If I was still doing the kind of work I used to do, I would jump all over this gorgeous piece of engineering. But the iPad Pro is also a refined thing of beauty.
It’s an impressive machine for sure. Like I have said many times, it’s a niche machine designed specially for Mac-oriented ‘creators’ with very deep pockets. PC workstations, from Dell, HP, and Lenovo are still a better value and offer more options. But for Apple’s loyal base the Mac Pro is now the object of desire...
If I had a nickel for every time I have heard "and it will get faster" when programmers do something…over the last 30 years. Heck, I'd be happy if touch ID would just work everywhere the System asks for a password.
This is what I came here to say.
”Other developers aren't there yet. Because of that, the Mac Pro is built for tomorrow for most, not today. But, that's okay, as long as you're forward-thinking, as tomorrow is always on the way.”
I've watched computer hardware potential (be it new busses, new processors, specialist chips, or even just bare processing capability) be squandered for decades because the needed software never arrives. If you buy a product today, buy it for what it IS NOW, what it can DO NOW, and NOT what it might POTENTIALLY become later. Chances are, that potential won’t ever be met.
It’s a worse situation when the potential you are hoping to see realized is based on uniqueness. Unique hardware, when owned by few, results in developers ignoring it.
Yes, it will get faster - but this is not due to any major accomplishments by Apple.
This is largely due to the work being done by very bright people at AMD/Intel/nVidia - who are enabling Apple to benefit. It would be interesting to benchmark the price/Performance of the A-series chips from Apple in a desktop/server application, against AMD/Intel/nVidia and work in that direction.
But, currently - to give credit to Apple, is akin to giving credit to the cock that crows every morning at sunrise.
NVidia you say? The company that’s dropping existing Mac support from their next round of drivers? Okay.
Have I missed an announcement?
After Apple refused to sign the new drivers due to a dispute in the past, Nvidia stopped supporting Apple hardware. So depending on your work you need to either move to Windows/Linux or put up with an AMD card.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
Must be that they are not using a highly secretive piece of test software that is 10+ years old that can’t be discussed except to tell people to trust them on it!😁 Come to think of it I wonder if it is Shiller’s “innovating” ass? 😂 I digress. Disappointing of true but as you move up it seems to be a very powerful machine. I never buy a first gen Apple whatever so will wait at least a year till the next version comes out and some of the possible issues are resolved. Till then the iMacs work really well for us.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
Must be that they are not using a highly secretive piece of test software that is 10+ years old that can’t be discussed except to tell people to trust them on it!😁 Come to think of it I wonder if it is Shiller’s “innovating” ass? 😂 I digress. Disappointing of true but as you move up it seems to be a very powerful machine. I never buy a first gen Apple whatever so will wait at least a year till the next version comes out and some of the possible issues are resolved. Till then the iMacs work really well for us.
No one should be surprised by these scores. The 8 core iMac 27 will outperform the 8-core base models of both the iMac Pro and Mac Pro. Cascade Lake is just a slight refresh of Skylake, with very minor differences. The biggest difference to the iMac Coffee Lake CPU is probably cache, memory channels, max memory support, AVX512, and PCIe lanes. You definitely pay more to get those “more” features.
If you need more cores, more memory, more GPUs, quieter operations, more expandability, more display support, just more of everything, then buyers will gravitate to the iMac Pro and Mac Pro models depending on their needs.
If you are gated be single core performance, the iMac 27, maybe the Mac mini, and possibly the iPhone (and 2020 iPad Pro) is your best bet.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
You did notice I specified "cheaping out" with an entry level build. Adding another $2K on an Afterburner card and bumping the price north of $7K is absolutely not "cheaping out" IMHO. Your link is more about the power of Afterburner than the new Mac Pro isn't it?
Yes, it will get faster - but this is not due to any major accomplishments by Apple.
This is largely due to the work being done by very bright people at AMD/Intel/nVidia - who are enabling Apple to benefit. It would be interesting to benchmark the price/Performance of the A-series chips from Apple in a desktop/server application, against AMD/Intel/nVidia and work in that direction.
But, currently - to give credit to Apple, is akin to giving credit to the cock that crows every morning at sunrise.
NVidia you say? The company that’s dropping existing Mac support from their next round of drivers? Okay.
The dropping of support has got nothing to do with Nvidia. Nvidia writes the Mac drivers for their cards, Apple writes the AMD drivers. Apple is refusing to sign the Nvidia drivers. My 2012 iMac with a Geforce 680MX still gets (or got - until Apple put their middle finger up at Nvidia) regular graphics driver updates. This is not the case for AMD cards from that era. Also, the AMD drivers Apple writes are utter crap. Back in 2006 I had a Mac Pro with an AMD card, and it would drop frames when any UI element showed over a window with 3D graphics in. Switched to a Nvidia card, problem vanished. Now on my top of the line 2019 i9 iMac with a Radeon Pro Vega 48, I get the same frame drops I got 15 years ago. Apple fell out with Nvidia (again) and refuses not only to use their cards but refuses to sign Nvidia drivers too. Nvidia cards are better at most things than AMD cards. Until Apple grows up and stops this ridiculous spat, we won't see any Nvidia drivers or cards on Macs, which only has the result of hurting Apple's customers.
