I have not looked at the Leonovos, I will check them out. I believe you that Windows 10 is a lot better, but I feel like I need to spend 1-2 months researching PCs, chips, builds, etc. before I can understand the "scene". And then in 3-5 years, if I go back to a new Mac? Another painful transition. Hmm...
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MP 7,1 Does it make sense to purchase a 7,1 Mac Pro today?
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I have not looked at the Leonovos, I will check them out. I believe you that Windows 10 is a lot better, but I feel like I need to spend 1-2 months researching PCs, chips, builds, etc. before I can understand the "scene". And then in 3-5 years, if I go back to a new Mac? Another painful transition. Hmm...
Picking through monitors is definitely a pain the ass but a good display should last you a while if you're able to calibrate regularly and have realistic expectations for service life. Eizo, NEC, and FSI also offer quite long warranties since they're not really selling you a "consumer/prosumer" item like the XDR or a BenQ / LG / Asus.
Most people at LGG strongly stress that if you can't afford the big shiny display, just deal with a 'good enough' consumer monitor for your editing work and a serious but smaller (even 17"!) display for final color check. You can limp by with many different resolutions and display sizes but if you can't trust your color you're dead in the water.
If you're struggling with adjustability I'd invest in a good display arm. I have a set of 3 Ergotrons (including a huge double-swivel one for my heavy 27" Cintiq) and I basically expect them to outlive me.
^ Even a good quality “cheap” field monitor hooked up to a calibrated HDMI or SDI output is a good option. Most high quality monitors are good enough for ~85% of the work, even through a lot of the “finishing” process for long form. Use scopes and learn how they work to push that a little further.
100% agreed. I was just going on about the difficulty in finding an an actual good monitor that's 4K and how Apple does the resolution correct for scaling purposes, while most others don't. The below is a very interesting article about this very thing that I recently came across - check out the graph.
Mac external displays for designers and developers
If you’re considering an external display for your Mac, there’s a few important decisions to make. Apple doesn’t sell external displays any more, so you can’t just default to their wisdom. That’s an issue, because not all displays are well suited for Macs.
But yeah, my NEC is great - calibrated before each project, I get average dEs < 1. I just need a 4K display. FSI 4Ks are $25,000+ and out of my budget. That leaves NEC or Eizo. I was interested in the XDR, but the more I look into it, the less convinced I am that it's worth the cost for grading and accurate color work. I may just get another NEC or the Eizo 319X.
I just looked at the forum you mentioned, and noticed Steve Shaw is a participant there. I know Steve and use his LightSpace (ColorSpace) products for display and LUT calibration. Great stuff. I also use it to calibrate the LUTs on my 77" LG OLED TV. Same process really.
This is my setup today. MBP, cabling, and storage are in a keyboard-style pull out drawer under the desk. Nice and neat.
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I bought a 2019 MP earlier in the year for video production work and it has been great. Like you, I had a significant bottleneck in my workflow and it has definitely fixed that. I simply wouldn't have met my deadlines without it.
The whole project has cost a big stack of money however. Previously, I never had too much tied up in my editing setup and preferred to keep things simple with just an iMac and a thunderbolt RAID. Now I've got the tower, XDR display, Afterburner card, audio interface... and it will continue to grow as I add pci-e SSD storage, studio monitors for sound, new GPUs etc. Not going to lie - it's great fun putting all of this together, it's just expensive.
I don't personally regret it at all - but am prepared for a cheap Apple Silicon iMac to come along shortly and more or less be a match for my Mac Pro in terms day-to-day performance.
Add this point of time, I might be tempted to try the M1 Mac Mini, TB3 dock, 8TB Thunderblade and a XDR Monitor. If the Mac Mini doesn't cut it, you can later go for the Mac Pro... and keep the monitor and storage.
One note on Canon cinema raw lite... I shot some C200 raw a couple of months ago and was surprised that my Mac Pro did not handle it smoothly at all in Premiere. I'm sure this must be a software optimisation thing. It's worth investigating though as it'd be a shame to get the Mac Pro and still be stuck using proxies.
The whole project has cost a big stack of money however. Previously, I never had too much tied up in my editing setup and preferred to keep things simple with just an iMac and a thunderbolt RAID. Now I've got the tower, XDR display, Afterburner card, audio interface... and it will continue to grow as I add pci-e SSD storage, studio monitors for sound, new GPUs etc. Not going to lie - it's great fun putting all of this together, it's just expensive.
I don't personally regret it at all - but am prepared for a cheap Apple Silicon iMac to come along shortly and more or less be a match for my Mac Pro in terms day-to-day performance.
