I'd buy such Mini for using the 4core i7 for compiling source code, but I'm not going to put my money on it until they upgrade it to some GPU that won't become obsolete next year.
Compiling source code on a Mini? Really, is that remotely feasible? Or the Mini's that powerful, or has compiling come down to a simple task? I used to support developers of ERP software and always bought the fastest PC's I could. Maxed out RAM, CPU, often over $6k. Okay, this was 1998, so has the Mini caught up on this over the years?
Thanks!
Hi Phil,
My mid-2010 8GB quad-core i7 iMac compiled Blender (3D animation app) for OS X/Cocoa and associated libs in around an hour using the -j8 switch passed to make. I don't know how the latest Mini compares hardware-wise othe than having a different GPU setup, but this might give you a data point. The source was from Git-hub, and the tools were darwinports and X-code 4.x. Hope that helps.
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
Back then yes, though as time goes on it will vary but most likely point towards no. The mini keeps taking big strides.
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
The biggest achilles heel for me at this point is the gpu. That's an area of heavy requirement growth, as it allows for different workflows. Consider animation where even companies with large workstations available still use low or medium resolution meshes without full textures as proxy rigs to drive the real thing. Games will still use all available gpu power. There are certainly use cases where it's not really appropriate yet. If the intel gpus got to a point of good enough, upgrading every year with a mini could become a viable strategy for a wider range of workflows. You can generally reuse ram through a tick/tock cycle without much of a performance penalty. The speculation over eGPUs and node based hardware from some people on here still shows a lack of comprehension. It's an expensive feature for the lower end machines, and on the higher end machines it would combine a somewhat constrained system of throughput with an expensive base solution. If someone is spending the money on a 27" imac, they might be disappointed by the improvement offered by an external gpu setup. The 680MX still falls significantly short of anything midrange and above when it comes to desktop variants of the same generation, yet you're still paying for that. Adding even a GTX 670 with the cost of the housing throttled over a x4 connection may not produce enough of a gain to be worthwhile. LGA1155 is also fairly lane constrained, so I'm not sure whether you really receive a full 16 lanes of bandwidth.
The other thing on gpus is I have to wonder how AMD and NVidia will hold up. I know NVidia tries to deal with high development costs via their high volume products. The onward march of integrated graphics may break that business model, even if NVidia cuts out their graphics card manufacturing partners.
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
Back then yes, though as time goes on it will vary but most likely point towards no. The mini keeps taking big strides.
Welp, if my MP dies or becomes 'too slow' I will take a peek at a Mini, in that case. Maybe need to bring my .aplibrary to the store, but I think they'll allow it (if I first tell them I'm looking for a Mac Pro - lol)
Yeah for now, your Mac Pro is better than the Mini but in 2013 or 2014, start to take a look.
The machines of 2015 will still have to be judged based on the user and software needs of the time. The need for a MacPro will be no less then than now, software needs and user leveraging continues to increase at a steady rate. Think about the days of Dos or even the Mac Plus, people would go gaga over the newest processor leaks fully believing that that would be the ultimate machine.
Personally I don't think the software industry has even gotten started yet. I foresee a day when something like the Siri AI is built into every Mac OS for one. Well actually far more advanced that today's Siri. Think about true AI built into things like Pages that corrects your documents and actually works with you to produce a document. The engineer in me imagines far more advanced CAD/CAM software that works in realtime. There is just so much than can be done or done better with more powerful hardware I just don't see the need for the Pro ever going away.
The engineer in me imagines far more advanced CAD/CAM software that works in realtime. There is just so much than can be done or done better with more powerful hardware I just don't see the need for the Pro ever going away.
This is the kind of thing I've mentioned before. What we do on our machines is heavily influenced by the level of technology at the time where big strides tend to change the way we use software rather than just allow it to run faster. That's a big reason I continually see OpenCL implemented in various programs. It brings a lot of tedious functions to real time.
Quote:
The need for a MacPro will be no less then than now, software needs and user leveraging continues to increase at a steady rate.
That has been a problem for the mac pro. It hasn't maintained steady alignment with some of its past popular markets. Assuming a static price target, the gains haven't always been there on an annual basis. Apple would need to find ways to grab new customers, presumably from Windows or Linux (yes Linux ) systems.
