The Mac Pro Review (Late 2013)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2013 3:18 PM ESTSSD
The new Mac Pro does the right thing and abandons internal hard drives in favor of high-speed PCIe based storage. You could argue wanting more internal PCIe storage, but hard drives don’t belong inside this machine - for that there’s Thunderbolt 2.
There’s a single proprietary Apple PCIe SSD connector and module inside the new Mac Pro. The connector looks similar to what’s in the new MacBook Pro but I haven’t verified compatibility. Unlike the new MacBook Pros, the Mac Pro SSDs only ship in a x4 PCIe configuration. The result is faster peak sequential speeds.
Custom SSD behind the GPU board on the left
My review sample had a 512GB Samsung XP941 based drive. I believe this is a 2-bit-per-cell MLC design with a 512MB LPDDR2-1066 DRAM. Samsung’s SSD architectures have evolved pretty well over the years. As long as you’re careful not to completely fill the drive you should be ok from an IO consistency standpoint as well. I continue to recommend keeping around 15 - 20% of the SSD free if you want to keep performance at a relatively high level. Definitely keep this in mind if you’re torn about what capacity drive you should outfit your system with.
| Mac Pro (Late 2013) SSD Options | ||||||
| 4-Core Config | 6-Core Config | |||||
| 256GB | Included | Included | ||||
| 512GB | +$300 | +$300 | ||||
| 1TB | +$800 | +$800 | ||||
Apple offers three SSD capacities with the new Mac Pro: 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. Both default configurations come with a 256GB drive. Upgrades to 512GB/1TB cost the same regardless of your starting point: $300 and $800, respectively. Chances are you’re going to depend fairly heavily on external storage for media, which leaves you the flexibility of sticking with the base 256GB configuration. Personally I’d use the Mac Pro just as much as a regular PC (including gaming) as I would for photo/video work, so I’d push for the highest capacity SSD possible. Since Apple isn’t using a standard connector or form factor here, you can’t necessarily count on anyone offering a decent aftermarket solutions (although OWC has done so in the past). If OWC or anyone else was brave enough to produce an aftermarket Mac Pro SSD, it might come with fewer tradeoffs compared to what we’ve seen in the portable Mac space. I’m primarily talking about ultra low idle power not being as much of an issue for an SSD in the Mac Pro. Last time I looked, OWC’s aftermarket MacBook Air/Pro SSDs consumed more power at idle compared to the Apple OEM drives. The same issues wouldn’t matter in a Mac Pro.
I ran the 512GB SSD through our standard four-corners Iometer test suite. The numbers were expectedly a bit higher than what I measured on the 15-inch Haswell rMBP and the 21.5-inch Haswell iMac thanks to the drive’s PCIe x4 interface. Random write performance takes a step backwards but all of the results we're showing here are more than enough for single user workstation use. Although Mavericks itself seems to have issues that can cause high latency IO (particularly around quicklook), the SSD in the Mac Pro performed quite well.
I’m beyond pleased to see that Apple has moved its Mac lineup virtually top to bottom to PCIe SSDs. This is absolutely the right approach, and one that all other OEMs should follow.
Gigabit Ethernet & WiFi
Broadcom won all of the networking sockets in the new Mac Pro. Each machine ships with two BCM57762 Gigabit Ethernet controllers and a BCM4360 802.11ac controller. Each controller is connected to its own PCIe 2.0 x1 lane, guaranteeing it more than enough bandwidth to operate at full speed. The GigE ports on the back of the Mac Pro are thus independent and can sustain full bandwidth in tandem.
The 802.11ac solution is the same 3-stream BCM4360 you’ll find in the new Haswell MacBook Pros. The Broadcom controller supports 80MHz wide channels and 256 QAM, resulting in a peak theoretical data rate of 433Mbps per stream. With three streams that works out to be a max negotiated PHY rate of 1.3Gbps.
In practice I found the Mac Pro’s WiFi performance in best conditions to be similar to that of the 21.5-inch 2013 iMac, which ships with the same hardware. Over UDP that amounts to just under 900Mbps, and a bit over 600Mbps over TCP. You’re still better off using GigE if you can, but 3-stream 802.11ac is arguably good enough if you can’t get a cable down to your Mac.
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zepi - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
How about virtualization and for example VT-d support with multiple gpu's and thunderbolts etc?Ie. Running windows in a virtual machine with half a dozen cores + another GPU while using rest for the OSX simultaneously?
