So what you're saying is that we're getting a PCI slot 'upgrade' in practice. Sure, they're not as fast, technically as PCIe 3? ...but you get a practical upgrade because we're not dealing with only theoretical bottlenecks?
Not in comparison to an updated classic Mac Pro. Then you would have had 2 x16 PCIe 3.0 slots and 2 x4 PCIe 3.0 slots. All 6 TB2 ports are equivalent to less than one single x16 slot. A single TB2 port is equivalent to 2 and a half PCIe 3.0 lanes.
If you need x8 bandwidth you can't get it with TB2. If you want an external PCIe chassis with more than one slot you have no more than 2.5 lanes available.
The implication here is that given that the PCIe SSD is taking over a lane that the two GPUs may not be running at 16x but 8x.
Bottlenecks were not theoretical when you're talking using GPUs for computational load.
The picture assumes that the Mac Pro changes but everything else stays the same, i.e. people still want DVD, Blu Ray and hard drives. Is that a valid assumption though?
What if DVD dies out within a year, Bu Ray within 2 years, and external storage quickly changes from HDs in boxes to small memory sticks that plug in to the back of the Mac Pro, out of sight?
None of these will happen in the next 2 years. As to whether people need these things, some do and the result will be what is pictured.
So what is the point here? Even with the old Mac Pro you still have a bling breakout ones or worst octopus like split cables. At least with the new MAC Pro you have an opportunity to put te I/O in a decent box near where it is used.
The point is that you have to look at the total footprint and not just of the workstation itself. There are advantages to the new Mac Pro but there are also significant disadvantages as well.
If you configured the old Mac Pro like the new one, you'd have two GPUs taking up the two x16 slots and a PCIe SSD taking up one of the x4 slots. That would leave you with a single x4 PCIe slot that wouldn't have aux power so no HDX cards ( http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=323900 ) and you'd need an external RAID for bulk storage.
The mockup uses 3 separate HDDs (says 4 in the bullet list), which would have 6 cables behind it. Normally people would just use a single RAID drive.
Mac Pro - power cable + display cable, same as before
RAID (as many as 8 drives or more, which isn't possible in the Pro) - one power cable + one TB e.g http://www.areca.com.tw/products/thunderbolt.htm
It looks like it uses one of the larger optical units with power supply but these aren't necessary - you get affordable bus-powered optical drives and typically you'd only need a single Blu-Ray burner as it supports DVD too. A second bus-powered drive is needed for copying discs but not a common need.
The Apogee Duet audio device would be the same for both. If they compared the following:
then there is the extra box but, except for the TB cable, the same cables have to come out the back. The Blackmagic Ultrastudio is an extra TB cable and so would the fibre channel box be.
A few extra cables and boxes for people who have all those things at once but how many people are going to have all those things? Who for example does both high-end video and audio work together? These are different professions.
People have to be realistic about how much it takes to match a MP. The mockup I posted a while ago shows a scenario closer to a MP:
Even excluding the Blackmagic at the end, it exceeds the current Mac Pro because the RAID is hardware RAID, which you can get with hot-swappable drives on top of a PCIe SSD boot drive, it has dual GPUs and 3 PCIe slots with 250W of power. The optical drives are plug and play as needed.
The cheapest 4K monitor on the market is made by Asus, has a rez of 3840 x 2160 and cost's 5,000 dollars. 2,000 is highly improbable, especially from a company who historically has very high margins on their products.
It depends, there's a company here selling a 4K 39" TV for $699:
They are obviously selling at a profit. Other manufacturers are probably milking the sales to more affluent people first and will lower the prices over time. I don't think that Apple would rather Mac Pro owners buy 3rd party 4K displays.
The fact that they are working on an FCPX update and have TB2 coming out and have Retina displays in their Pro laptops suggests that 4K is coming to the desktop. If they went to 5K, that would be crazy (5120x2880) but the kind of crazy we've come to expect from them and it matches up with their current displays because they allow you to edit 1080p. A 5K display would allow you to view 4K video natively and still have controls on top.
Retina is nice for desktop publishing as it displays text the way it does in print.
It might not arrive this year but I think they'll have a Retina Thunderbolt display at $999 and at least one model of iMac with a Retina display by the end of 2014.
Not in comparison to an updated classic Mac Pro. Then you would have had 2 x16 PCIe 3.0 slots and 2 x4 PCIe 3.0 slots. All 6 TB2 ports are equivalent to less than one single x16 slot. A single TB2 port is equivalent to 2 and a half PCIe 3.0 lanes.
If you need x8 bandwidth you can't get it with TB2. If you want an external PCIe chassis with more than one slot you have no more than 2.5 lanes available.
The implication here is that given that the PCIe SSD is taking over a lane that the two GPUs may not be running at 16x but 8x.
Bottlenecks were not theoretical when you're talking using GPUs for computational load.
Go to Magma's web site. They have one and two slot PCi chassis for Thunderbolt. What cards really need that bandwidth? I think it's mostly the graphics cards, which aren't needed since Apple already gives you two rather nice GPUs standard. I honestly don't think cards (non-Graphics) are really pushing the bandwidth as much. I could be wrong as this is a gut feeling since people can already run two HDX Pro Tools cards in an external chassis through Thunderbolt.
