My nMP Review (vs my old 4,1 Mac Pro)

[wildmac]

I decided to upgrade my good old MacPro 4.1 to give it some more years to live. It's still a very fast machine (for webdesign and programming) and with the new CPU, the GTX 680, SSDs and more RAM it's even great for gaming. I never had a PC that lived that long ...

With the money I saved from upgrading instead of buying a nMP I bought a fully loaded MacBook Pro 15".

I'm happy with my decision

Next hardware: a new monitor...

For those who already had a 4,1 or 5,1 that's a sensible decision. For the rest of us on older hardware, the big jump is needed, in one form or another. Buying a 4,1+ for $1,500+ doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you have a huge investment in PCIe cards.

 

[wheelhot]

I'm still waiting for SpecPerf benchmarks, the guy who tested SolidWorks on his D300 seemed impressed--that's a good sign, but we still need numbers. It runs about twice as fast on the W7000 as 7970GE.

Oh really? Cool! I'm really looking forward to find owners of the nMP who uses 3D CAD software as I'll be using it with SolidEdge and I'm planning to get the base D300 model as well

Btw, any link on that? The guy who tested SolidWorks on his D300 and probably email him to run a specviewperf benchmark test?

 

[AidenShaw]

Fastest thing I've seen run OSX and Windows Hate as well as the smallest....

Report back after you've seen a 24 core Z820....

 

[slughead]

Oh really? Cool! I'm really looking forward to find owners of the nMP who uses 3D CAD software as I'll be using it with SolidEdge and I'm planning to get the base D300 model as well

Btw, any link on that? The guy who tested SolidWorks on his D300 and probably email him to run a specviewperf benchmark test?

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18614662/

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Report back after you've seen a 24 core Z820....

There are 24 core machines? After all these comparisons with other Macs, I thought 12 was the max.

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I decided to upgrade my good old MacPro 4.1 to give it some more years to live. It's still a very fast machine (for webdesign and programming) and with the new CPU, the GTX 680, SSDs and more RAM it's even great for gaming. I never had a PC that lived that long ...

With the money I saved from upgrading instead of buying a nMP I bought a fully loaded MacBook Pro 15".

I'm happy with my decision

Next hardware: a new monitor...

I got a couple SSD for [HOLIDAY GIFTGIVING]. I'm getting a SATA 3 controller card to put them in a RAID-0 -- spruce up the old Mac Pro 5,1.

 

[wheelhot]

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18614662/

Thanks, msged him

 

[bcuzawd]

I’m going to put some of them on a new WD TB Velociraptor Duo. I got one of these on sale at Amazon a few weeks ago, and at that price, it seems like the ideal solution for me. It offers 2TB of storage at SSD like speeds for $400.

Did you get a chance to run Blackmagic on the Veloci-Duo yet?

 

[milo]

There are 24 core machines?

Dual twelve core. And there are really high end machines that have more than two CPU, if you have deep enough pockets you have been able to get more cores than Apple's max for years.

 

[mikepj]

Hey, I tried out your monitoring app, it looks like it's functional... (unlike iStat Menus)

I've attached a couple of screenshots.

The first one is while running Geekbench Stress Test and the other is after a couple of Heaven Extreme loops.

Observations:

CPU: there are two "CPU Proximity" temps and one is about 5-deg higher than the other. It's not clear what these are actually referring to.

GPU: The GPU Die 0 seems to be tied to the GPU in slot 1 which I think is dedicated to compute. The GPU Die 1 seems to be the GPU in slot 2 which does display/OpenGL duty. As you might expect, the GPU doing display duty is warmer than the idle GPU during regular usage. GPU2 climbed considerably during the Heaven benchmark, but as you can see, the Heaven benchmark appears to be reporting the idle GPU temperature... so the Heaven benchmark temperature reporting is wrong. I can get one or the other GPU temps to climb more than the other selecting different GPUs in LuxMark.

Disk: The disk indicator in the first screen shot captured a Blackmagic benchmark.

Other Notes:

- Note that due to the nature of the heat sink, temps for the CPU and both GPUs will rise in tandem, even if only one of them is working hard.

- The temps seem to fall as quickly as they rise, which means once the load is removed from the CPU or GPU it cools quickly.

Glad to hear that XRG is correctly reading the temperature sensors in the nMP. You've provided some interesting observations as well.

I'm only making a guess here, but I'm thinking there might be a temperature sensor on either side of the CPU socket, just to get a better idea of the temperature in that area. If the cache resides entirely on one side of the CPU, that would explain the temperature difference between each side.

Even though it's not surprising, it's interesting to watch each GPU temperature change based on the type of load being placed on the machine. Looking forward to keeping tabs on that on my own Mac Pro.

