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Is the new Mac Pro a failure?
- Thread starter ZombiePhysicist
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That's your opinion. A bad uninformed and totally wrong one but it's your own personal opinion.
Nobody ask you what is or isn't a workstation.
And frankly your posting history smells like troll and flamebaiter poo.
Sorry bud, but if that Alienware had come in a designer case with an Apple sticker quite a few here would be singing its praise. A computer is a computer and that Alienware is still a cuda beast that can render faster than the nMP and is upgradable unlike the nMP.
I'm in IT in engineering/energy related field. Except for a very few use case, the only reason until today that we were buying workstation was because of the ram limit in the I-serie CPU compared to the Xeon. Since Skylake can address 64gig of ddr4 a bunch of them will get regular i7 pc next time an update is due.
You can get a socket 2011 6 core i7 in a gaming rig too. You can even upgrade to a full Xeon later as they're socket compatible. Hell, modern board even detect which CPU is used and make the use of both ecc or non ecc ram depending on that CPU, so you can buy a "lowly" i7 and upgrade to a Xeon later.
Some here have a very dogmatic view of what a workstation is.
In workstation land, six cores isn't much these days. And that's six cores maximum. 8 years ago 6 cores was great.
A machine with a low end CPU but a high end GPU is called a gaming machine because that's what games are optimized for. If you're doing a lot of heavy Premiere work, an 8 or 12 core box is going to get you a lot more bang for your buck.
It sounds like you don't need workstations for your work, but that doesn't mean every iMac is now a workstation.
Workstation is such a loaded term. I've lived through times and in industries when the only real workstation had a RISC processor and ran UNIX. I guess I didn't get the memo that officially designated where the distinction now lives?
i think its funny that people are using PC's with consumer oriented gamer parts and calling it a "workstation". I don't see a xeon CPU, firepro or quadro graphics, ECC memory, or a quiet and efficient cooling system with no throttling anywhere in that massive "alienware" LED-ridden mess.
you geeks are funny and its so obvious that none of you do any actual work
you geeks are funny and its so obvious that none of you do any actual work
I don't know if dumbing down the term "workstation" is going to make the people who already (for good reason) don't even consider the current Mac Pro a workstation any happier.
I chucked a i5 or i7 from my flashing rig in my cMP CPU tray. Called it a Xeon in System Profiler. Didn't seem to give a cxxl.
A real riot here. You do know that real FirePro cards have ECC RAM but somehow the Apple Dxxx cards don't?
So fire up OpenCl and watch the errors pile up. Guess it wasn't as crucial as you are pretending, at least not to Apple.
"No throttling" is especially funny. The Dxxx cards are PRE-throttled. No need to throttle if you down clocked them in the first place.
And as far as making "gaming" seem unimportant or silly, have a look at the main FirePro page. Here is section on the 8100:
A real riot here. You do know that real FirePro cards have ECC RAM but somehow the Apple Dxxx cards don't?
So fire up OpenCl and watch the errors pile up. Guess it wasn't as crucial as you are pretending, at least not to Apple.
"No throttling" is especially funny. The Dxxx cards are PRE-throttled. No need to throttle if you down clocked them in the first place.
And as far as making "gaming" seem unimportant or silly, have a look at the main FirePro page. Here is section on the 8100:
- AMD FirePro™ W8100
- Add Best-in-class GPU Compute to Your Workstation[2]
- AMD is the best choice for cloud gaming, virtual/remote computing and computationally intensive workloads
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/workstation
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Lets see what happens when someone suggests an Alienware computer for their next office wide upgrade. Someone would definitely get laughed at.
Unless you call gaming work...lol.
A name is a name, but its a fact that xeons sustain long workloads (rendering, editing, you know, WORK) better and with less heat and energy than their gamer i7 counterparts. They are higher binned. Do you even know what that means, noob? You can leave them running for days rendering an entire sequence, film, project, whatever.
Keep playing with your cute little spec checklists and gamer toyz and trolling on MR in between.
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Boy it is getting thick in here with marketing-speak.
Someone pass the sacred chalice, just hope I don't get stained lips & tongue again.
Someone pass the sacred chalice, just hope I don't get stained lips & tongue again.