The engineer in me imagines far more advanced CAD/CAM software that works in realtime. There is just so much than can be done or done better with more powerful hardware I just don't see the need for the Pro ever going away.
This is the kind of thing I've mentioned before. What we do on our machines is heavily influenced by the level of technology at the time where big strides tend to change the way we use software rather than just allow it to run faster. That's a big reason I continually see OpenCL implemented in various programs. It brings a lot of tedious functions to real time.
If one has been around long enough you can see how more powerful hardware has dramatically changed what software is capable of. Just take a look at CAD, the industry started out with real clunky 2D, progressed to 3D, then to solid modeling and now we are starting to see systems model whole mechanisms. All of this on the desktop. Each step has changed industry a bit. The biggest change being making such capability available to the designer at his desk and reducing the need for that ivory tower of limited access.
The need for a MacPro will be no less then than now, software needs and user leveraging continues to increase at a steady rate.
That has been a problem for the mac pro. It hasn't maintained steady alignment with some of its past popular markets. Assuming a static price target, the gains haven't always been there on an annual basis. Apple would need to find ways to grab new customers, presumably from Windows or Linux (yes Linux ) systems.
In some cases that has been Intel fault and in other Apples. The static price target is perhaps Apples biggest mistake with the Pro. The introductory machine is a terrible value now and that rests squarely on Apples shoulders. In a way the Mac Pro is like a fish that has been beached. It has life to flop around a bit but it really needs to get back to its native environment. Like the water, that supports many fish, Apple needs a rational school of Mac Pros to cover the gamut of user needs. Each member of that school needs to support the other members to keep the school itself solid.
If one has been around long enough you can see how more powerful hardware has dramatically changed what software is capable of. Just take a look at CAD, the industry started out with real clunky 2D, progressed to 3D, then to solid modeling and now we are starting to see systems model whole mechanisms. All of this on the desktop. Each step has changed industry a bit. The biggest change being making such capability available to the designer at his desk and reducing the need for that ivory tower of limited access.
Yeah the goalposts move. With computing it's not just a matter of speed but one of what works at the time. Some of that software can still place a pretty extreme load on gpus with some of the shaders used to check continuity.
Quote:
In some cases that has been Intel fault and in other Apples. The static price target is perhaps Apples biggest mistake with the Pro. The introductory machine is a terrible value now and that rests squarely on Apples shoulders. In a way the Mac Pro is like a fish that has been beached. It has life to flop around a bit but it really needs to get back to its native environment. Like the water, that supports many fish, Apple needs a rational school of Mac Pros to cover the gamut of user needs. Each member of that school needs to support the other members to keep the school itself solid.
The single cpu machine was considered a poor value in 2009, and its evolution since then has obviously been minimal. Workstations Windows side are slightly similar on the gpu end, as you don't have a constant influx of new workstation gpus. Kepler options are just starting to trickle out, and the Quadro 4000 from 2010 or so is still sold today. Typically you can get into a minimum of a 6 core machine with a very nice gpu Windows side for the cost of the one remaining Nehalem configuration. It tapers off somewhat toward the higher end, as dual package stations include higher costs and margins. The raw benchmarks don't really tell everything. Sandy Bridge E gained some new instruction sets, support for SATA III, and some moderate gains even if software doesn't leverage the new instruction sets. With the possible inclusion of usb3 (even without native support), and a current generation gpu, it would have breathed some amount of life into the line. I don't know how intel is going to handle the continued partial perceived misalignment on chip architectures. They can't skip Ivy. Currently their multi processor server products are stuck on Westmere. They produce EX variants on die shrink years, and they wouldn't push a high margin product like that out even further.
They may try to play catch up later, but I don't know exactly what they'll do from that point on.
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
What was required a few years ago, and what is required today are different animals. Today's Mac Mini is more powerful that the early PowerMacs, and the first Mac Pro. Unless the requirements for compiling have risen terrifically, a Mini should be fine. Same thing is true for Aperture. And unless you're working on multi 100 meg files in Photoshop with lots do layers and live compositing, it should work fine there as well with 16GB RAM.
I am kind of disappointed about the slight decrease in graphics base MHz but I think that is because I don't understand Haswell even with the Anandtech article and it'll end up being far better for a reason.
