One user's very coherent argument in favor of the nMP

[MH01]

The nMP has many improvements over the previous generation, and it's one sexy machine, though it could have been so much more had they build a desktop with expandability and configurabilit over the best looking shuttle PC.

I'd love to own one, just not for the asking $$$$. Same reason I will not spend big bucks on a top end shuttle case over a quality desktop case, the shuttle offering has way too many limitations.

The other issue it faces, for the money, the iMac 5k top end is much better value, power wise and with a screen, apple need to update these puppies asap.

Hopefully AMD can supply a new GPU that can run at 100% clock speed offered by the nMP PSU . Will be a test for them, though things move slow in the FirePro world....

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Windows has supported hot plug PCI, hot plug memory, and hot add CPUs for a long time. (Some of the big iron vendors support hot remove CPUs, but you have to reboot Windows to remove them.)

Windows already had all of the plumbing to handle hot plug devices in T-Bolt, it simply works.

Hot plugging GPUs over TB3 is still a bit crashy

 

[zephonic]

I think people will be able to update the CPU to a certain point. Going from 4/6/8 to 12 cores and slightly newer versions of the XEON that use the same socket. So there is a little room there.

But the pink elephant in the room is the GPU. Due to the proprietary connector and form factor it will be impossible to upgrade and swapping out fried boards will become a very expensive option.

Does the SSD also have a proprietary connector or does OWC already offer upgrades?

Given that I just don't see the nMP being anywhere as long lived as the old cheese grater model and would be surprised if the resale value isn't affected by that.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but my point is rather that lack of upgradeability doesn't seem to affect the resale value of the MacBook Air/Pro and iMac much. It may or may not be different for the MacPro, we will soon know...

 

[MacVidCards]

Really? Again?
I'm growing tired of your needless derision and belligerence.

The thread title should give you a clue as to what is really being said here. You sound like you didn't even bother to read the OP, as Charlie Clouser says nothing about "using it wrong" or "not a real pro" or "Gods at Apple". He simply states the reasons why he decided to go with the nMP.

Now, people have responded (and disagreed) in a civil and reasonable manner so far, and I'd like to keep it that way. If you can't do the same, I respectfully request that you refrain from posting in this thread. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.



And it cuts both ways. This sort of stuff is just flame bait. Let's not do this here, okay?

Newsflash !

Posting the usual apologies for the usual machine will get you the usual results.

Nothing has changed. And by this I mean literally NOTHING.

Except the rest of the world moved into 2016.

The feel good, koom ba ya thing ended long ago. It is what it is. (To steal a phrase from the film biz)

I understand that the fans would love a glowing thread full of teary, loving praise. The PROBLEM is that reality doesn't warrant that.

Reality 1. nMP 0.

 

[zephonic]

You can't help yourself, I get that.Your opinions are duly noted, as is your polarizing drivel.


I know I can't make you stop, but again I hereby politely and respectfully ask you to stop posting in this thread. Thank you.

 

[MacVidCards]

You can't help yourself, I get that.Your opinions are duly noted, as is your polarizing drivel.


I know I can't make you stop, but again I hereby politely and respectfully ask you to stop posting in this thread. Thank you.

It's a public forum and the 1st Amendment is still in force.

If you wish to post your opinion and present it as fact, I get to do the same thing.

I realize that Apple and AMD fans and PR shills would like to pretend that the 2013 nMP answered a bunch of needs.

But I think that expecting everyone else to "shut up" so that they can post pretty pictures that don't represent reality is unrealistic.

Reality has proven the 6,1 to be a bad idea. When you agree that the lack of new CPUs justifies no 7,1 then you are also proving that having 2011 GPUs being SOLDERED IN limited this machine's future. A fact. Values will PLUMMET just like an old iMac, nobody will want ancient Tahiti GPUs next year, or the year after.

All I hear in your pleading is "please stop telling the truth, it makes the computer I love look really bad"

I hereby politely and respectfully ask all of the Apple and AMD shills stop posting things that don't represent reality.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Thinking if this thread was "One user's very coherent argument not in favor of the nMP", all opposing views would be welcomed and encouraged. Lots of language attacking Apple, AMD and the nMP but readers take it personally! The funny thing about the AMD angle is people are arguing in favor of this card to play games on a computer! I have yet to see anyone compare and contrast AMD/Nvidia on their system and post results. It's always data from some site. If you have an issue with one based on it's inability to perform a specific task, ask if anyone has experience to the contrary. Arguing that AMD is the best because it's better at games but "games" is rarely mentioned. Using AMD for games and Nvidia for CUDA cores to play a mixed timeline including 2K-8K with a fast PCIE RAID are totally different!

