[rdr09]

This is the cpu they are using that they are charging twice as much and it is barely faster than a 800$ one.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819118010

Apple prolly got them when intel was selling them twice as much and now they are passing the buck to the dupedsumers.

 

[skupples]

like folks designing pixar movies, tier?

 

[SwitchFX]

A render box will not replace a local high end workstation. Especially when you need hundreds of people working on a movie. A quadro server will also cost a lot more. The DGX-1 cost 120K$. Customized ones will go for 400K$.

And the Z8 will cost more, so I have no idea what you are talking about. The fully spec 28 core z8 g4 similar to the fully spec mac pro will reach 65K$. And that is not even its final form, as it has less memory and no special card.
If you add 56 cores into the mix, the Z8 will cost 70K$. And that is down from 88K$ which is their original price.

Apple's mac pro is actually in the same range as OEM and other branded high end workstations. People just have no idea the actual prices and compare them to their 2000$ desktops.

You're assuming a studio pays list price when they order several of these at once. Furthermore, I wasn't comparing the Z8 to the Mac Pro. I was stating the Z8 offers capacity for 2 processors. The Afterburner card is an fpga specific to prores codecs. ProRes is an Apple codec. And as far as I know, the card is only utilized when using Final Cut Pro X as of this post. A third party like Adobe or BMS would need to work with Apple to align their software with the card so that their software may utilize the card's functionality when working with ProRes codec video.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210748

DGX-1 is for AI. How would a film studio leverage a cluster made for deep learning? I'm very curious. The RTX render server works in conjunction with a local workstation and allows many to connect to it. You don't send video off to it. Render farms exist for a reason.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro-servers/rtx/

The Z8 may cost more, but it's certainly more usable and upgradeable without Apple's nonsense. And anyone who's relied on HP for high end business support knows they have same day or less repair or component swap. The only reason to go with the Mac Pro is if you're heavily reliant on the Apple environment and or you require use of Final Cut Pro X. Meanwhile, Premier, Resolve (paid version), Media Composer, et al. are available on Windows.

No where in my post did I suggest the Mac Pro should or could be compared to a $2,000 computer setup. Don't put words in my mouth or waste my time with your silliness.

^^True.. this Mac Pro (especially the maxed out one with 1.5TB of RAM) is NOT meant for even the "prosumer." It's a professional workstation meant for professionals - animation, audio, AI, data-science, scientists etc.

The problem is, previous Mac Pros have been targeted towards the prosumer market as well - those with relatively "high" budgets who want a great system in their homes/home-office.

I feel like they should create a separate segment for just professionals and have the Mac Pro in the prosumer segment where the workstations are about $15K maxed out.

NVidia is the "leader" by one way or another in deep learning, AI and computer. Others including AMD are slowly gaining on them. Can you use these professional units from NVidia on a Mac Pro? These units can be scaled in size to a small server room or a whole building if you had the resources.

The ProSumer version of the Mac Pro is the iMac Pro.

 

[113802]

NVidia is the "leader" by one way or another in deep learning, AI and computer. Others including AMD are slowly gaining on them. Can you use these professional units from NVidia on a Mac Pro?

The ProSumer version of the Mac Pro is the iMac Pro.

Not on macOS since there aren't drivers for Mojave or Catalina. Plus nVidia announced CUDA 10.2 will be the last release for macOS. We use PlaidML framework on macOS: https://github.com/plaidml/plaidml

 

[SwitchFX]

This is the cpu they are using that they are charging twice as much and it is barely faster than a 800$ one.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819118010

Apple prolly got them when intel was selling them twice as much and now they are passing the buck to the dupedsumers.

Might be. Probably an Apple specific SKU that you won't find listed anywhere.

I think AMD really dropped the ball with TR and limiting it to 256 GB of RAM, and not necessarily ECC RDIMM either. Never mind limiting it to 4ch instead of going full 8ch DDR4. I suspect they'll drop their new TR3 socket after TR4 for a newer pin out to support everything new. Had they done those two things, along with more PCIe lanes, when designing the new socket and chipset, I suspect they would have had more people flock to their hardware if they were OS agnostic.

Not on macOS since there aren't drivers for Mojave or Catalina. Plus nVidia announced CUDA 10.2 will be the last release for macOS. We use PlaidML framework on macOS: https://github.com/plaidml/plaidml

That's what I thought. The other user's posts implied Apple and NVidia worked on to allow that in the name of science but not consumer hardware and drivers. How's the performance of that at scale? NVidia's hardware use restrictions aren't great for the scientific community but everyone's gotta make a buck... even NVidia.