100% true. And yes, there are certainly use cases like the one you mentioned, where such capabilities are significant. But I think what we're seeing here is that they are not, for every user. Several years back, Apple had systems that catered to both Pro shop types, and power-users/prosumers or whatever derogatory remark those of you who are rendering film sequences overnight want to throw at those if us who aren't.
We now have an iMac line that's pretty much designed to be disposable, and isn't powerful enough for many of us prosumer types. We have a Mac Mini line that's a complete joke. And we have a Mac Pro line that's been somewhat neglected by Apple, and has taken on some of the "disposable" characteristics of its lower-end siblings.
While I get the feeling that some on this thread scoff at those of us who aren't rendering effects overnight for a Hollywood feature as Geeks, others still get our segment. Intel is "getting" our segment, by releasing the E family of CPUs that offer more cores and lanes, for a modest price increase over the mainstream line. NVIDIA and AMD are getting our segment with a plethora of offerings with a price-value ratios to meet our needs. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. are jumping on board too. While many of these are gaming systems, they are perfectly suited to meet our other needs (multiple VMs, many high-res displays, graphics horsepower, CPU horsepower, etc.). They're now making them quiet and fairly efficient. Most of all, they're making them easily upgradeable.
Scoff at us and turn down your noses at those of us who aren't worthy of wearing the "Pro" badge, and call the inexpensive systems we assemble or buy that provide solid price-performance toys, but without the attention of our segment the "Pro" line of Mac systems means even less to Apple's bean counters.
We now have an iMac line that's pretty much designed to be disposable, and isn't powerful enough for many of us prosumer types. We have a Mac Mini line that's a complete joke. And we have a Mac Pro line that's been somewhat neglected by Apple, and has taken on some of the "disposable" characteristics of its lower-end siblings.
While I get the feeling that some on this thread scoff at those of us who aren't rendering effects overnight for a Hollywood feature as Geeks, others still get our segment. Intel is "getting" our segment, by releasing the E family of CPUs that offer more cores and lanes, for a modest price increase over the mainstream line. NVIDIA and AMD are getting our segment with a plethora of offerings with a price-value ratios to meet our needs. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. are jumping on board too. While many of these are gaming systems, they are perfectly suited to meet our other needs (multiple VMs, many high-res displays, graphics horsepower, CPU horsepower, etc.). They're now making them quiet and fairly efficient. Most of all, they're making them easily upgradeable.
Scoff at us and turn down your noses at those of us who aren't worthy of wearing the "Pro" badge, and call the inexpensive systems we assemble or buy that provide solid price-performance toys, but without the attention of our segment the "Pro" line of Mac systems means even less to Apple's bean counters.
I think that was 2003, but those machines were mid towers, not workstations.
From the Power Mac G5 on Apple started to leave Prosumers behind. A $2000 machine with a low end GPU isn't really what I'd consider competitive with Intel gaming machines.
Precision and the Z-Series have mid-tower models that are workstations by any definition.
It's not the size of your tool....
And the MP6,1 brings to mind a Bette Midler line....
not meant for dramatic effect.
i quoted your post and accidentally post replied prior to typing anything.
but yes, i'll answer your cuda question.
going to walk charlie, get a snack, then i'll complete typing.
Oh, this may be Epic.
FF may be coming out of the CUDA Closet !
But hey, it's 2015, there is no shame anymore.
FF may be coming out of the CUDA Closet !
But hey, it's 2015, there is no shame anymore.
no.. i could.. i could also use openCL.
gpu acceleration options:
(indigo renderer)
..i (very) rarely use either.
current implementation is limited or of little to non-observable benefits.. there are specific types of renderings (things like: lighting (sun vs lights vs .hdr vs global), materials, methods (MTL, bidirectional, alpha, path)) in which you'll experience perceptible gains but the flip side , using just one example-- is that enabling gpu assist limits you to path tracing mode.. however, in many conditions, rendering using (say) bidirectional mode will allow the image to resolve to desired level faster than rendering the same scene with path tracing.. (as in, using cuda or openCL would lengthen the render time.. not because of anything to do with either.. but because you're using standard path tracing as opposed to MLT.)
