New nvidia gtx 1080, really makes this imac seem paltry

[joema2]

I still don't get why the pricetag of the GoPro has any relevance here, it's 4K video. It doesn't matter if it's a 4K coming from a RED Epic or a 4K compact Canon camera? I must be missing something.

As already stated, 4K video files can have widely differing encoding. This produces very different stress on the editing hardware/software. E.g, 4K ProRes 422 requires much less CPU horsepower to edit than 4K H264, but is about 8x the file size so requires more I/O.

Even within 4K H264, there can be significant variations. That codec allows different GOP (Group Of Picture) lengths, different bitrates, different I or P frame intervals, etc. The 4K H264 codec used by one camera could be tweaked for minimal file size at the cost of higher CPU demands during decoding and editing. Another 4K H264 codec could use a larger file size or encoding parameters which are less CPU-intensive to decode and edit.

In general GoPro footage is highly compressed and demanding to edit, some editing software more than others. The OP seemed surprised his "inexpensive" 4K GoPro footage was difficult to edit using Premiere CC on a $3200 iMac 27, but this is expected. He blamed the iMac's GPU, when in fact the GPU cannot really help H264 encode/decode. Premiere does not use Intel's QuickSync hardware-accelerated decoding. A more expensive camera (while also recording 4K H264) might use less compression, shorter GOP length, more reference frames, etc. which makes editing easier.

FCPX can easily edit 4K H264 on a medium-level Mac, although this may require using the built-in proxy function. Adobe will be improving Premiere CC in the future to have proxy capability and they may add Quick Sync, although probably Windows only in the initial version.

 

[turbineseaplane]

2000 hackintosh. Impressive

Yep - Precisely why so many of us have gone the Hack route in the last years.
It's come a long long way and if you purchase the correct components, it's more compatible and seamless than its ever been before - So that's nice at least.

But - I'd still be in the camp of buying a "real Mac" tower again if I could. I just can't step back as far in time as is now required if you go with a cMP and mega upgrades.

 

[AsprineTm]

Oh boy Asus shows the new 1080 mobile gpu performance and it beats the Titan x!
http://rog.asus.com/23312016/coming-soon/the-future-of-ultimate-gaming-laptops---a-glimpse/

Man I want one in an IMac...

 

[throAU]

New card faster than old card! Film at 11!

Will see what comes out soon. For what Apple is pushing (low overhead APIs like Metal, GPGPU like OpenCL) Nvidia is not really beating the R9 Fury convincingly (maybe 2-3%) with the 1080 (based on DirectX 12 benchmarks). Yes, it wins convincingly on old outdated APIs, but that's not where things are headed in future.

Will be interesting to see what happens with Polaris.

Yes, i'm sure that for a bunch of stuff with regards to PC gaming, Nvidia will be faster. But that's not what you generally buy a Mac for, and for GPGPU, DX12 and Metal - i suspect Polaris will be faster. It will certainly be better bang for buck.

Going ga ga over the 1080 and 1070 before AMD release their stuff is a little premature, IMHO.

(and that's whether you plan to build a gaming PC, a Hackintosh, or whatever. we've waited 3 years for anything other than badge upgrades, may as well wait a few months longer to see them benchmarked on various stuff head to head. That's what I'm certainly doing before upgrading the gaming PC)

 

[iemcj]

Wow, I get busy for a few days and this thread blows up in my absence! Ok I can't reply to everyone so I'll do what I can...

To clarify, I am not "whining" I've been an avid Mac supporter for years, I wouldn't have spend 3199 on their best machine if I didn't believe in it. The point of my thread was to show in the gpu side how vastly far behind Apple is. I bought the best they have and it's comparable to a mid range gpu from last year. I have every right to point out the FACT that macs are lagging in this department. You can say that you are fine with that but please don't dispute logic and facts.

Now, a few people mentioned using final cut pro, I am downloading the trial version tonight and will give it a whirl tomorrow. It's a 300 dollar piece of software to buy so I think some of you are over simplifying when you say "just get final cut" like it's a piece of freeware. But yes, I will try it.

Now some of you poo pooed 4k as being niche, as a professional wedding photographer who does videography on the side and works a lot with video guys, I completely disagree. It was niche maybe in 2013 but heck even mobile phones shoot in 4k now. It's not niche, it's standard. I can go into the MANY reasons one would want to shoot in 4k (far flexibility in post for digital stabilization, sharper final image even exporting at 1080p, more ability to change composition and tilt, ect) but this isn't the place for that. If you do not understand the reason for shooting in 4k then I suggest doing some research on the topic. Not trying to sound like a prick but by saying something like that it shows you're quite behind on the issue.