The temperature relationship of the three main components (CPU and 2 GPUs) makes a lot of sense and I'm glad you noticed that. It seems like it would be a subtle change to notice. It's also good to see temperatures drop so quickly once the machine idles after a compute-intensive task.

Thanks again for giving the app a shot.

 

[propower]

The temperatures posted look like the peaks you are seeing are in the 65degC range? Does the fan increase to keep them at this point or have you even gotten to the point where the fan increases?

You can always try this simple terminal command to load the machine one core at a time. Great review! I run the constant 30% to 50% kinds of loads so am always keen on what the temps and any additional fan noise is there...

http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/02/stress-test-mac-cpu/

 

[toxic]

have you tried running atMonitor or similar to monitor GPU activity? as of Aperture 3.0, I never got anything above 20% GPU usage, on either a 5770 or GTX 285. it did suck up VRAM though...

I've since switched to C1, but still curious if it's gotten better at using processing power instead of just sucking up RAM.

 

[VirtualRain]

have you tried running atMonitor or similar to monitor GPU activity? as of Aperture 3.0, I never got anything above 20% GPU usage, on either a 5770 or GTX 285. it did suck up VRAM though...

I've since switched to C1, but still curious if it's gotten better at using processing power instead of just sucking up RAM.

I'll give that a try later.

The temperatures posted look like the peaks you are seeing are in the 65degC range? Does the fan increase to keep them at this point or have you even gotten to the point where the fan increases?

You can always try this simple terminal command to load the machine one core at a time. Great review! I run the constant 30% to 50% kinds of loads so am always keen on what the temps and any additional fan noise is there...

http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/02/stress-test-mac-cpu/

I only stressed it for a few minutes in testing the monitoring too and the temps hadn't peaked yet. The fans was steady at its normal 770rpm. I'll be doing a few handbrake sessions this weekend and will let you know the temps/fan behave.

Did you get a chance to run Blackmagic on the Veloci-Duo yet?

Yes indeed... attached. In addition to the great sequential speeds, the 10K RPM platters also provide better random I/O performance than conventional 7200 RPM drives.

 

[Gav Mack]

Report back after you've seen a 24 core Z820....

Lol - as quiet as a gentle warm breeze too no doubt!

 

[bcuzawd]

Yes indeed... attached. In addition to the great sequential speeds, the 10K RPM platters also provide better random I/O performance than conventional 7200 RPM drives.

You're amazing and my new hero!!! THANK YOU for doing all this stuff!!!

 

[propower]

I only stressed it for a few minutes in testing the monitoring too and the temps hadn't peaked yet. The fans was steady at its normal 770rpm. I'll be doing a few handbrake sessions this weekend and will let you know the temps/fan behave.

Much appreciated

 

[VirtualRain]

The temperatures posted look like the peaks you are seeing are in the 65degC range? Does the fan increase to keep them at this point or have you even gotten to the point where the fan increases?

You can always try this simple terminal command to load the machine one core at a time. Great review! I run the constant 30% to 50% kinds of loads so am always keen on what the temps and any additional fan noise is there...

http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/02/stress-test-mac-cpu/

So, here are some temperature (and TDP) insights...

I used this Intel Power Gadget to monitor CPU temps. Since it's from Intel, I expect it to be accurate (none of the other temperature monitoring tools I've got match the temp. this provides).

Ambiant is around 21-deg C.

At idle, CPU temp is around 46-48-deg C and power consumption is around 20-22W (first attachment)

At load (Handbrake), CPU temp ramps up slowly and levels off at 86-deg C at which point the fan speed is 900RPM (up from it's usual 770RPM). It still didn't make a sound. Power consumption hovered around 90W. (see second attachment)

It cools quickly, dropping about 20-deg C almost immediately and then slowly returning to idle temperatures over several minutes. (see final attachment).

 

[VirtualRain]

have you tried running atMonitor or similar to monitor GPU activity? as of Aperture 3.0, I never got anything above 20% GPU usage, on either a 5770 or GTX 285. it did suck up VRAM though...

I've since switched to C1, but still curious if it's gotten better at using processing power instead of just sucking up RAM.

I also spent some time today trying to measure GPU usage.

I tried using atMonitor but it was flaky and when it did run, it was clearly monitoring the compute GPU, not the Display/OpenGL GPU so it showed no activity.

I then turned to OpenGL Driver Monitor which is part of the Xcode tools but it's extremely difficult to interpret. You can have one monitor window per GPU, but only one of the two GPUs in the nMP is used for OpenGL. So after some experimentation, I found a few parameters that seemed to move with GPU tasks like running Heaven or using Aperture, and you can see the results of that in the attachment.

