So why aren’t other workstation vendors falling over themselves to switch to AMD?
HP is but one example . . . There are zero AMD options on the Z8, and if HP is to be believed there won’t be one.
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MP All Models Is Apple ****ing themselves over the ThreadRipper 3 yet?
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So why aren’t other workstation vendors falling over themselves to switch to AMD?
HP is but one example . . . There are zero AMD options on the Z8, and if HP is to be believed there won’t be one.
Could you please explain a bit more about the AVX512? What advantages does it give and how significant is it? I've read some info about it, but it seems that even with these pros, threadripper 3970x is far better in performance so the advantage of this shouldn't be so important. Not to mention the new 3990x threadripper.
Of course I'm not a tech specialist, but it just doesn't look so essential to choose it over cores, speed, L3.
I've decided to buy a new workstation PC this year and I really prefer Apple. Don't even remember when I had something else. I was ready to overpay just a month ago, almost bought a new MP when its launched, but when I investigated the current AMD to Intel situation, it's become clear to me that the new 64 cores threadripper will outperform the Xeon w3275 so much that it becomes weird to overpay tremendous amount of money for the CPU that is much weaker and more expensive than the competitor's market solution.
So if someone knows any pros of Xeons in the Mac Pro that show that intel is performing better in some cases, I would really appreciate to hear it. And any other information/thoughts about it.
Would this situation make you assemble a custom PC over Apple if you needed the best CPU power while being a huge Apple fan? Is there any advantages of having a Xeon Mac Pro apart from Mac OS?
AMD throttles even more on AVX-512 . They don't have a faster AVX-512 solution. One metric that Intel is still consistently winning on is AVX-512. Same with the ML/DL/AI extensions.
Threadripper isn't a Z8 chip, for the same reason it's not a Mac Pro chip. Its RAM limit is critical in PRECISELY the little, tiny sliver of the market those machines serve. It would make a great Z4 chip, because people don't buy Z4s to use a gigabyte of RAM.
HP doesn't do much with AMD in the desktop market (they do a few low-end Ryzens in home desktops, and they have a business desktop or two with a Ryzen 7, but previous-generation). I can't find a Threadripper anywhere in their line.
I suspect none or very few of the big Intel workstation makers are doing much with AMD - a little hard to explain to high-end workstation customers that the machine two models down the line is actually faster, but accepts less RAM.
HP doesn't do much with AMD in the desktop market (they do a few low-end Ryzens in home desktops, and they have a business desktop or two with a Ryzen 7, but previous-generation). I can't find a Threadripper anywhere in their line.
I suspect none or very few of the big Intel workstation makers are doing much with AMD - a little hard to explain to high-end workstation customers that the machine two models down the line is actually faster, but accepts less RAM.
if the working set data size is larger than your RAM capacity then more RAM is performance. Not less. Pushing the data out onto a SSD or worse a HDD (even fancy RAID) is way worse than having it in RAM.
There have been "princess and pea" audio folks who needs almost all their samples on RAM backed SSD to have minimal latencies. Those folks.
More banks of DIMMs slots is what more than a few folks railed for in these forums for years (ever since Apple dropped the dual CPU package set up). There was lots of "real pros have maximum core count and max capacity RAM and max PCI-e slot " talk. And Apple put the Mac Pro on "max".
The Mac Pro is being aimed at multiple usages (including racked virtualization workloads) . Large data working sets is one of those because they aren't doing a mid-sized or "even bigger" version.
AMD does not have AVX-512 yet.
They just upgraded AVX2 to 256-bit.
That's why you need double the cores with Zen 2 (4 times before).
Maybe the right answer is "waiting for sWRX".
Then it could be "waiting for Zen 3" (AVX-512 compatibility hopefully).
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Don't make this argument with the people who claim Intel and AMD use the same instruction set.
HP gets a sweetheart deal from Intel just like Apple does. AMD's chips are better, no deals needed. Combined with that the public's perception that Intel is the best it's easier and financially better for them to keep offering Intel.
Who gets screwed? the consumer.
AVX512 is a special instruction set that lets the CPU process large chunks of data at once. Works well for doing the same thing repeatedly across a set of data. Things like processing a lot of pixels at once, or processing a lot of audio frames at once. Color correction, audio effects, etc. While image has been moving to the GPU, audio is still on CPU. So you see AVX a lot on audio. Apple seems pretty into AVX512, so my guess is Logic has a lot of AVX512 optimization.