If you configured the old Mac Pro like the new one, you'd have two GPUs taking up the two x16 slots and a PCIe SSD taking up one of the x4 slots. That would leave you with a single x4 PCIe slot that wouldn't have aux power so no HDX cards ( http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=323900 ) and you'd need an external RAID for bulk storage.
No, you don't. You can have have a hardware RAID card attached to the drive bays if you want hardware RAID. As for the HDX it was solved with a $15 cable in that thread since the HDX is less than 50W draw and as long as you stay under 300W you're okay. Not to mention that the HDX wasn't part of that daisy chain anyway.
Well, well, well...it seems the PCIe splitter cable I got from TigerDirect will work for this after all. Used one of the ATI 5780 cables from the B port on the logic board to the splitter and on to the card ports. So far so good...MP booted into MTL, PT10.3.3 and played the mp4 in a current session without issue. No extra fans getting hot and bothered like our old G4/5 class rigs. I've only run it for an hour or so, but I'll bang on it some more tonight
Moreover on a modernized "classic" Mac Pro form factor you'd have TB ports on the rear as well.
Quote:
It looks like it uses one of the larger optical units with power supply but these aren't necessary - you get affordable bus-powered optical drives and typically you'd only need a single Blu-Ray burner as it supports DVD too. A second bus-powered drive is needed for copying discs but not a common need.
If you use only one of the optical bays you have room for another HDD or SSD.
Quote:
People have to be realistic about how much it takes to match a MP. The mockup I posted a while ago shows a scenario closer to a MP:
.
Which STILL has a larger desktop footprint than the older Mac Pro design. What are you going to do? Precariously stack the Mac Pro above the RAID array?
It might not arrive this year but I think they'll have a Retina Thunderbolt display at $999 and at least one model of iMac with a Retina display by the end of 2014.
They said they normally put MPs in a cooled cupboard so the iMac brings the heat into the editing room. The new MP would alleviate that problem.
The HDX audio and Rocket video cards have been shown to work fine in the chassis for people who use those. Ideally there would be dedicated TB products for those but some manufacturers might be waiting for TB2 because their products are really expensive. These setups are important but don't affect many people. It took RED 7 months to deal with 3,000 orders for their cameras (big productions only buy about 50 each tops and not every year). Avid isn't shipping more than 20,000 HDX cards in a year.
No, you don't. You can have have a hardware RAID card attached to the drive bays if you want hardware RAID.
Not if you had two GPUs, a PCIe SSD and an HDX card - you couldn't even support two high-end GPUs with HDX because of the power issue. You can now have two GPUs, PCIe SSD, multiple HDX cards, multiple Red Rocket cards plus adaptors. The old Mac Pro would support things like the Cubix:
As for the HDX it was solved with a $15 cable in that thread since the HDX is less than 50W draw and as long as you stay under 300W you're okay.
Splitting off power from a single high-end GPU isn't a solution that a lot of people with such expensive equipment are going to want to mess with. Some people just downgraded back to a 5770.
Which STILL has a larger desktop footprint than the older Mac Pro design. What are you going to do? Precariously stack the Mac Pro above the RAID array?
Only slightly larger:
The Magma is 14.6" x 4.3", the Mac Pro is 6.6" x 6.6", the Pegasus is 9.3" x 7.4" = 175 sqi
The old Mac Pro was 18.7" x 8.1" = 151 sqi
I don't see how stacking the Magma on top of the Pegasus would be much more precarious than it sitting on the desk and you'd beat the MP footprint. They can go on the floor too or in another room.
The cheapest 4K monitor on the market is made by Asus, has a rez of 3840 x 2160 and cost's 5,000 dollars. 2,000 is highly improbable, especially from a company who historically has very high margins on their products.
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from; Amazon, Newegg & Tiger Direct all have the Asus PQ321Q 4K monitor for US$3,499.00…
I also said that a Retina Display from Apple should be at LEAST US2,000.00; and I emphasized the LEAST in the original post as well…
But given time & bulk ordering, Apple just might be able to do a 27" Retina Thunderbolt2 Display in 2014 for US2,499.00…
Normally people would just use a single RAID drive.
That depends. If you're starting from scratch, yes. If, like me, you've accumulated external drives one at a time as needed, one winds up with what Phil illustrated. The drives stack very neatly, thank you, but the cluster of inflexible Firewire 800 cables and unruly pile of line lump power supplies make keeping it all tidy practically impossible. I just can't justify the cost of an array unit when I already have this stack of working storage with a resale value of roughly poodly.
Though I suppose if one were upgrading from an old pro with internal storage, one wouldn't have the stack of external drives us portable people tend to accumulate.
I got it from Asus's product announcement, great the price has dropped. Unless the price is 1,000 though I don't see many buying one.
