MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro to M1?

[ghoniba]

'The interface changes really bother me'

Seeing iTunes and Apple TV in action, it seems Apple apps are designed to sell you more stuff all the time. Seems less about the actual app! Look at an old iTunes app, it's all about the music.

 

[vel0city]

I am in Photoshop every day for most of the day. That and Cinema 4D. Digital art, illustration, image editing. Massive layered 4k files, embedded smart objects, layer effects, masks, type layers, placed vectors, really busy files. Heavy Photoshop user since version 3.0 (first version with layers!) and have owned a bunch of Macs since, including most of the pro towers going back to the desktop G3.

Going from a maxed out 5, 1 to a 16GB M1 Mini was like leaving the past behind and seeing a glimpse of the future. Photoshop itself launches in a second. It's insane. Editing images and working with 3D layers, layer effects and embedded smart objects is buttery smooth - this kind of .psd on my 5, 1 would be like swimming though bricks. With this M1 I can experiment and iterate more because it frees me up creatively.

On the 5, 1 I just wanted to get the job done and finished because it was so slow in Photoshop. Now I can work freely and the machine just gets out of the way. I feel like I am pushing my creativity to the limits and not worrying about the Mac grinding and beachballing. It's liberating. Flicking, panning, and zooming through images is so smooth and fluid, whereas on my 5, 1 there was redraw everywhere and an overall feeling that the machine was lagging. The M1 laughs at all that.

Affinity Photo is even better and I'm slowly transitioning some of my workflow over to it. Absolutely lightning fast and responsive, immediate visual feedback from your edits and completely lag free.

As a Photoshop user of 20+ years I can honestly say that the M1 Mini has blown away any previous Mac and Photoshop combo, especially on OSX. I really missed the snappiness of OS8/9 until I got the M1 Mini. Big Sur + M1 feels like that again. Responsive and lag free. Everything is instant. I'm only keeping my 5, 1 active because it has a nice GPU for rendering - beyond that it is useless to me now.

 

[sam80]

As a Photoshop user of 20+ years I can honestly say that the M1 Mini has blown away any previous Mac and Photoshop combo, especially on OSX. I really missed the snappiness of OS8/9 until I got the M1 Mini. Big Sur + M1 feels like that again. Responsive and lag free. Everything is instant.

Thanks for the write up, glad you had a good experience with it and great to know it's from an experienced Photoshop user. I have 7,1 but considering giving M1 a go, in a laptop form.

 

[DFP1989]

The interface changes really bother me.

I really hated the interface too, but I’ve gotten over it with time.

There were a few things that I could revert (like bringing back the previous Finder design), and the rest I’ve learned to live with. Stability has been much improved over Catalina, and that’s reason enough for me.

 

[ghoniba]

Thank you vel0city, that is quite a review. (sure you don't work for Apple? I have been retouching for 33 years (worked on proprietary systems prior to Mac's) and this sounds like a refreshing change. Looking forward to it.

​

 

[Mike Richardson]

I am in Photoshop every day for most of the day. That and Cinema 4D. Digital art, illustration, image editing. Massive layered 4k files, embedded smart objects, layer effects, masks, type layers, placed vectors, really busy files. Heavy Photoshop user since version 3.0 (first version with layers!) and have owned a bunch of Macs since, including most of the pro towers going back to the desktop G3.

Going from a maxed out 5, 1 to a 16GB M1 Mini was like leaving the past behind and seeing a glimpse of the future. Photoshop itself launches in a second. It's insane. Editing images and working with 3D layers, layer effects and embedded smart objects is buttery smooth - this kind of .psd on my 5, 1 would be like swimming though bricks. With this M1 I can experiment and iterate more because it frees me up creatively.

On the 5, 1 I just wanted to get the job done and finished because it was so slow in Photoshop. Now I can work freely and the machine just gets out of the way. I feel like I am pushing my creativity to the limits and not worrying about the Mac grinding and beachballing. It's liberating. Flicking, panning, and zooming through images is so smooth and fluid, whereas on my 5, 1 there was redraw everywhere and an overall feeling that the machine was lagging. The M1 laughs at all that.