Add this point of time, I might be tempted to try the M1 Mac Mini, TB3 dock, 8TB Thunderblade and a XDR Monitor. If the Mac Mini doesn't cut it, you can later go for the Mac Pro... and keep the monitor and storage.
One note on Canon cinema raw lite... I shot some C200 raw a couple of months ago and was surprised that my Mac Pro did not handle it smoothly at all in Premiere. I'm sure this must be a software optimisation thing. It's worth investigating though as it'd be a shame to get the Mac Pro and still be stuck using proxies.
100% agreed. I was just going on about the difficulty in finding an an actual good monitor that's 4K and how Apple does the resolution correct for scaling purposes, while most others don't. The below is a very interesting article about this very thing that I recently came across - check out the graph.
Mac external displays for designers and developers
If you’re considering an external display for your Mac, there’s a few important decisions to make. Apple doesn’t sell external displays any more, so you can’t just default to their wisdom. That’s an issue, because not all displays are well suited for Macs.bjango.com
But yeah, my NEC is great - calibrated before each project, I get average dEs < 1. I just need a 4K display. FSI 4Ks are $25,000+ and out of my budget. That leaves NEC or Eizo. I was interested in the XDR, but the more I look into it, the less convinced I am that it's worth the cost for grading and accurate color work. I may just get another NEC or the Eizo 319X.
I just looked at the forum you mentioned, and noticed Steve Shaw is a participant there. I know Steve and use his LightSpace (ColorSpace) products for display and LUT calibration. Great stuff. I also use it to calibrate the LUTs on my 77" LG OLED TV. Same process really.
This is my setup today. MBP, cabling, and storage are in a keyboard-style pull out drawer under the desk. Nice and neat.
View attachment 1675712
Nice! Clean setup.
I guess I haven’t thought about Retina scaling lately - I’m using a Win10 PC these days for my heavy lifting and non-integer scaling at 150% works really well. When high-DPI displays started coming out on the market the lack of application support on the PC side made the Apple 2x-or-bust approach sensible, but those days are long behind us now for essentially every modern application.
I think the M1 is a truly exciting development for computing. After a string of (IMO) very boring releases, Apple really did pull a rabbit out of their hat. But it puts demanding users in a bind; nobody knows how well it’s going to scale up and AMD is absolutely killing it on the PC side of things if you have embarrassingly parallel workloads.
So M1 is squeezing upwards, high core count AMD CPUs are pushing down, and the current 7,1 is stuck in the middle.
If you need it now, and you need it on a Mac, then of course the solution is obvious. But if you’re trying to make an investment for the next 3-5 years I think it’s really hard to have confidence in the platform.
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As an owner of a 12C Mac Pro 2019, I would say that any benchmark (even for M1’s) is irrelevant for professional work. No one... and I mean no one, reviews multitasking overheads. The latest 2020 iMac and M1 Mac mini (returned) could not handle my workloads. I do photo edits (hundreds per day), FCP edits with pro res raw, and a ton of photoshop work. The Mac Pro can export a 1000 images and leave headroom for FCP edits, email, web etc etc. same while doing fcpx exports. I never have to leave the computer and wait for a task to complete. Try that on the M1 or any future iMac. Will fail miserably.
I got sucked into the “this has higher cinebench” scores fad, burnt my money until I settled on the Mac Pro.
Add to that expandability and you cannot go wrong. I too wondered about Apple not supporting the intel machines. But this is the only thing that chugs through without breaking a sweat.
I got sucked into the “this has higher cinebench” scores fad, burnt my money until I settled on the Mac Pro.
Add to that expandability and you cannot go wrong. I too wondered about Apple not supporting the intel machines. But this is the only thing that chugs through without breaking a sweat.
M1 has a lot more dedicated accelerators for tasks. There are a lot of use cases where if your software uses Accelerate or Metal, M1 will blow the doors of a Mac Pro. It just has specialized processing the Xeon simply doesn't. You can offset that a bit by using something like a Vega 2 on a Mac Pro.
But there is an cost question around that. A $1000 Mac Mini getting _even close_ to the performance of a $12000 Mac Pro is very much not good. And that Mac Mini is using a super tiny sub notebook CPU. Higher end Apple Silicon Macs coming next year are going to continue eating at and surpassing the Mac Pro.
I mean, for the cost of a decent Mac Pro config, you could literally buy 12 Mac Minis and multitask circles about the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro already didn't look like the best deal. It looks like a very bad deal now.
Even in the PC world, the Xeon that Apple is using in the Mac Pro is considered fairly low performance, and is not a good multitasking CPU. The Xeon that Apple is using isn't exactly some great multitasker either.