Compiling is one of those things that gets almost linear speed ups as you add cores. Faster more capable computers just result in interpreter like design cycles if the machine is well matched to the code base. I think we are a very long way from having systems that are fast enough for every programming task at hand.
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
What was required a few years ago, and what is required today are different animals.
This is very true but realize that software isn't standing still. You really can't predict what tomorrows hot software product will require hardware wise.
Today's Mac Mini is more powerful that the early PowerMacs, and the first Mac Pro. Unless the requirements for compiling have risen terrifically, a Mini should be fine. Same thing is true for Aperture. And unless you're working on multi 100 meg files in Photoshop with lots do layers and live compositing, it should work fine there as well with 16GB RAM.
Well here I have to disagree just a bit. Some people are just more demanding than others and would expect the additional performance more cores could bring. There is no doubt that a Mini can be serviceable with Aperture but many would laugh at the idea of any computer used for photographic work to come without a discrete GPU. The day may come when a discrete GPU might be dismissed as no longer needed but today many Pros would argue we are far from that day.
I am kind of disappointed about the slight decrease in graphics base MHz…
If anything it's the same thing that happened to processors: clock speed became next to meaningless in the face of cores.
Clock speed isn't meaningless but it is just one element in determining a machines performance. Many have not noticed but we are now hitting 4GHz in the CPU cores of modern processors. That isn't pedaled now a days like in the past but you can not dismiss that 1.5 extra GHz does impact machine performance. Sure cores help a great deal as modern machines have many threads and processes running at the same time, I just have to object to the idea that clock speed isn't an important factor here. If for nothing else many apps are and likely will be, single threaded or at least not able to leverage threads heavily.
Don't misunderstand me I'd be the first to look for a new machine with four or more cores as I know cores suit my usage patterns well. However if I have a choice between four cores running at 1.2gHZ and four cores running at 3.2GHz I'm going with the 3.2GHz machine all other things being equal.
Makes sense. I know it seems extraneous, though I can't wait for a Haswell mini.
I may try to hold for a Haswell Mini myself. The hope being that the GPUs are a bit less than total crap in the chip. As it is though a four core machine with lots of RAM should do pretty good these days, it is just the lack of respectable 3D that has me concerned about the current Minis.
There is no doubt that a Mini can be serviceable with Aperture but many would laugh at the idea of any computer used for photographic work to come without a discrete GPU. The day may come when a discrete GPU might be dismissed as no longer needed but today many Pros would argue we are far from that day.
This is not really true. Dealing with 2D raster images isn't a problem for any modern gpu. Most of them don't scale that well with OpenGL. OpenCL is typically applied to a limited number of functions. Apple and Adobe have both placed it where they can, but a mini with a nice display attached could be arguably superior to an imac there. The mini gets a single thunderbolt port, but usb3 storage options can take care of that. The gpu matters a lot more when you're dealing with 3D stuff such as reprojecting images or stitching spherical images. Most of the 2D image editors have really fallen behind there. With things like Creative Suite, their requirements are heavily based around video ram more and OpenGL version. Intel should be caught up in that regard by the next revision. If it ships with decent drivers, it would satisfy a lot of professionals in that area. In fact the biggest bottleneck would probably become ram. Creative Suite is extremely ram hungry, especially when dealing with higher bit depths in either stills or footage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I may try to hold for a Haswell Mini myself. The hope being that the GPUs are a bit less than total crap in the chip. As it is though a four core machine with lots of RAM should do pretty good these days, it is just the lack of respectable 3D that has me concerned about the current Minis.
As much as I don't consider the mini a great value, it is slowly becoming a better option for a wider range of workloads. That said I'm still disappointed in Apple's workstation offerings. On Windows a decent 6 core (E5-1650) Sandy Bridge E model with SATA III, usb3, and a mid range workstation card like a Quadro 4000 can be found around the price of the base mac pro. I checked several brands. It's mainly when you go to the specialty vendors and "purpose built" hardware that it gets really expensive.
There is no doubt that a Mini can be serviceable with Aperture but many would laugh at the idea of any computer used for photographic work to come without a discrete GPU. The day may come when a discrete GPU might be dismissed as no longer needed but today many Pros would argue we are far from that day.
This is not really true. Dealing with 2D raster images isn't a problem for any modern gpu.
