sometimes baffled by people who do not see that CUDA on Mac is not going to happen any more.

Yeah who knows anything, maybe Apple will stop making computer hardware and just make cars, but right now I am using a MacOS computer with Nvidia and CUDA to get jobs done and make money, so that is all anyone can go on. When that changes, yeah, we will reassess the market.

 

[richpjr]

FCP may not be a pro tool in the very high end world of TV or movie editing but for someone with less demanding needs like a wedding videographer, it works just fine and is used a lot (my wife is a wedding coordinator and virtually every videographer she works with uses FCP). Different people require different tools.

 

[fathergll]

In my industry a lot of studios took the leap from OS X to PC, especially if you work in a network render environment or you use a few specific programs. An Animation studio that I help setup for OS X years and years ago has is now 100% PC, they had to go through one to many upgrade cycles that Apple couldn't deliver on. Of course every single artist has an iPhone and MacBook or MacBook Pro, but when they sit down to work, its all Windows. Software was After Effects, Nuke, Premiere and 3D Max, mostly windows, a few Linux for the tweekers...

A lot of high end studios that where on Linux had OS X heads all over, for a small period of time you could compete with 3D Max or Maya with OS X hardware... That competing level of hardware left with MacPro being slowly choked to death. MacPro 6,1 was ill-conceived for our market, and a bit buggy.

The CUDA problem obviously isn't an issue on Windows or Linux, since you have a GPU choice when building, so the CUDA problem is only an issue on OS X, and it is/was a huge problem. In the previous setups I mentioned NVIDIA was always the choice over AMD. Their where a couple expensive FireGL cards that had tons and tons of memory and where great for 3DMax or Maya, but I don't see much of those around anymore, not sure where AMD is at on top of the line video cards for CG.

I give Final Cut Pro X a lot of crap, mostly geared at Apple for taking a working tool, destroying it, then turing it into something else, but the Final Cut Pro X workflow works if your in the OS X micro verse and don't need CUDA. That market is obviously not the high end market anymore since Apple killed SHAKE and Final Cut.

Pro users moving to windows or linux from OS X is a combination of hardware and software. I think having a CUDA enabled card in OS X would be great, but I highly doubt they would use the top of the line Nvidia card, and in the only computer they seem to update on any frequency, the iMac, again, great!, but they would never have a CUDA core monster.. I think the biggest problem for my market was the death of the MacPro, since I think we could be cruising along fine if we had a Cheese Grader MacPro like the 5,1 with modern hardware, so we could choose and video cards we want.

Part of me wonders why Apple didn't make more of an effort into trying to keep much of their professional hold on the market with keeping more of it's pro apps alive and offering more options in the Mac Pro area giving users options for sticking around. Even if it didn't make complete sense money wise since it's more of a niche market at least keep it alive and well like a prestige product.....something that adds more value to the brand than it does monetary wise. Sort of like of some car manufactures complete in F1 or Indy Racing(good brand awareness). I guess they are such a giant tech company at this point it doesn't matter and they needed resources directed in other areas that make more sense for their business at this point.

I guess you'll be off OSX at some point as well.

 

[jjjoseph]

Part of me wonders why Apple didn't make more of an effort into trying to keep much of their professional hold on the market with keeping more of it's pro apps alive and offering more options in the Mac Pro area giving users options for sticking around. Even if it didn't make complete sense money wise since it's more of a niche market at least keep it alive and well like a prestige product.....something that adds more value to the brand than it does monetary wise. Sort of like of some car manufactures complete in F1 or Indy Racing(good brand awareness). I guess they are such a giant tech company at this point it doesn't matter and they needed resources directed in other areas that make more sense for their business at this point.

I guess you'll be off OSX at some point as well.

I think Apple regrets it, they allude to it at times, but Apple is a company that will never admit failure. I think they killed the MacPro and Pro Apps because they wanted to focus on iPhone and iOS and what happened was Apple ending up making a ton of $$$$ doing it that way.. The Pro Market got pushed to the side, and now Apple has so much $$$ they want to put R&D into MacPro's and iMac Pros in hopes to re-establish a Pro Market. This is something they should have been doing the whole time. Hopefully not too late to win back the Pro's. Now, they need more Apple Pro Apps that compete directly with Adobe and Autodesk, but honestly that will probably never happen.. Since they already did that.. then killed those apps.. They can't honestly do that again...

