nMP/new Mac Pro/Mac Pro 6,1 Reviews [MERGED]

[AppleDroid]

Not that I would ever base a purchase decision on a Macworld benchmark, for anyone who didn't actually read the Macworld review and are wondering about the "horrible" results for the nMP, this is what the headline said:

New Mac Pro is the speedster we've been waiting for (finally)

I'm at a loss as to what to do going by early benchmarks like those from Macworld.

Being a design and photographer the most demanding apps I run daily are Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5. I edit 5DMIII raw files. The benchmarks I've seen put the 4c nMP on par with the BTO i7 iMac so that is a wash. The only model worth it's money is the 6c it seems.

So my decision comes down to:

6c nMP w/ BTO 512 SSD ($300), 32GB Ram ($400) + $900 in external TB drives. Total(w/tax): $5927

BTO i7 iMac: 1TB Fusion SSD ($200) / 32GB Ram ($300) + $900 external TB drives
Total(w/tax): $3927

So for my needs the question is will the 6c nMP give me $1900+ worth of extra power for Adobe CC / Lightroom 5?

 

[wildmac]

I'm at a loss as to what to do going by early benchmarks like those from Macworld.

Being a design and photographer the most demanding apps I run daily are Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5. I edit 5DMIII raw files. The benchmarks I've seen put the 4c nMP on par with the BTO i7 iMac so that is a wash. The only model worth it's money is the 6c it seems.

So my decision comes down to:

6c nMP w/ BTO 512 SSD ($300), 32GB Ram ($400) + $900 in external TB drives. Total(w/tax): $5927

BTO i7 iMac: 1TB Fusion SSD ($200) / 32GB Ram ($300) + $900 external TB drives
Total(w/tax): $3927

So for my needs the question is will the 6c nMP give me $1900+ worth of extra power for Adobe CC / Lightroom 5?

Those benchmarks don't show everything, especially things like memory bandwidth.

Also, Lightroom will use those extra cores, while PS, depending on what you are doing, will utilize the system overall.

 

[Cubemmal]

The benchmarks I've seen put the 4c nMP on par with the BTO i7 iMac so that is a wash. The only model worth it's money is the 6c it seems.

Benchmarks don't tell you the whole story, but yes I'd agree that the hex is the sweet spot. Also, on a pure compute basis there isn't a huge difference between the Haswell i7 and nMP Xeon - for the first minute or so. Any Xeon kicks an i7 under continuous load which can't take the heat for long and has to throttle back.

 

[kennyman]

Full-Geared nMP

I have not seen any reviews of the 12-Core nMP yet. Just wondering if you guys have come across any benchmark/review. Please share.

 

[Rogifan]

My new Mac Pro! (Oh, wait...)

Image

Do people still think these jokes are funny? For me they were Zzzzzz the day after the nMP was originally announced.

 

[FredT2]

So my decision comes down to:

6c nMP w/ BTO 512 SSD ($300), 32GB Ram ($400) + $900 in external TB drives. Total(w/tax): $5927

BTO i7 iMac: 1TB Fusion SSD ($200) / 32GB Ram ($300) + $900 external TB drives
Total(w/tax): $3927

So for my needs the question is will the 6c nMP give me $1900+ worth of extra power for Adobe CC / Lightroom 5?

The way I'm making the comparison is to configure an iMac with 3.5Mhz i7, 512 GB SSD, 32 MB ram, and GTX 780M, and comparing that to nMP 6-core, 512/32 with D300. The price difference between those is $850.

You said you'll have external drives on the iMac, so why put a fusion drive in it instead of SSD?

 

[Pipper99]

Do people still think these jokes are funny? For me they were Zzzzzz the day after the nMP was originally announced.

More likely they just think you're a turd

 

[macines]

Interesting.


Those RAM slots are the most user-accessible component inside, although Apple says the SSD and graphics cards could be swapped out as well, but it certainly wouldn't be as easy as it is on a traditional desktop tower

Where did you get that quote - is it true? Users are able to replace those GPUs?

 

[FredT2]

I have not seen any reviews of the 12-Core nMP yet. Just wondering if you guys have come across any benchmark/review. Please share.

It seems like Apple just sent out the 8-core model to the reviewers. At least that's all I've seen reported.

 

[elvisizer]

So for my needs the question is will the 6c nMP give me $1900+ worth of extra power for Adobe CC / Lightroom 5?

judging from the FCP 10.1 update specifically calling out that the application was updated to enable rendering and playback on the nMP's dual GPU's, we can be pretty certain that there is no system-level dual gpu support and applications will need to be updated to take advantage of the 2nd gpu. until adobe confirms that the 2nd gpu will be used in your workflow, the iMac is probably the safer choice. lots of photoshop operations are single threaded, anyway.

 

[theSeb]

Where did you get that quote - is it true? Users are able to replace those GPUs?