Okay, I just went back & read both links you originally gave…
The first, from the Asus website, has NO mention of pricing…
The second, from Extremetech.com, has THEIR guesstimate on pricing, but nothing from Asus saying that this monitor is going to be 5 grand…
My three links to various vendors all are taken from the Asus product page for the monitor in question… In the 'where to buy' section…
Even if an Apple Retina Thunderbolt2 Display is around 3 grand, the ones who NEED it will buy it… If you are working with 4K video, you want a monitor that can display said video at full-rez, and 'a little extra around the edges' is nice for on-screen controls & such…
I see Apple releasing around 2.5 grand, with a price drop in a year or so to 2 grand…
Those who cannot afford the 2 (+) grand will go for the I/O spec-bumped Apple Thunderbolt2 Display (NON-Retina)…
That depends. If you're starting from scratch, yes. If, like me, you've accumulated external drives one at a time as needed, one winds up with what Phil illustrated. The drives stack very neatly, thank you, but the cluster of inflexible Firewire 800 cables and unruly pile of line lump power supplies make keeping it all tidy practically impossible. I just can't justify the cost of an array unit when I already have this stack of working storage with a resale value of roughly poodly.
Though I suppose if one were upgrading from an old pro with internal storage, one wouldn't have the stack of external drives us portable people tend to accumulate.
Are folks still using their collection of old SCSI externals…? Their old Zip/Jaz drives…? People DO upgrade their equipment as needed… You already have external drives, a Thunderbolt > FireWire adapter will take care of you still using your externals until you decide to upgrade to a new TB2 RAID chassis… Depending on the HDDs in your current externals, you may just be able to move them to an empty TB2 chassis & continue on with the same JBOD you had all along…
And if you already have a collection of FireWire externals, then you already have the same octopus of cables; the new Mac Pro did not make that suddenly appear in your work space…
They said they normally put MPs in a cooled cupboard so the iMac brings the heat into the editing room. The new MP would alleviate that problem.
The HDX audio and Rocket video cards have been shown to work fine in the chassis for people who use those. Ideally there would be dedicated TB products for those but some manufacturers might be waiting for TB2 because their products are really expensive. These setups are important but don't affect many people. It took RED 7 months to deal with 3,000 orders for their cameras (big productions only buy about 50 each tops and not every year). Avid isn't shipping more than 20,000 HDX cards in a year.
I'm beginning to wonder if you really are Walter. Too much allergy medicine. Everything is funny right now.
Unfortunately Apple doesn't, so now they don't have any matte displays anymore. I wonder if they'll make them again, presuming we can get a 4k monitor together with the new Pro.
I was unaware of that. I know a couple of Dell's displays. I don't currently know anyone who uses one. It's typically NEC and Eizo. If they aren't using one of those it's an Apple display, in some cases an old aluminum one that is well past its prime. I'm not insinuating that my personal experience indicates anything about the broader market. It's just what I know.
Are folks still using their collection of old SCSI externals…? Their old Zip/Jaz drives…? People DO upgrade their equipment as needed…
Really? That's freakin' fascinating. What the heck it has to do with what I wrote, I have no idea, but thanks for the update.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRonin
And if you already have a collection of FireWire externals, then you already have the same octopus of cables; the new Mac Pro did not make that suddenly appear in your work space…
I don't recall ever implying any relationship between that scenario and the new Pro at all. Hang on, lemme go re-read what I wrote...
Okay, I'm back. I was right. I didn't suggest that this was a shortcoming of the new Mac Pro.
You can lower your shields. I have no idea what you think you're arguing against, but none of what I wrote was a criticism of the new Pro.
I'm beginning to wonder if you really are Walter. Too much allergy medicine. Everything is funny right now.
He makes some interesting posts. When the Mac Pro was lagging in updates, he tested alternatives and figured out how to make them work. He didn't like FCPX so went with Premiere Pro & Avid and will be testing out Smoke. He seems to have mostly ditched the idea of workstations in favour of iMacs besides a few for rendering performance and you can see why here:
"I cut a 6 part, hour long series for Broadcast on an iMac without Thunderbolt and had very few problems with the machine. We had over 200 hours of ProRes 422 HQ footage, and we were delivering edits for Network approval every 72 hours. Rendering and Encoding short segments was not a problem, however when we had to render/dump out the 44 minute offline it took a really long time and we had quite a few FCP ‘General Errors’.
But the actual editing was pretty painless.
I also recently cut 7 commercials for Nike on an iMac (with the agency in the room) without any issues. I never felt the need for the MacPro on this job. Not even when I was using Mocha (AE CS5) to swap out live action elements with the client looking on. We also used Color to communicate the ‘Looks’ that the agency wanted, to the Colorist doing the Final Grade. Again no issues with ProRes footage. But try working with .r3d files natively and the iMac really struggles. So i think that for an offline workflow with HD Footage an iMac is a really good fit."
Of course the PC crowd jumps in eventually in the comments to explain all the better deals. A certain group of people just can't accept Apple being seen positively in any light.
He makes some interesting posts. When the Mac Pro was lagging in updates, he tested alternatives and figured out how to make them work. He didn't like FCPX so went with Premiere Pro & Avid and will be testing out Smoke. He seems to have mostly ditched the idea of workstations in favour of iMacs besides a few for rendering performance and you can see why here:
"I cut a 6 part, hour long series for Broadcast on an iMac without Thunderbolt and had very few problems with the machine. We had over 200 hours of ProRes 422 HQ footage, and we were delivering edits for Network approval every 72 hours. Rendering and Encoding short segments was not a problem, however when we had to render/dump out the 44 minute offline it took a really long time and we had quite a few FCP ‘General Errors’.