Gpus are extremely important for high res video rendering and work. And we have apples flagship machine fully speced that can just barely keep up with todays off the shelf technology, what's going to happen next year when the iphone is shooting 4k video? And 4 years after that when we're all in 8k? The point is that Apple has historically been a "long term investment machine" that could still work for you just fine for half a decade easily. That worked fine in the late 90s and 2000s when most users were doing simple tasks and browsing the web. Well now we're in an age where people have 4k video cameras in their pockets and there's exponential growth in the number of people who are going to need to churn through those videos.

The price of the gopro is completely relevant. The reason being that this high end machine is not getting taxed by a high end product like some professional filming equipment. It's getting taxed by an off the shelf product that is only going to get cheaper in the next year or two. If it's getting slogged down by a 400 dollar camera now, what's going to happen in 3 years when every iphone is shooting in 4k or higher??


I have for months raved about this machine and recommended it to literally everyone but I'm now having concerns since other things are moving at a faster pace than apple and this machine could rapidly need to be replaced. Do not knee jerk see that as "apple bashing," I have 5 different apple products on my desk at this moment. I'm bringing up what I see as legitimate problems going forward, that off the shelf consumer video cameras are already pushing this machine to it's limit.

 

[joema2]

...Now some of you poo pooed 4k as being niche, as a professional wedding photographer who does videography on the side and works a lot with video guys, I completely disagree...MANY reasons one would want to shoot in 4k (far flexibility in post for digital stabilization, sharper final image even exporting at 1080p, more ability to change composition and tilt, ect)

Of course you are correct. I am a professional documentary editor and for the reasons you state we have shot only 4K for the last year. The benefits have little to do with distributing in 4K -- which you understand but most people don't.

....we're in an age where people have 4k video cameras in their pockets and there's exponential growth in the number of people who are going to need to churn through those videos...

We are in a difficult transition period to 4K, not that different from the DV to HD transition which happened several years ago. It places much greater demands on the editing hardware and software. In particular this transition caught Adobe flat-footed since their long-term policy for Premiere is you edit in the camera-native codec without transcoding. This scheme essentially fell apart with H264 4K but the next version of Premiere will have built-in proxy support like FCPX has had for years. Adobe's Premiere CC intro video says: "allows editors to work with 4k and beyond, without time-consuming transcoding", and "never needing to render until your work is complete". This is simply not the case.
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pr....html?set=premiere-pro--get-started--overview

...this high end machine is not getting taxed by a high end product like some professional filming equipment. It's getting taxed by an off the shelf product that is only going to get cheaper in the next year or two. If it's getting slogged down by a 400 dollar camera now, what's going to happen in 3 years when every iphone is shooting in 4k or higher??

Your machine is being taxed by inefficient software, not the camera. Adobe knows they have a serious problem in this area and they are working to correct it. They have already demonstrated this at NAB and the combination of proxy support and use of Apple's Metal API should greatly improve things for Premiere users...[/QUOTE]

If you want an immediate solution you will have to use a manual proxy workflow. The procedure is documented here in this article "Getting Acquainted with Offline Video Editing to Ease You Into 4K", by Tony Northrup:

http://www.rangefinderonline.com/fe...-Video-Editing-to-Ease-You-Into-4K-8988.shtml

If you like FCPX that is fine -- its frame update rate is about 20x faster than Premiere on 4K H264, but it has a significantly different design and typically people transitioning from track-based editors have a considerable learning curve. if you have a large experience base with Premiere and can afford the $50 per month for the entire package, it might be more effective to stay with that. You can use a manual proxy procedure until Adobe ships the Premiere update; time frame for that is unknown but hopefully not much longer. Many photographers will need the $10 per month Adobe package for LightRoom and Photoshop, no matter what video editor they use.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I've been a mac user since the Macintosh SE days, I've never known them to have cutting, (or bleading) edge GPUs, They've always seemed to be a generation or two behind or they'd never select the fastest one.

Given that observation, if your needs are such that need or want such heavy duty GPUs, then Apple is not the right manufacturer for you


Minis, MBPs and even iMacs have never had very powerful GPUs, heck, the 13" MBP and the Mini both use iGPUs, so I think its silly to condemn them for not having the best dGPUs on the market when those models don't even have them.

I understand your point, and I'm big believer in selecting the best tool for the job, if I wanted to play the best and most intensive games, I'd select a PC with the appropriate hardware, Macs would not be on the list. Likewise, if you have certain needs with regard to the hardware, waiting for apple is not really the best option.

True words.

When have Apple actually had at least equal grfx hardware with their PC counter parts...?
Let's see:
• nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL springs to mind.... Apple was forced into that because of the just released 30" ACD (Power Mac G5 times)
• 3Dfx Vododoo 5 (5500)?... 3Dfx almost dead, tried the Mac (Power Mac G3 / G4) market (not really same release date as the PC, but close)
• What about ATi / AMD? Radeon 8500 (Power Mac G4), X1800 (Power Mac G5).... maybe?

