New Mac Pros slower than rMBP, new iMacs plus all 5.1 mac pros

[FrasierCrane]

No it's not. Just because you can't afford one, OP, doesn't mean you have to go around spreading FUD. I'm expecting mine in a couple weeks, and I DO work with 4K and 5K video on a daily basis. Based on what I've seen so far, and the fact that I have a nearly fully Thunderbolt peripheral workflow and storage setup, this is going to be the perfect Mac for my needs. Sorry to disappoint you.

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oh here for all those 4K video editors thats how your desk will look if you work with footage longer than 2 hrs

Are you assuming all of us 4K editors are slobs? I have 8 Thunderbolt devices mounted in a rack with ONE cable coming out of it into my Mac. There's no cable mess in my desk. Keep your baseless assumptions to yourself. But I have seen editors with a previous gen Mac Pro with more cable clutter than you can imagine.

 

[ZnU]

Just keep in mind, that Promise is using consumer grade drives in these, so there will be reliability issues in parity based arrays (5/6/50/60).

They're not selling an empty unit either, so swapping them out either for enterprise grade HDD's or SSD's will be rather expensive due to the included drives).

They are actually selling an empty model of the R4.

Promise does produce a TB2 to Fibre Channel bridge (SANlink2), that would allow you to connect the nMP to a FC based storage enclosure/system. It would at least allow for the use of enterprise grade drives, but again, it's at an additional cost.

It's an interesting product. I've had my eye on it, as we're presently evaluating shared storage options. But shared storage would be of somewhat marginal benefit to us (we're primarily doing post on features, which tends to be a pretty linear process) and FC gear is in a whole other category in terms of price.

iSCSI over 10 GbE is another interesting option.

 

[VirtualRain]

Just keep in mind, that Promise is using consumer grade drives in these, so there will be reliability issues in parity based arrays (5/6/50/60).

They're not selling an empty unit either, so swapping them out either for enterprise grade HDD's or SSD's will be rather expensive due to the included drives).

Promise does produce a TB2 to Fibre Channel bridge (SANlink2), that would allow you to connect the nMP to a FC based storage enclosure/system. It would at least allow for the use of enterprise grade drives, but again, it's at an additional cost.

Welcome back! (Haven't seen you around her in months!)

Anyway, Promise is offering the Pegasus2 R4 without drives... (EDIT: I see someone beat me to it above)
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/H...s2-r4-diskless-4bay-thunderbolt-2-raid-system

 

[LongSticks]

Have you seen this?

Matt, I was just wondering whether you had seen the video on the FCP site?

I'm not into video at all - purely found it looking for real use videos today? Impressed me tho!

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...th-apple-s-new-mac-pro-and-final-cut-pro-10-1

 

[theSeb]

Good selective posting, op. Have you considered a career as a politician, or a climate change activist?

 

[MattDSLR]

Matt, I was just wondering whether you had seen the video on the FCP site?

I'm not into video at all - purely found it looking for real use videos today? Impressed me tho!

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...th-apple-s-new-mac-pro-and-final-cut-pro-10-1

Yes I have seen it
and its nothing impressive as its a very short movie and it looks like it was already ruined through a process at least ones
what I would rather see a compression of the 5 minutes project VS 5.1 or iMac and burn it to BR
this will not be a long test
what they showing its not a test as they are not comparing it to anything, just showing it off
Working with videos my self as I have a crew of 2 guys working on 2 mac pros editing 4 k and 1080p video i know how slow the process work so its not like they kept editing effects and testing it
they added effects run it and then showed it to us on video
our 8 core 4.1 will not loose any frames when we do that

so if you testing something or showing it show it off against something
and compering it to 8 core 2.93 4.1 unit or 12 core 3.3 5.1 running solid state drives and lets see what works faster.

Its easy to say wow look what it does

the new MP looks amazing but its so limited where it comes to expansion it shocks me
you have more options with customization of iMac than mac pro and thats wrong
I priced nMP to replace my 12 core 5.1 with all the drives that I have and it would cost me almost 20K thats way to much for something that I payed 7k for

 

[FrasierCrane]

=
I priced nMP to replace my 12 core 5.1 with all the drives that I have and it would cost me almost 20K thats way to much for something that I payed 7k for

But you have so much money to throw around...why not just buy it so you can brag about it?

 

[LongSticks]

Yes I have seen it
and its nothing impressive as its a very short movie and it looks like it was already ruined through a process at least ones
what I would rather see a compression of the 5 minutes project VS 5.1 or iMac and burn it to BR
this will not be a long test
what they showing its not a test as they are not comparing it to anything, just showing it off
Working with videos my self as I have a crew of 2 guys working on 2 mac pros editing 4 k and 1080p video i know how slow the process work so its not like they kept editing effects and testing it
they added effects run it and then showed it to us on video
our 8 core 4.1 will not loose any frames when we do that

so if you testing something or showing it show it off against something
and compering it to 8 core 2.93 4.1 unit or 12 core 3.3 5.1 running solid state drives and lets see what works faster.