True to an extent but some filter do get GPU acceleration. In any event I don't like the idea of professionals as only photographers so in that regard I probably shouldn't have even used photographers as an example. Professionals by definition is a broader group of people, in that context more professionals still have rational need for a GPU.
Most of them don't scale that well with OpenGL. OpenCL is typically applied to a limited number of functions.
This I know, I still have a hard time explaining to people how specific GPU computation is. GPUs in the sense of computation have to fit the problem at hand otherwise there is little benefit.
Apple and Adobe have both placed it where they can, but a mini with a nice display attached could be arguably superior to an imac there. The mini gets a single thunderbolt port, but usb3 storage options can take care of that. The gpu matters a lot more when you're dealing with 3D stuff such as reprojecting images or stitching spherical images.
It isn't just 3D, you benefit from a GPU whenever it is faster than integrated.
Most of the 2D image editors have really fallen behind there. With things like Creative Suite, their requirements are heavily based around video ram more and OpenGL version. Intel should be caught up in that regard by the next revision. If it ships with decent drivers, it would satisfy a lot of professionals in that area. In fact the biggest bottleneck would probably become ram. Creative Suite is extremely ram hungry, especially when dealing with higher bit depths in either stills or footage.
I may try to hold for a Haswell Mini myself. The hope being that the GPUs are a bit less than total crap in the chip. As it is though a four core machine with lots of RAM should do pretty good these days, it is just the lack of respectable 3D that has me concerned about the current Minis.
As much as I don't consider the mini a great value, it is slowly becoming a better option for a wider range of workloads.
It is certainly something of mixed value. The frustration is that Apple could make it into a far more interesting machine.
That said I'm still disappointed in Apple's workstation offerings.
Disappointed is putting it mildly. I've been waiting at least five years to see Apple rationalize their desktop lineup. In contrast to their laptops the desktops are all around terrible offerings.
On Windows a decent 6 core (E5-1650) Sandy Bridge E model with SATA III, usb3, and a mid range workstation card like a Quadro 4000 can be found around the price of the base mac pro. I checked several brands. It's mainly when you go to the specialty vendors and "purpose built" hardware that it gets really expensive.
Yep. The hilarious thing is that the Mac Pro was never really a Pro machine in my estimation. At least not since it was no longer the machine bleeding edge tech was introduced on.
True to an extent but some filter do get GPU acceleration. In any event I don't like the idea of professionals as only photographers so in that regard I probably shouldn't have even used photographers as an example. Professionals by definition is a broader group of people, in that context more professionals still have rational need for a GPU.
I agree there. If it was Windows I'd just suggest they go for a nice i7, lots of ram, and invest in a quality display to minimize viewing headaches. I extrapolated to graphic designers and light video editing there. A good gpu is ideal. It's just the functions are limited enough to where a mini + nice external display could be an alternative to something like a 27" imac. If haswell/broadwell improve upon this, it could be quite viable for many media based workflows. There's a big jump in price if you outgrow such a machine.
Quote:
This I know, I still have a hard time explaining to people how specific GPU computation is. GPUs in the sense of computation have to fit the problem at hand otherwise there is little benefit.
OpenCL 1.2 and the latest CUDA implementations do support wider ranges of API calls. It'll just take time. Developers typically don't go back and rewrite old workable code most of the time. They're likely to start with the newest features. Note how Adobe went with CUDA on their After Effects raytracer. They've been starting to go toward OpenCL, but I don't think it was ready when they started development.
Quote:
It isn't just 3D, you benefit from a GPU whenever it is faster than integrated.
It is certainly something of mixed value. The frustration is that Apple could make it into a far more interesting machine.
I'm probably going in circles here, but with Apple their solutions tend to work extremely well if your requirements are fairly generic. Once you go a bit outside of their design paradigm, things become more difficult. The desire for eGPUs is one area where I feel people are misguided. The products would require both high margins and minimum sales volumes to be viable, especially with potential firmware tweaks and things required to deal with it over an external cable. It would need to be possible to plug one in when the machine is running or recognize the unit if it's accidentally unplugged and must be plugged in again. By the time you're done with it, it would be $600 for a mid range gpu. I don't think Mac users alone would carry that. I could definitely see things headed toward integrated. Right now NVidia is extremely reliant on volume sales to overcome chip fabrication costs on their Quadros, Teslas, and high end gaming cards. They've started to cut out development partners, but they're still having trouble.
