iMac Pro iMac Pro 18 Core delivery status

[SecuritySteve]

So I have a couple of concerns regarding the iMac Pro I received, and the results of some of my benchmarks.

Geekbench CPU:
5.4-5.5k Single Core 44-45k Multi
Geekbench GPU:
175k
Cinebench CPU:
2755 cb
Cinebench GPU:
81.89 FPS
BlackMagic:
3 GB/s read and 2.3 GB/s write

GPU Gaming test:

World of Warcraft (macOS):
5k Resolution at graphics setting level 8 on my densely populated server ... Stormwind City 55 FPS
2k Resolution at graphics setting level 10 in the same location ... 60 FPS
5k Resolution at graphics setting level 8 in a battleground - 40 FPS
2k Resolution at graphics setting level 10 in the same location - 60 FPS

So it does look like the Vega 64 GPU is capable of decent 5k gaming experiences ... quite impressive. But I'm probably going to stick with 2k simply because of mouse cursor size issues

My silicon rollout on my CPU must be godlike, that single core score is almost identical to the 10 core version. Definitely glad I went with my 18 core option.

Noted Bugs (on day 1 ... seriously?)
Installing Razer Synapse was a PAIN IN THE *** due to the "you must enable Razer Ltd" security center issue. I had to install Synapse twice before macOS allowed it to run. What a pain. That said after it was installed the devices worked beautifully ... no jumping mouse or unclear mic audio, and the keyboard obviously works flawlessly (hard to screw that up tho)

Before and after installing the drivers, macOS is EXTREMELY LAGGY on the login page from a restart or power on. After I am logged into my desktop, all is well. This only occurs when Razer devices are attached to the computer at power on or reboot. I hope this issue gets patched out as macOS updates roll out. I already had a kernel panic during the same time period, so there has to be some kind of device incompatibility issue or the T2 coprocessor is going nuts during login and causing a conflict.

I haven't had the chance to set up my professional use cases yet ... but will update this thread after I do.

 

[bxs]

Keep your impressions coming please. If I have the chance to buy a 2nd iMP during 2018 it will be the 18 core model.

 

[libertyranger10]

So I have a couple of concerns regarding the iMac Pro I received, and the results of some of my benchmarks.

Geekbench CPU:
5.4-5.5k Single Core 44-45k Multi
Geekbench GPU:
175k
Cinebench CPU:
2755 cb
Cinebench GPU:
81.89 FPS
BlackMagic:
3 GB/s read and 2.3 GB/s write

GPU Gaming test:

World of Warcraft (macOS):
5k Resolution at graphics setting level 8 on my densely populated server ... Stormwind City 55 FPS
2k Resolution at graphics setting level 10 in the same location ... 60 FPS
5k Resolution at graphics setting level 8 in a battleground - 40 FPS
2k Resolution at graphics setting level 10 in the same location - 60 FPS

So it does look like the Vega 64 GPU is capable of decent 5k gaming experiences ... quite impressive. But I'm probably going to stick with 2k simply because of mouse cursor size issues

My silicon rollout on my CPU must be godlike, that single core score is almost identical to the 10 core version. Definitely glad I went with my 18 core option.

Noted Bugs (on day 1 ... seriously?)
Installing Razer Synapse was a PAIN IN THE *** due to the "you must enable Razer Ltd" security center issue. I had to install Synapse twice before macOS allowed it to run. What a pain. That said after it was installed the devices worked beautifully ... no jumping mouse or unclear mic audio, and the keyboard obviously works flawlessly (hard to screw that up tho)

Before and after installing the drivers, macOS is EXTREMELY LAGGY on the login page from a restart or power on. After I am logged into my desktop, all is well. This only occurs when Razer devices are attached to the computer at power on or reboot. I hope this issue gets patched out as macOS updates roll out. I already had a kernel panic during the same time period, so there has to be some kind of device incompatibility issue or the T2 coprocessor is going nuts during login and causing a conflict.

I haven't had the chance to set up my professional use cases yet ... but will update this thread after I do.

Wow, fast results! Do you use Adobe Lightroom? I'm super curious to see any speed advantages with so many cores! Especially since they announced recently they are working with Intel directly for an update that is advantageous for multicore processors.

 

[SecuritySteve]

Wow, fast results! Do you use Adobe Lightroom? I'm super curious to see any speed advantages with so many cores! Especially since they announced recently they are working with Intel directly for an update that is advantageous for multicore processors.

