So What Do You Use Your Pro For?

[BillyBobBongo]

I use my top of the line rMBP for general stuff, but I have also been doing some stuff with multiple VMs (Server 2012r2) and I output to a 32" 4K monitor, which makes it all nice to work with.
Shame they didn't offer 32GB for RAM, which I suspect they will with the next one.

Welcome to the Mac Pro forum, laptop threads can be found here!

Since I'm here...I use my Mac Pro for video editing (I actually use FCPX) and the production of print based advertising material, I make posters and billboards the sort that you see on the side of the road. My work involves the use of Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Hobby photo editing, Xcode, some gaming. I got the Pro because I keep tons of stuff up at once, and I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as too much RAM. Most of my tasks aren't CPU-bound, but RAM/GPU bound. I like that I can have numerous drives in the box (there are 4 in there right now), and that the GPU can be upgraded in the future should I feel the desire.

 

[kschendel]

Zombie thread! Dual boot cMP here is usually found running Linux and is used for software development (DBMS engine stuff). The OSX side gets used when I have to run windows (under virtualbox) but fortunately that's rare. The office-y tasks like email, web, WP and such stay on the MBP.

 

[stu.h]

Welcome to the Mac Pro forum, laptop threads can be found here!

Since I'm here...I use my Mac Pro for video editing (I actually use FCPX) and the production of print based advertising material, I make posters and billboards the sort that you see on the side of the road. My work involves the use of Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign.

Oh! Sorry! LOL!
Obviously didn't read the title properly

 

[OS6-OSX]

I use the Mac Pro for posting on MR! Anyone using their MP for any other reason is misusing it!

 

[iceman42]

i use my 2013 mac pro quad core for video editing final cut pro x and photo editing.im thinking about putting a 4tb ssd in it soon

 

[Macinsquatch]

I had a awesome mac pro 5,1 with dual 3.46 6 core Xeons (5690), a 7950 and GTX 970 for photogrammetry and video editing. Tried a nMP 6 core with Dual D700's and it was actually faster. This was primarily due to the GPUs but that sealed the deal to sell the classic MP. And it wasn't a little faster, it was about 50% faster in creating dense point clouds. I miss the ability to change out the GPUs but the noise reduction and heat reduction has been worth it. Another plus is running 3 4k displays, and multiple thunderbolt raid arrays.

 

[iceman42]

i think 6 cores on a mac pro is overkill i don't think there is any program that uses 6 cores.i just went with the quad core and went with the high end D700 graphics card

 

[Macinsquatch]

i think 6 cores on a mac pro is overkill i don't think there is any program that uses 6 cores.i just went with the quad core and went with the high end D700 graphics card

I use every core I can get for the work I do. 6 really isn't enough, I'm debating on putting in the 8 or 10 core for the increased cache and core count. The 12 core has a bit of a penalty for single core usage and can't turbo near what the E5-2667V2 can. I think most on here would agree that a 10 core model at 3.5ghz would be the sweet spot.

 

[dimobr]

i think 6 cores on a mac pro is overkill i don't think there is any program that uses 6 cores.i just went with the quad core and went with the high end D700 graphics card

D700 is hi-end only in the world of apple that needed a board with average performance without the need for a cooling system dedicated.

 

[Macinsquatch]

For heavy OpenCL workloads the dual D700's are still quite powerful considering their footprint and power consumption.

 

[AidenShaw]

For heavy OpenCL workloads the dual D700's are still quite powerful considering their footprint and power consumption.

I think that this post is "damning with faint praise". Height of "apology".

Yes, they have reasonable performance for small form factor, underclocked GPUs.

However, the D700s really suck compared to standard form factor GPUs that are available from Nvidia and that other company (the one that is close to bankruptcy).

 

[Macinsquatch]

Like I said, I had a cMP that had dual power supplies, 12 cores at 3.46Ghz an AMD 7950 and Nvidia 970sc from Evga.

The nMP is significantly faster for my workloads, producing far less heat and noise at the same time. By significantly I mean a reduction from 483 seconds to 291 seconds for one dataset. This scales with the workload so my time savings is significant.

 

[AidenShaw]

Like I said, I had a cMP that had dual power supplies, 12 cores at 3.46Ghz an AMD 7950 and Nvidia 970sc from Evga.