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It's a bit misleading to say X cannot be benchmarked (to paraphrase 'any benchmark is irrelevant for professional work') - none of this is magic. It's all measurable. As long as you have an OS scheduler that plays nice and RAM, CPU threads, storage bandwith, etc. to spare you'll be able to multitask X workload on Y system.
Most modern OSs are very good at gracefully handling these things. I'm rendering out a nasty file in Houdini right now and I'm still able to paint in PS, layout in InDesign, or draw in Illustrator because I assigned the CPU threads rationally and have enough memory to prevent swap file thrashing.
More to the point, every workload and workflow is different. Some people just need raw thread count to crush certain jobs and other people would be better served by single-threaded speed because their tasks just work out that way.
There's no one-size-fits all answer to most of these 'should I get this?' questions - you can always just throw more hardware at the problem but that's not realistic for the vast majority seeking equipment fit for purpose.
Most modern OSs are very good at gracefully handling these things. I'm rendering out a nasty file in Houdini right now and I'm still able to paint in PS, layout in InDesign, or draw in Illustrator because I assigned the CPU threads rationally and have enough memory to prevent swap file thrashing.
More to the point, every workload and workflow is different. Some people just need raw thread count to crush certain jobs and other people would be better served by single-threaded speed because their tasks just work out that way.
There's no one-size-fits all answer to most of these 'should I get this?' questions - you can always just throw more hardware at the problem but that's not realistic for the vast majority seeking equipment fit for purpose.
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Im in this camp as well, and is actually what I did. I just ordered my second TR/Win 10 unit this afternoon and sent back my 7.1 Tuesday. Ill run these for now and see what comes up in a couple years.
Very much night and day IF and I emphasize IF. you or someone clean loads the operating system, and has an idea how you want your drives setup. I will probabally get a second gen ASi machine but for the time being I have specific needs, deadlines and I dont like working all night every night. I am keeping my iMP unit for the very little FCP I do nowadays.
For me it wasn't a hard transition at all, ... ok some shortcuts are very different and you need to go back to remembering file trees etc but for the last decade Ive been running both platforms
as for builds. I went with a 64c/128t Threadripper AMD unit this time and well. its the reason the 7.1 went back Tuesday. for me it had too many advantages in what im currently working on. ( yes LOTS of places are demanding Adobe only in production ).
I will revisit it again in a couple years and see what has come up but after numerous headaches I can care less the name on my equipment as long as I can get it done efficiently, properly and with minimal headaches. And if changing a machine or dumping one brand for another gets me more done and more time to go have fun with the family great. in the end their either tools, or toys and they need to do what you want/need to do.
Pardon me but I tend to disagree with what you're saying...
1- Not everything is related to CPU, this benchmarking and marketing war has been ongoing forever and unfortunately just like the mobile phone industry back in 2010, Antutu numbers didn't reflect the true user experience in any way.
2- I am not aware of any manufacturer that was able to achieve a massive leap in performance without moving to a different architecture. Even Intel sucked the 14nm so hard that they can't really provide anything impressive anymore.
3- Asi is not magic, even an iPhone used to have a better single thread performance than an Intel or AMD CPU. The concept behind the M1 chip is very interesting but saying that Apple Si will surpass a server grade CPU next year is nothing but wishful thinking, it's a long road and don't expect anything before couple of years.
4- Saying something like Xeon are not great multitasking CPUs makes me wonder what's your definition of multitasking. If you are talking about benchmark score it's a different story. Xeon processors target audience are workstations that need the most STABLE performance out there under a continuous heavy load for a prolonged time. The 3200 series Xeon were exactly what Apple needed for expandability since they offer 64 PCIE lanes which is something I don't expect Apple to come even close to in the next 2 years.
5- Apple is not stupid, they spent a lot of time and resources developing the Mac pro, it's not like they're gonna throw it after 24 months. I strongly believe they're going to release more MPX cards along with other ASi models in parallel however the two are very different and intended for different workloads.
Currently Apple M1 has a very limited PCIE lanes, it's a perfect solution for mobility and low power consumption but saying that Apple is going to magically release a M2 next year that will be able to handle multiple GPUs, at least 64GB of RAM and outperform other chipsets is again nothing but wishful thinking.
As of Today, the Mac pro is still the fastest, most expandable Mac computer available and I don't expect this to change in the next 3 years.
This statement must be as old as competing CPU architectures and is usually used to justify the slower, more expensive platform somehow by bringing up some 'pro' feature that's not even utilized outside of highend distributed oddjobs.