I'm afraid I don't. Sorry

 

[libertyranger10]

I'm afraid I don't. Sorry

No worries, congrats on your new machine!!

 

[tribaltek]

macOS is EXTREMELY LAGGY on the login page from a restart or power on.

Same thing here on my 8-core. I've seen a few others mention it as well. I'm assuming it'll get patched soon. After the laggy login things are fine, though.

 

[SecuritySteve]

So I set up my old system and my new iMac Pro for a real world test of my application last night, for an overnight test. This software is of my own design, and the grand arching overview is that it works as follows:

1 Parent Application is launched
2 Spawns a 'target' application with generated random input
3 Checks the health of the 'target' application
4 if there is a crash it is recorded, if there is a hang it is recorded, and if there is no change the generated input is discarded and regenerated.
5 Back to step 2.

Each one of those cycles I refer to as an iteration. I ran this setup overnight on Safari as my target application.

Iterations complete on old system: 750,245
Iterations complete on iMac Pro: 34,024,783

Since any one iteration can theoretically provide me with crash data that I am looking for, I judge raw performance based off of the sheer volume of iterations that the system can complete.

My old system was a maxed out 2012 quad core i7 with 32 GB RAM.

This system cost me $1,200 in 2016.
I paid $10,690.56 for the new iMac Pro after business discount and taxes.

Seeing as I was able to receive 45x performance from the iMac Pro, to build the same system of networked i7s would've cost me $54,000 in 2016 when I bought it. In short, for my use this iMac Pro was a steal of a price.

There will be more analysis of other real world tests to come. The aerospace engineer that I am working for on the weekends would like to test CFD software on my system to check. He needs to deliver this software by hand to me first though. Stay tuned!

 

[bxs]

So I set up my old system and my new iMac Pro for a real world test of my application last night, for an overnight test. This software is of my own design, and the grand arching overview is that it works as follows:

1 Parent Application is launched
2 Spawns a 'target' application with generated random input
3 Checks the health of the 'target' application
4 if there is a crash it is recorded, if there is a hang it is recorded, and if there is no change the generated input is discarded and regenerated.
5 Back to step 2.

Each one of those cycles I refer to as an iteration. I ran this setup overnight on Safari as my target application.

Iterations complete on old system: 750,245
Iterations complete on iMac Pro: 34,024,783

Since any one iteration can theoretically provide me with crash data that I am looking for, I judge raw performance based off of the sheer volume of iterations that the system can complete.

My old system was a maxed out 2012 quad core i7 with 32 GB RAM.

This system cost me $1,200 in 2016.
I paid $10,690.56 for the new iMac Pro after business discount and taxes.

Seeing as I was able to receive 45x performance from the iMac Pro, to build the same system of networked i7s would've cost me $54,000 in 2016 when I bought it. In short, for my use this iMac Pro was a steal of a price.

There will be more analysis of other real world tests to come. The aerospace engineer that I am working for on the weekends would like to test CFD software on my system to check. He needs to deliver this software by hand to me first though. Stay tuned!

I'm a CFD user and that is my primary workload on my iMP 10core. Obviously I will be interested in any CFD benchmarking experience you care to share. Thank you.

 

[SFjohn]

Same thing here on my 8-core. I've seen a few others mention it as well. I'm assuming it'll get patched soon. After the laggy login things are fine, though.

I’m not too surprised. I’ve noticed when adding more RAM to my Macs in the past, the boot up would take longer. With more everything, I’m guessing that the boot up process on the new iMac Pro has a lot more to verify...

 

[SecuritySteve]

I’m not too surprised. I’ve noticed when adding more RAM to my Macs in the past, the boot up would take longer. With more everything, I’m guessing that the boot up process on the new iMac Pro has a lot more to verify...

To be specific, I'm noticing that my screen tears and my mouse cursor is barely responsive. Selecting my user causes screen tears as well, and the kernel panic happens as I'm typing in a password. I am not referring to the boot process, which takes less time than my 2015 MBP.

 

[SFjohn]

To be specific, I'm noticing that my screen tears and my mouse cursor is barely responsive. Selecting my user causes screen tears as well, and the kernel panic happens as I'm typing in a password. I am not referring to the boot process, which takes less time than my 2015 MBP.