Quote:
Disappointed is putting it mildly. I've been waiting at least five years to see Apple rationalize their desktop lineup. In contrast to their laptops the desktops are all around terrible offerings.
Yep. The hilarious thing is that the Mac Pro was never really a Pro machine in my estimation. At least not since it was no longer the machine bleeding edge tech was introduced on.
There are a lot of points where I'm confused by their offerings. The Mac Pro is sufficient in a lot of ways. Where I think it's somewhat messed up is on the low end. They employ a lot of cost cutting measures such as the daughterboard design, so that they can use a single backplane type without absorbing the cost of a dual cpu chipset on the single model. The external case design is ancient. Those costs were likely recovered long ago. If it's languishing on volume early in a product cycle, an issue is price on their single configurations, which would carry any kind of volume for the line.
Comments
Hi Phil,
My mid-2010 8GB quad-core i7 iMac compiled Blender (3D animation app) for OS X/Cocoa and associated libs in around an hour using the -j8 switch passed to make. I don't know how the latest Mini compares hardware-wise othe than having a different GPU setup, but this might give you a data point. The source was from Git-hub, and the tools were darwinports and X-code 4.x. Hope that helps.
Back then yes, though as time goes on it will vary but most likely point towards no. The mini keeps taking big strides.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Makes me wonder if I ever needed a Mac Pro in order to run Aperture. I don't even photoshop my photos, just don't like to wait on my computer to get anything done; I like instant results. But if compiling on a Mini is feasible I will definitely reconsider when my MP dies.
The video card might be the least of my worries, I don't play games so don't need below zero ms response time. Just SSD, a 30" screen.
The biggest achilles heel for me at this point is the gpu. That's an area of heavy requirement growth, as it allows for different workflows. Consider animation where even companies with large workstations available still use low or medium resolution meshes without full textures as proxy rigs to drive the real thing. Games will still use all available gpu power. There are certainly use cases where it's not really appropriate yet. If the intel gpus got to a point of good enough, upgrading every year with a mini could become a viable strategy for a wider range of workflows. You can generally reuse ram through a tick/tock cycle without much of a performance penalty. The speculation over eGPUs and node based hardware from some people on here still shows a lack of comprehension. It's an expensive feature for the lower end machines, and on the higher end machines it would combine a somewhat constrained system of throughput with an expensive base solution. If someone is spending the money on a 27" imac, they might be disappointed by the improvement offered by an external gpu setup. The 680MX still falls significantly short of anything midrange and above when it comes to desktop variants of the same generation, yet you're still paying for that. Adding even a GTX 670 with the cost of the housing throttled over a x4 connection may not produce enough of a gain to be worthwhile. LGA1155 is also fairly lane constrained, so I'm not sure whether you really receive a full 16 lanes of bandwidth.
The other thing on gpus is I have to wonder how AMD and NVidia will hold up. I know NVidia tries to deal with high development costs via their high volume products. The onward march of integrated graphics may break that business model, even if NVidia cuts out their graphics card manufacturing partners.
Welp, if my MP dies or becomes 'too slow' I will take a peek at a Mini, in that case. Maybe need to bring my .aplibrary to the store, but I think they'll allow it (if I first tell them I'm looking for a Mac Pro - lol)
The machines of 2015 will still have to be judged based on the user and software needs of the time. The need for a MacPro will be no less then than now, software needs and user leveraging continues to increase at a steady rate. Think about the days of Dos or even the Mac Plus, people would go gaga over the newest processor leaks fully believing that that would be the ultimate machine.
Personally I don't think the software industry has even gotten started yet. I foresee a day when something like the Siri AI is built into every Mac OS for one. Well actually far more advanced that today's Siri. Think about true AI built into things like Pages that corrects your documents and actually works with you to produce a document. The engineer in me imagines far more advanced CAD/CAM software that works in realtime. There is just so much than can be done or done better with more powerful hardware I just don't see the need for the Pro ever going away.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
The engineer in me imagines far more advanced CAD/CAM software that works in realtime. There is just so much than can be done or done better with more powerful hardware I just don't see the need for the Pro ever going away.
This is the kind of thing I've mentioned before. What we do on our machines is heavily influenced by the level of technology at the time where big strides tend to change the way we use software rather than just allow it to run faster. That's a big reason I continually see OpenCL implemented in various programs. It brings a lot of tedious functions to real time.
