Review of New Mac Pro

[billf]

ARS has a long review of the new Mac Pro which you can read in detail here. For those who just like summaries, here's what they say:

The Good

Impossibly quiet operation, even under load.
Power consumption at both idle and full load is amazingly low.
Space-saving design is a marvel of engineering.
Dual D700 OpenCL scores are incredible.
A good upgrade over previous Mac Pros for poorly multithreaded programs.
PCIe SSD is exceptionally fast.
Thermal temperatures are safely in spec for extended workstation-style usage and GPU operations.
Good pricing for workstation-class GPU options.
Affordable relative to similar configs offered by competing workstation vendors.
CrossFire enabled in Boot Camp so you can get very good gaming speeds.

The Bad

Drivers are to blame for some very low OpenGL results for the FirePro D700 in OS X.
Reliance on external devices for PCIe expansion increases cost and has some short-term compatibility implications for some.
Lack of Nvidia GPU option and CUDA problematic due to Apple's lackluster OpenCL developer support.
If mid-life GPU upgrade kits aren't offered for these machines, they will age badly for 3D and OpenCL work.
Despite the FirePro logo in the Windows AMD Catalyst utility, GPUs appear as Radeons in Boot Camp, so it's not recommended for Windows pro apps unless a FirePro driver becomes available for these GPUs.

The Ugly

Lack of dual-socket CPU options means that the 8-core Xeon E5 v2 gets the same multithreaded CPU performance as the mid-priced dual-CPU Mac Pro from 2010. It's bested badly by more recent dual CPU workstations, even for the 12-core.
If you are using programs that are poorly multithreaded throughout, then an iMac is frequently a better option due to faster clock speeds.

[Prime Mover]

Woah, looks like I won't be doing any video editing on this thing any time soon. Modern editors and compositors make heavy use of CUDA cores. BAD BAD BAD.

[FutureLegends]

Woah, looks like I won't be doing any video editing on this thing any time soon. Modern editors and compositors make heavy use of CUDA cores. BAD BAD BAD.

Well, not if you're using FCPX, which is tailor made for these machines...

[mikehalloran]

Woah, looks like I won't be doing any video editing on this thing any time soon. Modern editors and compositors make heavy use of CUDA cores. BAD BAD BAD.

Well, not if you're using FCPX, which is tailor made for these machines...

I have a number of friends editing video for a living. FCPx is the norm for them. They seem to be in two camps: those with the NMP on order and those who already have theirs.

[ignatius]

thanks for the summary!

[Prime Mover]

FCP-X... lol

Seriously, though, many producers I know have switched to Premiere, which really has stepped up its game. I know I'll never go back. Even people still using FCP are likely using After Effects for compositing. Both Premiere and AE make heavy use of CUDA processing. The switch to using the CUDA engine in Premiere was like night and day. Not pleased to hear they can't use them.

[bayswater]

Woah, looks like I won't be doing any video editing on this thing any time soon. Modern editors and compositors make heavy use of CUDA cores. BAD BAD BAD.

I read the whole review. While I'm not that familiar with video editing apps, the author seemed to think that CUDA was slowly losing its hold on that market. My take from the review was that there may be a case for getting the Mac Pro for video, but little point in getting it for audio with it's emphasis on the GPU, and not so much on the CPU. Another interesting view he presented is that moving processing from the CPU to the GPU has not been as easy and effective as expected.

[JMVideo]

I actually make my living as a video editor and motion graphics artist, and I can tell you that people who say "lol" at FCPX don't know what they're talking about. It's very similar to a lot of Pro Tools users who say "lol" about DP.

Yes, FCPX sucked when it first launched, but so did FCP 1.0 back in 1999. FCPX has since improved dramatically and those who bailed to Premiere and bought PC's were a little too hasty in my opinion.

I edit various projects on FCPX, Premiere, and Avid, and I currently prefer FCPX. Despite all the hype and bad press from the past few years, I believe it has a strong future as long as Apple continues to update and make improvements.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The March 2014 issue of Macworld (just out) has a great article about the new Mac Pro. Aside from having to make the drives and PCI cards external (and the price of a pimped out machine) there's a lot to love in the new machine.

[Prime Mover]

I edit various projects on FCPX, Premiere, and Avid, and I currently prefer FCPX. Despite all the hype and bad press from the past few years, I believe it has a strong future as long as Apple continues to update and make improvements.

Well, I'll probably always prefer Premiere. Even before FCPX, back when it was "cool" to like FCP, I switched because I just thought Adobe had a better handle on video production interfaces and feature sets. They slipped slightly with CS6 (I believe CC is almost identical), but only slightly. I think Premiere does a better job of separating tasks by scale, similar to the way DP divides work up from the Tracks window and Sequencer windows.

I've actually never used Avid, but if PT is any indication, I'm not particularly interested in trying it out.

[BKK-OZ]

Can't wait - my promised delivery was 'February'.
Tick-Tock.