 

[ApfelKuchen]

If someone makes their living upgrading GPUs for MPs, then yeah... solder is the anti-christ.

That doesn't make everyone else shills for Apple or AMD. It's just possible that people who evaluate and purchase the nMP know exactly what they want and what they're getting, and can even be satisfied with their purchase. Not everyone has the same priorities or needs. It's not always about having the bleeding edge GPU (the quoted post that started this thread comes from the music side of the business, after all).

I was involved in buying decisions for broadcast and recording studios for over 25 years. Resale value was nearly never considered. If a piece of $10,000 equipment couldn't pay off within two to three years of daily use (and I'm talking the equivalent in 1970s, '80s, and '90s dollars), the purchase was questionable. Upgradability? Those were the days of analog, bucky! What you got was what you got. Resale value? That was way down the list. "Resale" was synonymous with "failure," and those were optimistic days.

Yeah, if you can stretch the useful life of a piece of equipment it's good for the environment, it may keep a marginal business in business, it may improve operational efficiencies, it may put older pro gear into the hands of hobbyists and students, or help someone get into the business on a shoe string. Nothing wrong with any of that, but in most cases, none of those are primary considerations when buying a brand-new bit of gear.

 

[keysofanxiety]

If someone makes their living upgrading GPUs for MPs, then yeah... solder is the anti-christ.

That doesn't make everyone else shills for Apple or AMD. It's just possible that people who evaluate and purchase the nMP know exactly what they want and what they're getting, and can even be satisfied with their purchase. Not everyone has the same priorities or needs. It's not always about having the bleeding edge GPU

So what's the alternative if you needed to buy the most powerful Mac currently available?

Hackintosh?

That's the thing. Mac Pros will sell. But there's almost this implication that because they're selling, it therefore means that it's out with the old and in with the new. If Apple had offered the cMP shell with the same hardware as the nMP, at the same price, I really don't believe it would be a decisive victory for the nMP.

Here's the thing -- it's marketed as a Pro machine. Most people who invest in an expensive workstation make their money from what a computer does. And I can absolutely guarantee that for most of these people, reliability, longevity, and upgradability matter a heck of a lot more than size, portability, or weight.

Just look at the fiasco already. People on MR were calling this back in 2013 when the nMP was released. Plop a radiator-Radeon inside a tiny housing, and you're pretty much playing with fire. They'll fail, they'll overheat. And I don't know whether they failed due to AMD design, poor thermal design, casing, solder, whatever -- the point is that they have, and will continue to do so because it's a documented issue. Now when your work, and your time, and your money is dependant on a computer running reliably, you'll be amazed how quickly people would forget about how beautifully small, quiet, and sleek it is.

Whereas old Mac Pros can, and still do, happily chug along and eat every upgrade you throw at it, until the Logic Board tech is just too old for upgrades to be financially viable. I might be speaking from a point of ignorance here, but give me a big old case with plenty of vents, fans, and room inside, and I'd be a heck of a lot less worried about component failure in the long run.

 

[Hank Carter]

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but my point is rather that lack of upgradeability doesn't seem to affect the resale value of the MacBook Air/Pro and iMac much. It may or may not be different for the MacPro, we will soon know...

I see where you are coming from. But two things.

First off I don't think that anyone expects a laptop to be expandable or upgradeable beyond RAM and the internal storage. It is what it is.

The iMac is in a similar position, but also in this case previous incarnations were far more expandable. As of roughly two generations ago upgrading a hard drive was a no brainer. Now the case is taped shut and opening it involves major surgery. I believe the CPU is still socketed in the 27 inch, so that still is a possibility. On the other hand the 21 inch is a dead end with soldered in RAM. But regardless I don't feel that people expect the iMac to be hugely upgradeable, aside from internal storage and RAM. It's a relatively cheap machine compared to a Mac Pro and I feel that most people are satisfied if they get 3-4 years out of it.

The Mac Pro is a very different kind of beast. It's very expensive and many are (were) customized for specific tasks with expansion cards. It's supposed to be the Swiss Army Knife of the Mac lineup. Also given the cost of the machine I think people do not look at them as being 'disposable', but expect them to last a lot longer by updating components. At my job the front line is now nearly all nMP, but we still have several upgraded silver boxes serving in second line positions were they are still doing fine. Some of these machines are of 2009/2010 vintage, which is pretty impressive. They've been bumped to 12 cores, got a new GPU and SSD and are doing just fine.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Just look at the fiasco already. People on MR were calling this back in 2013 when the nMP was released.