If you wanted to do a gain boost on audio or something, that's a pretty basic acceleration case for AVX. A lot of audio filters are probably AVX accelerated. Especially on Mac where the Accelerate framework is built on AVX. AVX512 is the latest version, and Apple has been doing a lot of work with it.
The one place I've seen the Xeon easily beat Threadripper in benchmarks is on AVX workloads.
I don't know if that's enough to keep Apple on Intel. But it would be enough to give them pause if they thought they might be sacrificing Logic or FCPX performance by switching over.
I think the business and contract entanglements with Intel are more important. But for pro Mac apps, Threadripper is not a clear winner in all workflows.
Speaking of AMD parts, i want these in a 13" macbook pro
www.anandtech.com
Also, vendors will have no choice but to switch to AMD soon (if they want enough processors to meet demand) as intel simply can't supply enough competitive parts.
They are having to make cores 2x the planned size on an old process (Intel intended to stick with 4 cores as mainstream on 14nm, they're now pushing 8-10) to be even as competitive as they currently are, and thus simply can't make up the volume due to consuming more wafers and higher defect rate due to die size.
They were not expecting to have to build core counts this high on this sized process node and thats why they are having continual parts shortages at the moment.
This is also why they can do nothing (until they fix their 10nm or give up, skip, and move to 7nm node) to stop AMD taking market share with a price drop - as whatever the price they don't have enough competitive parts to sell.
AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile APUs: 7nm, 8-core on both 15W and 45W, Coming Q1
Also, vendors will have no choice but to switch to AMD soon (if they want enough processors to meet demand) as intel simply can't supply enough competitive parts.
They are having to make cores 2x the planned size on an old process (Intel intended to stick with 4 cores as mainstream on 14nm, they're now pushing 8-10) to be even as competitive as they currently are, and thus simply can't make up the volume due to consuming more wafers and higher defect rate due to die size.
They were not expecting to have to build core counts this high on this sized process node and thats why they are having continual parts shortages at the moment.
This is also why they can do nothing (until they fix their 10nm or give up, skip, and move to 7nm node) to stop AMD taking market share with a price drop - as whatever the price they don't have enough competitive parts to sell.
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I actually work in Ableton, so I guess the difference there should be less noticeable, but I definitely need to search how performance depends on this AVX512.
However, even with a good advantage of this, don’t you think that the new 64 cores threadripper is just far more powerful than Xeon W-3275 so it will win in any case? Or is AVX512 so significant that even with the new threadripper intel will be able to compete on AVX workloads ?
I don't think so, and i think this is why Apple put an ASIC into the Mac Pro. In anticipation of having an ASIC do this sort of thing in a CPU architecture independent way.
And yes, with >2 times the cores for less money, a 64 core threadripper will still be (just) faster on AVX than a 28 core Xeon W3275. Simply due to brute force core count.
As to RAM capacities... if Apple want more than the memory threadripper can deal with in the mac Pro, there's EPYC. Which can also be used in 2 socket form for 128 cores and more memory (and PCIe lanes) than Xeon. For less money. With less power. And less heat.
Apple should have put its money/effort/resources into AMD. Apple's current problems:
1) Delay. They delayed a Mac Pro refresh for nearly 10 years. Specifically, they have ignored a large segment of potential and certain buyers.
2) Shrinking the market segment. Apple decided that the Mac Pro wasn't for pro-sumers or enthusiasts anymore, but strictly for a narrow segment. Related closely to 3). This is actually huge. When I was going through graduate school and learning Graphic Design and the such, Apple made the Mac Pro affordable for my needs, although it was still expensive but palatable--I could work longer summer hours to get one by the end of summer. The Mac Pro is absolutely out of this realm for any college student.
3) Price. I have shown over and over again that the Mac Pro is 100% more expensive, including inflation to a 2010-2012 Mac Pro by simply posting my receipt from 2008. This just isn't right, and the only explanation left is 2).
There is no "Magic" in your new Mac Pro that makes it just as advanced, or more advanced than the current offerings today. For most tasks, it will be slower than an offering by AMD.
What's being argued here is the top tier spec'd Mac Pro (which is ungodly expensive) vs the best Threadripper. Looks like Threadripper wins for 95% of everything. But how about we focus on the volume of sales that the Mac Pro will undergo, likely 8/16 core count machines? Threadripper will literally rip them up so hard it would be hard to ignore. We should talk about that more.