 

[Kpjoslee]

I think AMD really dropped the ball with TR and limiting it to 256 GB of RAM, and not necessarily ECC RDIMM either. Never mind limiting it to 4ch instead of going full 8ch DDR4. I suspect they'll drop their new TR3 socket after TR4 for a newer pin out to support everything new. Had they done those two things, along with more PCIe lanes, when designing the new socket and chipset, I suspect they would have had more people flock to their hardware if they were OS agnostic.

AMD probably doesn't want Threadripper cannibalizing potential EPYC sales.

 

[SwitchFX]

AMD probably doesn't want Threadripper cannibalizing potential EPYC sales.

Most of the 2nd gen Epyc lineup with the 7302 and lower are 16c and under $1,000. Epyc itself has lower base clocks and boost blocks. Your theory makes sense if it weren't that software still likes high core count and high clock speeds. Besides, if the RAM cutoff were 1 TB then you're not cutting into Epyc sales as a result of the aforementioned, or the fact that Epyc can address 4 TB on each socket.

TR is fairly cheap going by core count in the above model compared to Epyc. There's benefits to more memory channels as well as more PCIe lanes. If you don't offer it up for people who aren't going to drop $5-7K on an Epyc, then you're giving Intel your potential sales with their lower end Xeons, even if their product is bunk at this point. Granted, even a 2P 8280 setup is wasted money at this point.

Not trying to be rude. Just expressing frustration. Epyc isn't for me. TR makes sense for my use case and I can make do with what's been given but I'm going to wait until the next generation of processors from AMD coming in the summer. The reworked cache structure should give a boost to the later Threadripper 4 and I can purchase then in confidence. It being a new socket, I can pick up a 24 core then and upgrade the year after if I need more juice, but I doubt it.

Don't know how old you or anyone is here, but these days AMD makes it feel like the sweet spot in the 90s and 2000s when there was new stuff coming out all the time. Granted it's AMD running the show nowadays and not Intel. For older folks such as myself, it's a special time to be alive.

 

[guttheslayer]

does it look like a cheese grater to anyone else?

For that price its a very bad cheese grater... You can buy one at the supermarket for 1/10000 the price and it will perform the job better.


https://sea.pcmag.com/news/35437/can-the-new-mac-pro-actually-shred-cheese-ifixit-found-out

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I'll ask santa for two please

 

[Defoler]

You're assuming a studio pays list price when they order several of these at once. Furthermore, I wasn't comparing the Z8 to the Mac Pro. I was stating the Z8 offers capacity for 2 processors. The Afterburner card is an fpga specific to prores codecs. ProRes is an Apple codec. And as far as I know, the card is only utilized when using Final Cut Pro X as of this post. A third party like Adobe or BMS would need to work with Apple to align their software with the card so that their software may utilize the card's functionality when working with ProRes codec video.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210748

DGX-1 is for AI. How would a film studio leverage a cluster made for deep learning? I'm very curious. The RTX render server works in conjunction with a local workstation and allows many to connect to it. You don't send video off to it. Render farms exist for a reason.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro-servers/rtx/

The Z8 may cost more, but it's certainly more usable and upgradeable without Apple's nonsense. And anyone who's relied on HP for high end business support knows they have same day or less repair or component swap. The only reason to go with the Mac Pro is if you're heavily reliant on the Apple environment and or you require use of Final Cut Pro X. Meanwhile, Premier, Resolve (paid version), Media Composer, et al. are available on Windows.

No where in my post did I suggest the Mac Pro should or could be compared to a $2,000 computer setup. Don't put words in my mouth or waste my time with your silliness.



NVidia is the "leader" by one way or another in deep learning, AI and computer. Others including AMD are slowly gaining on them. Can you use these professional units from NVidia on a Mac Pro? These units can be scaled in size to a small server room or a whole building if you had the resources.

The ProSumer version of the Mac Pro is the iMac Pro.

You did compare it to the Z8 else you wouldn't mention the z8. Also you attacked apple for the price but neglected to mention the price of the z8, let alone with a 56 core one.
Why is that? Why did you left out the price?
And if you claim that a studio won't pay the full price, but you make it sound like they will for the mac pro for some reason. Why is that?

And what claim the Z8 is more upgradeable, but is it? Will a studio actually upgrade them or just buy new ones? And why it is more upgradeable when its internals cost more than apple ones? How is that making any sense?
And how do you know it will cost less to repair? In what way? If they will have a service repair along with ordering the machines, just like they will do with apple, who cares about repair cost? Broken, send it back to apple for repair/replace.