But the actual editing was pretty painless.
His blog post still suggests big iron for a small shop with only a couple stations. It's about what I recall reading last time. He started with the imacs for offline workflows and slip edits. He doesn't mention getting rid of big iron entirely.
If you are a one man band, a 1 or 2 machine shop, then you really want to buy THE fastest and most powerful system you can afford because you’re asking that machine to do everything for you. Edit, Graphics, Render, Output, etc…. I always recommend to anyone that’s a single or two machine shop to have a powerful desktop system unless you absolutely must have the portability of a laptop for your work. Desktop machines, while much more expensive when configured for video editing, will always give you the fastest performance. So keep in mind that my thoughts here are more about me replacing a series of machines vs. a smaller shop that might only need to replace one or two systems.
So what do I give up by dropping a bunch of Big Iron machines in favor of the iMac? Render speed primarily. Big iron will always render faster than an all-in-one ever will because there’s a lot more room for processors and large power supplies to drive those processors. Not to mention a ton more RAM for the same reasons. But for the type of work we’re doing day in, day out, we don’t need super fast rendering all the time on every single workstation.
It's clear he sees a spot for them. I like his posts, but they aren't quite so polarizing in favor of "must be all imacs". One man shops have mostly gone for mac pros in my experience, although I have seen some imacs since the core2duo units. There aren't as many, but I've known at least a couple graphic designers who used them. I hate any amount of screen shininess. As I mentioned a few months ago, I haven't looked at the new ones in person. The examples suggest a definite improvement, but displays are a much more complicated issue than is sometimes suggested. Note how that 17" broadcast display referenced in the thread was "only" $3200.
Quote:
also recently cut 7 commercials for Nike on an iMac (with the agency in the room) without any issues. I never felt the need for the MacPro on this job. Not even when I was using Mocha (AE CS5) to swap out live action elements with the client looking on. We also used Color to communicate the ‘Looks’ that the agency wanted, to the Colorist doing the Final Grade. Again no issues with ProRes footage. But try working with .r3d files natively and the iMac really struggles. So i think that for an offline workflow with HD Footage an iMac is a really good fit."
I wonder if he'll try the new mac pro for finishing work.
Quote:
Of course the PC crowd jumps in eventually in the comments to explain all the better deals. A certain group of people just can't accept Apple being seen positively in any light.
It varies. I mean if they're talking about working solutions, discussion isn't a bad thing. What I hate most is ideological arguments, which is why I generally try to cite what makes the most sense for me. I have to carry a notebook at times. If I was looking at the imac, I would probably be tempted to look at going to notebook + large display, as I end up having to carry a notebook anyway. The biggest advantage the imac has for me there is double the ram capacity, and that is huge. Ram is one of those things where you still get smoother performance beyond the minimum amount required to load files of a particular size. It often influences what features you enable and overall workflow in an effort to maintain fluidity. The sources you quote are a lot better reference than myself for editing. I do very little of that, and I'm certainly not cutting video for ad campaigns.
Edit: oh man he must spend a fortune on cables
Quote:
For Machine Control, we already use Cat 6 connectors to all the machines. At the current time we have 5 Cat 6 cables running into each edit suite for the Gefen DVI / USB Extenders. We won’t need all of those anymore so we can repurpose the Cat 6 cable for machine control.
Same with our shared storage which is all connected via Cat 6. We’ll just repurpose one of those 5 cables to connect to the SAN.
Further down he also mentions they stuck to big iron for finishing systems, as I expected.
To all the naysayers, this shows (hopefully) that the current iMac is a pretty decent machine ¥capable of doing pretty good work. Some guy recently posted that somebody would be just doing mail and surfing so the iMac would suffice... Go figure.
To all the naysayers, this shows (hopefully) that the current iMac is a pretty decent machine ¥capable of doing pretty good work. Some guy recently posted that somebody would be just doing mail and surfing so the iMac would suffice... Go figure.
I can do that with my iPad, in fact I'm editing this right now on an iPad. That doesn't mean though that iPad is ideal for every surfing and mail need. Likewise iMac is leass than ideal for many users computer needs. The fact that these sights go on at length to explain how they got the iMac to work for them ought to indicate that it is less than ideal for some uses
The new MacPro will just be awesome.
Well this I can agree with, this especially the case if you are already a person that can find the iMac limiting. However I suspect the new iMac will pretty awesome also, even the Mini. It is all about the lower power chips enabling significantly better GPU performance at no loss of CPU performance or excessive thermal gain.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
So what you're saying is that we're getting a PCI slot 'upgrade' in practice. Sure, they're not as fast, technically as PCIe 3? ...but you get a practical upgrade because we're not dealing with only theoretical bottlenecks?
Not in comparison to an updated classic Mac Pro. Then you would have had 2 x16 PCIe 3.0 slots and 2 x4 PCIe 3.0 slots. All 6 TB2 ports are equivalent to less than one single x16 slot. A single TB2 port is equivalent to 2 and a half PCIe 3.0 lanes.
If you need x8 bandwidth you can't get it with TB2. If you want an external PCIe chassis with more than one slot you have no more than 2.5 lanes available.