I'm looking forward to building a measily Ryzen 4900x 12-core machine in a Dune Pro case. Call it a prosumer machine if you want, but it will be a superb gamer and superb editing machine that is interchangeable, upgradable, and quiet. The cost will be astronomically cheaper than what Apple charge compared to its base machine while using the highest-end components possible. This shouldn't be possible, but again, go look at 2) and 3) above. Apple wanted this to happen.
Yes, I've been with Apple for 14 years. I understand and accept the Apple tax because MacOS is clearly worth extra. But the Mac Pro is operating at something that far exceeds the "Apple Tax." This thread is plain proof of just what exactly is that, because it isn't clear...
Sorry, but the 7,1 Mac Pro is "too little, too much, too late." Not for me, but for MOST professionals that would be in the market segment for this machine. You can prove me wrong now, but how about we just wait to see how well it sells throughout 2020?
AMD in 2019/2010:
1) The fastest and most productive CPU ever built--the 3990x. Most won't need this, but for the segment the Mac Pro is operating in, it seriously is a punch in the face.
2) We are about to experience the best mobile CPU ever built according to AMD, and the specs of the "U" 4xxx series CPUs so far are showing it to not be a lie. They are powerhouses that extend battery life, have great single threaded performance, and have more cores to boot. AMD is about to shake up the mobile market really hard. Apple cares A LOT about this. I'd like to see talks about the current top of the line MacBook Pro vs AMD's upcoming line of CPUs...
3) Ryzen 3xxx series literally shook up the industry. The 2xxx series showed AMD to be a player, but the 3xxx really cemented AMD into a serious competitor. The best way to say it, is 2% less gaming performance, 30% more "production" performance, lower heat, lower watt, and at 70% of the cost. Why can't you like that? Since Apple likes to pack technology in a sliver of space, nothing can beat the performance of a Ryzen for the iMac and Mac Mini line as far as performance and heat goes, regardless of price.
Take all of this into account. Take the fact that Apple is throwing nVidia away, who absolutely owns the GPU market in the same way AMD owns the CPU market. Apple has become the 90s Apple again. Stale. Expensive. Non-compatible. Shrunk. Idiosyncratic.
1) Delay. They delayed a Mac Pro refresh for nearly 10 years. Specifically, they have ignored a large segment of potential and certain buyers.
2) Shrinking the market segment. Apple decided that the Mac Pro wasn't for pro-sumers or enthusiasts anymore, but strictly for a narrow segment. Related closely to 3). This is actually huge. When I was going through graduate school and learning Graphic Design and the such, Apple made the Mac Pro affordable for my needs, although it was still expensive but palatable--I could work longer summer hours to get one by the end of summer. The Mac Pro is absolutely out of this realm for any college student.
3) Price. I have shown over and over again that the Mac Pro is 100% more expensive, including inflation to a 2010-2012 Mac Pro by simply posting my receipt from 2008. This just isn't right, and the only explanation left is 2).
There is no "Magic" in your new Mac Pro that makes it just as advanced, or more advanced than the current offerings today. For most tasks, it will be slower than an offering by AMD.
What's being argued here is the top tier spec'd Mac Pro (which is ungodly expensive) vs the best Threadripper. Looks like Threadripper wins for 95% of everything. But how about we focus on the volume of sales that the Mac Pro will undergo, likely 8/16 core count machines? Threadripper will literally rip them up so hard it would be hard to ignore. We should talk about that more.
I'm looking forward to building a measily Ryzen 4900x 12-core machine in a Dune Pro case. Call it a prosumer machine if you want, but it will be a superb gamer and superb editing machine that is interchangeable, upgradable, and quiet. The cost will be astronomically cheaper than what Apple charge compared to its base machine while using the highest-end components possible. This shouldn't be possible, but again, go look at 2) and 3) above. Apple wanted this to happen.
Yes, I've been with Apple for 14 years. I understand and accept the Apple tax because MacOS is clearly worth extra. But the Mac Pro is operating at something that far exceeds the "Apple Tax." This thread is plain proof of just what exactly is that, because it isn't clear...
Sorry, but the 7,1 Mac Pro is "too little, too much, too late." Not for me, but for MOST professionals that would be in the market segment for this machine. You can prove me wrong now, but how about we just wait to see how well it sells throughout 2020?
AMD in 2019/2010:
1) The fastest and most productive CPU ever built--the 3990x. Most won't need this, but for the segment the Mac Pro is operating in, it seriously is a punch in the face.