And you do know there are other programs than final pro x right? And some people prefer the apple eco system more than windows. Especially since on top of their workstations, they won't need to pay ridiculous windows enterprise licensing.

And the afterburner is not only utilized in final cut. Apple offer that API to use it, and adobe stated that it will be supported, autocad, maya and a few more are also on their way to support it. Red, pixelmator, as well. It will not just boost apple's codecs, but others as well.

And DGX-1 is more than you think. Nvidia released OptiX 5.0 to work on rendering on the DGX-1. They are pushing that box anywhere they can.

You make a long of assumptions on one side, but you attack the other based on similar assumptions. Feels overly hypocritical to me.

 

[Punjab]

...and it will perform the job better.

I don't think there's any science to support that.

With regard to the Mac Pro. What's all the fuss about? You can afford it or you can't. I don't see how this changes anything for anyone.

 

[bmgjet]

Its not too bad value. You got to look at the price it costs over its life cycle.
Your only paying about 40K per year.

 

[andrews2547]

I see people are still complaining about the price of these.


The top-end $50K model isn't made for consumers or prosumers. It's made for multi-million/billion dollar corporations that can bulk buy these without batting an eye. Those corporations aren't going to get custom built Windows machines either. While that is cheaper for the parts, obviously, it's actually going to end up costing way more because they'd have to hire people to assemble, test and maintain them. A similarly spec'd Windows based workstation like the Mac Pro cost roughly the same as the Mac Pro, usually around 5% cheaper. The Mac Pro isn't and never has been a consumer product. Maybe prosumer if you want to include the base model version but even then prosumers are better off just buying an iMac which does the same thing but a bit slower for half the cost.

Its not too bad value. You got to look at the price it costs over its life cycle.
Your only paying about 40K per year.

Haha yes, because they're obsolete in a little over a year xD


That's definitely something Apple does xD


I can't even install Mac OS 10.15 on a Mac released before 2009 xD

 

[113802]

I see people are still complaining about the price of these.


The top-end $50K model isn't made for consumers or prosumers. It's made for multi-million/billion dollar corporations that can bulk buy these without batting an eye. Those corporations aren't going to get custom built Windows machines either. While that is cheaper for the parts, obviously, it's actually going to end up costing way more because they'd have to hire people to assemble, test and maintain them. A similarly spec'd Windows based workstation like the Mac Pro cost roughly the same as the Mac Pro, usually around 5% cheaper. The Mac Pro isn't and never has been a consumer product. Maybe prosumer if you want to include the base model version but even then prosumers are better off just buying an iMac which does the same thing but a bit slower for half the cost.





Haha yes, because they're obsolete in a little over a year xD


That's definitely something Apple does xD


I can't even install Mac OS 10.15 on a Mac released before 2009 xD

We buy assembled workstations from Titan Computers. There are other options like Thinkmate, Supermicro, System76 and Lambda Labs. They're cheaper than this Mac Pro with better specifications especially now that Epyc Rome workstations are available. Only reason to purchase this would be for Final Cut Pro and the limited support for the Afterburner card. For Adobe Premiere Pro, nVidia Quadros are the way to go since they provide significantly higher performance than AMD GPUs.

 

[skupples]

I see people are still complaining about the price of these.


The top-end $50K model isn't made for consumers or prosumers. It's made for multi-million/billion dollar corporations that can bulk buy these without batting an eye. Those corporations aren't going to get custom built Windows machines either. While that is cheaper for the parts, obviously, it's actually going to end up costing way more because they'd have to hire people to assemble, test and maintain them. A similarly spec'd Windows based workstation like the Mac Pro cost roughly the same as the Mac Pro, usually around 5% cheaper. The Mac Pro isn't and never has been a consumer product. Maybe prosumer if you want to include the base model version but even then prosumers are better off just buying an iMac which does the same thing but a bit slower for half the cost.





Haha yes, because they're obsolete in a little over a year xD


That's definitely something Apple does xD


I can't even install Mac OS 10.15 on a Mac released before 2009 xD

you mean the guys at pixar have a direct pipeline to apple products that're vastly superior than most everything we build in this under 10K total system cost bracket? ! though it is quite easy to squander money when you're shooting for TERABYTES of R.A.M. jebus. who else actually buys them? pixar basically is apple.