The implication here is that given that the PCIe SSD is taking over a lane that the two GPUs may not be running at 16x but 8x.
Bottlenecks were not theoretical when you're talking using GPUs for computational load.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
The picture assumes that the Mac Pro changes but everything else stays the same, i.e. people still want DVD, Blu Ray and hard drives. Is that a valid assumption though?
What if DVD dies out within a year, Bu Ray within 2 years, and external storage quickly changes from HDs in boxes to small memory sticks that plug in to the back of the Mac Pro, out of sight?
None of these will happen in the next 2 years. As to whether people need these things, some do and the result will be what is pictured.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
So what is the point here? Even with the old Mac Pro you still have a bling breakout ones or worst octopus like split cables. At least with the new MAC Pro you have an opportunity to put te I/O in a decent box near where it is used.
The point is that you have to look at the total footprint and not just of the workstation itself. There are advantages to the new Mac Pro but there are also significant disadvantages as well.
If you configured the old Mac Pro like the new one, you'd have two GPUs taking up the two x16 slots and a PCIe SSD taking up one of the x4 slots. That would leave you with a single x4 PCIe slot that wouldn't have aux power so no HDX cards ( http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=323900 ) and you'd need an external RAID for bulk storage.
The mockup uses 3 separate HDDs (says 4 in the bullet list), which would have 6 cables behind it. Normally people would just use a single RAID drive.
Mac Pro - power cable + display cable, same as before
RAID (as many as 8 drives or more, which isn't possible in the Pro) - one power cable + one TB e.g http://www.areca.com.tw/products/thunderbolt.htm
It looks like it uses one of the larger optical units with power supply but these aren't necessary - you get affordable bus-powered optical drives and typically you'd only need a single Blu-Ray burner as it supports DVD too. A second bus-powered drive is needed for copying discs but not a common need.
The Apogee Duet audio device would be the same for both. If they compared the following:
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/symphony-64-thunderbridge.php
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/symphony-system.php
then there is the extra box but, except for the TB cable, the same cables have to come out the back. The Blackmagic Ultrastudio is an extra TB cable and so would the fibre channel box be.
A few extra cables and boxes for people who have all those things at once but how many people are going to have all those things? Who for example does both high-end video and audio work together? These are different professions.
People have to be realistic about how much it takes to match a MP. The mockup I posted a while ago shows a scenario closer to a MP:
Even excluding the Blackmagic at the end, it exceeds the current Mac Pro because the RAID is hardware RAID, which you can get with hot-swappable drives on top of a PCIe SSD boot drive, it has dual GPUs and 3 PCIe slots with 250W of power. The optical drives are plug and play as needed.
It depends, there's a company here selling a 4K 39" TV for $699:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/25/seiki-launches-39-inch-4k-tv-for-699/
They are obviously selling at a profit. Other manufacturers are probably milking the sales to more affluent people first and will lower the prices over time. I don't think that Apple would rather Mac Pro owners buy 3rd party 4K displays.
The fact that they are working on an FCPX update and have TB2 coming out and have Retina displays in their Pro laptops suggests that 4K is coming to the desktop. If they went to 5K, that would be crazy (5120x2880) but the kind of crazy we've come to expect from them and it matches up with their current displays because they allow you to edit 1080p. A 5K display would allow you to view 4K video natively and still have controls on top.
Retina is nice for desktop publishing as it displays text the way it does in print.
It might not arrive this year but I think they'll have a Retina Thunderbolt display at $999 and at least one model of iMac with a Retina display by the end of 2014.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Not in comparison to an updated classic Mac Pro. Then you would have had 2 x16 PCIe 3.0 slots and 2 x4 PCIe 3.0 slots. All 6 TB2 ports are equivalent to less than one single x16 slot. A single TB2 port is equivalent to 2 and a half PCIe 3.0 lanes.
If you need x8 bandwidth you can't get it with TB2. If you want an external PCIe chassis with more than one slot you have no more than 2.5 lanes available.
The implication here is that given that the PCIe SSD is taking over a lane that the two GPUs may not be running at 16x but 8x.
Bottlenecks were not theoretical when you're talking using GPUs for computational load.
Go to Magma's web site. They have one and two slot PCi chassis for Thunderbolt. What cards really need that bandwidth? I think it's mostly the graphics cards, which aren't needed since Apple already gives you two rather nice GPUs standard. I honestly don't think cards (non-Graphics) are really pushing the bandwidth as much. I could be wrong as this is a gut feeling since people can already run two HDX Pro Tools cards in an external chassis through Thunderbolt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
If you configured the old Mac Pro like the new one, you'd have two GPUs taking up the two x16 slots and a PCIe SSD taking up one of the x4 slots. That would leave you with a single x4 PCIe slot that wouldn't have aux power so no HDX cards ( http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=323900 ) and you'd need an external RAID for bulk storage.
No, you don't. You can have have a hardware RAID card attached to the drive bays if you want hardware RAID. As for the HDX it was solved with a $15 cable in that thread since the HDX is less than 50W draw and as long as you stay under 300W you're okay. Not to mention that the HDX wasn't part of that daisy chain anyway.