Page 2 of the cnet review

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/apple-mac-pro-2013/4505-3118_7-35781456-2.html

 

[AppleDroid]

Those benchmarks don't show everything, especially things like memory bandwidth.

Also, Lightroom will use those extra cores, while PS, depending on what you are doing, will utilize the system overall.

First I didn't expect the amount of replies thanks everyone!

True. I was hoping Apple would have released it Dec 1st so there'd be enough time for proper benchmarking. I know Lightroom can for certain tasks (use more cores effectively) but PS only does on certain filters so clock speed > cores.

Benchmarks don't tell you the whole story, but yes I'd agree that the hex is the sweet spot. Also, on a pure compute basis there isn't a huge difference between the Haswell i7 and nMP Xeon - for the first minute or so. Any Xeon kicks an i7 under continuous load which can't take the heat for long and has to throttle back.

Good points thanks. I don't do any multi-hour rendering so I didn't see heat/throttling as a potential issue. I could be wrong obviously.

The way I'm making the comparison is to configure an iMac with 3.5Mhz i7, 512 GB SSD, 32 MB ram, and GTX 780M, and comparing that to nMP 6-core, 512/32 with D300. The price difference between those is $850.

You said you'll have external drives on the iMac, so why put a fusion drive in it instead of SSD?

Resale value and hopes that OWC will offer aftermarket, cheaper, options. Right now I could fit all my apps on the SSD portion and use a RAID5 setup externally for my data. I would do so on the nMP as well most likely. (Or move files back/forth when working but that's a pain)

...until adobe confirms that the 2nd gpu will be used in your workflow, the iMac is probably the safer choice. lots of photoshop operations are single threaded, anyway.

And this is a huge factor. If I could do a BTO with 1x GPU (and cut the cost by $300-400) I'd do so as I don't do any heavy video or 3D. Plus I really wanted to replace my 09 4c Mac pro for the tax deduction in 2013 but that's out the window for the nMP. I've upgraded this thing with an SSD boot drive + 24GB Ram but whenever the CPU has to take over it's not nearly as fast as even a modern MBP.

 

[kennyman]

It seems like Apple just sent out the 8-core model to the reviewers. At least that's all I've seen reported.

That is why I am wondering - why they did not send the most powerful one to Tech sites for review/benchmark? That is kind of strange

 

[BEIGE]

because the 8-core's actually a much better performer for 90% of tasks than the 12-core is. Unless you do 3D rendering with all cores saturated, the 8-core is going to beat it all the time because of the higher turbo clock speed and because most applications like After Effects, Nuke, Maya, Mari, etc. rarely use multithreaded operations for most of their tasks. That's the reason I ordered the 8-core myself. If they'd sent out the 12-core, a current iMac at 3.5GHz would completely destroy it for most things like iMovie and that would be a terrible PR problem. Why anyone tests this thing with iMovie is beyond me, though. Idiocy.

But Apple forgot one reviewer for their units: me. I'm reviewing the 8-core for Ars Technica and haven't sent us anything. Over 500,000 views just of my critical look article ( http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/a-critical-look-at-the-new-mac-pro/ ) but somehow they haven't deemed us worthy of a review unit.

 

[FredT2]

But Apple forgot one reviewer for their units: me. I'm reviewing the 8-core for Ars Technica and haven't sent us anything. Over 500,000 views just of my critical look article ( http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/a-critical-look-at-the-new-mac-pro/ ) but somehow they haven't deemed us worthy of a review unit.

That's crazy! I hope you guys are reminding them that a lot of people depend on Ars. It's MUCH more important a resource for this kind of product than Macworld.

 

[davidb367]

I'm sure the 12 core CPUs are in short supply and want to get those to their business and preferred customers.

 

[kennyman]

because the 8-core's actually a much better performer for 90% of tasks than the 12-core is. Unless you do 3D rendering with all cores saturated, the 8-core is going to beat it all the time because of the higher turbo clock speed and because most applications like After Effects, Nuke, Maya, Mari, etc. rarely use multithreaded operations for most of their tasks. That's the reason I ordered the 8-core myself.

But Apple forgot one reviewer for their units: me. I'm reviewing the 8-core for Ars Technica and haven't sent us anything. Over 500,000 views just of my critical look article ( http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/a-critical-look-at-the-new-mac-pro/ ) but somehow they haven't deemed us worthy of a review unit.

Wow.....500,000 is a lot, also the reviews that we have seen so far are not really detailed, I have not seen anything on AT today.....probably will just need to wait

I do a lot of rendering, use MP for media creation and mainly for Sorenson, Auto desk apps, Adobe CS, Blender and so on, mostly CPU intensive application with CUDA/OpenCL for rendering or visualising models.

But seriously, the 8-core nMP would not do any good for me. It would be slow, I use a 12-Core MP. And so far I have not seen any reviews to compare it to the new nMP, to see the advantages.