The activity on the left half is from running Heaven. It looks like the red graph is maxed but that's only because of the log scale of the graph... It's actually only at 20%. I'll admit, I have no idea what these graphs mean other than the GPU was being used.

The activity on the right is from Aperture. The red graph peaked at just over 2% here.

I'm open to other ideas, but as it stands, it's extremely hard to tell what apps are making meaningful use of the GPUs based on this.

 

[nathan43082]

Dual twelve core. And there are really high end machines that have more than two CPU, if you have deep enough pockets you have been able to get more cores than Apple's max for years.

And if you have even *more* money, you can buy a supercomputer with hundreds of times the power, but that's not the point of these forums.

 

[bcuzawd]

At idle, CPU temp is around 46-48-deg C and power consumption is around 20-22W (first attachment)

At load (Handbrake), CPU temp ramps up slowly and levels off at 86-deg C at which point the fan speed is 900RPM (up from it's usual 770RPM).

Man...my MBP 5,2 is sitting at 80-deg C (fans at 3350rpm...and rising as I type more) right now just reading this page. It'll regularly get above 102 deg C when I'm running through some imagery/rendering/searching for files/sleeping.

I've woken in the morning and come into my office and the fan is spinning @ 5400 like I've been running a render all night...but it was completely idle.

I REALLY can't wait for my new baby to get here.

 

[slughead]

Lol - as quiet as a gentle warm breeze too no doubt!

The nMP is 45dBA with a reasonable FCP X load according to Anandtech, that's about what a lot of really powerful rigs do at load.

 

[jbg232]

I also spent some time today trying to measure GPU usage.

The activity on the right is from Aperture. The red graph peaked at just over 2% here.

So I'm confused - are you saying that Aperture is basically not using the GPU at all? As a photographer I was going to upgrade the GPU but if there is no benefit that would change my purchase decision. Maybe aperture X will utilize the GPU more fully...

 

[Killerbob]

Given Apple's frantic focus on OpenCL I will not be surprised to see all of their Pro apps optimised towards it in their next versions. Perhaps that is why we are eagerly awaiting Aperture X for some time now...

Aperture basically never got updated to support any of the standards entirely, and looking at iMovie and Final Cut Pro X, there is no doubt this is where Apple is banking its mula. The other graphics developers are following suit, with Adobe also upgrading their CC apps. So, Aperture X here we go...

 

[FredT2]

The nMP is 45dBA with a reasonable FCP X load according to Anandtech, that's about what a lot of really powerful rigs do at load.

What he really said:

"...with a relatively heavy 4K render in Final Cut Pro. "

" I quit FurMark and kept the FCP render going, which brought system power down from ~380W to ~326W. It also slowly dropped fan speed from 1900 RPM down to 1500 RPM before smoothly alternating between 1200 RPM and 1450 RPM. "

He measured 35.2 to 38.6 dBA between 1193 and1440 RPM. And finally:

"The system never gets annoyingly loud, it just varies between silent and calmly reminding you that there’s a large fan inside. Even at full bore the Mac Pro’s fan noise is more pleasant than harsh."

 

[wheelhot]

So I'm confused - are you saying that Aperture is basically not using the GPU at all? As a photographer I was going to upgrade the GPU but if there is no benefit that would change my purchase decision. Maybe aperture X will utilize the GPU more fully...

Yes, dual GPU support could be the very reason why Apple hasn't update Aperture to X yet. I'm waiting for it as well as I can't stand how Lightroom workflow works. The thing I'm wondering now is, do LogicProX makes use of the dual GPU

 

[wildmac]

Given Apple's frantic focus on OpenCL I will not be surprised to see all of their Pro apps optimised towards it in their next versions. Perhaps that is why we are eagerly awaiting Aperture X for some time now...

Aperture basically never got updated to support any of the standards entirely, and looking at iMovie and Final Cut Pro X, there is no doubt this is where Apple is banking its mula. The other graphics developers are following suit, with Adobe also upgrading their CC apps. So, Aperture X here we go...

Allthough I don't use Aperture, I hope it is upgraded, as that will force Adobe to tweak performance on Lightroom, and not just add new cameras.

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The activity on the right is from Aperture. The red graph peaked at just over 2% here.

Any chance you could install the LR demo and compare it to the performance of Aperture regarding the CPU and GPU usage?

 

[propower]

So, here are some temperature (and TDP) insights...

Thanks a TON for doing this! Very interesting and helpful. I assume Handbrake was maxing out all cores (hex core right)... If so then leveling off at 85degC really isn't that bad - though a part of me was wishing (just from an old computer builders point of view) with really just the CPU taking all the thermal mass it would stay closer to the 60degC range. But 85degC is way better than 100degC (like the imacs, minis and MBP's)...

Thanks again!