Well, well, well...it seems the PCIe splitter cable I got from TigerDirect will work for this after all. Used one of the ATI 5780 cables from the B port on the logic board to the splitter and on to the card ports. So far so good...MP booted into MTL, PT10.3.3 and played the mp4 in a current session without issue. No extra fans getting hot and bothered like our old G4/5 class rigs. I've only run it for an hour or so, but I'll bang on it some more tonight
Moreover on a modernized "classic" Mac Pro form factor you'd have TB ports on the rear as well.
Quote:
It looks like it uses one of the larger optical units with power supply but these aren't necessary - you get affordable bus-powered optical drives and typically you'd only need a single Blu-Ray burner as it supports DVD too. A second bus-powered drive is needed for copying discs but not a common need.
If you use only one of the optical bays you have room for another HDD or SSD.
Quote:
People have to be realistic about how much it takes to match a MP. The mockup I posted a while ago shows a scenario closer to a MP:
.
Which STILL has a larger desktop footprint than the older Mac Pro design. What are you going to do? Precariously stack the Mac Pro above the RAID array?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It might not arrive this year but I think they'll have a Retina Thunderbolt display at $999 and at least one model of iMac with a Retina display by the end of 2014.
2014, I can by that, this year, no way.
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/
The hardware listed was a Behringer audio mixer, which would be the same on a MP:
http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/MON800.aspx
The AJA IOXT:
http://www.aja.com/en/products/io-xt/#overview
Broadcast Monitor, same on the MP:
http://www.flandersscientific.com/index/cm170w.php
and 1Gbit Ethernet adaptor for their storage (only used because they've found Apple's ethernet flakey):
http://www.small-tree.com/Thunderbolt_Products_for_Mac_OS_X_s/192.htm
They said they normally put MPs in a cooled cupboard so the iMac brings the heat into the editing room. The new MP would alleviate that problem.
The HDX audio and Rocket video cards have been shown to work fine in the chassis for people who use those. Ideally there would be dedicated TB products for those but some manufacturers might be waiting for TB2 because their products are really expensive. These setups are important but don't affect many people. It took RED 7 months to deal with 3,000 orders for their cameras (big productions only buy about 50 each tops and not every year). Avid isn't shipping more than 20,000 HDX cards in a year.
Not if you had two GPUs, a PCIe SSD and an HDX card - you couldn't even support two high-end GPUs with HDX because of the power issue. You can now have two GPUs, PCIe SSD, multiple HDX cards, multiple Red Rocket cards plus adaptors. The old Mac Pro would support things like the Cubix:
http://www.cubix.com/catalog/buy-xpander-desktop
but that's $2800 and has a massive footprint.
Splitting off power from a single high-end GPU isn't a solution that a lot of people with such expensive equipment are going to want to mess with. Some people just downgraded back to a 5770.
Potentially but it takes away lanes from the slots and it's only been put into desktop motherboards that have chips with IGPs so far.
Only slightly larger:
The Magma is 14.6" x 4.3", the Mac Pro is 6.6" x 6.6", the Pegasus is 9.3" x 7.4" = 175 sqi
The old Mac Pro was 18.7" x 8.1" = 151 sqi
I don't see how stacking the Magma on top of the Pegasus would be much more precarious than it sitting on the desk and you'd beat the MP footprint. They can go on the floor too or in another room.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
The cheapest 4K monitor on the market is made by Asus, has a rez of 3840 x 2160 and cost's 5,000 dollars. 2,000 is highly improbable, especially from a company who historically has very high margins on their products.
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from; Amazon, Newegg & Tiger Direct all have the Asus PQ321Q 4K monitor for US$3,499.00…
I also said that a Retina Display from Apple should be at LEAST US2,000.00; and I emphasized the LEAST in the original post as well…
But given time & bulk ordering, Apple just might be able to do a 27" Retina Thunderbolt2 Display in 2014 for US2,499.00…
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRonin
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from; Amazon, Newegg & Tiger Direct all have the Asus PQ321Q 4K monitor for US$3,499.00…
I also said that a Retina Display from Apple should be at LEAST US2,000.00; and I emphasized the LEAST in the original post as well…
But given time & bulk ordering, Apple just might be able to do a 27" Retina Thunderbolt2 Display in 2014 for US2,499.00…
I got it from Asus's product announcement, great the price has dropped. Unless the price is 1,000 though I don't see many buying one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Normally people would just use a single RAID drive.
That depends. If you're starting from scratch, yes. If, like me, you've accumulated external drives one at a time as needed, one winds up with what Phil illustrated. The drives stack very neatly, thank you, but the cluster of inflexible Firewire 800 cables and unruly pile of line lump power supplies make keeping it all tidy practically impossible. I just can't justify the cost of an array unit when I already have this stack of working storage with a resale value of roughly poodly.
Though I suppose if one were upgrading from an old pro with internal storage, one wouldn't have the stack of external drives us portable people tend to accumulate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
I got it from Asus's product announcement, great the price has dropped. Unless the price is 1,000 though I don't see many buying one.