The nMP is significantly faster for my workloads, producing far less heat and noise at the same time. By significantly I mean a reduction from 483 seconds to 291 seconds for one dataset. This scales with the workload so my time savings is significant.

Where was the second power supply for the cMP located?

 

[Macinsquatch]

Second DVD bay. Soldered the leads into the other power supply. Very clean.

 

[dimobr]

For heavy OpenCL workloads the dual D700's are still quite powerful considering their footprint and power consumption.

But this is what we all already know, practically made to run FCPX. And do it with praise.

 

[Macinsquatch]

I use mine for 3d modeling and CAD, not so much the video editing. But it does do well in FCPX.

 

[Bytehoven]

Greetings Everyone...

My latest Mac in a long succession of Macs is a 2011 cMP. After many years of finding ways to make money with a Mac, I thought I might be very near to dialing things back. However, just before Christmas, an old friend and client contacted me about upgrading my set up to support 4K post production. Now, given the cost I was not too excited, until we budgeted out the 1st project I would be producing. With that financial commitment in hand, I set out to make the hardware changes I needed to best support a 4K work flow. Fast forward a couple of months, the 1st 3rd of the billing on the that 4K project has paid for all of the upgrades I needed, and I have 2 more 4K projects coming online in the next month.

Because I work from a a home production studio, my cMP also servers as the family audio/video PLEX media server. The cMP also hosts a number of PC games I love, namely SW:TOR, Star Trek Online and The Secret World. So my Mac can play just as hard as it can work.

As far as the build specifics...

Production Space:
25'x16'x9' Sound Stage / Home Theater
10'x10' VO Booth

Computers:
2011 Mac Mini 10.6.8 (Legacy FCPro 7.0.3 support)
2011 cMP (2x) x5690 3.46 Ghz processors
64GB Ram
Internal 1 - 500BG Samsung EVO 850 SSD (10.10.5 + Apps)
Internal 2 - 500BG Samsung EVO 850 SSD (10.10.5 + Apps back up clone)
Internal 3 - 2TB DATA drive (stock music/video/EFX/SFX + iTunes files)
Internal 4 - 500GB Crucial SSD (Win 10 Volume)

PCIe Cards:
- Atto R680 -> SAS (8x) 3TB Seagate HDDs in RAID0 (Production RAID)
- Atto H680 -> SAS (4x) 5TB Seagate HDDs in RAID0 (Production RAID buck up) + (4x) SAS HDD bays for mounting archival storage HDDs up to 5GB
- Sonnet Allegra Pro (4x) USB 3.0 Connections

Mobius 2 Bay Enclosure (eSATA/FW800/USB 3.0) for mounting HDDs up to 8TB.

I keep project files archived to (2x) external HDDs. I have thought about switching to DLT, but this archival practice has served me well for atleast 15 years.

Video:
GPU - nVidia GTX980 Ti
(2x) Dell U2711
(1x) Dell 2408 (via HDMI output which also drives Sony 1080P SXRD video projector 120" 2.35:1 format screen)
(1x) ViewSonic VP2780 4K with factory calibration

Audio:
Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 (FW800 DAW interface)
Behringer XR-12 Digital Mixer (Voice Processing front end for VO recording into Saffire)
EV RE320 (main VO Mic)
Hafler P125 Power Amp -> KLH 2.1 reference monitoring
Denon AVR-x2200W Receiver -> 7.2 Surround calibrated reference monitoring
(7x JBL Control 5 Pro Studio Monitors + 2x 12" Sub Woofers front/rear)

Software:
Adobe CC 2015 Subscription - Full CC bundle (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, etc)
Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 (running on a Mac Mini with 10.6.8)
Final Cut X
ProTool 10
Logic Pro X
(tons of other goodies to support a wide range of audio/video chores)

Gaming:
PS4
Xbox 360
cMP (when running Win 10)

Internet: FiOS 50/50 (soon to 100/100 as a free upgrade)

Well... that pretty much sums up what I call home these days, and despite really looking forward to working less, it's nice to be pretty busy with some old friends/clients. For as much as I sometimes hate Apple, I really have to give a shout out to what Apple and it's 3rd party developers have given us all in the way of a creative tools over the years.