In my experience it's usually the single core score that matters most for software like Adobe.Going by the numbers they manage already with their puny initial low end offering - in 3 years time the Mac Pro will likely be the slowest machine in Apple's product range and due to it's outrageous price even more of a running gag than the Trashcan managed to be for several years. Most expandable though, for sure. Probably also the one with the by far highest theoretical RAM ceiling for many years.
If it's needed for work now then no choice but to pick one up. I'd seriously look into leasing or renting arrangements though. This is not going to be a keeper like the last cheesegrater, the platform shift and ongoing progress in the CPU space will prevent that.
This statement must be as old as competing CPU architectures and is usually used to justify the slower, more expensive platform somehow by bringing up some 'pro' feature that's not even utilized outside of highend distributed oddjobs.
Going by the numbers they manage already with their puny initial low end offering - in 3 years time the Mac Pro will likely be the slowest machine in Apple's product range and due to it's outrageous price even more of a running gag than the Trashcan managed to be for several years. Most expandable though, for sure. Probably also the one with the by far highest theoretical RAM ceiling for many years.
If it's needed for work now then no choice but to pick one up. I'd seriously look into leasing or renting arrangements though. This is not going to be a keeper like the last cheesegrater, the platform shift and ongoing progress in the CPU space will prevent that.
Ah yes if you're talking about the next three years then yes I agree; Let's not forget that a product refresh cycle usually is anywhere between 2 to 4 years. The MP7,1 should have been released back in 2016 or 2017 however it took them too long; the iMac is still suffering from the same old outdated design as well...
The MP7,1 will probably be the slowest machine in 3 years but until then, have fun with it.
While still having the Mac Pro in mind, I started looking here:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Our workstations for Adobe Premiere Pro are tested and optimized to give you the best performance and reliability.
www.pugetsystems.com
Seems like a good company, solid products, and I need to do homework on what config to get. Not as easy to figure out as Mac Pro options.
While still having the Mac Pro in mind, I started looking here:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Our workstations for Adobe Premiere Pro are tested and optimized to give you the best performance and reliability.
Seems like a good company, solid products, and I need to do homework on what config to get. Not as easy to figure out as Mac Pro options.
Assuming your flavour of Adobe does not make much use of a high end GPU then you will probably not need the Nvidia 3090 whos main selling point is the VRAM, allowing you to pick either the 3080 or 3070 - both should be plenty. Again, make sure VRAM isn't going to be an issue for your software or your hardware configuration (several high-DPI monitors plus virtual desktops, multiple applications making use of GPU acceleration simultaneously, etc).
All these cards are apparently right now in short supply so you'll most likely have to wait a bit for your order.
Otherwise the main differentiator I can see between their 6K and 8K workstation is that for Adobe the AMD 5xxx CPU should be the better performer (single core) - top choice in fact - but the memory ceiling is 128 GB so if you suspect that it won't be enough then you'll have to go with their Threadripper (8K) configuration which allows for twice the RAM but seems to be a good deal slower in single core yet ships with many more cores - which will probably sit idle most of the time during work.
I'd not consider Intel at this point so their 4k offering is out.
I have three of these in the office for the bulk of the PP/After Effecs work. I have said in many threads - a musician hasn't but one guitar, or one keyboard, or one microphone.While still having the Mac Pro in mind, I started looking here:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Our workstations for Adobe Premiere Pro are tested and optimized to give you the best performance and reliability.
Seems like a good company, solid products, and I need to do homework on what config to get. Not as easy to figure out as Mac Pro options.
An editor doesn't have one type of computer.
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I snipped out the arguments because they all basically come down to Apple can't beat Xeon and it won't happen. So lets just be clear here.
Apple is beating Core i9 right now in every single measure. However you want to frame it, whatever score or app or benchmark or workflow you want to use, they win and Core i9 loses. Done. Over. In the history books. The people who said Apple can't beat desktop CPUs with ARM look extremely foolish right now. Apple is beating Core i9 with an Ultrabook CPU that _has no fan_.
At this point, Apple is a very, very short distance from beating Xeon. They already win in single thread. They just need to add more cores. Which is trivial. Apple's CPU designers could do that on autopilot. In fact, we probably will see higher core versions in the next six months. And those higher core versions will probably beat Xeon. And they'll probably ship in a 16" MacBook Pro.
Intel is done, at least for now. The entire Core series has been beaten by Apple. Xeon will get blown out of the water too. It has nothing to do with ARM vs x86. It has everything to do with Intel fundamentally shipping the same 14 nm processor for years. Intel has been lazy, Apple hasn't.