I think thats a mistake right there. Since your talking about a Pro machine for pro users, I don't think the majority of pro users comprise the majority on MacRumors. I think its mostly enthusiasts, hackers, crackers and power users. Also people who don't even use a Mac but are primarily here to put it down.

Plop a radiator-Radeon inside a tiny housing, and you're pretty much playing with fire. They'll fail, they'll overheat. And I don't know whether they failed due to AMD design, poor thermal design, casing, solder, whatever -- the point is that they have, and will continue to do so because it's a documented issue. Now when your work, and your time, and your money is dependant on a computer running reliably, you'll be amazed how quickly people would forget about how beautifully small, quiet, and sleek it is.

No evidence yet suggesting the nMP fails due to overheating other than some that have graphic problems. The graphics inside the nMP have a much better cooling than laptops and all in ones. Perhaps even better than the old Mac Pro's. The nMP cooling is much more efficient than a box design needing multiple fan configurations.

 

[reel2reel]

The usual suspects that trash the nMP on this board are basically luddites, or people trying to protect their outdated business models.

Sure. In your world, I guess.

For the last year, we've been working with trash cans to finish and deliver approximately 5-10 hours of 4K video for broadcast per week and they just can't cut it. I love the idea of the small form factor and quiet operation, but it's useless to me when I can't render a full-res show out of Resolve beyond 5 frames per second on average and I don't dare touch the thing for fear of losing my SAN connection and local drives (the rear TB ports are very flaky, to say the least).

So I'm not sure what's "luddite" about that. One guy here just brought in some Windoze beast of a machine and he's finishing 5K Red realtime. It's ugly and he hates Windows, but, guess what, it works!

I'm curious to see what follows the trash can, though.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the hideous, crippling render artifacts in Resolve with the D700's. Make sure you let your Mac Pro cool down for a while before a big render!

 

[Hank Carter]

Sure. In your world, I guess.

For the last year, we've been working with trash cans to finish and deliver approximately 5-10 hours of 4K video for broadcast per week and they just can't cut it. I love the idea of the small form factor and quiet operation, but it's useless to me when I can't render a full-res show out of Resolve beyond 5 frames per second on average and I don't dare touch the thing for fear of losing my SAN connection and local drives (the rear TB ports are very flaky, to say the least).

So I'm not sure what's "luddite" about that. One guy here just brought in some Windoze beast of a machine and he's finishing 5K Red realtime. It's ugly and he hates Windows, but, guess what, it works!

I'm curious to see what follows the trash can, though.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the hideous, crippling render artifacts in Resolve with the D700's. Make sure you let your Mac Pro cool down for a while before a big render!

I also work in post and one of our 12 core / D700 nMP is starting to show GPU issues after getting hammered in production for about a year. We're talking NUKE, Resolve etc.

I have a 12 core / D700 on my desk and primarily run NUKE. So, far so good, but Nuke is not nearly as GPU intensive as Resolve. It's a pretty quick machine for what I do and Nuke really prefers OS X or Linux over Windoze, but it's no sledgehammer.

Backed into a corner we just built a Supermicro for rendering in OCTANE and Resolve that has 8 Titan X cards and dual XEON CPU. It's scary fast. Many of our workstations are now also HP or Supermicro with dual Xenon. I think these boxes have 20 cores total. Unfortunately they are all running Windows and some Linux, but we simply didn't have a choice. We probably could have dumped 4 x Titans in an old silver Mac Pro, but the lack of Thunderbolt killed that idea.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Sure. In your world, I guess.

For the last year, we've been working with trash cans to finish and deliver approximately 5-10 hours of 4K video for broadcast per week and they just can't cut it. I love the idea of the small form factor and quiet operation, but it's useless to me when I can't render a full-res show out of Resolve beyond 5 frames per second on average and I don't dare touch the thing for fear of losing my SAN connection and local drives (the rear TB ports are very flaky, to say the least).

So I'm not sure what's "luddite" about that. One guy here just brought in some Windoze beast of a machine and he's finishing 5K Red realtime. It's ugly and he hates Windows, but, guess what, it works!

I'm curious to see what follows the trash can, though.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the hideous, crippling render artifacts in Resolve with the D700's. Make sure you let your Mac Pro cool down for a while before a big render!

Strange. I'm getting faster than realtime rendering using 1080p from a Canon C100. I'm using the free version. Not 4K, but I guess with your workflow its more involved. Working in Resolve has been working like a champ for me. Even the free version I can use both vid cards as long as main monitor outputs to HDMI.