Its easy to say wow look what it does

the new MP looks amazing but its so limited where it comes to expansion it shocks me
you have more options with customization of iMac than mac pro and thats wrong
I priced nMP to replace my 12 core 5.1 with all the drives that I have and it would cost me almost 20K thats way to much for something that I payed 7k for

Matt, I'm not being deliberately provocative in asking this, just interested as I'm still debating over a recon'd 5,1 and the nMP. My line of work is completely different mind!

My storage is completely out of box and always has been. Ultimately, if I had a catastrophic machine failure, I would replace the machine there and then and simply continue as before, if it was time critical. I use the internal drives on my machines as OS and scratch drives only.

How come the external storage you need will cost you 10k over the 12 core maxed out nMP?. This is the sort of add on cost I don't want to experience.

Currently my out storage is

Work storage
Seagate thunderbolt SSD external additional/large scratch drives
Promise 4 bay raid 0 fast storage (4tb) - Thunderbolt
WD 4tb network drive - Ethernet slow back up
WD 4tb network drive - Ethernet archive drive
Dropbox for additional offsite storage - we have a fast broadband

General backup
2tb time capsule
2tb off site USB drive

I would guess you are looking at PCIe breakout boxes for TB2 with SSD to match internal speeds? Or are you looking at fibre channel?

 

[MattDSLR]

New Mac Pros slower than rMBP, new iMacs plus all 5.1 mac pros at equivalent speeds running on Sata2
Lets results speak for themselves :
http://www.macworld.com/article/208...ter-weve-been-waiting-for-finally.html?page=2

Finder tests
Mac model Copy 6GB Folder------ Compress6GB Folder -----Decompress 6GB Folder
Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 23.46 324.8 39.10
Mac Pro 6-Core/2.4GHz (Mid 2012) 113.22 396.43 96.52
Mac Pro quad-core/3.2GHz (Mid 2012) 147.35 329.67 129.44
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 40.89 241.25 33.62
15-inch Retina MacBook Pro quad-core/2.3GHz
(Late 2013) 21.42 272.67 33.01
Results are times in seconds. Lower results are better. Best result in bold. Reference models in italics.

iMovie 10.0.1 enhance/export
Mac model Result (seconds)
Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 170
Mac Pro 6-Core/2.4GHz (Mid 2012) 225.00
Mac Pro quad-core/3.2GHz (Mid 2012) 290.33
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 47.33
15-inch Retina MacBook Pro quad-core/2.3GHz (Late 2013) 63.00
Lower results are better. Best result in bold. Reference models in italics.


Aperture 3.5.1 import/process
Mac model Results (seconds)
Mac Pro 8-Core/3.0GHz (Late 2013) 72
Mac Pro 6-Core/2.4GHz (Mid 2012) 127.00
Mac Pro quad-core/3.2GHz (Mid 2012) 112.00
27-inch iMac quad-core/3.5GHz CTO (Late 2013) 70.67
15-inch Retina MacBook Pro quad-core/2.3GHz (Late 2013) 75.67
Lower results are better. Best result in bold. Reference models in italics.

So one day we may see something faster from nMP Mini but for now those do not look good on apple

 

[PuppiesCakePizz]

MattDSLR seems to have a point. I'm not understanding why people are attacking him for zero'ing in on the questionable benchmarks.

When the benchmarks started showing in the past few months I was pretty disappointed, I had already planned to buy the 6 core and when I saw the scores was pretty unhappy - I had already been quite disappointed on the lack of cuda.

And now these latest 'labtests,' I mean what's the good news? I get that the drivers are messing up, but these results aren't good any way you look at it.

For those on here with titans in 12core/~3ghz+ machines what's there to get excited about in the nMP?

 

[MattDSLR]

Matt, I'm not being deliberately provocative in asking this, just interested as I'm still debating over a recon'd 5,1 and the nMP. My line of work is completely different mind!

My storage is completely out of box and always has been. Ultimately, if I had a catastrophic machine failure, I would replace the machine there and then and simply continue as before, if it was time critical. I use the internal drives on my machines as OS and scratch drives only.

How come the external storage you need will cost you 10k over the 12 core maxed out nMP?. This is the sort of add on cost I don't want to experience.

Currently my out storage is

Work storage
Seagate thunderbolt SSD external additional/large scratch drives
Promise 4 bay raid 0 fast storage (4tb) - Thunderbolt
WD 4tb network drive - Ethernet slow back up
WD 4tb network drive - Ethernet archive drive
Dropbox for additional offsite storage - we have a fast broadband

General backup
2tb time capsule
2tb off site USB drive

I would guess you are looking at PCIe breakout boxes for TB2 with SSD to match internal speeds? Or are you looking at fibre channel?