Damn, thanks for detailing what is going wrong. That is really shocking. Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[SFjohn]

Anyone take delivery on an 18 core with 4TB SSD yet? I’m wondering if that is drawing out my delivery time...
My status changed on the 12th. Now it’s “Preparing to Ship”. I’m expecting it will arrive on the 20th which is the last day of Apple’s original date range.

 

[gobluejd]

I think there is a production issue. Several people (me, twitter and here) had theirs ready for shipment only to go back to in progress days later.

 

[mcewangus]

Wow, fast results! Do you use Adobe Lightroom? I'm super curious to see any speed advantages with so many cores! Especially since they announced recently they are working with Intel directly for an update that is advantageous for multicore processors.

Mine arrived this morning, 24h earlier, as I was leaving home to go to work. I won't have a chance to play with it until later tonight, however I do use Adobe Lightroom extensively, so I will be posting my experience here afterwards. I will also be able to compare it against the 10-core which I sent back for the 18-core one instead.

 

[mcewangus]

Score out of the box, nothing installed but Geekbench - somewhat puzzling that single-core is consistently hitting such a high figure...

 

[bxs]

Score out of the box, nothing installed but Geekbench - somewhat puzzling that single-core is consistently hitting such a high figure...

View attachment 750466

View attachment 750474

Very nice results.

 

[lifjoy]

I think there is a production issue. Several people (me, twitter and here) had theirs ready for shipment only to go back to in progress days later.

I experienced the same thing. My order briefly changed to "Preparing for Shipment" on 2018-02-03 then changed back to "Order In Progress" the next day and has not progressed since then. Currently showing "Delivers 05 Feb, 2018 - 19 Feb, 2018 by 2-3 Business Days".

Also, the pending credit card charges for the iMac Pro and AppleCare+ appeared on my bank's website on 2018-01-30, but have since vanished.

I called Apple to ask about all this, and they said everything was fine with my order and that I just had to wait. They had no further explanation-- other than to comment that a shipment notification email was erroneously sent in early January to some 18-core purchasers.

I ordered on 2017-12-14: 18 core, 128GB, 2TB SSD, Pro Vega 64, mouse + trackpad. The VESA Mount Adapter Kit was delivered on 2017-12-30.

 

[SincetheNES]

I am still waiting to see that this was shipped. My card was charged already, I ordered as soon as it was available, yet I am getting no answer from Apple other than, "We can refund your money". I don't want my money back, I want to know why I don't have my machine. "I don't have those answers". Well, someone there does!

It seems Apple was more concerned with generating hype as every major Apple-using YouTuber has received the 18 core model for review purposes already. Meanwhile, those of us who paid for the machine outright and actually need it to do work rather than do reviews of consumer nonsense are left with no answers.

 

[Beliyaal]

1) I ran the test with one instance of the prime number program executing

Frequency was observed using the Intel Power Gadget

1 cores active - Frequency = 4.5 GHz
2 cores active - Frequency = 4.5 GHz
3 cores active - Frequency = 4.3 GHz
4 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
5 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
6 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
7 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
8 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
9 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz
10 cores active - Frequency = 4.2 GHz

I have been analyzing the turbo boost of my 18-core iMac Pro and have some conclusions.

It would seem that Intel Power Gadget is miss-reporting the turbo boost frequency, possibly because macOS is moving the single threaded workload between the cores. When you disable cores with Instruments it forces measurement on the same core as the workload is on.

Using the command line client in Intel Power Gadget to dump at a higher frequency we get:

First with 2 cores + HT enabled in Instruments:

Then with all 36 cores + HT enabled in Instruments:

Notice that it's flickering between the 4.3 GHz max turbo boost and lower turbo boost frequencies.

To confirm my theory this I created an application that simple decrements a register, loops and measures the performance of this. This ended up taking 1 cycle per loop:

Running this application Intel Power Gadget reports 4.3 GHz consistently with 2 threads enabled, but only about 4.1 GHz when all hardware 36 threads are enabled. This does not agree with the performance results in the application however:

While Intel Power Gadget is reporting 4 % lower frequency, the looper is actually faster for all 36 threads enabled. This could be because other processes are interfering, but also notice that the counter is decremented at 4.28 GHz. The power is also very similar, pointing to the same turbo boost.

I think we can conclude that Turbo boost is actually working at the advertised frequency of 4.3 GHz.