 

[TennisandMusic]

because the 8-core's actually a much better performer for 90% of tasks than the 12-core is. Unless you do 3D rendering with all cores saturated, the 8-core is going to beat it all the time because of the higher turbo clock speed and because most applications like After Effects, Nuke, Maya, Mari, etc. rarely use multithreaded operations for most of their tasks. That's the reason I ordered the 8-core myself. If they'd sent out the 12-core, a current iMac at 3.5GHz would completely destroy it for most things like iMovie and that would be a terrible PR problem. Why anyone tests this thing with iMovie is beyond me, though. Idiocy.

But Apple forgot one reviewer for their units: me. I'm reviewing the 8-core for Ars Technica and haven't sent us anything. Over 500,000 views just of my critical look article ( http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/a-critical-look-at-the-new-mac-pro/ ) but somehow they haven't deemed us worthy of a review unit.

You took a pretty negative view of the machine when it was revealed. You don't think they noticed and withheld a review unit as a result? They tend to give review units to "believers."

 

[VirtualRain]

Don't think I've seen this mentioned here yet...

http://barefeats.com/tube01.html

Thanks for sharing... Nice results there for the nMP 12-core...

INSIGHTS
At least in terms of Geekbench 3's three performance tests, the top 'late 2013' Mac Pro 2.7GHz 12-core beats every legacy Mac Pro tower we have tested including the 12-core 'hot rod' from EditBuilder.com running a Xeon X5690 at 3.46GHz.

 

[Rogifan]

More likely they just think you're a turd

wow, classy.

 

[BEIGE]

You took a pretty negative view of the machine when it was revealed. You don't think they noticed and withheld a review unit as a result? They tend to give review units to "believers."

could be – I wouldn't call it negative. Just skeptical, I guess. Anyway, I don't care. It saves me sending it back to them or feeling like I owe them something for the favour.

 

[kennyman]

Thanks for sharing... Nice results there for the nMP 12-core...

WOW Great, thank you all for your help

Now I can make some comparisons;

Integer Performance
Barefeats nMP is 38050
Old MP is 38126

Floating Point Performance
Barefeats nMP is 42041
old MP is 39718
Difference is - 2323

Memory Performance
Barefeats nMP is 5152
old MP is 4705
Difference is - 447

I was just comparing it to the MacPro on Geekbench 3 online

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/204819

So, CPU processing power and memory bandwidth are not that far from MP 4,1/5,1 dual setups (not double as it was mentioned). Still, it is very impressive for a single-CPU machine

kudos to Intel for designing this Monster CPU!

 

[VirtualRain]

WOW Great, thank you all for your help

Now I can make some comparisons;

Integer Performance
Barefeats nMP is 38050
Old MP is 38126

Floating Point Performance
Barefeats nMP is 42041
old MP is 39718
Difference is - 2323

Memory Performance
Barefeats nMP is 5152
old MP is 4705
Difference is - 447

I was just comparing it to the MacPro on Geekbench 3 online

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/204819

So, CPU processing power and memory bandwidth are not that far from MP 4,1/5,1 dual setups (not double as it was mentioned). Still, it is very impressive for a single-CPU machine

kudos to Intel for designing this Monster CPU!

Just keep in mind that the best performing 12-Core 5,1 is the one which Apple never sold, it's a DIY CPU upgrade to the 3.46GHz CPUs which says a lot about the new 2.7GHz variant. I wonder how much of the improvement is due to having all 12 cores on a single CPU?

 

[snapdragonx]

Im just going to leave this here.
http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/new-mac-pro-cpus

WOW Great, thank you all for your help

Now I can make some comparisons;

Integer Performance
Barefeats nMP is 38050
Old MP is 38126

Floating Point Performance
Barefeats nMP is 42041
old MP is 39718
Difference is - 2323

Memory Performance
Barefeats nMP is 5152
old MP is 4705
Difference is - 447

I was just comparing it to the MacPro on Geekbench 3 online

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/204819

So, CPU processing power and memory bandwidth are not that far from MP 4,1/5,1 dual setups (not double as it was mentioned). Still, it is very impressive for a single-CPU machine

kudos to Intel for designing this Monster CPU!

The top-end 2012 Mac Pro that Apple sold:

Integrer:
Single-core 2693
Multi-core 32576

FP:
Single-core 2619
Multi-core 32652

You're probably referring to the 3.47GHz 12-core model, but Apple didn't sell that, users just upgraded it themselves. So it was a significant additional cost on top of the Mac Pro.

The new Mac Pro 12 core clocks in at 2.7GHz, so that says a lot as it's a significant improvement over the 3.47GHz CPUs.

 

[superdx]

I have a feeling that the Diablo 3 benchmarks were done with vsync turned on, since I get 58-59 as well with my current GTX 680.