Metal is the future for Apple with respect to their GPU strategy. Full stop. Nvidia is not coming back.
So when Apple falls out with AMD again like they have in the past, what do they do then? Go back to Nvidia bowl in hand? Use only Intel GPUs? There's no reason Metal can't be supported by Nvidia drivers, just Apple's childishness is blocking them from macOS. In any case, very few devs actually write for Metal directly on anything but iOS (even then, its not entirely ubiquitous) they use the massively more popular Vulkan, with a shim (MoltenVK) to emulate Vulkan on Metal; causing overhead and reducing the quality of the experience for Apple users. All because of Apple's stubbornness to support an open standard. Full stop.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
Must be that they are not using a highly secretive piece of test software that is 10+ years old that can’t be discussed except to tell people to trust them on it!ߘ᠃ome to think of it I wonder if it is Shiller’s “innovating” ass? ߘ⠉ digress. Disappointing of true but as you move up it seems to be a very powerful machine. I never buy a first gen Apple whatever so will wait at least a year till the next version comes out and some of the possible issues are resolved. Till then the iMacs work really well for us.
For what it's worth, it isn't test or software dedicated to benchmarking. Its an operational software suite, with a day-to-day job. I personally had more to do with it those two decades, and three careers ago, than I do now, but I still maintain ties with the maintainers and users.
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
You did notice I specified "cheaping out" with an entry level build. Adding another $2K on an Afterburner card and bumping the price north of $7K is absolutely not "cheaping out" IMHO. Your link is more about the power of Afterburner than the new Mac Pro isn't it?
There's been a lot of chatter on Twitter and on blogs about how the entry-level Mac Pro is poor value because there isn't much difference in terms of CPU performance vs an iMac 5K or iMac Pro. The point I was trying to make with those links is there's more to the performance of the Mac Pro than just sheer CPU speed. With the expansion headroom, one can greatly increase performance so that $6,000 price tag isn't so bad when looking at a long-term investment point of view. I'm not saying it's cheap but it isn't that bad either.
We can always count on Adobe to be slow with updating their apps to support new Apple hardware and operating systems. Apple's Macintosh helped Adobe get its start. Their ingratitude toward Apple is obvious every time Apple releases something new and innovative. Adobe can and should get their software updated BEFORE new versions of macOS are released, and they should also have updated their software to take full advantage of the new Mac Pro's computing power.
“ Photoshop won't use more than 10 cores”. How embarrassing.
I'm sure Adobe is going to get their Apps to take full advantage of their higher end models. After all, Adobe is buying a bunch of these things for themselves.
Yes, it will get faster - but this is not due to any major accomplishments by Apple.
This is largely due to the work being done by very bright people at AMD/Intel/nVidia - who are enabling Apple to benefit. It would be interesting to benchmark the price/Performance of the A-series chips from Apple in a desktop/server application, against AMD/Intel/nVidia and work in that direction.
But, currently - to give credit to Apple, is akin to giving credit to the cock that crows every morning at sunrise.
NVidia you say? The company that’s dropping existing Mac support from their next round of drivers? Okay.
The dropping of support has got nothing to do with Nvidia. Nvidia writes the Mac drivers for their cards, Apple writes the AMD drivers. Apple is refusing to sign the Nvidia drivers. My 2012 iMac with a Geforce 680MX still gets (or got - until Apple put their middle finger up at Nvidia) regular graphics driver updates. This is not the case for AMD cards from that era. Also, the AMD drivers Apple writes are utter crap. Back in 2006 I had a Mac Pro with an AMD card, and it would drop frames when any UI element showed over a window with 3D graphics in. Switched to a Nvidia card, problem vanished. Now on my top of the line 2019 i9 iMac with a Radeon Pro Vega 48, I get the same frame drops I got 15 years ago. Apple fell out with Nvidia (again) and refuses not only to use their cards but refuses to sign Nvidia drivers too. Nvidia cards are better at most things than AMD cards. Until Apple grows up and stops this ridiculous spat, we won't see any Nvidia drivers or cards on Macs, which only has the result of hurting Apple's customers.
Metal is the future for Apple with respect to their GPU strategy. Full stop. Nvidia is not coming back.
So when Apple falls out with AMD again like they have in the past, what do they do then? Go back to Nvidia bowl in hand? Use only Intel GPUs? There's no reason Metal can't be supported by Nvidia drivers, just Apple's childishness is blocking them from macOS.
So how do you know Nvidia made Metal-compatible drivers and it was Apple that refused to sign them?
