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MP All Models Buy cheap 7,1 or Studio

7,1 or M3 Max studio for protools home studio

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H2SO4 said:
Is there anything to do with your graphic design that Windows could not do?
Click to expand...

Yes.

99% of designers in the world use Macs because of how beautiful the UI is, including built-in PostScript, great font management, etc. Adobe software came out on Apple first fyi.

Let's just not go down this route, I'm too lazy to post examples here. I will never use Windows for real work, it's a joke to me.

H2SO4 said:
If the new Apple eco system meant that you could NOT use some of the hardware that you currently use, what would you do?
I have a MacBook Pro, (AS), and have to keep my MacBook Pro around, (Wintel), as the M2 will NOT talk to a lot of hardware in the industrial space.
Even big companies like Moxa take time to update drivers for their products.
Click to expand...

My work is mostly based around software, not hardware.

So I will stick with Macs until I'm dead.


If you are a heavy 3d user and need NVIDIA GPUs by all means go with Windows. (ie Octane, Redshift, etc). I don't do any of that.
 
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SDAVE said:
If you are a heavy 3d user and need NVIDIA GPUs by all means go with Windows. (ie Octane, Redshift, etc). I don't do any of that.
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Octane on the Mac doesn't need Nvidia anymore.
It works with AS, so you can have as much GPU ram as can be used from the unified pool....:)
 
MarkC426 said:
Octane on the Mac doesn't need Nvidia anymore.
It works with AS, so you can have as much GPU ram as can be used from the unified pool....:)
Click to expand...
True about the ram available for the GPU.
Not so much about not needing Nvidia.
The top of the line M2 Ultra 76 core GPU has 1/4 the performance of a 4090.
When the 5090 launches this fall that will go to around 1/6 the performance of the Nvidia.

opendata.blender.org

Blender - Open Data

Blender Open Data is a platform to collect, display and query the results of hardware and software performance tests - provided by the public.
opendata.blender.org opendata.blender.org
 
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Harry Haller said:
True about the ram available for the GPU.
Not so much about not needing Nvidia.
The top of the line M2 Ultra 76 core GPU as 1/4 the performance of a 4090.
When the 5090 launches this fall that will go to around 1/6 the performance of the Nvidia.
Click to expand...
True, but considering a 4090 is about $1500-2000.....and a 5090 ~$2500 (google searches), it is Apples + Oranges in comparison. My point being Octane works on Apple Silicon...;)
 
Well, when the 4090/5090 is 4x-6x faster than the the 76 core in the $7,000 Mac Pro, it's well worth it.
 
Harry Haller said:
Well, when the 4090/5090 is 4x-6x faster than the the 76 core in the $7,000 Mac Pro, it's well worth it.
Click to expand...
Reminds of a post on the Avid Forum. Yeah the latest and greatest is cool. But like these folks mention is getting work done. Lance mixes professional videos from top artist and still rocking on a 5,1.
I'm waiting for the sweet spot as well. LOL, M2 Ultra only slightly faster (WOW)
 
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This discussion of fans on the 7,1 versus the 5,1 prompts me to report my observations. I'm a relatively new owner of a (lightly used) 2019 Mac Pro. I find it much more noisy in casual use than my old 5,1. My 2019 has the original RX580 GPU with the base Xeon processor (eight core, I think it is). There is one thing that I do fairly often that kicks the fans on very quickly and noticeably: if I browse a folder of JPEG photos with the Quick Look feature (select a file, press space bar), and then use the up or down arrow keys to move successive files, I can get the 2019's fans roaring with fewer than 10 files previewed. I don't see any spikes in CPU activity, so my guess is that the GPU is involved in throwing these images up on the screen. Has anyone else seen this behavior with their 2019 Mac Pro?

Neither of my 2010 Mac Pros ever did this (or if they did kick on the fan for the RX560 in the chassis I didn't hear it externally).
 
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flaubert said:
This discussion of fans on the 7,1 versus the 5,1 prompts me to report my observations. I'm a relatively new owner of a (lightly used) 2019 Mac Pro. I find it much more noisy in casual use than my old 5,1. My 2019 has the original RX580 GPU with the base Xeon processor (eight core, I think it is). There is one thing that I do fairly often that kicks the fans on very quickly and noticeably: if I browse a folder of JPEG photos with the Quick Look feature (select a file, press space bar), and then use the up or down arrow keys to move successive files, I can get the 2019's fans roaring with fewer than 10 files previewed. I don't see any spikes in CPU activity, so my guess is that the GPU is involved in throwing these images up on the screen. Has anyone else seen this behavior with their 2019 Mac Pro?

Neither of my 2010 Mac Pros ever did this (or if they did kick on the fan for the RX560 in the chassis I didn't hear it externally).
Click to expand...