Affinity Photo is even better and I'm slowly transitioning some of my workflow over to it. Absolutely lightning fast and responsive, immediate visual feedback from your edits and completely lag free.

As a Photoshop user of 20+ years I can honestly say that the M1 Mini has blown away any previous Mac and Photoshop combo, especially on OSX. I really missed the snappiness of OS8/9 until I got the M1 Mini. Big Sur + M1 feels like that again. Responsive and lag free. Everything is instant. I'm only keeping my 5, 1 active because it has a nice GPU for rendering - beyond that it is useless to me now.

Was your 5,1 completely stock or something? Did it have an SSD?

I don't have Photoshop so I can't see how slow it is or anything myself.

I'm glad the M1 works for you but it almost sounds like there was something wrong with your 5,1 or maybe some upgrades you didn't do.

There is a benefit to having the RAM basically on top of the CPU and there is of course a downside.

If someone has a totally or nearly stock 5,1 right now and is considering doing upgrades vs getting an M1, I would say it's both cheaper and faster to get the M1, when looked at from a business standpoint.

But if you're a tinkerer? No more tinkering. Tinkering is dead. Thanks, Tim Cook. Use that M1 for 3 years, and then basically put it directly in the trash and buy another one.

 

[Stex]

Use that M1 for 3 years, and then basically put it directly in the trash and buy another one.

yep, a very likely outcome in my view too. if it comes to that (or actually when it comes to that, because we all know our cMP have a rather imminent deadline) I would rather buy an iPad Pro with M1 (or later generations) and fully embrace the new era of zero-tinkering altogether!

 

[vel0city]

Was your 5,1 completely stock or something? Did it have an SSD?

I don't have Photoshop so I can't see how slow it is or anything myself.

I'm glad the M1 works for you but it almost sounds like there was something wrong with your 5,1 or maybe some upgrades you didn't do.

There is a benefit to having the RAM basically on top of the CPU and there is of course a downside.

If someone has a totally or nearly stock 5,1 right now and is considering doing upgrades vs getting an M1, I would say it's both cheaper and faster to get the M1, when looked at from a business standpoint.

But if you're a tinkerer? No more tinkering. Tinkering is dead. Thanks, Tim Cook. Use that M1 for 3 years, and then basically put it directly in the trash and buy another one.

My 4, 1 to 5, 1 has a boot SSD on a PCI card, 64GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1080ti, Dedicated Photoshop scratch SSD, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core. Apart from the RAM I pushed it as far as I could.

During my career as a freelancer, I worked at agencies and studios as a Photoshop artist and used pretty much every version of Photoshop on every Mac you could name from the beige G3s onwards. Owned a bunch of Macs myself since the mid 90s and have at least five active Macs in my studio for professional design/3D/graphics work.

All I can tell you is that Photoshop performs better on the 16GB M1 Mini than any Mac I've used or owned previously. The overall experience is more responsive, more fluid, more interactive and just blazing faster than any previous Mac that I have used. And I have maxed out every single Mac I've owned specifically for Photoshop performance.

The single core performance in the M1 Mini completely outclasses the 5, 1 and that is where Photoshop shines. If you've ever seen Affinity Photo running in the iPad and been hypnotised by how real-time and directly interactive it is, well that is Photoshop on the Mac now. It is glorious.

Cinema 4D viewport performance (a bottleneck for years) is faster and gives more instant visual feedback than even the Mac Pro 7,1. Comparing side by side operations like particle simulations, softbody sims, mograph calculations, animation playback etc, the M1 is noticeably smoother and more responsive.

Just telling it as I've experienced it. I've always considered myself a power user (yeah I know that is cringey as hell) and I'm as surprised as anyone that professional creative work is not only doable, but a massive pleasure, on such a modestly specced and priced Mac.

 

[NotTooLate]

Was your 5,1 completely stock or something? Did it have an SSD?

I don't have Photoshop so I can't see how slow it is or anything myself.

I'm glad the M1 works for you but it almost sounds like there was something wrong with your 5,1 or maybe some upgrades you didn't do.

There is a benefit to having the RAM basically on top of the CPU and there is of course a downside.

