One of our sources that we've relied on for over two decades has a very computationally-intensive task that can easily be broken up into sub-tasks and performed with GPU assistance. We really can't delve into the specifics of the application or the calculation, but the need for it has remained static over the years. And, the more timely the result, the better.
At the beginning of our relationship before the turn of the century, the calculation took three days to perform. Even as recently as 2016, the same task would take one full day.
On the Mac Pro 2019, on Sunday night, it took just a hair under four minutes using the 24-core Mac Pro configuration with a single Vega II Duo card, and the Afterburner.
The speed improvements go beyond just custom software. As a general rule, on the eight-core Mac Pro, we're seeing video encode times half of what they are on a high-end i9 MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro hit about 96 percent total CPU utilization.
The same encode on the 24-core model halves the shorter time again with about 80% total CPU utilization -- leaving power for other tasks at the same time without impacting encoding times. It's the early days of our testing, but we also see 10-bit 8K video processing faster than real-time.
I myself am waiting to see what Apple does with the 2020 iMac. I'm hoping for a major design change and going for serious CPU cores. It's time. My understanding is that the current 5K iMac exceeds the performance of the (now-aging) iMac Pro.
The iMac exceeded the single core performance of the iMac Pro in 2018 let alone 2019. Otherwise, the iMac Pro is a much better computer if you can afford the SSD storage. It’s a very easy decision imo to get a lightly upgraded iMac Pro over a highly optioned iMac 27.
The question becomes more difficult between a Comet Lake iMac and a Xeon W-2200 series iMac Pro though.
Yeah, I’m awaiting for a new ID for the iMac 27 too, but it may bleed into Summer or Fall as those Intel 10nm desktop chips are going to trickle in pretty slowly. I’m hoping it means it will be an iMac 32”, thinner, quieter, a couple of USB ports in the front or on the keyboard. I’m a little crazy and want an optical drive, but no way that’s coming back. A keyboard with a built-in hub would awesome though. Otherwise it has to a Mac mini for me.
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.
What a bullshit post. There are hundreds of design and engineering innovations in the Mac Pro, from the thermal system to the MPX module. There's a reason that the mashine smokes pretty much everything else out there performance wise, while also being quieter and better looking. Stop attempting to desperately strip Apple from all credit by being intellectually dishonest.
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.
This is a stunning machine.. I will admire it from afar. There is no way I could ever justify it.
I myself am waiting to see what Apple does with the 2020 iMac. I'm hoping for a major design change and going for serious CPU cores. It's time. My understanding is that the current 5K iMac exceeds the performance of the (now-aging) iMac Pro.
Crossing fingers. My 2015 iMac is beginning to slow me down.
" I myself am waiting to see what Apple does with the 2020 iMac."
Same here. I would love to see a much improved cooling system and speaker system.
With all the Apple TV+ original shows, series, and movies (especially the SciFi stuff) in the works Apple has quite the impetus to develop their own high performance 3D graphics toolkit.
I foresee Final Cut Pro X like 3D tool chain being developed for internal projects with release for external use over time.
Renders, Modelers and a. line of Apple designed GPU hardware to support it all as very likely.
Apple doesn't make these shows, they're made by other studios and Apple buys the rights to them. I think they recently added *A* studio for some internal productions but it's not like they're filming/editing and doing post on episodes of All for Mankind themselves.
The tools you describe already exist and run on Macs, and in most cases are being updated to use Metal 2 already by their developers.
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.
As I already clarified, Nvidia is dropping Mac support for their CUDA Toolkit. I think we either see Nvidia buy in on Metal or we see no drivers at all going forward. We'll see.
Photoshop using only 10 cores. Wow, but yes, shouldn't be a surprise. It probably still has functions that utilize only one core. It never supported the dual graphic cards of the Mac Pro 2013 either. Adobe is a prime example of a company that completely has lost touch with their users. I would like to see more critical testing of Adobe software in conjunction with the new Mac Pro.
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.
Who is blaming Apple? Please indicate where I laid blame at anyone's feet; I said that credit for the speed is largely due to the chipsets involved; yes Metal helps, but without good hardware to run the software on, you only have 1 oar in the water. Then there is this little gem: " If you don’t work with Apple ProRes or ProRes RAW video codecs, it’s not worth purchasing — particularly as it costs $2,000.". Apple made a ASIC board, this is all fine and good; but unless you are using Apple specific codecs, it doesn't do much of anything.
Big heatsinks and fans are nice, so is a dependable power supply. But the heavy lifting is not being done by Apple; it's being done by some very high performance IC's.
How hot does this thing run? I refer to the standard model AI has on loan. No Mac Pros last week at the stores... I intend to buy one but want to see it before I buy it online (Military and Veteran store gives a 10% discount, online only).
I was looking at the service stuff online and they suggest 10 minutes of cool down before swapping memory, for example.
I have owned Power Mac G4s, G5s and the Intel Mac Pros and they all were to some extent space heaters under the desk, but I do not remember being told to wait 10 minutes to swap cards or memory.
Just wondering how hot these things are running compared to the Cheesegrater Mac Pros.
“ 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.
The next time you eat a good food at a restaurant, don't credit the Chef...Thank the guy who made the salt, pepper, the ingredients...