 

[iBug2]

I think Apple regrets it, they allude to it at times, but Apple is a company that will never admit failure. I think they killed the MacPro and Pro Apps because they wanted to focus on iPhone and iOS and what happened was Apple ending up making a ton of $$$$ doing it that way.. The Pro Market got pushed to the side, and now Apple has so much $$$ they want to put R&D into MacPro's and iMac Pros in hopes to re-establish a Pro Market. This is something they should have been doing the whole time. Hopefully not too late to win back the Pro's. Now, they need more Apple Pro Apps that compete directly with Adobe and Autodesk, but honestly that will probably never happen.. Since they already did that.. then killed those apps.. They can't honestly do that again...

Apple has people working on iPhone and Mac Pro and iMac and Macbook Pro all at the same time. They could not have "killed" Mac Pro to focus on iPhone.

They probably killed Mac Pro because it wasn't selling well since most professionals switched to iMacs and Macbook Pro's over the years. The only people who still "needed" a Mac Pro for their work was studio editors and 3DFX artists. The big data / A.I. guys probably left when Apple dumped XServe anyway. Considering the tons of professionals who use iMacs / Macbook Pro's for their work, the niche crowd that always required the highest end gear stopped being Apple's concern.

15 years ago, even if you were typing a book on your Mac, a PowerMac would serve you better than a PowerBook. Even Quark did run faster if you had the best CPU available. But for the last 7-8 years, writers can do with the cheapest laptop, Adobe Design / Publishing apps run crazy fast on Macbook Pro's and iMacs so the computer is mostly waiting for the operator anyway. Pros from many fields stopped needing the fastest of the fastest. My father runs a graphic design studio, they used to buy top of the line Quadras, Powermacs back then. Nowadays they use entry level iMacs and Mac Mini's with no need to upgrade.

Computers got too fast for most, that's what happened.

I have always owned a PowerMac or Mac Pro until 2 weeks ago. Sold my Mac Pro and bought an iMac. Don't need more speed than what the iMac offers anymore.

I can see the iMac disappearing or merging with MacBook line in the future as well. Just one Macbook and a big display will be enough for 99%.

 

[Ethosik]

Your text edit argument... I'm not going to even reply to that. What a desperate attempt at a rebuttal.

Ya Im sure if you called the big post houses in LA or New York most of them would be using Avid. That's the reality and I never said the all of these huge studios are using it. That was never my argument.

You're clearly coming from a hurt and bitter perspective like most people who can't accept FCPX as a professional tool ever since it was released in 2011. A lot of people were hurt at that time, I get it. It wasn't good then.

My argument simply came from this quote of yours.

"Final Cut Pro X is a toy. No one in any professional edit or tv environment or film for that matter uses Final Cut Pro X. It is a toy."

It's ignorant. I never said FCPX was being used by all of these top end post houses, but I listed examples of FCPX being used in a professional setting. It's been used on high end productions by professionals, that is fact you can't dispute. Of course it's not a lot, thats not the point! I know the people that worked with it on both of those movies listed and have talked with many people that use on it daily basis. You can continue to blab on and on about how you hate FCPX and why no one uses it, but it doesn't change the fact that professional editors are using it today.

That seems to be a very recurring theme on this site. If AAA million dollar game development companies do not use software X or hardware Y, it is not professional! If big budget studios do not use FCPX, it is not a professional tool. If I cannot run 10 virtual machines, 16GB is not professional level hardware. If I cannot use a NVIDIA GPU, it is not professional hardware. And on and on and on and on.
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windows pc build all the way, it's way cheaper and premiere will literally fly on 1080/1440p resolutions. also you can build it hackintosh friendly too. for the monitor look at the LG 27UD68P, it's a nice 4k.

Not necessarily. I have a 6-core, 32GB RAM, GTX 1080, 3x 1TB SSDs custom built PC and even my 2016 MacBook Pro running FCPX exports WAY FASTER than Premiere Pro on Windows.

 

[Persian-apple]

N

I wonder if anyone chosen the i7+580 combination and if we are going to see again the heating problems of m295x all over again

nope it runs pretty cool fans arent too quiet but the machine doesnt have throttling issues

 

[wardie]

I’ve got i7+580 and the fans are audible but only when they crank up, and that is only under a sustained heavy load, normally silent enough not to notice.

 

[Persian-apple]

and the hdd is pretty silent too this machine is nearly perfect comparing to the rmbp line up which is a mess