Quote:
The need for a MacPro will be no less then than now, software needs and user leveraging continues to increase at a steady rate.
That has been a problem for the mac pro. It hasn't maintained steady alignment with some of its past popular markets. Assuming a static price target, the gains haven't always been there on an annual basis. Apple would need to find ways to grab new customers, presumably from Windows or Linux (yes Linux ) systems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
If one has been around long enough you can see how more powerful hardware has dramatically changed what software is capable of. Just take a look at CAD, the industry started out with real clunky 2D, progressed to 3D, then to solid modeling and now we are starting to see systems model whole mechanisms. All of this on the desktop. Each step has changed industry a bit. The biggest change being making such capability available to the designer at his desk and reducing the need for that ivory tower of limited access.
Yeah the goalposts move. With computing it's not just a matter of speed but one of what works at the time. Some of that software can still place a pretty extreme load on gpus with some of the shaders used to check continuity.
Quote:
In some cases that has been Intel fault and in other Apples. The static price target is perhaps Apples biggest mistake with the Pro. The introductory machine is a terrible value now and that rests squarely on Apples shoulders. In a way the Mac Pro is like a fish that has been beached. It has life to flop around a bit but it really needs to get back to its native environment. Like the water, that supports many fish, Apple needs a rational school of Mac Pros to cover the gamut of user needs. Each member of that school needs to support the other members to keep the school itself solid.
The single cpu machine was considered a poor value in 2009, and its evolution since then has obviously been minimal. Workstations Windows side are slightly similar on the gpu end, as you don't have a constant influx of new workstation gpus. Kepler options are just starting to trickle out, and the Quadro 4000 from 2010 or so is still sold today. Typically you can get into a minimum of a 6 core machine with a very nice gpu Windows side for the cost of the one remaining Nehalem configuration. It tapers off somewhat toward the higher end, as dual package stations include higher costs and margins. The raw benchmarks don't really tell everything. Sandy Bridge E gained some new instruction sets, support for SATA III, and some moderate gains even if software doesn't leverage the new instruction sets. With the possible inclusion of usb3 (even without native support), and a current generation gpu, it would have breathed some amount of life into the line. I don't know how intel is going to handle the continued partial perceived misalignment on chip architectures. They can't skip Ivy. Currently their multi processor server products are stuck on Westmere. They produce EX variants on die shrink years, and they wouldn't push a high margin product like that out even further.
They may try to play catch up later, but I don't know exactly what they'll do from that point on.
What was required a few years ago, and what is required today are different animals. Today's Mac Mini is more powerful that the early PowerMacs, and the first Mac Pro. Unless the requirements for compiling have risen terrifically, a Mini should be fine. Same thing is true for Aperture. And unless you're working on multi 100 meg files in Photoshop with lots do layers and live compositing, it should work fine there as well with 16GB RAM.
I am kind of disappointed about the slight decrease in graphics base MHz but I think that is because I don't understand Haswell even with the Anandtech article and it'll end up being far better for a reason.
Originally Posted by Winter
I am kind of disappointed about the slight decrease in graphics base MHz…
If anything it's the same thing that happened to processors: clock speed became next to meaningless in the face of cores.
This is very true but realize that software isn't standing still. You really can't predict what tomorrows hot software product will require hardware wise. Well here I have to disagree just a bit. Some people are just more demanding than others and would expect the additional performance more cores could bring. There is no doubt that a Mini can be serviceable with Aperture but many would laugh at the idea of any computer used for photographic work to come without a discrete GPU. The day may come when a discrete GPU might be dismissed as no longer needed but today many Pros would argue we are far from that day.
Don't misunderstand me I'd be the first to look for a new machine with four or more cores as I know cores suit my usage patterns well. However if I have a choice between four cores running at 1.2gHZ and four cores running at 3.2GHz I'm going with the 3.2GHz machine all other things being equal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
There is no doubt that a Mini can be serviceable with Aperture but many would laugh at the idea of any computer used for photographic work to come without a discrete GPU. The day may come when a discrete GPU might be dismissed as no longer needed but today many Pros would argue we are far from that day.