 

[lifjoy]

I am still waiting to see that this was shipped.

Tonight, my order's status once again changed to "Preparing for Shipment". Here's hoping that you and SFJohn will soon see the same with your orders.

Update 1 (15 minutes later)... I spoke too soon as the status has again reverted to "Order In Progress". I had saved a "Preparing for Shipment" screenshot to prove to myself that I had not imagined this. This situation is frustrating.

Update 2. I chatted online with an Apple Customer Service rep, who said "That’s really weird. I’ve never heard or seen such a thing!". He then explained that the "Delivers 05 Feb, 2018 - 19 Feb, 2018 by 2-3 Business Days" statement is not a two-week window of opportunity, but instead: "...the range there is an 'either or' rather than a 'from this date to this one'." So sadly, it appears that I have another week of waiting.

It is odd that the status changed to "Preparing for Shipment" at about the same time last Sunday.

 

[gobluejd]

Tonight, my order's status once again changed to "Preparing for Shipment". Here's hoping that you and SFJohn will soon see the same with your orders.

Update 1 (15 minutes later)... I spoke too soon as the status has again reverted to "Order In Progress". I had saved a "Preparing for Shipment" screenshot to prove to myself that I had not imagined this. This situation is frustrating.

Update 2. I chatted online with an Apple Customer Service rep, who said "That’s really weird. I’ve never heard or seen such a thing!". He then explained that the "Delivers 05 Feb, 2018 - 19 Feb, 2018 by 2-3 Business Days" statement is not a two-week window of opportunity, but instead: "...the range there is an 'either or' rather than a 'from this date to this one'." So sadly, it appears that I have another week of waiting.

It is odd that the status changed to "Preparing for Shipment" at about the same time last Sunday.

Mine did the same (14 Core) back to Order in Progress.....(last week Sunday same thing)

 

[SecuritySteve]

So after using the iMac Pro for a weekend, I have some general observations of the beast. For one, this is probably the most comfortable all-around powerhouse I've ever used. However, there are some nitpicky things that keep bugging me. For one, the speakers seem to have a bass boost of some sort. That's cool and all, but I don't like music that sounds good with a bass boost ... so sometimes things sound weird. Theres also no way to disable this feature, which makes it kinda awkward.

I've also noticed that when doing one thing (say playing music or watching a video) the chimes for things like new email have their beginnings cut off, so all I get is an immediate high note or low note that is jarring. I've never been on a mac that does this, but I found the workaround is to just use the "blow" sound file since it is the most subtle and least ear piercing to start in the middle of the sound playback.

Audio aside, I've been blown away by the powerhouse that this machine brings. It's capable of doing so much, and the cost per performance is spot on with the 18 core system. If a professional that utilized heavy multicore performance were to ask me, I would strongly recommend the 18 core system over all of the other processors because of my experience with it.

No system is without bugs, and I'm glad that the iMac Pro only has the two I've mentioned in this thread. (To recap, that's the audio chime playback, and the boot up login screen heavy lag) I expect many of these bugs will be patched out soon with updates. I'm also extremely glad that the processor doesn't seem throttled in any way, as based on some of what you'd read on these forums you'd think that Apple was gimping their own hardware. That does not seem to be the case at all here.

The machine is also extremely silent, and when pressed for load it spins up the fans, but even then they are quieter than my old gaming rig was on idle. I can totally see this being used in a large office with minimal noise interference. The thermal cooling solution is the best I've ever seen in an iMac.

Final opinion: 10/10 would recommend again.

 

[hfg]

For one, the speakers seem to have a bass boost of some sort. That's cool and all, but I don't like music that sounds good with a bass boost ... so sometimes things sound weird. Theres also no way to disable this feature, which makes it kinda awkward.

If you are playing your music with iTunes, will the equalizer adjustments under "Window" allow for correction to your liking?

 

[SecuritySteve]

If you are playing your music with iTunes, will the equalizer adjustments under "Window" allow for correction to your liking?

Thats actually brilliant. I will try that.

 

[CLS727]

For one, the speakers seem to have a bass boost of some sort. That's cool and all, but I don't like music that sounds good with a bass boost ... so sometimes things sound weird. Theres also no way to disable this feature, which makes it kinda awkward.

Thanks for the write-up... awesome machine.

Sounds like for the speakers you should just pair it with a couple of new HomePods with the stereo sync.