If someone has a totally or nearly stock 5,1 right now and is considering doing upgrades vs getting an M1, I would say it's both cheaper and faster to get the M1, when looked at from a business standpoint.

But if you're a tinkerer? No more tinkering. Tinkering is dead. Thanks, Tim Cook. Use that M1 for 3 years, and then basically put it directly in the trash and buy another one.

How the trade in program will look like in the Apple silicon will be interesting , if you can recoup a good bit of value in a trade in , then 3 years of use -> trade in for hopefully a good enough value -> get a new computer.

 

[DFP1989]

Just telling it as I've experienced it. I've always considered myself a power user (yeah I know that is cringey as hell) and I'm as surprised as anyone that professional creative work is not only doable, but a massive pleasure, on such a modestly specced and priced Mac.

This mirrors my experience. The fact that this tiny computer that sits on top of one of my speakers and cost less than half the 16-core CPU upgrade cost on my 7,1 can be so good is astounding. Even more so that my fanless Air is every bit as good.

Sold my specced up 16-inch MacBook Pro this week (it got crazy hot with fans blasting while reloading Big Sur, says it all), will not miss it.

 

[Stex]

My 4, 1 to 5, 1 has a boot SSD on a PCI card

unclear if yours is a 2.5" SSD or NMVe blade? Using the latter specifically in PCIe slot 2 makes a tremendous difference with overall snappiness and responsiveness. I have 2 blades on PCIe slot, one scratch and one with boot OS. When I finally upgraded to NMVe I regretted not having done so before!

 

[vel0city]

unclear if yours is a 2.5" SSD or NMVe blade? Using the latter specifically in PCIe slot 2 makes a tremendous difference with overall snappiness and responsiveness. I have 2 blades on PCIe slot, one scratch and one with boot OS. When I finally upgraded to NMVe I regretted not having done so before!

Angelbird 2.5", don't think (might be wrong) I can upgrade to an NMVe blade on this machine as I have to run High Sierra for the Nvidia drivers - my GPU is specifically for a CUDA workflow and the Nvidia driver support ended with High Sierra.

 

[JMacHack]

M1 might be great, but then you are forced onto Big Sur, which is a dumpster fire as far as I'm concerned.

In my experience Big Sur is okay, not amazing though. Adobe apps seem to crash a lot though.

 

[Mike Richardson]

The single core performance in the M1 Mini completely outclasses the 5, 1 and that is where Photoshop shines.

Aha, yes, ok. It makes a bit more sense now.

I also wonder about factors such as compiler optimizations. I think this was a factor in moving from PPC to Intel.

unclear if yours is a 2.5" SSD or NMVe blade? Using the latter specifically in PCIe slot 2 makes a tremendous difference with overall snappiness and responsiveness. I have 2 blades on PCIe slot, one scratch and one with boot OS. When I finally upgraded to NMVe I regretted not having done so before!

I'm using a Sonnet Tempo card right now with a pretty decent Crucial SSD (that I used to run on the stock bus).

Would going to NVMe from this setup provide appreciable benefits? I'm not doing video editing or anything.

Seems like the greatest benefit is obtained by going from an HDD to an SSD regardless of the bus. Mass throughput on the stock bus might be low, but it's the basically zero seek time that is the greatest influence on things like boot time and interface responsiveness.

 

[Stex]

I'm using a Sonnet Tempo card right now with a pretty decent Crucial SSD (that I used to run on the stock bus).

Would going to NVMe from this setup provide appreciable benefits? I'm not doing video editing or anything.

Seems like the greatest benefit is obtained by going from an HDD to an SSD regardless of the bus. Mass throughput on the stock bus might be low, but it's the basically zero seek time that is the greatest influence on things like boot time and interface responsiveness.

@Mike Richardson I am not the right person to answer this is technical terms, but I have read multiple threads with detailed (technical) explanations of why disk speed has positive impact on the system overall including its interface responsiveness. I don't remember which specific threads now, but very likely it was in the sticky NMVe thread. I can speak from experience though, as I had two SSD Accelsior S PCIe adapter with 2.5" SSD Samsung Evo 860s for several years, one as boot and one as scratch. I was happy with that setup, but once I upgraded to NMVe I immediately experienced speed/snappiness improvements in my overall workflow and general system usage. An NMVe upgrade can be done for under USD 100 total (includes both PCIe card and blade.)

