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iMac Pro What do you think of your iMac Pro?
- Thread starter pertusis1
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UPDATE: I’ve had boot camp installed for a few days but lots of what I feel we’re problems. So I went into boot camp on Mac side and restored it back to normal. Did a complete install again and still have problems. Biggest problem is the mouse and keyboard working. Sometimes it does, other times one or the other will work. My portable DVD/CD drive works when it wants to. Looks like at least on the new pro there are still a few bugs. Is anybody else having problems?
This has already been written about dozens of times. You should call/email Apple and ask for proper graphics and audio driver support in Bootcamp. Apple did a crappy job with their Bootcamp drivers for the iMac Pro. Btw. one of the latest Windows updates messed up Apple's bluetooth devices. Only option at this point is using an unofficial graphics hack (Radeon 580 driver) and external sound card, and invest in a Logitech mouse or something (I recommend MX Master 2S.)
Oh dear, so there's only the UPS option to take care of the iMacPro...Sorry, but that dust cover is a bit silly to me. A dust cloth comes with the iMac Pro, and if you have that much dust in your room - then you should rather worry about the fans and heatsink clogging up. Just IMO, of course.
Through one of the companies that I work for, we have sent feedback regarding the iMac Pro's terrible Bootcamp performance via the business partner channel. According to them, bootcamp is not "officially supported" for iMac Pro yet, but that work on the drivers for Bootcamp on iMac Pros are ongoing and and a fix will be released in a future update.
Your guess is as good as mine as to when that update comes out, but I thought everyone here might be interested to know that there is work being done on this area that obviously needs improvement.
I got my iMacPro last week, and I am slowing setting it up for my work environment. I have been using my 2010 MacPro5,1 for years. Today I opened a 2GB image in Photoshop, picked an action that's quite representative for what I often do, and ran it in the iMacPro and MacPro5,1. To my surprise, iMacPro is "only" 1.7x faster than the MacPro. This is a very respectable performance for an 8-year old machine against the most powerful computer in Apple's lineup. On the other hand, the iMacPro feels way more responsive on every click. The feel is many times more than just 1.7x.
Conclusion? I love my iMacPro (so far), and I also feel it may be too early to retire the MacPro.
Conclusion? I love my iMacPro (so far), and I also feel it may be too early to retire the MacPro.
Thanks for the information.
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Any RAM differences between the 5,1 and the MacPro?
What version of Photoshop?
Are you using any old plug-ins?
is this action GPU sensitive?
What GPU do you have installed in the 5,1?
Thank you for that information, Steve.
What you say makes sense, since there is no separate support page for iMac Pro Bootcamp on Apple.com. You just get an error message, if you click on that particular link. I have to say this is pretty disappointing, as the iMac Pro has been out for about 3 months now. Apple needs to take a break from wristbands and emojis, and fix their software. At least we now know that proper support is on the way, but when...who knows.No doubt the RAM is different. The 5,1 has 1333 MHz DDR3, while the iMacPro has 2666 MHz DDR4.
The Photoshop is the latest CC. No plug-ins. I have no idea whether the action is GPU sensitive or not, but I thought GPU is not very useful for Photoshop, isn't it? Basically the action is a series of the Dust/Scratch filter. The 5,1 has GTX 980 4GB, while the iMacPro has Vega 56.
If Apple is in the business of selling hardware and not OSs then making bootcamp support high on the list can only help sell hardware.
To be fair, this was a fairly rushed project in order to keep professional users happy with the lack of a Mac Pro for three years. I am pleased with the performance of my iMac Pro in macOS, so at least the primary use case for most users is being handled well.
However you are correct, Bootcamp is an important feature of Apple products, since many buy these products in order to be able to run software for both macOS and Windows. Professional users are in this category even more so than regular users, and you would expect Apple to have treated this aspect with more importance. But alas, what goes on behind the glass doors of Apple Development is a complicated process, and I'm sure they have their reasons.