Okay, I just went back & read both links you originally gave…
The first, from the Asus website, has NO mention of pricing…
The second, from Extremetech.com, has THEIR guesstimate on pricing, but nothing from Asus saying that this monitor is going to be 5 grand…
My three links to various vendors all are taken from the Asus product page for the monitor in question… In the 'where to buy' section…
Even if an Apple Retina Thunderbolt2 Display is around 3 grand, the ones who NEED it will buy it… If you are working with 4K video, you want a monitor that can display said video at full-rez, and 'a little extra around the edges' is nice for on-screen controls & such…
I see Apple releasing around 2.5 grand, with a price drop in a year or so to 2 grand…
Those who cannot afford the 2 (+) grand will go for the I/O spec-bumped Apple Thunderbolt2 Display (NON-Retina)…
Quote:
Originally Posted by v5v
That depends. If you're starting from scratch, yes. If, like me, you've accumulated external drives one at a time as needed, one winds up with what Phil illustrated. The drives stack very neatly, thank you, but the cluster of inflexible Firewire 800 cables and unruly pile of line lump power supplies make keeping it all tidy practically impossible. I just can't justify the cost of an array unit when I already have this stack of working storage with a resale value of roughly poodly.
Though I suppose if one were upgrading from an old pro with internal storage, one wouldn't have the stack of external drives us portable people tend to accumulate.
Are folks still using their collection of old SCSI externals…? Their old Zip/Jaz drives…? People DO upgrade their equipment as needed… You already have external drives, a Thunderbolt > FireWire adapter will take care of you still using your externals until you decide to upgrade to a new TB2 RAID chassis… Depending on the HDDs in your current externals, you may just be able to move them to an empty TB2 chassis & continue on with the same JBOD you had all along…
And if you already have a collection of FireWire externals, then you already have the same octopus of cables; the new Mac Pro did not make that suddenly appear in your work space…
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Walter Biscardi showed off a video setup for iMacs:
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/
The hardware listed was a Behringer audio mixer, which would be the same on a MP:
http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/MON800.aspx
The AJA IOXT:
http://www.aja.com/en/products/io-xt/#overview
Broadcast Monitor, same on the MP:
http://www.flandersscientific.com/index/cm170w.php
and 1Gbit Ethernet adaptor for their storage (only used because they've found Apple's ethernet flakey):
http://www.small-tree.com/Thunderbolt_Products_for_Mac_OS_X_s/192.htm
They said they normally put MPs in a cooled cupboard so the iMac brings the heat into the editing room. The new MP would alleviate that problem.
The HDX audio and Rocket video cards have been shown to work fine in the chassis for people who use those. Ideally there would be dedicated TB products for those but some manufacturers might be waiting for TB2 because their products are really expensive. These setups are important but don't affect many people. It took RED 7 months to deal with 3,000 orders for their cameras (big productions only buy about 50 each tops and not every year). Avid isn't shipping more than 20,000 HDX cards in a year.
I'm beginning to wonder if you really are Walter
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Dell still sells the 30"
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=225-4429
Unfortunately Apple doesn't, so now they don't have any matte displays anymore. I wonder if they'll make them again, presuming we can get a 4k monitor together with the new Pro.
I was unaware of that. I know a couple of Dell's displays. I don't currently know anyone who uses one. It's typically NEC and Eizo. If they aren't using one of those it's an Apple display, in some cases an old aluminum one that is well past its prime. I'm not insinuating that my personal experience indicates anything about the broader market. It's just what I know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRonin
Are folks still using their collection of old SCSI externals…? Their old Zip/Jaz drives…? People DO upgrade their equipment as needed…
Really? That's freakin' fascinating. What the heck it has to do with what I wrote, I have no idea, but thanks for the update.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRonin
And if you already have a collection of FireWire externals, then you already have the same octopus of cables; the new Mac Pro did not make that suddenly appear in your work space…
I don't recall ever implying any relationship between that scenario and the new Pro at all. Hang on, lemme go re-read what I wrote...
Okay, I'm back. I was right. I didn't suggest that this was a shortcoming of the new Mac Pro.
You can lower your shields. I have no idea what you think you're arguing against, but none of what I wrote was a criticism of the new Pro.
He makes some interesting posts. When the Mac Pro was lagging in updates, he tested alternatives and figured out how to make them work. He didn't like FCPX so went with Premiere Pro & Avid and will be testing out Smoke. He seems to have mostly ditched the idea of workstations in favour of iMacs besides a few for rendering performance and you can see why here:
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/04/using-imacs-to-replace-desktop-workstations-a-consideration/
Interesting comments at the bottom too:
"I cut a 6 part, hour long series for Broadcast on an iMac without Thunderbolt and had very few problems with the machine. We had over 200 hours of ProRes 422 HQ footage, and we were delivering edits for Network approval every 72 hours. Rendering and Encoding short segments was not a problem, however when we had to render/dump out the 44 minute offline it took a really long time and we had quite a few FCP ‘General Errors’.
But the actual editing was pretty painless.
I also recently cut 7 commercials for Nike on an iMac (with the agency in the room) without any issues. I never felt the need for the MacPro on this job. Not even when I was using Mocha (AE CS5) to swap out live action elements with the client looking on. We also used Color to communicate the ‘Looks’ that the agency wanted, to the Colorist doing the Final Grade. Again no issues with ProRes footage. But try working with .r3d files natively and the iMac really struggles. So i think that for an offline workflow with HD Footage an iMac is a really good fit."