 

[Hank Carter]

Strange. I'm getting faster than realtime rendering using 1080p from a Canon C100. I'm using the free version. Not 4K, but I guess with your workflow its more involved. Working in Resolve has been working like a champ for me. Even the free version I can use both vid cards as long as main monitor outputs to HDMI.

Very different kind of footage. The C100 uses a highly compressed 8bit codec. You don't need a lot of horsepower to grade that, even a MacBook Pro will make do. Even uncompressed 8bit 422 HD is not a problem.

Grading RAW 2/4k out of an Alexa or Sony or 5/6/8k Redcode is a very different story. Even uncompressed HD is 10mb per frame or 240MB/sec.

Now we have 6k RAW Alexa 65 footage showing up and the data footprint is insane (850MB/second @ 24fps). To be honest there isn't a Mac Pro out there that could handle that.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Very different kind of footage. The C100 is 8bit and uses a highly compressed codec. You don't need a lot of horsepower to grade that, even a MacBook Pro will make do.

Grading RAW 2/4k out of an Alexa or Sony or 5/6/8k Redcode is a very different story. Even uncompressed HD is 10mb per frame or 240MB/sec.

Now we have 6k RAW Alexa 65 footage showing up and the data footprint is insane. To be honest there isn't a Mac Pro out there that could handle that.

Wow, no wonder. Have you tried proxy? Different codec?

 

[Hank Carter]

Wow, no wonder. Have you tried proxy? Different codec?

Sure, but you're still your pushing a ton of RAW data around. Ultimately you do need to see it at full resolution. And because clients may be looking over your shoulder during the session this all needs to happen in realtime or near to.

Keep in mind that this is for commercials and feature film work, so the requirements are at the top of the market.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Sure, but you're still your pushing a ton of RAW data around. Ultimately you do need to see it at full resolution. And because clients may be looking over your back during the session this all needs to happen in realtime or near to.

Keep in mind that this is for commercials and feature film work, so the requirements are at the top of the market.

But it seems your workflow is even beyond the typical windows workstation if your running 8 Titans at once. I think the nMP is geared toward the prosumer market which tends to be larger.

 

[Hank Carter]

But it seems your workflow is even beyond the typical windows workstation if your running 8 Titans at once. I think the nMP is geared toward the prosumer market which tends to be larger.

The box with the 8 Titans is a specialized rig for Octane and running the most demanding Resolve jobs. So, yes, that is a special case

But the average workstations are dual 10 core Xeon boxes with 1-2 Titan cards. Nothing unusual about those configurations. They are just the equivalent of up to date versions of the old dual CPU silver Mac Pro boxes.

If Apple had bothered to update the CPU in the nMP, the GPU was swappable and it had better cooling we would probably be running those. We still have a few 12 core / D700 nMP, but their price/performance ratio is getting less competitive. And we are worried about heat and upgradeability. Also a single low frequency CPU is not ideal. We'd prefer a high frequency dual CPU system.

None of us like Windows and prefer OS X, but at the end of the day the work needs to get done regardless of our OS preference.

 

[Average Pro]

Well said. Thank you for posting.

With all the haterade regarding the nMP and fear-mongering about Apple's disdain for the "pros" [sic], I thought it would good to share this post from an nMP user over at the gearslutz forum for balance:

https://www.gearspace.com/board/11684639-post14.html

It appears he is a professional film composer. He expresses a few of my own thoughts, but far better than I have done. Further in the thread he also posts about why he ditched RAID in favor of JBOD, among other things.

Here's what he said:

 

[Mago]

It's a public forum and the 1st Amendment is still in force.

If you wish to post your opinion and present it as fact, I get to do the same thing.

I realize that Apple and AMD fans and PR shills would like to pretend that the 2013 nMP answered a bunch of needs.

But I think that expecting everyone else to "shut up" so that they can post pretty pictures that don't represent reality is unrealistic.

Reality has proven the 6,1 to be a bad idea. When you agree that the lack of new CPUs justifies no 7,1 then you are also proving that having 2011 GPUs being SOLDERED IN limited this machine's future. A fact. Values will PLUMMET just like an old iMac, nobody will want ancient Tahiti GPUs next year, or the year after.

All I hear in your pleading is "please stop telling the truth, it makes the computer I love look really bad"

I hereby politely and respectfully ask all of the Apple and AMD shills stop posting things that don't represent reality.

1st the gpu on the nMP isn't soldered to the main board.
2nd GPU on the nMP are soldered as usual to an daughter board as every gpu on the market.
3rd that daughter board is replaceable and upgradeable the case is AMD/Apple don't sell this upgrade yet.