More info on the wonderful Vega 56 and how an external GPU is an expensive and underperforming option.
BTW productivity is shown pretty heavily too, nobody expects the iMac pro to be great at gaming. When adding an external GPU the performance sucks but that may be the drivers it doesn't say whether the results are under windows or mac os.
Was the external GPU used on the internal iMac Pro screen, or an external screen (regarding the performance scores)? I didn't hear Linus specify this, and that's a pretty important point.
I hate those videos, they build a PC and compare it, despite it lacking all the workstation spec hardware a Pro needs..
And he also consistently claims the iMac Pro constantly throttles at ANY hard work it does, that seems to be a complete contradiction of what owners of the machine on here claim?
Did you even watch it? He spoke highly of the iMac pro and compared spec for spec xeons and with consumer chips. The Xeons and i series have their pros and negatives for creatives.
I thought it was quite interesting. The main takeaway is that external GPUs through TB3 dont give the same performance as one through PCIE. So if thats a reason for you to upgrade it later down the road it will cost roughly $1200 and wont perform as well which is a complete bust at that price point.
Yes I did and no he didn’t, Xeon processors and error correction ram are not the same as a gaming PC with an i7 and a Titan XE top line gaming GPU, and then comparing the games performance.
It’s pointless and biased too.
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I guess that the two systems have the same amount of RAM?
Anyway, too many people are complaining about Adobe's inneficient coding. As their software cannot fully use all the CPU cores and it's not optimized in any way, it may be just something they will fix in the future (or not
).Try and a non Adobe application to check the speed difference.
The iMP is for sure a very fast system, and I wish that it will last you as many years as your 5,1 or even more...
I guess that the two systems have the same amount of RAM?
Anyway, too many people are complaining about Adobe's inneficient coding. As their software cannot fully use all the CPU cores and it's not optimized in any way, it may be just something they will fix in the future (or not
Try and a non Adobe application to check the speed difference.
The iMP is for sure a very fast system, and I wish that it will last you as many years as your 5,1 or even more...
Hi,
The iMP has 128 GB of RAM. My MP5,1 used to have 96 GB, but unfortunately the RAM was sent back for replacement. When I ran the test, the MP was running with 24 GB of RAM (three 4 GB banks per CPU, optimal for DDR3). So, in principle, even more credits should be given to the MP, since it was running with much less RAM. However, the testing image isn't that big, and neither of the machines used all of their RAM during the test. So I suppose the amount of RAM shouldn't be a factor here.
It is well known that Photoshop doesn't make efficient use of extra cores. This equally applies to the MP and iMP. My MP has 12 cores (2x6) and my iMP has 10 cores. They aren't that different. Actually, according to Mac Performance Guide, the 10-core model is probably the fastest iMP among all. So again the MP does impressively well against the newest, fastest machine.
I also run other scientific calculations that can make better use of the multiple cores. In such cases, the 20% additional cores might bring the MP a bit closer to the iMP. On the other hand, the two MP CPUs have to talk to each other, while the iMP cores are all within one CPU and can have faster commnication. The iMP runs DDR4 and the MP runs DDR3. I guess these may be enough to offset the 20% difference in core counts, at least for some of the tasks that require frequent data exchange between cores and RAM. So probably we will still see a 2:1 speed ratio between the iMP and the MP. We will see.
On a different note, I keep setting up my iMP (slowly) these days, and the first frustrating thing appeared yesterday. SoftRAID doesn't seem to work well on iMP. Their website lists a problem of infinite loop of driver updates. I encountered that. I also had terrible performance on writing under RAID5. (Reading performance is fine. Writing is 5x slower, which is not acceptable.) I was hoping that I could use SoftRAID's RAID5 to give some protection to the data. But given the poor RAID5 performance and its driver issue, I went back to Apple's RAID0. Now I have to completely rely on external backup(s) to help protecting my data. This is what I did with my MP. Hopefully it can work equally well on my iMP.