another thing of note (not meant as a point or whatever) is that, under current implementation, you're using only a small amount of the potential power in the gpu.. if i put the 64MB radeon from my old powerbook alongside the much faster cpu/ram of my imac then, then i might experience a maxed out gpu.. other than that, any supported low to mid grade gpu will handle the load just fine (or- if you use a high end gpu, all that betterness just means more gpu potential sits idle)
i think much of the software you presently see labeled as supporting openCL or cuda incorporates it in a similar fashion as above.. which is more along the lines of keeping the core of the software the same then adding a few side nuggets of gpgpu.. like a boost or a bonus or whatever.. the software itself still, under the hood, behaves the same way as before except a few of the routines can offload to the gpu to execute the same code/algorithm.. it's the easy way to bring gpgpu into the loop but the benefits are average to slim to detrimental in some cases.. and by easy, i don't mean easy.. it still takes a talented coder to get it hooked up.. just that the difficult way is considerably much more difficult than the sidecar method (but-- results in orders of magnitude greater usage of hardware).. it involves digging into the program core-- in cases, we're talking about legacy code.. and re-writing nearly from scratch under the notion the target hardware meant to execute this code is a GPU instead of a CPU..
yes, on certain levels, those two things are very similar.. on other levels, they're very different and the code simply isn't interchangeable (well, one of positive things that can be said about openCL is that it attempts to negate these differences and allow the code look at it as just PU instead of Graphics or Central PU)
we've still seen very few examples of code that was started from scratch with gpgpu in mind.. one that's likely more of us here have seen is filter usage in fcpx.. when people used that specific capability within fcpx, they were floored with the performance enhancement.. it wasn't 1.25x faster.. it wasn't 2x faster.. it's not 5x faster.. it's way effing faster.
that 'holy cow.. freaking incredible!' type of example can be utilized in certain other computing tasks but it's not something that can happen overnight.. it's not something that can happen in a month.. however long it took the original application to be written is a decent gauge of how long it might take to rewrite it.
software is one of the major 'problems' in computing today.. not hardware.. the hardware is very very good for nearly every single use case.. arguing over many of the hardware specs and benchmarks is just an exercise in futility right now.. thats great you get suchandsuch fps from that card but how is that helping most people needing or wanting performance enhancements? games? ok, cool.. you'll have a better gaming experiences.. that's awesome.
but what else? what other applications can i get some super duper gpu and experience super duper enhancements? not many.. like maybe 5 or 6 that are commercially available.
and i was.. i was under the impression my software would be updated prior to my 1,1 endoflife.. but that didn't happen.. as already explained in the wall of words post.
no, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the nmp met my needs and fell within my budget.. but i didn't buy a different machine instead.. i bought two machines which are capable of running in tandem in order to match the performance expected from 6,1..
in my flow, can an imac match the speed i was looking for in my modeling apps? yes.. these apps want fast clock rates- usually in spurts instead of continuous 100%.. the top end imac is very fast.. the imac (or similarly outfitted windows/linux/etc boxes) is a very good spec/computer for running the majority of modern day modeling/cad functions..
what about multicore, which i also take advantage of (for beautifying(?) the models created on the above system?) no.. an imac can't match it or even really come close to matching mp ..it's four cores instead of 6 and further, those 4 cores will run even slower when asked to do the things i need it to do.. (or else it will overheat)
in order to balance out and regain the speed loss from lower core#/throttling ..i had to also buy a macbook pro..
those two computers, when running together, have given me a similar overall project experience (ie- start to finish) as the single mp hex would.
and realize this as well.. i don't view my laptop as a companion to my desktop.. i use the laptop, often (everyday), away from my desk.. it was a worthwhile upgrade on it's own accord..
anyway.. it took two new computers to replace one mac pro 6,1
(but once my software goes to the next version, this will be a completely different story.. it's not as if i'll be piggy backing the laptop to the desktop anymore.. if all goes according to (my understanding of) the plan, the laptop cpus would maybe contribute an additional 1% of overall processing power instead of what they're currently doing at maybe 35-40%.. unless, of course, the laptop's gpu will be able to be used via network alongside the two in the macpro.. then i'd probably still link up.. but i don't imagine this will be the case upon initial release.. maybe down the line?
)
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Sorry but that doesn’t make sense. It either meets your needs in which case it is ALL you need or it doesn’t. If it did everything that the iMac does at the same speeds and more it meets your needs, I get the impression that isn’t the case.
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