Of course the PC crowd jumps in eventually in the comments to explain all the better deals. A certain group of people just can't accept Apple being seen positively in any light.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
He makes some interesting posts. When the Mac Pro was lagging in updates, he tested alternatives and figured out how to make them work. He didn't like FCPX so went with Premiere Pro & Avid and will be testing out Smoke. He seems to have mostly ditched the idea of workstations in favour of iMacs besides a few for rendering performance and you can see why here:
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/04/using-imacs-to-replace-desktop-workstations-a-consideration/
Interesting comments at the bottom too:
"I cut a 6 part, hour long series for Broadcast on an iMac without Thunderbolt and had very few problems with the machine. We had over 200 hours of ProRes 422 HQ footage, and we were delivering edits for Network approval every 72 hours. Rendering and Encoding short segments was not a problem, however when we had to render/dump out the 44 minute offline it took a really long time and we had quite a few FCP ‘General Errors’.
But the actual editing was pretty painless.
His blog post still suggests big iron for a small shop with only a couple stations. It's about what I recall reading last time. He started with the imacs for offline workflows and slip edits. He doesn't mention getting rid of big iron entirely.
From the blog post
Quote:
And while they might cost a bit more, I think our “Big Iron” systems will be Wintel moving forward. Just too many good options out there vs the limited choices from Apple. And who knows, we just might be running OS X on a PC soon.
and
Quote:
If you are a one man band, a 1 or 2 machine shop, then you really want to buy THE fastest and most powerful system you can afford because you’re asking that machine to do everything for you. Edit, Graphics, Render, Output, etc…. I always recommend to anyone that’s a single or two machine shop to have a powerful desktop system unless you absolutely must have the portability of a laptop for your work. Desktop machines, while much more expensive when configured for video editing, will always give you the fastest performance. So keep in mind that my thoughts here are more about me replacing a series of machines vs. a smaller shop that might only need to replace one or two systems.
So what do I give up by dropping a bunch of Big Iron machines in favor of the iMac? Render speed primarily. Big iron will always render faster than an all-in-one ever will because there’s a lot more room for processors and large power supplies to drive those processors. Not to mention a ton more RAM for the same reasons. But for the type of work we’re doing day in, day out, we don’t need super fast rendering all the time on every single workstation.
It's clear he sees a spot for them. I like his posts, but they aren't quite so polarizing in favor of "must be all imacs". One man shops have mostly gone for mac pros in my experience, although I have seen some imacs since the core2duo units. There aren't as many, but I've known at least a couple graphic designers who used them. I hate any amount of screen shininess. As I mentioned a few months ago, I haven't looked at the new ones in person. The examples suggest a definite improvement, but displays are a much more complicated issue than is sometimes suggested. Note how that 17" broadcast display referenced in the thread was "only" $3200.
Quote:
also recently cut 7 commercials for Nike on an iMac (with the agency in the room) without any issues. I never felt the need for the MacPro on this job. Not even when I was using Mocha (AE CS5) to swap out live action elements with the client looking on. We also used Color to communicate the ‘Looks’ that the agency wanted, to the Colorist doing the Final Grade. Again no issues with ProRes footage. But try working with .r3d files natively and the iMac really struggles. So i think that for an offline workflow with HD Footage an iMac is a really good fit."
I wonder if he'll try the new mac pro for finishing work.
Quote:
Of course the PC crowd jumps in eventually in the comments to explain all the better deals. A certain group of people just can't accept Apple being seen positively in any light.
It varies. I mean if they're talking about working solutions, discussion isn't a bad thing. What I hate most is ideological arguments, which is why I generally try to cite what makes the most sense for me. I have to carry a notebook at times. If I was looking at the imac, I would probably be tempted to look at going to notebook + large display, as I end up having to carry a notebook anyway. The biggest advantage the imac has for me there is double the ram capacity, and that is huge. Ram is one of those things where you still get smoother performance beyond the minimum amount required to load files of a particular size. It often influences what features you enable and overall workflow in an effort to maintain fluidity. The sources you quote are a lot better reference than myself for editing. I do very little of that, and I'm certainly not cutting video for ad campaigns.
Edit: oh man he must spend a fortune on cables
Quote:
For Machine Control, we already use Cat 6 connectors to all the machines. At the current time we have 5 Cat 6 cables running into each edit suite for the Gefen DVI / USB Extenders. We won’t need all of those anymore so we can repurpose the Cat 6 cable for machine control.
Same with our shared storage which is all connected via Cat 6. We’ll just repurpose one of those 5 cables to connect to the SAN.
Further down he also mentions they stuck to big iron for finishing systems, as I expected.
To all the naysayers, this shows (hopefully) that the current iMac is a pretty decent machine ¥capable of doing pretty good work. Some guy recently posted that somebody would be just doing mail and surfing so the iMac would suffice... Go figure.
The new MacPro will just be awesome.
Well this I can agree with, this especially the case if you are already a person that can find the iMac limiting. However I suspect the new iMac will pretty awesome also, even the Mini. It is all about the lower power chips enabling significantly better GPU performance at no loss of CPU performance or excessive thermal gain.