@vel0city I am not sure comparing a M1 MacMini running the latest Big Sur with a cMP running High Sierra from a 2.5" SSD is a fair comparison. Also, yes indeed, Photoshop shines in single-core performance, the latter being the Achilles' heel of our old cMPs regardless of how maxed out they are. But Affinity Photo seems to benefit greatly from Metal and multi-core performance, so our cMPs might still be competitive with Affinity workflows on M1 Macs.

Lastly (and partially humorously), I would dare to compare an M1 MacMini with a "Mikas Mod" cMP...! Check out the following thread, you will find detailed multi-GPU performance benchmarks including one running Affinity Photo...!

Pixlas Mod & Radeon VII Install Mac Pro 5,1

Thank You for the video. I grabbed two of those just recently. First one for 699€ from abroad, and then accidentally waiting for it to be delivered, found one for 360€ domestic. I think prices might be coming down now, while people are waiting for RTX 30xx avalability and maybe Big Navi stuff...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[uller6]

The interface changes really bother me. There is no logical reason for having alert dialog boxes looking like a rip off from iOS - unless the goal is to eventually merge macOS and iOS or otherwise depreciate macOS in some fashion.

And it's totally inconsistent, not to mention completely illogical as well. 100% of macOS users are using it in a widescreen, landscape type of display, ideally suited for alert dialogs that are in a landscape orientation. Stupid, narrow iOS style alerts are completely illogical here.

No, I don't like it at all, and it's a terrible harbinger of what might be to come.

Some of us do use vertical screens!

 

[uller6]

Was your 5,1 completely stock or something? Did it have an SSD?

I don't have Photoshop so I can't see how slow it is or anything myself.

I'm glad the M1 works for you but it almost sounds like there was something wrong with your 5,1 or maybe some upgrades you didn't do.

There is a benefit to having the RAM basically on top of the CPU and there is of course a downside.

If someone has a totally or nearly stock 5,1 right now and is considering doing upgrades vs getting an M1, I would say it's both cheaper and faster to get the M1, when looked at from a business standpoint.

But if you're a tinkerer? No more tinkering. Tinkering is dead. Thanks, Tim Cook. Use that M1 for 3 years, and then basically put it directly in the trash and buy another one.

Tinkering is going the way of the dodo unfortunately. I love to tinker, but as I get older I find myself having less and less time to do so.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Some of us do use vertical screens!

Ok, you are right. I do have one weird friend who insists on using a Dell monitor in portrait mode in conjunction with his 2009 iMac for mostly clerical work.

Still, 99% of people are using Landscape/horizontal. The new dialogs look completely stupid. Not to mention they have serious usability issues. To me, buttons on the Big Sur NSAlert appear disabled, when in fact they are enabled. I filed a bug report about this back in August 2020 since believe it or not I was actually a Big Sur beta tester (probably the only one beta testing on a 2015 MacBook Air).

Apple finally replied in April 2021 and said "Please know that some contrast/blending issues have been resolved, but the screenshot you attached is the expected appearance of the alert". Which is to say, the expected appearance is a dumpster fire.

Tinkering is going the way of the dodo unfortunately. I love to tinker, but as I get older I find myself having less and less time to do so.

Mac Tinkering, yes. But as long as you can deal with Windows or Linux I don't see Built PCs going away totally. Thanks to ARM we'll lose to ability to make Hackintosh soon enough.

 

[vel0city]

Okay another insane speed comparison - Arnold Renderer, known as Hollywood's favourite 3D render engine, is a CPU renderer on the Mac (no GPU CUDA option unless you're on PC)

Running Arnold inside Cinema 4D R23 in Rosetta mode is FASTER than my 5,1, 64MB RAM, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core. An image taking 10 minutes on the 5, 1 resolves in about 8 minutes on the Mini.

That includes Arnold's IPR (Interactive Preview window, so you can see your work before you render it) and also rendering the final image.