The gpu issue could be solved by purchasing them from Mac spares market or by an petition to Apple / AMD could help they to release D500/D700 GPU for upgrades.

4th you still have the option to sell the Mac Pro and purchase another one (also I've heard of individuals buying a 4c/d700/256gb nMP configuration to transplant their 10 core cpu and then ssd from a previous Mac, then resell the older Mac with the 4c Xeon from the newer and the 256gb ssd from the newer.

The nMP has proven is an excellent machine loved by its owners an good idea on regard to performance footprint covers 95%+ the pro user base.
What's also prove the nMP is that is bad news to the upgrade market from pc parts, the nMP is upgradeable with Mac parts, sorry Apple is not concerned on your business model.

 

[Hank Carter]

1st the gpu on the nMP isn't soldered to the main board.
2nd GPU on the nMP are soldered as usual to an daughter board as every gpu on the market.
3rd that daughter board is replaceable and upgradeable the case is AMD/Apple don't sell this upgrade yet.

The gpu issue could be solved by purchasing them from Mac spares market or by an petition to Apple / AMD could help they to release D500/D700 GPU for upgrades.

I can almost guarantee you that you can petition Apple and AMD as much as you want, but they are not going to reissue what will be a 3-4 year old custom GPU board. Once that production line is shut down or Apple runs out of spares that will be it. Nor will AMD fire up a new production line to offer GPU upgrade boards of newer technology for the proprietary 2013 nMP. The market is far too small and it makes no economic sense. In the meanwhile any replacement board will be very expensive due to it's scarcity.

If this was a standard PCI card you would stand a much better chance of finding a replacement or a newer model.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the next MP will offer PCI expansion either via TB3 and or a dedicated external systems bus and cage. I really wish we will see a return of actual PCI slots, but that would mean a few bruised egos over at Apple, so that's unlikely to happen. If I had to bet money I would say the 2016 MP will be another single CPU cylinder and Apple will tell us to use TB3 for compromised PCI expansion or drop dead.

The nMP has proven is an excellent machine loved by its owners an good idea on regard to performance footprint covers 95%+ the pro user base.
What's also prove the nMP is that is bad news to the upgrade market from pc parts, the nMP is upgradeable with Mac parts, sorry Apple is not concerned on your business model.

Given the endless discontent on this and other forums the nMP is very obviously not loved by a very large portion of the pro market nor does it appear to meet their requirements, regardless of what dear leader in Cupertino says.

 

[Mago]

I can almost guarantee you that you can petition Apple and AMD as much as you want, but they are not going to reissue what will be a 3-4 year old custom GPU board. Once that production line is shut down or Apple runs out of spares that will be it. Nor will AMD fire up a new production line to offer GPU upgrade boards of newer technology for the proprietary 2013 nMP. The market is far too small and it makes no economic sense. In the meanwhile any replacement board will be very expensive due to it's scarcity.

If this was a standard PCI card you would stand a much better chance of finding a replacement or a newer model.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the next MP will offer PCI expansion either via TB3 and or a dedicated external systems bus and cage. I really wish we will see a return of actual PCI slots, but that would mean a few bruised egos over at Apple, so that's unlikely to happen. If I had to bet money I would say the 2016 MP will be another single CPU cylinder and Apple will tell us to use TB3 for compromised PCI expansion or drop dead.




Given the endless discontent on this and other forums the nMP is very obviously not loved by a very large portion of the pro market nor does it appear to meet their requirements, regardless of what dear leader in Cupertino says.

4th you still have the option to sell the Mac Pro and purchase another one (also I've heard of individuals buying a 4c/d700/256gb nMP configuration to transplant their 10 core cpu and then ssd from a previous Mac, then resell the older Mac with the 4c Xeon from the newer and the 256gb ssd from the newer.

 

[Hank Carter]

4th you still have the option to sell the Mac Pro and purchase another one (also I've heard of individuals buying a 4c/d700/256gb nMP configuration to transplant their 10 core cpu and then ssd from a previous Mac, then resell the older Mac with the 4c Xeon from the newer and the 256gb ssd from the newer.

I read that the first time. Look a few posts back and you will see that I already pointed out the the CPU on the nMP is upgradeable.

have a great day.

 

[Mago]

I read that the first time. Look a few posts back and you will see that I already pointed out the the CPU on the nMP is upgradeable.

have a great day.

It's named a reverse upgrade, where you bought a system with the Peripheral configuration you want and then remove the parts you want to keep from your older system and finally send your older system with the parts you don't want from the newer.

I think we still could expect some aftermarket upgrade solution from AMD to their newer "Polaris" based GPUs with or without Apple blessing.