Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Need help choosing between nMP or Dell Precision T3610

B

BigZero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 25, 2014
4
0
Hi guys, I'm having a hard time choosing between the nMP (Hex 16Gbs SSD512 Dual D700) and Dell precision T3610 (Hex 16Gbs SSD256 Dual Quadro K5000).
My work involves 3D modeling, animation, particles effects, product and architecture visualization. My main workflow includes 3Ds Max, Maya, Vray and Vray RT which is crucial cuz real time preview really speeds up my workflow. I don't require the level of accuracy like CAD design but I need a machine to handle large scene and lots of particles effects.
I've never used Mac or AMD firepros before, researches on the internet show mixed results. Some say the nMP is designed towards video/post processing work and is not really a 3D workstation because Firepro and OpenCL is not as good and widely used as Nvidia and CUDA. The nMP is an amazing machine of great value but if this is true then I wouldn't mind spending a few more on the Dell.
So what is your opinion on this? Thank you guys for your time :)
 
From looking at the site then 3DS Max appears to be a Windows Only software.

The Dell T3610 appears on the Recommended List, so I would say go with that.
 
Go with the Dell. The Mac Pro might be intriguing, but you're asking for trouble trying to run a heavy windows workflow on it.
 
Well, it varies depending on the software

BigZero said:
Hi guys, I'm having a hard time choosing between the nMP (Hex 16Gbs SSD512 Dual D700) and Dell precision T3610 (Hex 16Gbs SSD256 Dual Quadro K5000).
My work involves 3D modeling, animation, particles effects, product and architecture visualization. My main workflow includes 3Ds Max, Maya, Vray and Vray RT which is crucial cuz real time preview really speeds up my workflow. I don't require the level of accuracy like CAD design but I need a machine to handle large scene and lots of particles effects.
I've never used Mac or AMD firepros before, researches on the internet show mixed results. Some say the nMP is designed towards video/post processing work and is not really a 3D workstation because Firepro and OpenCL is not as good and widely used as Nvidia and CUDA. The nMP is an amazing machine of great value but if this is true then I wouldn't mind spending a few more on the Dell.
So what is your opinion on this? Thank you guys for your time :)
Click to expand...

It is not as much what you do, as it is what software you use to do it. When Apple showed off the Mac Pro, they used Maya for instance.
I suggest looking in to your software before making your decision.
 
casperes1996 said:
It is not as much what you do, as it is what software you use to do it. When Apple showed off the Mac Pro, they used Maya for instance.
I suggest looking in to your software before making your decision.
Click to expand...

I believe you're thinking of the Mari demo, not Maya.


But yes, the decision should weigh in favor of the software one will use.
 
vray-RT for maya also works in Open-CL mode altho performance is nowhere near to CUDA mode. Both methods works in mac os X, with crippled performance in Mavericks. Also keep in mind that the new Mac Pro is not certified to run versions of maya prior to 2015, because Mac os mavericks is not fully compatibile (main problems are render job failures with Backburner and MayaBatch). IF your pipeline requires Maya 2014 or older for rendering you need a mac compatibile with Mountain Lion.
The radeon cards on mac pro are very fast for realtime 3d packages such as Mari, Mudbox, and are great for complex scenes in maya (layout, animation and vfx), but are kinda useless for gpu raytrace rendering.

Dual quadro k5000 from the dell probably are slower than high-end geforce models such as the titan or the 780 in Vray-RT and other gpu rendering engines, but they will handle huge , complex scenes and animations in Maya much better.
 
BigZero said:
So what is your opinion on this? Thank you guys for your time :)
Click to expand...

I've had a new Dell T3610 for about 7 weeks now. It's a great machine, quiet, and lots of expandability. I got the E5-1650v2 (same hex that Apple sells), DVD-RW and BD-RE. I put two 4 TB Seagate SSHDs in the drive bays, and a pair of Samsung 840 Pros in a plastic "two SSD in one 3.5in slot" carrier velcroed in the space between the SSHDs and the optical. (The mobo has 6 internal SATA ports.)

Two RocketRaid 644LS cards give me up to 40 eSATA drives in inexpensive PM cabinets.

I got the 8 GiB (2*4GiB) 1866 MHz ECC memory from Dell, then got two more 4 GiB plus four 16 GiB for a total of 80 GiB. (I could have done 4 GiB non-ECC from Dell, and thrown the 4 GiB away - but it was slightly cheaper to get 8 GiB from Dell that I could keep.) Really nice that the T3610 has eight DIMM slots for up to 256 GiB of RAM (although the stats still say 128 GiB max - until the 32 GiB DIMMs get qualified).