That is on the 16GB M1 Mini running C4D in Rosetta compared to a fully tricked out 5,1 with 64GB. Same version of C4D and Arnold on both machines.

Stick a fork in those 5, 1s. They're done.

 

[hifimac]

Okay another insane speed comparison - Arnold Renderer, known as Hollywood's favourite 3D render engine, is a CPU renderer on the Mac (no GPU CUDA option unless you're on PC)

Running Arnold inside Cinema 4D R23 in Rosetta mode is FASTER than my 5,1, 64MB RAM, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core. An image taking 10 minutes on the 5, 1 resolves in about 8 minutes on the Mini.

That includes Arnold's IPR (Interactive Preview window, so you can see your work before you render it) and also rendering the final image.

That is on the 16GB M1 Mini running C4D in Rosetta compared to a fully tricked out 5,1 with 64GB. Same version of C4D and Arnold on both machines.

Stick a fork in those 5, 1s. They're done.

In my tests my M1 MacBook Pro is almost as fast as my 10 Core iMac Pro for CPU rendering in Corona. The big problem is the lack of RAM. With only 16GB I consistently get errors about running out of RAM and big scenes bog down in IPR or crash on final render. Looking forward to more pro focused AS machines with more RAM ASAP!

 

[vel0city]

Is Corona M1 Native? I've never used it but like the look of its output.

Redshift is M1/Metal native now and running in C4D, but being GPU based it's just too slow to use on the current M1s for anything other thsn light lookdev.

 

[hifimac]

Corona is not M1 native yet, but you can force non-native plug-ins to load by using the Open using Rosetta flag in the C4D get info. I do a lot of Archviz and Corona is amazing for quickly getting good looking interior scenes. It's s super simple renderer to pickup and use and I'm really surprised it does not get more attention. I've found v6 to be super stable on macOS, and you get a couple of render nodes licenses with the regular sub which helps when you have couple of 5,1 laying around to help kick those renders out.

I agree M1 Redshift is not quite there yet. Might be ok for some quick lookdev on a simple scene, but way too slow for anything super complex. I was really hoping for better performance. I've been hovering on jumping to a PC build for a couple of years now. If I don't see some major AS GPU improvements at WWDC I may go ahead and pull the trigger. I'm just not sure they can scale those GPU cores to be competitive fast enough. I'd think we'd need something like 128 AS GPU cores to compete with even a 3080.

 

[vel0city]

Thanks, I'll add Corona to my to try list.

Can you even get a GPU for a PC right now if you wanted one? I'm not that sold on Redshift's look or the speed of its dev team to get new features out the door to make me want to commit to GPU rendering any more- how long have we waited for SSS random walk, toon shading, better VDB/volume support, Redshift RT, etc.

I just tried Cycles4D in Rosetta on C4D R23 and like Arnold it is faster than my 5, 1. Cycles is underrated and can produce amazing results, I only started using it recently after sitting on a license for years and am impressed with its features and output already. Really nice handling of lighting and has that sexy Octane look.

For the M1 the future might well be CPU renderers like Cycles and Arnold - Cycles for mograph/stlyised work with X-Particles, Arnold for photoreal high-end work. The speed and responsiveness of these CPU renderers is already beyond what I expected on the Mini and I think this might be the direction we see 3D on the Mac going in. The GPU renderers always seem out of reach.

If you watch Arnold running on a 64 Core Threadripper and imagine that running on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro then who needs Redshift anyway - I will take Arnold any day of the week.

 

[grouch]

Can you even get a GPU for a PC right now if you wanted one?

I just bought a sapphire nitro+ radeon rx 580 on ebay for $567 (price after tax/shipping). Really good card despite not having pre-boot screen compatibility.

 

[mikas]

I sold my other Sapphire RX580 Pulse for something like 120€ last year. Now half a year later they are like 300+€ used locally. Insane.

In here there I live you can possibly get AMD 6800/6900XT sometimes, but it's gonna be about double the original cost. It's extremely unlikely for one to get a RTX 3080 or 3090. And they too are insanely priced.

Me too don't think M1 GPU is on production levels yet, not nearly even. I am afraid they will get the Mx stuff together, CPU and GPU, but that they will price those performance chips up as hell.