In any case, very few devs actually write for Metal directly on anything but iOS (even then, its not entirely ubiquitous) they use the massively more popular Vulkan, with a shim (MoltenVK) to emulate Vulkan on Metal; causing overhead and reducing the quality of the experience for Apple users. All because of Apple's stubbornness to support an open standard. Full stop.
Very few devs? Like Blackmagic Design bringing Davinci Resolve to Metal? Like Adobe which has been adding Metal support to their software in Premiere and Media Encoder and After Effects and are continuing to do so with Substance and Dimension and others? Or OTOY bringing Octane X to AMD/Metal? Or Maxon bringing Redshift to AMD/Metal? Pixar's Hydra? Unity 3D? Autodesk bringing AutoCAD, Maya, Fusion and Flame to Metal? Red Digital Cinema's R3D's new Metal version? Serif's Affinity Photo? SideFX's Houdini? Epic's Unreal Engine?
Those "very few devs", "full stop"? Just checking.
Yes, it will get faster - but this is not due to any major accomplishments by Apple.
This is largely due to the work being done by very bright people at AMD/Intel/nVidia - who are enabling Apple to benefit. It would be interesting to benchmark the price/Performance of the A-series chips from Apple in a desktop/server application, against AMD/Intel/nVidia and work in that direction.
But, currently - to give credit to Apple, is akin to giving credit to the cock that crows every morning at sunrise.
Oh, so did they design the Afterburner card and implement it in Apple software? Did they write the Metal framework? Also, considering thermal throttling, thermal management is the name of the game -- and that is designed entirely by the OEM, and Apple should get the credit for how their design handles heat.
Tho by the same token then Apple is not to blame for lack of updates. On Gruber's The Talk Show he said the 2017 iMac Pro has no suitable Xeon chips to update to, thus no updates...but I see on the forums Apple gets the blame.
There are those thermal-throttling issues that Apple gets the blame for despite the fact that Intel had problems breaking the 14nm barrier with its processors. It was claimed Apple had designed its MacBook Pros to use 10nm Intel processors which would have had lower power consumption and lower heat output. Intel had manufacturing problems with 10nm processors and they weren't ready when Apple needed them. Apple will always get blamed because most consumers are only interested in results and not interested in the back story. It's an Apple product, so Apple must take the blame even if it's not entirely their fault. We know that Intel has been dragging its feet and that's why AMD is starting to make some serious headway.
Now I assume Apple set different speeds in their line-ups to balance the performance/consumption & price, but all should be capable of delivering the same speed.
Comments
”Other developers aren't there yet. Because of that, the Mac Pro is built for tomorrow for most, not today. But, that's okay, as long as you're forward-thinking, as tomorrow is always on the way.”
I've watched computer hardware potential (be it new busses, new processors, specialist chips, or even just bare processing capability) be squandered for decades because the needed software never arrives. If you buy a product today, buy it for what it IS NOW, what it can DO NOW, and NOT what it might POTENTIALLY become later. Chances are, that potential won’t ever be met.
It’s a worse situation when the potential you are hoping to see realized is based on uniqueness. Unique hardware, when owned by few, results in developers ignoring it.
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
Those stats are showing that the 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core Mac Pro processor, the entry and mid-range builds, are performing very similarly to the two-year-old 2017 iMac. If you already have an iMac and planning on cheap-ing out with an entry-point Mac Pro build expecting better performance over what you have you might rethink it.
If you need more cores, more memory, more GPUs, quieter operations, more expandability, more display support, just more of everything, then buyers will gravitate to the iMac Pro and Mac Pro models depending on their needs.
If you are gated be single core performance, the iMac 27, maybe the Mac mini, and possibly the iPhone (and 2020 iPad Pro) is your best bet.
https://wccftech.com/mac-pro-afterburner-card-16k-footage-playback/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvS7FHtm2BI&t=96s
Very few devs? Like Blackmagic Design bringing Davinci Resolve to Metal? Like Adobe which has been adding Metal support to their software in Premiere and Media Encoder and After Effects and are continuing to do so with Substance and Dimension and others? Or OTOY bringing Octane X to AMD/Metal? Or Maxon bringing Redshift to AMD/Metal? Pixar's Hydra? Unity 3D? Autodesk bringing AutoCAD, Maya, Fusion and Flame to Metal? Red Digital Cinema's R3D's new Metal version? Serif's Affinity Photo? SideFX's Houdini? Epic's Unreal Engine?
Those "very few devs", "full stop"? Just checking.
Remember I've complained about "you can't upgrade the speed on the Mac Pro"? Yesterday I've found the maximum speed allowed with Intel RST is ~3.5GB/s, which indicates the T2 is capable of max out whatever it's available (within the margin error).
Now I assume Apple set different speeds in their line-ups to balance the performance/consumption & price, but all should be capable of delivering the same speed.
@Mike Wuerthele