This is not really true. Dealing with 2D raster images isn't a problem for any modern gpu. Most of them don't scale that well with OpenGL. OpenCL is typically applied to a limited number of functions. Apple and Adobe have both placed it where they can, but a mini with a nice display attached could be arguably superior to an imac there. The mini gets a single thunderbolt port, but usb3 storage options can take care of that. The gpu matters a lot more when you're dealing with 3D stuff such as reprojecting images or stitching spherical images. Most of the 2D image editors have really fallen behind there. With things like Creative Suite, their requirements are heavily based around video ram more and OpenGL version. Intel should be caught up in that regard by the next revision. If it ships with decent drivers, it would satisfy a lot of professionals in that area. In fact the biggest bottleneck would probably become ram. Creative Suite is extremely ram hungry, especially when dealing with higher bit depths in either stills or footage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I may try to hold for a Haswell Mini myself. The hope being that the GPUs are a bit less than total crap in the chip. As it is though a four core machine with lots of RAM should do pretty good these days, it is just the lack of respectable 3D that has me concerned about the current Minis.
As much as I don't consider the mini a great value, it is slowly becoming a better option for a wider range of workloads. That said I'm still disappointed in Apple's workstation offerings. On Windows a decent 6 core (E5-1650) Sandy Bridge E model with SATA III, usb3, and a mid range workstation card like a Quadro 4000 can be found around the price of the base mac pro. I checked several brands. It's mainly when you go to the specialty vendors and "purpose built" hardware that it gets really expensive.
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Originally Posted by wizard69
True to an extent but some filter do get GPU acceleration. In any event I don't like the idea of professionals as only photographers so in that regard I probably shouldn't have even used photographers as an example. Professionals by definition is a broader group of people, in that context more professionals still have rational need for a GPU.
I agree there. If it was Windows I'd just suggest they go for a nice i7, lots of ram, and invest in a quality display to minimize viewing headaches. I extrapolated to graphic designers and light video editing there. A good gpu is ideal. It's just the functions are limited enough to where a mini + nice external display could be an alternative to something like a 27" imac. If haswell/broadwell improve upon this, it could be quite viable for many media based workflows. There's a big jump in price if you outgrow such a machine.
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This I know, I still have a hard time explaining to people how specific GPU computation is. GPUs in the sense of computation have to fit the problem at hand otherwise there is little benefit.
OpenCL 1.2 and the latest CUDA implementations do support wider ranges of API calls. It'll just take time. Developers typically don't go back and rewrite old workable code most of the time. They're likely to start with the newest features. Note how Adobe went with CUDA on their After Effects raytracer. They've been starting to go toward OpenCL, but I don't think it was ready when they started development.
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It isn't just 3D, you benefit from a GPU whenever it is faster than integrated.
It is certainly something of mixed value. The frustration is that Apple could make it into a far more interesting machine.
I'm probably going in circles here, but with Apple their solutions tend to work extremely well if your requirements are fairly generic. Once you go a bit outside of their design paradigm, things become more difficult. The desire for eGPUs is one area where I feel people are misguided. The products would require both high margins and minimum sales volumes to be viable, especially with potential firmware tweaks and things required to deal with it over an external cable. It would need to be possible to plug one in when the machine is running or recognize the unit if it's accidentally unplugged and must be plugged in again. By the time you're done with it, it would be $600 for a mid range gpu. I don't think Mac users alone would carry that. I could definitely see things headed toward integrated. Right now NVidia is extremely reliant on volume sales to overcome chip fabrication costs on their Quadros, Teslas, and high end gaming cards. They've started to cut out development partners, but they're still having trouble.
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Disappointed is putting it mildly. I've been waiting at least five years to see Apple rationalize their desktop lineup. In contrast to their laptops the desktops are all around terrible offerings.
Yep. The hilarious thing is that the Mac Pro was never really a Pro machine in my estimation. At least not since it was no longer the machine bleeding edge tech was introduced on.
There are a lot of points where I'm confused by their offerings. The Mac Pro is sufficient in a lot of ways. Where I think it's somewhat messed up is on the low end. They employ a lot of cost cutting measures such as the daughterboard design, so that they can use a single backplane type without absorbing the cost of a dual cpu chipset on the single model. The external case design is ancient. Those costs were likely recovered long ago. If it's languishing on volume early in a product cycle, an issue is price on their single configurations, which would carry any kind of volume for the line.