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.
What a bullshit post. There are hundreds of design and engineering innovations in the Mac Pro, from the thermal system to the MPX module. There's a reason that the mashine smokes pretty much everything else out there performance wise, while also being quieter and better looking. Stop attempting to desperately strip Apple from all credit by being intellectually dishonest.
How hot does this thing run? I refer to the standard model AI has on loan. No Mac Pros last week at the stores... I intend to buy one but want to see it before I buy it online (Military and Veteran store gives a 10% discount, online only).
I was looking at the service stuff online and they suggest 10 minutes of cool down before swapping memory, for example.
I have owned Power Mac G4s, G5s and the Intel Mac Pros and they all were to some extent space heaters under the desk, but I do not remember being told to wait 10 minutes to swap cards or memory.
Just wondering how hot these things are running compared to the Cheesegrater Mac Pros.
That 10-minute advice has always been in play, and longer for the oldest Mac Pros. 30 minutes was the advice for the 1,1 through 3,1.
We have a lot of work to do yet, but there isn't anything that stands out in regards to how hot the machine gets versus the older models.
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.
Who is blaming Apple? Please indicate where I laid blame at anyone's feet; I said that credit for the speed is largely due to the chipsets involved; yes Metal helps, but without good hardware to run the software on, you only have 1 oar in the water. Then there is this little gem: " If you don’t work with Apple ProRes or ProRes RAW video codecs, it’s not worth purchasing — particularly as it costs $2,000.". Apple made a ASIC board, this is all fine and good; but unless you are using Apple specific codecs, it doesn't do much of anything.
Big heatsinks and fans are nice, so is a dependable power supply. But the heavy lifting is not being done by Apple; it's being done by some very high performance IC's.
Please cite where I said you were blaming Apple for the 2 years since the iMac Pro? Clearly, I said I see it on the forums. There are hundreds of users on these forums. And yes, some of them are faulting Apple for there being no updates to the 2017 iMP.
Again, your post is at odds with reality — the AB card is built for speed, for a major set of workstation users expected to use this MB. To say “But not everyone will!” is besides the point. And then there is thermal management, which most certainly is a bottleneck in anybody’s use case, and is well designed and implemented here. As well as a design that supports more RAM than any other workstation I’ve heard of. And, of course, the Metal framework for its GPU.
So, again, to claim there are no major accomplishments here by Apple is just silly nonsense.
After decades of gray and white, the black mouse and cables seem like a significant design departure, and a break from the reign of Ive. Of course lots of people don’t care about these details, and I can see an argument for their position, but I hope the Ive design aesthetic is generally maintained, at least until Apple comes up with something better. I know it’s illogical, but even after all this time, I think the gray and white can still feel futuristic in a way that black cables and peripherals never will.
I disagree, I think the black and silver mouse and keyboards are a homage to the Black Apple Pro Keyboard and Black Apple Pro Optical Mouse from the Powermac G4 that were Black and Clear White and the iMac keyboard was White and Clear White.
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The question becomes more difficult between a Comet Lake iMac and a Xeon W-2200 series iMac Pro though.
Yeah, I’m awaiting for a new ID for the iMac 27 too, but it may bleed into Summer or Fall as those Intel 10nm desktop chips are going to trickle in pretty slowly. I’m hoping it means it will be an iMac 32”, thinner, quieter, a couple of USB ports in the front or on the keyboard. I’m a little crazy and want an optical drive, but no way that’s coming back. A keyboard with a built-in hub would awesome though. Otherwise it has to a Mac mini for me.
What a bullshit post. There are hundreds of design and engineering innovations in the Mac Pro, from the thermal system to the MPX module. There's a reason that the mashine smokes pretty much everything else out there performance wise, while also being quieter and better looking. Stop attempting to desperately strip Apple from all credit by being intellectually dishonest.
Same here. I would love to see a much improved cooling system and speaker system.
The tools you describe already exist and run on Macs, and in most cases are being updated to use Metal 2 already by their developers.
As I already clarified, Nvidia is dropping Mac support for their CUDA Toolkit. I think we either see Nvidia buy in on Metal or we see no drivers at all going forward. We'll see.
No Mac Pros last week at the stores... I intend to buy one but want to see it before I buy it online (Military and Veteran store gives a 10% discount, online only).
I was looking at the service stuff online and they suggest 10 minutes of cool down before swapping memory, for example.
I have owned Power Mac G4s, G5s and the Intel Mac Pros and they all were to some extent space heaters under the desk, but I do not remember being told to wait 10 minutes to swap cards or memory.
Just wondering how hot these things are running compared to the Cheesegrater Mac Pros.
We have a lot of work to do yet, but there isn't anything that stands out in regards to how hot the machine gets versus the older models.
Something about ignoring giant suggestions to write in Xcode...
Again, your post is at odds with reality — the AB card is built for speed, for a major set of workstation users expected to use this MB. To say “But not everyone will!” is besides the point. And then there is thermal management, which most certainly is a bottleneck in anybody’s use case, and is well designed and implemented here. As well as a design that supports more RAM than any other workstation I’ve heard of. And, of course, the Metal framework for its GPU.
So, again, to claim there are no major accomplishments here by Apple is just silly nonsense.