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Is the new Mac Pro a failure?
- Thread starter ZombiePhysicist
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Neither machine in question is a Mac. Although I wish Apple would rectify the situation. :d
For anyone interested attached is a glimpse at the machine I have been talking about back when it was being assembled. It is not feature complete in the shot but close enough. The SSD is mounted in the back out of site. The case is a graphite 780T.
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Why is it that some get so upset when others refer to something in a less than correct manner (a diminishing name - I also don't like it and I've stated that much and been told to chill out) but when it comes to the nMP it seems to be ok?!
Just curious, that's all!!
It's not hat we have haters here, really
Have a nice 2016 folks!!
With a nnMP, of course.
Just curious, that's all!!
It's not hat we have haters here, really
Have a nice 2016 folks!!
With a nnMP, of course.
Heres hoping for what is old is new. The new new new mac pro.Why is it that some get so upset when others refer to something in a less than correct manner (a diminishing name - I also don't like it and I've stated that much and been told to chill out) but when it comes to the nMP it seems to be ok?!
Just curious, that's all!!
It's not hat we have haters here, really
Have a nice 2016 folks!!
With a nnMP, of course.
The question should be what does it fail at? I bought a base nMP for video editing. It was overkill for my video editing needs, but I was surprised at functionality as a Video Database. My project has 15TB of video, I use reference videos. So they have to be searchable. I was not expecting this functionality when I bought the nMP, but it was actually what I was looking for long term.
My main databases are on two thunderbolt 20TB raid5 drives and the speed and ability I can search through 15TB of video amazes me. From a commercial standpoint I see huge market in developing quality video database capabilities compared to video editing. From creating medical surgery video databases, to storing police videos, to managing home videos.
When you are looking at creating performance, you have to have a closed hardware system to really create quality performance, so I can understand that move.
If you look at the disk space and the disk speeds you need to build quality video databases, not video storage, then thunderbolt and raid drives make sense. When you consider the masses of raw video we are going to be handing in the future, you have to build a machine to hand those needs.
One thing I do know, is the old benchmarks are geared for video and photo editing, not video databases. This past week I had to convert all my old MPEG2 videos into ProRes 422, because FCPX was dog slow with the old format. Compressor covered the videos at 90MBS and FCPX imported the new 422 format at drive speed of 450MBS. My nMP was running 90% for close to a week, 24 hours a day. When I search a video clip for an action I am looking for, I can scan the clip at about 60 frames a second.
From what I can tell, video databases are leading edge technology, where video editing is a mature industry. It was interesting in the networking industry to make performance improvements by moving a process from a software process based application to microcode hardware application. We always lost the benchmark tests in the short run as our competitors just threw more processors at the problem, but in the long run we won. Our x.25 customers were never happy with our performance, but we understood it was a dead technology.
It will be interesting to see if the nMP is actually going a new direction instead of supporting mature technologies. You cannot measure a new tool by old benchmarks.
My main databases are on two thunderbolt 20TB raid5 drives and the speed and ability I can search through 15TB of video amazes me. From a commercial standpoint I see huge market in developing quality video database capabilities compared to video editing. From creating medical surgery video databases, to storing police videos, to managing home videos.
When you are looking at creating performance, you have to have a closed hardware system to really create quality performance, so I can understand that move.
If you look at the disk space and the disk speeds you need to build quality video databases, not video storage, then thunderbolt and raid drives make sense. When you consider the masses of raw video we are going to be handing in the future, you have to build a machine to hand those needs.
One thing I do know, is the old benchmarks are geared for video and photo editing, not video databases. This past week I had to convert all my old MPEG2 videos into ProRes 422, because FCPX was dog slow with the old format. Compressor covered the videos at 90MBS and FCPX imported the new 422 format at drive speed of 450MBS. My nMP was running 90% for close to a week, 24 hours a day. When I search a video clip for an action I am looking for, I can scan the clip at about 60 frames a second.
From what I can tell, video databases are leading edge technology, where video editing is a mature industry. It was interesting in the networking industry to make performance improvements by moving a process from a software process based application to microcode hardware application. We always lost the benchmark tests in the short run as our competitors just threw more processors at the problem, but in the long run we won. Our x.25 customers were never happy with our performance, but we understood it was a dead technology.
It will be interesting to see if the nMP is actually going a new direction instead of supporting mature technologies. You cannot measure a new tool by old benchmarks.
Thankfully it was before my professional time.
I had to fix an IRQ issue when setting up my Dad's flatbed scanner on his Windows 95 box.
My first machine that was mine was my Compaq (yeah I know) Presario with a AMD 500MHz K6-2. I got it for a high school graduation gift. I installed a PCI GeForce 2 MX because it didn't have an AGP slot. I ran into a IRQ issue with it on Windows 98 SE. I knew enough to be dangerous and wiped the machine. The restore disk got everything back up except the modem. :/ So the fun of getting online and finding the freaking driver to get it back online sucked.
Actually that was my first experience with the Power Mac G4 computer in SCAD's computer lab. An amazing machine for it's time.
Thankfully since Windows XP and the 9X kernel being thrown out Windows has improved a lot. However this was around the time OSX came out. I had a room mate that had a G4 during my second year of college and it was soul crushing trying to do my projects on a crappy Compaq while he had a dual G4.
That is my memory lane from the way back machine.
This is not accurate. The video /film production industry requires the same fast and large data I/O to support the use of, 4K, 4.xK. 5K and now 8K work flows. These work flows are made more demanding when uncompressed, raw camera source files are used with their associated big bandwidth data rates. These production workflow needs are one of the driving forces behind 40G TB3 and 12G SAS and 16G Fibre PCIe solutions being developed.