I had some bad luck with external drives failing, my first drobo s failed twice so this just sucks
I just got droboD to help with the pain of back up I maxed it out with 5 4TB drives and use triple back up on it (in total 8TB+)
Internally I have 20 tb
8 are used for back up and 12 are used for working with raw files
in the winter months we only need about 4 tB but in the summer 12 TB working with RAW files is pushing it
We also have always one MAC pro cloned just in case one fails I lost some very important files that it cost me a back trip to europe to retake them

so back is important for me
Having internal drives we can swap them any time we want and every year we have full 4 TB drives of jpgs backed up and store away off site

so I hope this explained

 

[ZnU]

The fact that I have 40TB of Thunderbolt storage attached to my 2013 iMac just proves this guy is a ignorant troll.

I think the most I've ever had hooked up to the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on at once is 30 TB

Here's a fun trick. Go buy an ATTO ExpressSAS R680. Toss it in a Sonnet Echo Express SE II (which qualifies for a free Thunderbolt 2 upgrade). Pick up 10 rack-mount 24 bay SAS JBOD enclosures with built-in expanders. Connect. Load up with 4 TB drives. 240 of them. Hell, grab a 16-bay enclosure and fill that with drives as well, just to take things up to the card's 256 end-point device limit. Now, configure the 1024 TB —*one petabyte — of storage attached to your new Mac Pro into any combination of RAID volumes you like. Enjoy.

Still not enough storage? Put a second R680 in the Echo Express's second slot and repeat.

Still not enough storage? Well, you've only connected one of a possible 36 Thunderbolt devices so far....

In fact, if we want to get really silly here, let's pick a Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosure with three slots rather than two. Let's fill them all with RAID controllers. That's 768 hard drives per Thunderbolt device. Now let's buy 35 of these and daisy chain them (not 36, because we'll probably want to attach a monitor). That's 27,648 hard drives. If they're each 4 TB models, that's over 110 petabytes of storage attached to your Mac Pro. According to Wolfram Alpha, that's 20% more storage than you need to keep your own local copy of the entire web, or about 60x the estimated storage capacity of the human brain.

We could go higher if we connected the Mac Pro to a SAN... but I'll stop now. I guess my point is, once you go out of the box, there's not really any meaningful upper limit on storage.

 

[Pressure]

Just keep in mind, that Promise is using consumer grade drives in these, so there will be reliability issues in parity based arrays (5/6/50/60).

That's basically a myth, both Google and Backblaze have hard data showing that consumer drives match enterprise drives pretty well on reliability. In fact, the consumer drives had a slightly lower failure ratio than enterprise drives (4.2% versus 4.6%).

That's just the data over 2 years for the enterprise drives though.

Source.

 

[LongSticks]

I had some bad luck with external drives failing, my first drobo s failed twice so this just sucks
I just got droboD to help with the pain of back up I maxed it out with 5 4TB drives and use triple back up on it (in total 8TB+)
Internally I have 20 tb
8 are used for back up and 12 are used for working with raw files
in the winter months we only need about 4 tB but in the summer 12 TB working with RAW files is pushing it
We also have always one MAC pro cloned just in case one fails I lost some very important files that it cost me a back trip to europe to retake them

so back is important for me
Having internal drives we can swap them any time we want and every year we have full 4 TB drives of jpgs backed up and store away off site

so I hope this explained

Yeh I had the drobo burn as well, still interested in the Mini though as I work out of the office a couple of days a week. Promise J2 & J4 also look interesting for that as well.

Thanks for the response. More stuff to mull over!

 

[ZnU]

MattDSLR seems to have a point. I'm not understanding why people are attacking him for zero'ing in on the questionable benchmarks.

He's largely pointing at benchmarks that tell us things we already know, and things that aren't specific to this machine. Like, per-core performance isn't dramatically different between a Xeon and a similarly clocked i7, or this year's processors aren't radically faster than last year's, especially if you compare them to models that have more cores.

The only remotely newsworthy thing anyone has identified here is the OpenGL performance, which matters primarily to gamers and 3D artists, both traditionally markets where Windows is stronger anyway. Certainly Apple should work to fix such issues, but they're just not relevant to most of the customers in this machine's target market.

For those on here with titans in 12core/~3ghz+ machines what's there to get excited about in the nMP?

Life without Windows/Hackintosh flakiness. Or if we're talking about upgraded legacy Mac Pros, life with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, and without power supplies stuffed into optical drive bays and severe limitations on expansion because of how easy it is to fill four PCIe slots in certain use cases.

 

[PuppiesCakePizz]

Life without Windows/Hackintosh flakiness. Or if we're talking about upgraded legacy Mac Pros, life with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, and without power supplies stuffed into optical drive bays and severe limitations on expansion because of how easy it is to fill four PCIe slots in certain use cases.

I wouldn't go with hackintosh. Upgrading macs is easier than a lot of people seem to think. I've only bought mac towers and mac laptops for the past decade and have done upgrades to many and I'm certainly no computer tech. You can get dual 680s for mac which run well and I nicely discovered on here today that non-mac dual GTX 780s run well also.

For a lot of 3d artists (sort of people like me) the lack of cuda support is a big thumbs down...

I kind of want an excuse to buy the nMP because it looks cool and I can show it off But so many downsides.. I've been searching far and wide for some good news on it but only finding worse and worse things.