2) We are about to experience the best mobile CPU ever built according to AMD, and the specs of the "U" 4xxx series CPUs so far are showing it to not be a lie. They are powerhouses that extend battery life, have great single threaded performance, and have more cores to boot. AMD is about to shake up the mobile market really hard. Apple cares A LOT about this. I'd like to see talks about the current top of the line MacBook Pro vs AMD's upcoming line of CPUs...
3) Ryzen 3xxx series literally shook up the industry. The 2xxx series showed AMD to be a player, but the 3xxx really cemented AMD into a serious competitor. The best way to say it, is 2% less gaming performance, 30% more "production" performance, lower heat, lower watt, and at 70% of the cost. Why can't you like that? Since Apple likes to pack technology in a sliver of space, nothing can beat the performance of a Ryzen for the iMac and Mac Mini line as far as performance and heat goes, regardless of price.
Take all of this into account. Take the fact that Apple is throwing nVidia away, who absolutely owns the GPU market in the same way AMD owns the CPU market. Apple has become the 90s Apple again. Stale. Expensive. Non-compatible. Shrunk. Idiosyncratic.
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Dunno. I'd say all these things are very workflow specific. And if you're really GPU dependent than all this AMD talk is nice but also pretty irrelevant. Aside from cost. Maybe. But for a lot of professionals even cost isn't the biggest deal.
Like, for someone like me who mostly cares about the GPU, I'm not all worked up about this. I do need a fast GPU with a larger number of cores. And AMD would make my work go faster. But it's not a deal breaker. I'm just happy to have a workstation from Apple that's fast and capable enough.
That's not everybody. Some people really do need the absolute fastest in CPU. It's only one component in the whole machine. But for my workflow I'd be hard pressed to make a big deal out of AMD vs Intel.
Sending this sort of work out to a co-processor can be very expensive. It's why some graphics apps still do tasks in AVX instead of using the GPU. The cost of getting out to a co-processor instead of keeping it local can result in a net loss.
Something like an image scale or color correction could be much faster in AVX than a GPU. Not because the GPU is slower. It just takes too long to get to the GPU.
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The afterburner card is a programmable FPGA / ASIC designed to do these sorts of tasks - or others (if i am not mistaken, based on the apple marketing) not a GPU.
i.e., it is field programmable virtual hardware that can be optimised for a specific task. It is virtual hardware that can be reconfigured to behave like other virtual hardware.
i.e., if apple (or rather, a mac pro end user with an afterburner) want to use it to do bulk h.265 transcoding for example, they could configure the thing as a dedicated hardware h.265 transcoder. later that day, it could be reprogrammed to be a dedicated hardware transcoder for webM or whatever. Yeah, reconfiguring it will likely be slow enough that you wouldn't want to be doing it as a multi-tasking type thing (essentially it would be like re-flashing a BIOS, but from within the OS) but the point is, that it is virtual hardware that can essentially be "re-flashed" to different virtual hardware as needs dictate.
i.e., if you know you're working on a lot of video of a specific codec, you flash it to deal with that. If you're working with some scientific research problem, you flash it to do that in hardware instead.
For those who don't know what FPGAs are - look em up, they're neat.
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Gamers and kids are buying between an AMD Ryzen 3200G and an AMD Ryzen 3700X for the most part. A Threadripper is absolutely not a well performing CPU line for gaming. I'd still be using Intel processors in my desktop builds if not for the hundreds of security holes in them that can only be fixed by sapping the performance of the Intel CPU. Intel cut a lot of corners in recent years and it really shows. I do hope Apple begins to offer options for both AMD & Intel processors in future computers, but even a switch to solely AMD would be a great benefit to Apple's bottom line. They can still charge the Apple brand premium with parts that were much cheaper for them to buy.
Yes, but in terms of game performance vs. cost you're far, far better off with a 3000 series Ryzen 3600 or up.
There's no PENALTY to game performance any more with the 3000 series, but you're paying for a heap of stuff that won't make any difference for gaming.
Yes, still the same deal. If it takes too long to get from RAM to the PCIe card across the PCIe bus, it could end up being an overall performance loss.
In the case of Afterburner - co-processor cards tend to pay off when the data is moderately large (4k or 8k video, yep) or when the algorithm is complex (ProRes decode is quite a bit more complex than something like a scale or color correction.) So Afterburner makes sense.
I do wonder if that's something Apple is looking at. Especially with Infinity Fabric now in the mix.
You buy Threadripper to work, if it performs well in games that would be a bonus.
But Threadripper 1 12-core looks like a great deal.
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