Anyone who thinks Apple can't beat the Xeon in actual workloads or benchmarks is going to look real foolish real quick. It's coming. People on these forums who thought Apple couldn't beat desktop performance have already gone real quiet.
Well it’s a really worrisome perspective for us people who have dropped 12k+ on the Mac Pro last year. I believe we will have a good workhorse in our stable for at least two more years from now, probably three also. But after that, the desire to jump on one of the new monsters will grow strongly! The big question is about resale value, who’s gonna buy such a monster machine in the first place and when will be the right moment to abandon ship...?
for now I couldn’t be more happy, I even just got a second Vega II for Resolve. Premiere is fine on the machine, IF (and that’s a big if) you’re NOT using an XDR display. Premiere on the XDR or any hidpi display is a pain in the ass to work with on this machine. I don’t know why but somehow the sheer amount of UI pixels to be rendered make the entire interface just a nightmare to use. I believe if I had three HD displays or so I’d be the happiest premiere editor with this baby, but on the xdr.. oh lord. I resorted to using premiere in 1/2 resolution UI Mode and it does the trick but it’s offending my eyes and the displays!
I’m trying to move to resolve more and more but a lot of clients demand Premiere because it’s the MS office of video editing softwares and it allows them to ping pong projects from freelancer to freelancer. Sadly still resolve is a big unknown for most.
for now I couldn’t be more happy, I even just got a second Vega II for Resolve. Premiere is fine on the machine, IF (and that’s a big if) you’re NOT using an XDR display. Premiere on the XDR or any hidpi display is a pain in the ass to work with on this machine. I don’t know why but somehow the sheer amount of UI pixels to be rendered make the entire interface just a nightmare to use. I believe if I had three HD displays or so I’d be the happiest premiere editor with this baby, but on the xdr.. oh lord. I resorted to using premiere in 1/2 resolution UI Mode and it does the trick but it’s offending my eyes and the displays!
I’m trying to move to resolve more and more but a lot of clients demand Premiere because it’s the MS office of video editing softwares and it allows them to ping pong projects from freelancer to freelancer. Sadly still resolve is a big unknown for most.
Overheat? These things don't even get warm. The M1 Mini handles playback and timeline scrubbing of 6k footage smoother than a 20k Mac Pro and its fan doesn't even kick in. Export and rendering is also faster on the M1 Mini whilst the machine remains responsive and you can go ahead and edit in another app whilst its exporting - all this on 8GB Ram. These machines are utterly decimating the Mac Pro, you only have to go on Youtube to see the evidence. There is just no argument for those horribly outdated and slow Xeons at this point.
Also look at Boxx if you’re trying to find fully configured PC based workstations instead of MacPro, or have decided to move on:While still having the Mac Pro in mind, I started looking here:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Our workstations for Adobe Premiere Pro are tested and optimized to give you the best performance and reliability.
Seems like a good company, solid products, and I need to do homework on what config to get. Not as easy to figure out as Mac Pro options.
High Performance Workstation Computers | BOXX Technologies
BOXX is a workstation manufacturer specializing in high performance computer workstations purpose-built for Architecture, Engineering, Design, Media, Entertainment, AI and Manufacturing.
www.boxx.com
If not, may be good time to get this thread back on track to your original need of which MACOS based product meets your needs. This will get off track quickly, especially when the AMD Threadripper discussions begin.
Wowww, very good review.
Anyone who has one may be able to answer, but for example Davinci Resolve needs 32gb ram when using Fusion, will it still run on a 16gb M1...?
I am sure Premiere (used in video) must need more than 8gb min....but still works.
It’s all a bit confusing as ghz and ram specs are not comparible.
Well there's a reason why corporate IT departments are still going for Xeon processors over AMD nowadays....
Ever heard the phrase: "No one gets fired for buying Cisco". Same thing with Intel.. It's all about STABILITY.
Most are looking for the guaranteed compatibility and certification of the hardware for certain programs/tasks. You must think about it similar to how companies purchase servers. AMDs hardware is just now starting to show up in some of the workstations on the market as it takes years sometimes to get validation/certification for some programs.
There have been a lot of documented stability issues with zen and Linux for example and the list goes on... Would you risk your job or getting fired for going for the fastest?
Trashcan is still selling on eBay, not just listed, it's selling god knows why. Who will be interested in a MP7,1 in 2024 is a difficult question but that MP will be the last one to run Windows x64 machines and many people need Bootcamp support along with Mac OS. Is it to get you a good deal for what you paid for? I don't know but it will certainly get you more than an unbranded PC. RAM is still RAM, spare parts is your worst bet but hell I've even seen people buying a 3 y old iphone just because they wanted an iPhone. Well, that's the Apple power
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