Render Options for New MacPro?
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Funny that...
..my girlfriend and I had a three hour conversation about graphics cards last night and I came to the same conclusion. The problem is, I am totally entrenched in the Mac world. The studio I do most of my freelancing for is Mac based and all the software I own is Mac centric.
I don't really mind spending the dough, but it is just very irritating that Apple chose the GPU platform that no one in the 3D world uses. Fine if you are debayering RED dragon footage in realtime, but total pants for rendering 3D.
I guess I am stuck with an iMac... I might build renderbox to use as a gaming rig/renderer.
This is a very good article that comes to the conclusion that the iMac is pretty much on par...
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Mac ARE expensive but you get what you pay for, quality and ease of use etc.
I have bought my last two Macs from the Apple Refurb site. The Apple Canada site is here,
http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?cid=jmDon't see a refurbed Pro there, probably too early. Noticed a nice Refurbished 27-inch iMac 3.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 @ $3,049
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Hey Mike
I bought my Thunderbolt monitors from Apple Refurbished (had to send one back because it had fluff behind the screen) and have my eye firmly on an almost top spec 27"er
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/G0PG6LL/A/refurbished-27-inch-imac-35ghz-quad-core-Intel-Core-i7
The only thing it doesn't have is the 4GB graphics card... but no bugger can tell me if having more VRAM will help with SU and any SU render engine that I happen to use (Maxwell at the moment but looking at the greener grass of V-Ray)
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@numerobis said:
But the price... The problem is, that you have to pay for the two FirePro cards - if you need them or not.
And yes, no nvidia card...But i think the positive thing about Apple using AMD is that finally OpenCL gets a push - not sure if it is Apple related but the latest AMD cards are very close to the top nvidia cards in v-ray RT.
Hang about... are you telling me that V-Ray RT can use the ATI cards in the new MacPro?
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I can't actually believe how small the new mac pro is!
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@unknownuser said:
that a top spec iMac is better for SketchUp and SU based rendering engines than a MacPro
I don't know how you came to this conclusion but CPU wise you can clearly get more power from the trashcan than from an iMac. The Mac Pro starts where the iMac ends, with an i7 (iMac i7 4770K 3,5GHz / 3,9GHz single core turbo). The smallest Mac Pro comes with an quad core Xeon (Xeon E5-1620 v2) with 3.7GHz (3.9GHz) The only problem i see is the money...
I think the best compromise between single core (Sketchup etc.) and multi core performance (rendering) is the 8-core with 3.9GHz turbo (Xeon E5-1680 v2) - same single core speed as the 6-core (Xeon E5-1650 v2), but 8x3.4GHz=27.2GHz combined instead of 6x3.6GHz=21.6GHz (both hyperthreaded).
http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/buy-mac/mac-pro?product=MD878LL/A%26amp;step=config
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5-1xxx_v2_.28uniprocessor.29
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/4But the price... The problem is, that you have to pay for the two FirePro cards - if you need them or not.
And yes, no nvidia card...But i think the positive thing about Apple using AMD is that finally OpenCL gets a push - not sure if it is Apple related but the latest AMD cards are very close to the top nvidia cards in v-ray RT.
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As an design office we've switched entirely to pc's. This is because of the and "stability". They say Macs don't have hang-ups or hardware issues? Well don't come to me with that...I've also been a Mac user since 25 years, but they are so much focusing on what the main stream wants. And then there's the flexibility of hardware, we change hardware now and then and gives us the opportunity to test setups with rendering...and that changes things! We saw that our "old" MacPro's(dual Xeon, don't get me wrong) were sooooo much slower then our new pc's(single core, but with two GTX780i's)...it really safes us hours! And, I actually must say I prefer Windows8 then OSX....sorry...So coming back to your question; The new MacPro is a beast and not even that expensive, but I would spent my money on a pc and get used to Windows...and actually there isn't so much difference...
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@mike lucey said:
Mac ARE expensive but you get what you pay for, quality and ease of use etc.
By quality, what do you mean? Quality of the outer shell? All the other components you'll find in a PC.
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These articles may help you make an informed decision:
Architosh Reviews:
Feb 17, 2014 - What Does Apple Mean by Pro? A View from a 3D pro.
Feb 17, 2014 - Mac Pro – A Buyer’s Guide Through the Best Test Results
Ars Technica Reviews:
Dec 20 2013 - You can spend $9,599 on a Mac Pro, but should you?
June 12 2013 - A critical look at the new Mac Pro
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@unknownuser said:
I love Apple and own all the mobile devices, an iMac and several Mac Pros for my home, but in the pipeline for my work…there isn’t one Mac. It can’t run Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Fume FX, or CUDA so I’m still waiting. I hope that in the future Apple will remedy this situation so that a Mac Pro can be found everywhere without any limitations. —- AKIKO ASHLEY
That pretty much sums it up for me. It would be a no-brainer if the thing had even moderately good Nvidia cards in it. It's so frustrating that Apple (and almost everyone else) views 'Pro' consumers as video editors. I'm a pro; I make a living sitting in front of many many pixels creating stuff, stuff that actually gets built into real things.
The conclusion my better half (who's machine would shame anyone* on here) and I came to is that I buy another Retina Macbook Pro and build a monster powerful PC to use as a render slave.
*I dare you step up to her hardware
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