 

[Defoler]

We buy assembled workstations from Titan Computers. There are other options like Thinkmate, Supermicro, System76 and Lambda Labs. They're cheaper than this Mac Pro with better specifications especially now that Epyc Rome workstations are available. Only reason to purchase this would be for Final Cut Pro and the limited support for the Afterburner card. For Adobe Premiere Pro, nVidia Quadros are the way to go since they provide significantly higher performance than AMD GPUs.

That is like comparing trucks to sport cars. Different cost, different usage.
Considering afterburner support is going into adobe, autocad, maya etc, and considering since apple moved to AMD adobe started to increase support and performance with AMD cards, those mac pros are going to be a better tool for certain jobs than cheaper alternatives. And since those companies are making movies at huge budgets and with a lot of profit, they can and will afford buying mac pros plus full support from apple.

 

[113802]

That is like comparing trucks to sport cars. Different cost, different usage.
Considering afterburner support is going into adobe, autocad, maya etc, and considering since apple moved to AMD adobe started to increase support and performance with AMD cards, those mac pros are going to be a better tool for certain jobs than cheaper alternatives. And since those companies are making movies at huge budgets and with a lot of profit, they can and will afford buying mac pros plus full support from apple.

I'm not going to argue some studios will purchase it but many have moved on to nVidia workstations. Those vendors I listed have fantastic support. A studio can buy an epyc Rome machine with more cores, storage, ram and 4 Quadro RTX 8000s for $53,000.

None of those developers you listed mentioned adding support for the Afterburner accelerator. They only talked optimizing for the Mac Pro. Aside from Final Cut Pro it looks like DaVinci Resolve can make use of it which runs very well on AMD cards.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019...react-to-the-new-mac-pro-and-pro-display-xdr/

You do realize nVidia made a massive move with their RT cores in studios? The new Star Wars Mandalorian series for example uses nVidia GPUs for their effects.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...-a-new-venture-1233239?linkId=100000007634393

 

[skupples]

mando seems low budget, now I know it is. they did everything on prosumer stuff.

jkjjkjkjk, don't kill me. it's a great show, though I really think both it and Witcher deserve 1 hour time slots.

 

[Hwgeek]

Do we know if Afterburner accelerator is also custom design by AMD for APPLE?

 

[neurotix]

I see people are still complaining about the price of these.


The top-end $50K model isn't made for consumers or prosumers. It's made for multi-million/billion dollar corporations that can bulk buy these without batting an eye. Those corporations aren't going to get custom built Windows machines either. While that is cheaper for the parts, obviously, it's actually going to end up costing way more because they'd have to hire people to assemble, test and maintain them. A similarly spec'd Windows based workstation like the Mac Pro cost roughly the same as the Mac Pro, usually around 5% cheaper. The Mac Pro isn't and never has been a consumer product. Maybe prosumer if you want to include the base model version but even then prosumers are better off just buying an iMac which does the same thing but a bit slower for half the cost.





Haha yes, because they're obsolete in a little over a year xD


That's definitely something Apple does xD


I can't even install Mac OS 10.15 on a Mac released before 2009 xD

The Mac Pro definitely was a prosumer and consumer product. I have no idea where you are getting this from.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_2.0_dp.html

Price was originally $2,999 and specs wise, this thing blew away Pentium 4 boxes when released in 2004- dual PowerPC G5s at 2GHz, which had significantly more IPC than anything Intel or AMD made.

There was also the monster quad PowerPC G5/ PowerPC 970 version that was water cooled.

Prior to that was the Power Mac G4,, G3 and before that in the late 90s, Power Macintosh models equipped with the PowerPC 604e. There was even the Quadra 840av a long time ago, https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quadra_840av.html , which retailed for $5100 in 1993, adjusted for inflation is $9,198 now. Pricey but still within the range of many people then- small businesses in the desktop publishing or video/sound rendering fields, which was the target demographic of the machine. It also came in one configuration, making all Quadra 840avs identical.

There is a long history of Apple selling power computers to "prosumers" (hate this modern buzzword) for use in video production, etc.

People don't want a giant flatpanel with a glued in laptop logic board that isn't user serviceable and overheats and throttles constantly because of terrible cooling, i.e. the iMac pro, this is what the fuss is over.

Because Apple did once make a pretty ahead of it's time, quad-processor, water cooled box with tons of expansion slots, and one of the sexiest case designs ever made (cheese grater stuff aside- the G5's case is fantastic and there is a small segment of builders who have taken dead/water cooling-failed G5 towers and built a new rig into the case.)

You are wrong, it used to be a consumer product.