My Dual X5690 (2x 6 core) 5,1 sounds like a banshee at times.

Adding an extra cooling fan for the northbridge heat sink quietened it to a degree but the 7,1 in my signature is much much quieter. Even when running flat out it is silent.

My 7,1 was brand new from Apple so nobody other than me has used it.
 
flaubert said:
This discussion of fans on the 7,1 versus the 5,1 prompts me to report my observations. I'm a relatively new owner of a (lightly used) 2019 Mac Pro. I find it much more noisy in casual use than my old 5,1. My 2019 has the original RX580 GPU with the base Xeon processor (eight core, I think it is). There is one thing that I do fairly often that kicks the fans on very quickly and noticeably: if I browse a folder of JPEG photos with the Quick Look feature (select a file, press space bar), and then use the up or down arrow keys to move successive files, I can get the 2019's fans roaring with fewer than 10 files previewed. I don't see any spikes in CPU activity, so my guess is that the GPU is involved in throwing these images up on the screen. Has anyone else seen this behavior with their 2019 Mac Pro?

Neither of my 2010 Mac Pros ever did this (or if they did kick on the fan for the RX560 in the chassis I didn't hear it externally).
Click to expand...

My machine is 2.5 metres from me, 45 degrees to the side, and sits with its bottom edge at my shoulder height when I'm sitting at my desk, with the rear exhaust fans pointing outwards towards me. I can't hear it at all over the ceiling fan or air-scrubber, and even with my ear right next to the back, the 2012 mac mini next to it is louder at idle.

Have you tried looking in activity monitor's GPU tab to see if there's any usage? I just quicklook arrowed through about 40 36MP .NEF RAWs, and no change in the sound from the machine.
 
MarkC426 said:
Octane on the Mac doesn't need Nvidia anymore.
It works with AS, so you can have as much GPU ram as can be used from the unified pool....:)
Click to expand...

No one uses Octane or Redshift on a Mac. Most hardcore 3d artists are on Windows. Just because it's available doesn't mean it's usable ;)

The 4090 is miles ahead of anything in this industry, and 5090 is around the corner and that gap will be widened more.
 
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SDAVE said:
No one uses Octane or Redshift on a Mac. Most hardcore 3d artists are on Windows. Just because it's available doesn't mean it's usable ;)

The 4090 is miles ahead of anything in this industry, and 5090 is around the corner and that gap will be widened more.
Click to expand...
Michael Simpson Jr. answered this in a recent comment on his youtube channel. Confirming your statement that artists are moving to Windows. He got a Puget PC instead of the Mac Pro.

Screenshot 2024-04-02 at 10.57.23.png



I had been wondering what he would say today. So yesterday, I looked through the answers he has given to comments.
Didn't expect that he was still answering an old video ;)

I suppose he uses the Mac Studio for sound, and the Puget PC for graphics
 
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flaubert said:
This discussion of fans on the 7,1 versus the 5,1 prompts me to report my observations. I'm a relatively new owner of a (lightly used) 2019 Mac Pro. I find it much more noisy in casual use than my old 5,1. My 2019 has the original RX580 GPU with the base Xeon processor (eight core, I think it is). There is one thing that I do fairly often that kicks the fans on very quickly and noticeably: if I browse a folder of JPEG photos with the Quick Look feature (select a file, press space bar), and then use the up or down arrow keys to move successive files, I can get the 2019's fans roaring with fewer than 10 files previewed. I don't see any spikes in CPU activity, so my guess is that the GPU is involved in throwing these images up on the screen. Has anyone else seen this behavior with their 2019 Mac Pro?

Neither of my 2010 Mac Pros ever did this (or if they did kick on the fan for the RX560 in the chassis I didn't hear it externally).
Click to expand...
There must be something wrong here.
I have a similar 7,1 and it's MUCH more quiet than my single 6-Core 5.1 under any workloads I did in the last months since getting it used.
Even my Lacie external 2.5" HDD is louder than the 7.1 Mac Pro.
 
Harry Haller said:
The top of the line M2 Ultra 76 core GPU has 1/4 the performance of a 4090.

Click to expand...

Not going to argue that the RTX 4090 doesn't have the crown when it comes to pure rendering, but my M3 Max MacBook renders Blender scenes faster than M2 Ultra—so the M2 Ultra isn't the benchmark.

The M3 generation got hardware raytracing, so it will be interesting to see how Apple might configure an 'Ultra' or 'Extreme' chip, now that we can't assume that M3 Ultra is two 'Max' chips fused.

I'm not holding my breath, but I'm also not ruling out that Apple has a Mac Pro configuration in testing sprung from a "hold my beer" moment of inspiration, with a corresponding price tag.

