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Apple - Mac Pro - Performance

Quickie as I gotta get out the door:

These are pretty much exactly the same as the existing Mac Pros, but with up to a pair of 3.0 GHz Quad Core processors.

Same graphics card options, same hard drive options, same EVERYTHING from my quick skim so far, just swapped out processors.

PERFORMANCE

Speed improvements for FCP don't look stunning...YET. UPDATE: Well, that's what I get for blogging in 3 minutes heading out the door for a meeting. The Quad Core 3.0 GHz Macs are 1.4x faster for FCP rendering than my Quad G5....but that is Quad Core TOTAL, not Quad core PER PROCESSOR - so I misread the stats - these stats appear to be for the OLDER machines (that have been shipping), they haven't released stats for the newer machines it would appear - but their phrasing is ambiguous and confusing.

BUT....that said, they DO have stats up for Maya 8.5 (the chart at top of article), and it is 2.6 times faster than my Quad Core G5. THAT is the kind of improvement that makes it worth upgrading a system for!

Photoshop CS2 stats are actually SLOWER than Quad G5 for many tests, since Photoshop CS3 (first Intel native version) stats haven't been released yet. CS3 stats will be very interesting to see, along with After Effects & Premiere Pro and H.264/MPEG-2 Adobe encoding options when the time comes.

PRICE

Dual 2.66 (with dual core processors, same as has been available) starts at $2500, dropping to 2.0 GHz shaves $300, bumping up to 3.0 GHz dual core adds $800, and the new option, the Quad Core 3.0 GHz is $4K.

AVAILABILITY

A BTO Octo-Mac the Apple Store claims will ship by April 9-11, a stock Octo-Mac 3.0 GHz config claims it'll ship by the same date - it would appear 8 cores is a BTO no matter what, and doesn't affect shipping dates if you customize from there. But shipping promptly - that's just 5-7 days from now for orders placed today.

Built the way I'd want it, an Octo-Mac would be over $5K before I put more goodies in it.

If I were building a new station, it'd cost about $7700 plus more RAM, RAID & AJA or BMD gear. Toys do add up quickly...

TAKEAWAY

Hmmph, not entirely impressed (YET):

-expensive for Quad Core processor option ($1500 more over Dual Core 2.66 processor option)
-not demonstrably cost justifying (YET) at this price point for what I want to use it for - I'll need to see the next Final Cut Studio running on it to say for sure...and we don't know yet when that'll ship. Maya stat shows promise though.
-no Blu-ray nor HD-DVD reader let alone burner
-no new graphics
-no new chassis
-no new nuthin' but the processors

The box IS fast for 8-core optimized apps, of which there are few as yet, Maya 8.5 being an excellent example. But I'd been hoping for Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD burners, better graphics card options, etc. Since Apple released this product now, 10 days before the pre-NAB press event, implies that they won't be changing the hardware for NAB - otherwise they would have just waited. By pre-announcing it, they get over the hump of "Hooray! Wait....that isn't so great...", and can just roll with the new software features as the Big Deal.

I'm going to wait for NAB to see what new software (that I'd use) can do on these. I'd been waiting for 2nd gen Mac Pros, this doesn't quite count in my book.

Color me not quite sufficiently impressed as yet - while the Maya stat is compelling, for me THE apps are going to be Adobe's CS3 suite (the video stuff and Photoshop), and Final Cut XXX, whatever they call the next version. Beyond that, everything else is gravy for my needs. Oh! And throw Redcine (Red's footage processing app) on that list as well of things I'm VERY interested to know how 4 vs 8 processors do.

My attitude may well change when I see Adobe CS3 and Final Cut Studio 6 run on this box, and we see stats for all 8 cores on some software. Oh! And for software that I care about and use, not some app not used for video tasks. One CANNOT linearly extrapolate "Well Maya 8.5 now runs 2.6 times faster on Octo-Macs than on a Quad G5, so Final Cut Studio wil RULE on these!" - it is NOT guaranteed to work that way. Some types of tasks break down for faster rendering than others, some do not. Even given that, it is up to the developers to take maximum advantage of the hardware available to them - for instance, my Quad 2.5 GHz G5 when running Compressor tops out around 220% CPU utilization, while my Dual 2.5 GHz G5 tops out around 175%. That means the Quad is running about 25% faster with twice as many processor cores available - not a hugely compelling gain. I'm HOPING that Apple will have done substantial processor optimization for the Intel chipsets with the new version, but we'll have to wait and see.

This also makes me think it'll be late summer or fall before we see a truly new, 2nd gen Mac Pro enclosure/motherboard at the SOONEST. Apple has been shipping the current enclosure, with minor modifications, for several years now. My Dual 2.0 GHz G5 looks pretty much the same at a casual glance as compared to one of these new Mac Pros, even though there are substantial internal differences.

I expect/hope to be able to revise my estimation WAY up as of two Sundays from now after the Apple press event at NAB (yes I'll be there). But for now, I'm not putting my own money down until I know what's up.

-mike

PS - my earlier "not so impressed" comments were based on a misreading of Apple's stats - I saw "Quad Core" in the Final Cut section and thought they meant Quad Core per processor, not per machine total. My bad.

UPDATE - just posted some Analysis & Tea Leaf reading on what this all means

Labels: Apple, Mac Pro