W10 haves an file system backup to like Time Machine. In a less fancy eye candy way. But it works great and a lot of options. In any profesional workflow you have to be worry about backup and play it safe. No mater what system you use. I am not sure if u can instal a new machine with this tho. Timemachine can restore a new computer in hours which is awesome off-course. So, there is a +1 for Apple. But will safe you some hours maybe. In a worse case scenario, you have lost your system for days. With an PC, u can buy the broken part and pick it up in 30 minutes, when you are lucky if there is a store nearby. For me there is this missing machine problem in the Apple computing line-up. I don't like to throw money away like its just paper and don't care about it. Investing an Xeon system and in this case, an dual gpu only option i dont care about ( i want a single card powerhouse).. a real move over for me
At Daisy, forget the NVidia thoughts. I havent read a single thing about it. Fury is the thing we can expect in a update, whenever they update this machine.
It's sad though that we didn't get the choice to choose between a Nvidia based nMP and an AMD one.
However, my main concern with my 6,1 was the single CPU unit which I now solved with my 3,46ghz 12 core 5,1. You get the same amount of cores or even bigger core numbers, higher clock speeds and 80 Pcie lanes. Which would benefit the nMP in having more IO options. Remember that the nMP has only 40 lanes, and already 36 are used via the dual GPUs and the Pcie SSD.
However, my main concern with my 6,1 was the single CPU unit which I now solved with my 3,46ghz 12 core 5,1. You get the same amount of cores or even bigger core numbers, higher clock speeds and 80 Pcie lanes. Which would benefit the nMP in having more IO options. Remember that the nMP has only 40 lanes, and already 36 are used via the dual GPUs and the Pcie SSD.
W10 haves an file system backup to like Time Machine. In a less fancy eye candy way. But it works great and a lot of options. In any profesional workflow you have to be worry about backup and play it safe. No mater what system you use. I am not sure if u can instal a new machine with this tho. Timemachine can restore a new computer in hours which is awesome off-course. So, there is a +1 for Apple. But will safe you some hours maybe. In a worse case scenario, you have lost your system for days. With an PC, u can buy the broken part and pick it up in 30 minutes, when you are lucky if there is a store nearby. For me there is this missing machine problem in the Apple computing line-up. I don't like to throw money away like its just paper and don't care about it. Investing an Xeon system and in this case, an dual gpu only option i dont care about ( i want a single card powerhouse).. a real move over for me
At Daisy, forget the NVidia thoughts. I havent read a single thing about it. Fury is the thing we can expect in a update, whenever they update this machine.
I haven't had to restore a Windows 10 machine yet. So far Windows 10 seems very stable. I use the start screen instead of the start menu. It reminds me of the OS X launch pad.
From my experience both platforms work very well.
Apple is using AMD graphics cards because they cost less. In my opinion they are inferior just like their processors. For such an expensive computer it would be better to get the better graphics card platform.
So true. A second CPU socket was a real loss for the Mac Pro.
It fails by not meeting there requirements
Failure = Doesn't meet my personal needs.
iPhone 6 series being an unbelievable failure. I have no need to pretend to be Dom Joly when using a phone, hence why using a 4S still
AMD cards were picked because they have the best OpenCL performance, and FCPX uses a lot of OpenCL. Take a look at the OpenCL benchmarks on Barefeats sometime.
I don't care to. I have had enough bad experiences with AMD including the 2011 MacBook Pro 15" AMD GPU burning up. They are inferior and lower quality.
Even if they don't?
P.S. Every generation of Nvidia GPUs in Macbook Pro 15 since GT8600 were failing. Was it really a problem of AMD GPUs, or something else...?
Yes, but a lot of software in content creating, use CUDA to. So, nice to see a good openCL card in there, but u miss the CUDA part for all kind of acceleration. For sure, its getting a bit messy in GPU support and i tried to convince myself by reading a lot of articles that OpenCL only is the best choice. It still miss CUDA. And for me personally, CUDA is well supported in Adobe tools + OpenCL. There is where u will meet Nvidia as your best partner at this moment.
I dont see the problem for Apple to give their user a choice for AMD or Nvidia, like many other workstation suppliers does like Dell and HP. Now they kill a whole range of users. Well, basically they say; take it or leave it. So, there i go
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Don't what? Burn up? My last MacBook Pro burned up and it had a Radeon in it. Proof is in the pudding. It was a late 2011 15 Inch. If I had an option I would never buy another Mac with anything from AMD in it.Even if they don't?
P.S. Every generation of Nvidia GPUs in Macbook Pro 15 since GT8600 were failing. Was it really a problem of AMD GPUs, or something else...?
If the nVidia chips are boring up too then it's a heat issue. Maybe Apple should get out of the hardware business.
And Apple doesn't care at all about CUDA. None of their software uses it, and it's not even bundled with OS X. It's a third party install.
Not to mention, Apple's not going to use cards that put their own software at a disadvantage because of low OpenCL performance.
Plenty of people on this board have also had issues with Nvidia cards burning up. Remember the Mac GeForce 8800? Or the whole Macbook Pro line that was recalled because their Nvidia GPUs were burning up?
Nvidia's drivers under OS X are also less mature than the AMD ones, even if they do have a web version.
GT650M in Retina Macbook Pro, GT330M, GT8600M in Macbook Pro 15 inch, 8800 in iMac's. They are all Nvidia cards, and were failing constantly.
There's nothing like causing a recall on an entire Macbook Pro line to get your hardware yanked out of Apple's vendor rotation.
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