Whatever. Only a handful *MIGHT* be boasted about, that Apple were close to having the best grfx cards out there, and it seems all were PowerPC days, i.e. 99% could not be boasted about... let alone OpenGL vs. Direct 3D and optimised drivers, etc..

OTOH, modern "mediocre" and "mobile" grfx cards perform pretty well, and seem to bridge the gap with the high-end cards. The performance requirement of most users hardly ever exceeds a mediocre or mobile GPU nowadays.

Waiting for a new iMac with "mobile" dedicated grfx (8 GB VRAM for X-Plane 10)

 

[cynics]

Now that the results are out the 1080 does very well although nothing that is mind blowing. nVidia's claims were are accurate when used in context, like twice the performance...for VR. Or better than 980ti's in SLI....in DirectX12....

Its very clear their target audience is gamers running Windows with features like "simultaneous multi projection" which allows the image to rotate on multi monitor setups to avoid distortion on the side monitors in games. Or "single pass stereo" which helps with rendering for VR along with many other neat features specifically for VR. Or "Ansel Tech" which allows for ultra high resolution gaming screenshots. Or 360 photos viewing screenshots in VR.

I'm not discounting its raw horsepower can't be used for many thing for an iMac, however if you are exceeding Apples currents offerings than a 1080(m) isn't the solution, an actual workstation is what you need.

 

[Precursor]

Oh boy Asus shows the new 1080 mobile gpu performance and it beats the Titan x!
http://rog.asus.com/23312016/coming-soon/the-future-of-ultimate-gaming-laptops---a-glimpse/

Man I want one in an IMac...

I like the use of scaling here lol
At the first glance it appeared like "GXXX" had more than twice the performance of GTX 980 Ti, until you see the scale

 

[AsprineTm]

A first benches of the AMD Radeon 480 and 480X.
Note, these are the desktop variants.

AMD Polaris 67DF:C7 — Radeon R9 480X CROSSFIRE
AMD Polaris 67DF:C7 — Radeon R9 480X
AMD Polaris 67DF:C4 — Radeon R9 480

 

[Omek]

New card faster than old card! Film at 11!

Will see what comes out soon. For what Apple is pushing (low overhead APIs like Metal, GPGPU like OpenCL) Nvidia is not really beating the R9 Fury convincingly (maybe 2-3%) with the 1080 (based on DirectX 12 benchmarks). Yes, it wins convincingly on old outdated APIs, but that's not where things are headed in future.

Will be interesting to see what happens with Polaris.

Yes, i'm sure that for a bunch of stuff with regards to PC gaming, Nvidia will be faster. But that's not what you generally buy a Mac for, and for GPGPU, DX12 and Metal - i suspect Polaris will be faster. It will certainly be better bang for buck.

Going ga ga over the 1080 and 1070 before AMD release their stuff is a little premature, IMHO.

(and that's whether you plan to build a gaming PC, a Hackintosh, or whatever. we've waited 3 years for anything other than badge upgrades, may as well wait a few months longer to see them benchmarked on various stuff head to head. That's what I'm certainly doing before upgrading the gaming PC)

The major game developers are not happy with Metal. Apple basically made it harder for them to develop games for the Mac platform and to try and make them backwards compatible. It's not the main reason games like Overwatch are Windows- and console-only, but it didn't help.

 

[urbanman2004]

Editing 1080p video is fine but when I'm working on the uncompressed 4k video from my Hero 4 black, it noticeably slows down. It's certainly not terrible but considering this is a 3 THOUSAND dollar machine and is brand new, this should not happen. Specs are in the sig, using adobe premier pro and have used the gopro software sparingly, similar results.


And re read what I posted everyone, I never implied one should buy an epic graphics card just for gopro editing. My statement is that this the top of the line iMac, and this is a one year old camera that cost less than 500 bucks and it's already noticeably slowed down by it. So what's going to happen with next years gopro? The canon 5d mark 4 when that comes out? It's top end price and currently at mid end performance which is a HUGE problem considering there is no way to upgrade. THAT is the point my friend.

I sarcastically brought up the colorspace and thinness because it's something that they talked about like it was important when it's nearly inconsequential. It's like buying a car with a undersized engine but the saleman trying to reassure you by telling you it has leather seats. That's nice and all but that's not going to matter when you're trying to keep up with traffic and your car can't go fast enough.

Send that SOB back... That's why I have 3 multi-boot hackintoshes

 

[Ethosik]

Guys, 4K editing is still a very powerful task. Even my GTX 980 (and the new 1080 a little bit) struggles to edit 4k video. If you are doing that kind of work, you should be looking at the Mac Pro and not the iMac. iMac is throttled due to the drawbacks of an All-in-one design.