Only hassle with the machine is that *all* of the Ivy Bridge E5-v2 Xeons have a bug in EPT virtualization - you need to disable it or your VMs will crash with various memory management errors. (It's Erratum CA135 - see http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...TypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=258860268&stateId=1)
 

Attachments

  • ca135.jpg
    ca135.jpg
    73.5 KB · Views: 190
Last edited:
BigZero said:
Hi guys, I'm having a hard time choosing between the nMP (Hex 16Gbs SSD512 Dual D700) and Dell precision T3610 (Hex 16Gbs SSD256 Dual Quadro K5000).
My work involves 3D modeling, animation, particles effects, product and architecture visualization. My main workflow includes 3Ds Max, Maya, Vray and Vray RT which is crucial cuz real time preview really speeds up my workflow. I don't require the level of accuracy like CAD design but I need a machine to handle large scene and lots of particles effects.
I've never used Mac or AMD firepros before, researches on the internet show mixed results. Some say the nMP is designed towards video/post processing work and is not really a 3D workstation because Firepro and OpenCL is not as good and widely used as Nvidia and CUDA. The nMP is an amazing machine of great value but if this is true then I wouldn't mind spending a few more on the Dell.
So what is your opinion on this? Thank you guys for your time :)
Click to expand...

If your workflow requires 3D Studio Max, then you are going to run bootcamp all the time. So you are basically asking that if you should buy a Mac to run Windows on it.

Well, it's up to you. The hardware is powerful enough for your needs in both cases, but it's weird to buy a Mac to run bootcamp. Just go with the PC imho.
 
  • Like
Reactions: searching-again
iBug2 said:
If your workflow requires 3D Studio Max, then you are going to run bootcamp all the time. So you are basically asking that if you should buy a Mac to run Windows on it.

Well, it's up to you. The hardware is powerful enough for your needs in both cases, but it's weird to buy a Mac to run bootcamp. Just go with the PC imho.
Click to expand...

Actually, a quick search on this forum for "bootcamp" will point out lots of issues with bootcamp.

It's not "weird" to buy a Mac Pro to run bootcamp, it's "foolish". You don't want to depend on Apple to give you the latest Windows drivers.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: searching-again
Thanks for your replies guys.
It seems the D700 has superior compute power over the Quadro k5000, but the problem is OpenCL support in various 3D applications. I don't know much about video work but I heard many of the Adobe products now fully support OpenCL, can 3D world expect the same in the near future? I've seen Mari demo and that was quite impressive. In that case the nMP seems like the best investment.
Regarding bootcamp, I might switch completely to Maya in the near future and abandon Windows and 3Ds max.
I came across this demo of the new Firepro W9100 using Max and VrayRT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njsv4r3tAx0
Cannot see clearly the image quality from the camera angle but the speed is nice. Can I expect the same or close performance on the Dual D700?
 
AidenShaw said:
Actually, a quick search on this forum for "bootcamp" will point out lots of issues with bootcamp.

It's not "weird" to buy a Mac Pro to run bootcamp, it's "foolish". You don't want to depend on Apple to give you the latest Windows drivers.
Click to expand...

I am never surprised to see sick people at a hospital. Bootcamp runs perfectly fine 99.9999% of the time. What issues have you experienced?
 
My opinion on this is to use the platform for which the software you require is supported. If that means a Windows based PC then so be it. If the best hardware for running that solution is a Mac then so be it. If Linux is the best tool than Linux it is.

My workplace allows a wide variety of solutions to be used. There are quite a few Mac users. However I routinely see them firing up a virtual instance of Windows in order to do several tasks. When it came time to replace my PC I ended up going with another PC. I didn't want to be hassling with running Windows on a Mac.

I love Macs and I own too many of them myself. But when I have to use a particular piece of software and that software is best run on something else then I'll use that something else.
 
AidenShaw said:
...which is rather sad.
Click to expand...

I was going to argue with you, but I have just lost my Windows 8 partition in the nMP for no reason. I got a cache_manager BSOD 3 times and now I cannot get into Windows at all any more. Everything was working perfectly, so I am a bit stumped.

:eek: :rolleyes:
 
theSeb said:
I was going to argue with you, but I have just lost my Windows 8 partition in the nMP for no reason. I got a cache_manager BSOD 3 times and now I cannot get into Windows at all any more. Everything was working perfectly, so I am a bit stumped.

:eek: :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. Hope you're able to recover without much lost time or data.
 
Another detail: doesn't Quadros have ECC RAM? The FirePro GPUs use standard memories, but if I'm not wrong desktop Quadro GPUs use ECC RAM which can be a good thing for stuff that requires longer processing times (like renderings that need a day or longer to complete).
 
If you're serious about using V-Ray RT in GPU mode the current Mac Pro is not an option. While it does have both OpenCL and CUDA support, the openCL kernal does not run on AMD hardware prior to Hawaii architecture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back