As nice as that would be to see as a halo product, the market would be extremely small. I think Apple shines the most in the enthusiast market segment which has some money to spend for nice solutions; pricey to many, but not 'strictly business 2 business' prices.

All that said, it's a huge brain fart to think that just because a PC with a 4090 (or two, or four...) renders a frame several times faster than a Mac, it's those several times better. The 'wow' factor is there, for sure, but that's not how I have ever experienced computer work, even 3D work.

During my 5.1 days, for a long time I had a Radeon R9 280X. At the end for a brief period I had a Nvidia 1080 Ti which I could use for GPU acceleration during rendering. Massive speed improvement. A few times I just started a render in Maxwell and watched it go. Like staring into an aquarium. That's not working, that's waiting. It was satisfying at the time, but I was done with 'watching renders' pretty quickly.

At the end of the day, what counts is the overall experience with a focus on "viewport performance". Sure, today we do get realtime raytraced feedback during lookdev. But I get that on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro too. There is nothing about today's Macs that keeps me from doing 3D work. Nothing. If I have a personal project I'd like to take to 'final pixel' I'll queue those up for when I'm done for the day. Commercial work: render farms all day.

Not saying I wouldn't take a Mac that was 6x faster, just pointing out that perspective is really important.
 
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AndreeOnline said:
Not going to argue that the RTX 4090 doesn't have the crown when it comes to pure rendering, but my M3 Max MacBook renders Blender scenes faster than M2 Ultra—so the M2 Ultra isn't the benchmark.

The M3 generation got hardware raytracing, so it will be interesting to see how Apple might configure an 'Ultra' or 'Extreme' chip, now that we can't assume that M3 Ultra is two 'Max' chips fused.

I'm not holding my breath, but I'm also not ruling out that Apple has a Mac Pro configuration in testing sprung from a "hold my beer" moment of inspiration, with a corresponding price tag.

As nice as that would be to see as a halo product, the market would be extremely small. I think Apple shines the most in the enthusiast market segment which has some money to spend for nice solutions; pricey to many, but not 'strictly business 2 business' prices.

All that said, it's a huge brain fart to think that just because a PC with a 4090 (or two, or four...) renders a frame several times faster than a Mac, it's those several times better. The 'wow' factor is there, for sure, but that's not how I have ever experienced computer work, even 3D work.

During my 5.1 days, for a long time I had a Radeon R9 280X. At the end for a brief period I had a Nvidia 1080 Ti which I could use for GPU acceleration during rendering. Massive speed improvement. A few times I just started a render in Maxwell and watched it go. Like staring into an aquarium. That's not working, that's waiting. It was satisfying at the time, but I was done with 'watching renders' pretty quickly.

At the end of the day, what counts is the overall experience with a focus on "viewport performance". Sure, today we do get realtime raytraced feedback during lookdev. But I get that on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro too. There is nothing about today's Macs that keeps me from doing 3D work. Nothing. If I have a personal project I'd like to take to 'final pixel' I'll queue those up for when I'm done for the day. Commercial work: render farms all day.

Not saying I wouldn't take a Mac that was 6x faster, just pointing out that perspective is really important.
Click to expand...

I agree the M3 GPU performance is a huge step up, a great indication of things to come and excellent for the vast majority of users who don't need extreme levels of GPU performance. I just wish the Mac Pro and Studio users who need that level of performance had the option for it. Maybe with an M4 Ultra or M4 Extreme option.
 
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I'll gather some data on what my 2019 Mac Pro is doing thermal and fan-wise, and start a new thread. Better that than derail the discussion here, thank you for your tolerance.
 
SDAVE said:
No one uses Octane or Redshift on a Mac. Most hardcore 3d artists are on Windows. Just because it's available doesn't mean it's usable ;)

The 4090 is miles ahead of anything in this industry, and 5090 is around the corner and that gap will be widened more.
Click to expand...
I am not disputing the fact that Windows does have more support when it comes to 3D software/plugins.

I prefer CPU rendering personally, but it's nice to now have an Octane renderer as well on my Silicon Mac.
My cMP only ever had AMD GPU's, so it wasn't an option.
I also find it a pain having to convert standard materials into Octane materials (stuck in my ways)....;)
 
MarkC426 said:
The deal of the year, if it's really new.
Click to expand...


But nobody buys them, nobody can even give them away - remember what that guy told us on here. ;)

I just grabbed an Afterburner card for mine.

I'm awfully tempted by the W6800X machine and getting the fabric link and putting the two together, then just plonking the RX6600XT in the 3.3ghz 12 core and I have my new cycling pain cave workstation, the old 5,1 can be retired. ;)

There are some unusual spec machines there, 2.5 28 core with unusual storage amount and ram.
 
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