I'd assume some people would benefit of having both OSX and Windows content creation applications and development environments available to them at the same time. Not to mention gaming in a virtual machine with dedicated GPU instead of virtual machine overhead / incompatibility etc.
japtor - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
This is something I've wondered about too, for a while now really. I'm kinda iffy on this stuff, but last I checked (admittedly quite a while back) OS X wouldn't work as the hypervisor and/or didn't have whatever necessary VT-d support. I've heard of people using some other OS as the hypervisor with OS X and Windows VMs, but then I think you'd be stuck with hard resource allocation in that case (without restarting at least). Fine if you're using both all the time but a waste of resources if you predominantly use one vs the other.horuss - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Anyway, I still would like to see some virtualization benchs. In my case, I can pretty much make it as an ideal home server with external storage while taking advantage of the incredible horse power to run multiple vms for my tests, for development, gaming and everything else!iwod - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
I have been how likely we get a Mac ( Non Pro ) Spec.Nvidia has realize those extra die space wasted for GPGPU wasn't worth it. Afterall their main target are gamers and gaming benchmarks. So they decided for Kepler they have two line, one for GPGPU and one on the mainstream. Unless they change course again I think Maxwell will very likely follow the same route. AMD are little difference since they are betting on their OpenCL Fusion with their APU, therefore GPGPU are critical for them.
That could means Apple diverge their product line with Nvidia on the non Professional Mac like iMac and Macbook Pro ( Urg.. ) while continue using AMD FirePro on the Mac Pro Line.
Last time it was rumoured Intel wasn't so interested in getting a Broadwell out for Desktop, the 14nm die shrink of Haswell. Mostly because Mobile / Notebook CPU has over taken Desktop and will continue to do so. It is much more important to cater for the biggest market. Not to mention die shrink nowadays are much more about Power savings then Performance Improvements. So Intel could milk the Desktop and Server Market while continue to lead in Mobile and try to catch up with 14nm Atom SoC.
If that is true, the rumor of Haswell-Refresh on Desktop could mean Intel is no longer delaying Server Product by a single cycle. They will be doing the same for Desktop as well.
That means there could be a Mac Pro with Haswell-EP along with Mac with a Haswell-Refresh.
And by using Nvidia Gfx instead of AMD Apple dont need to worry about Mac eating into Mac Pro Market. And there could be less cost involve with not using a Pro Gfx card, only have 3 TB display, etc.
words of peace - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
I keep thinking that if the MP is a good seller, maybe Apple could enlarge the unit so it contains a four sided heatsink, this could allow for dual CPU.Olivier_G - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
Hi,I don't understand the comment about the lack of HiDPI mode here?
I would think it's simply the last one down the list, listed as 1920x1080 HiDPI, it does make the screen be perceived as such for apps, yet photos and text render at 4x resolution, which is what we're looking for i believe?
i tried such mode on my iMac out of curiosity and while 1280x720 is a bit ridiculously small it allowed me to confirm it does work since OSX mavericks. So I do expect the same behaviour to use my 4K monitor correctly with mac pro?
Am I wrong?
Gigaplex - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
The article clearly states that it worked at 1920 HiDPI but the lack of higher resolutions in HiDPI mode is the problem.Olivier_G - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
Well no it does not state that at all I read again and he did not mention trying the last option in the selector.LumaForge - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
Anand,Firstly, thank you very much for such a well researched and well thought out piece of analysis - extremely insightful. I've been testing a 6 core and 12 core nMP all week using real-life post-production workflows and your scientific analysis helps explain why I've gotten good and OK results in some situations and not always seen the kinds of real-life improvements I was expecting in others.
Three follow up questions if I may:
1) DaVinci Resolve 10.1 ... have you done any benchmarking on Resolve with 4K files? ... like FCP X 10.1, BMD have optimized Resolve 10.1 to take full advantage of split CPU and GPU architecture but I'm not seeing the same performance gains as with FCP x 10.1 .... wondering if you have any ideas on system optimization or the sweet spot? I'm still waiting for my 8 core to arrive and that may be the machine that really takes advantage of the processor speed versus cores trade-off you identify.
2) Thunderbolt 2 storage options? ... external storage I/O also plays a significant role in overall sustained processing performance especially with 4K workflows ... I posted a short article on Creative Cow SAN section detailing some of my findings (no where as detailed or scientific as your approach I'm afraid) ... be interested to know your recommendations on Tbolt2 storage.
http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/197/859961
3) IP over Tbolt2 as peer-to-peer networking topology? ... as well as running the nMPs in DAS, NAS and SAN modes I've also been testing IP over Tbolt2 .... only been getting around 500 MB/s sustained throughput between two nMPs ... if you look at the AJA diskwhack tests I posted on Creative Cow you'll see that the READ speeds are very choppy ... looks like a read-ahead caching issue somewhere in the pipeline or lack of 'Jumbo Frames' across the network ... have you played with TCP/IP over Thunderbolt2 yet and come to any conclusions on how to optimize throughput?
Keep up the good work and all the best for 2014.
Cheers,
Neil
modeleste - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
I noticed that the Toshiba 65" 4k TV is about the same price as the Sharp 32" The reviews seem nice.Does anyone have any ide what the issues would be with using this display?