The Mac Pro Review (Late 2013)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2013 3:18 PM ESTPlotting the Mac Pro’s GPU Performance Over Time
The Mac Pro’s CPU options have ballooned at times during its 7 year history. What started with four CPU options grew to six for the early 2009 - mid 2010 models. It was also during that time period that we saw an expansion of the number of total core counts from 4 up to the current mix of 4, 6, 8 and 12 core configurations.
What’s particularly unique about this year’s Mac Pro is that all configurations are accomplished with a single socket. Moore’s Law and the process cadence it characterizes leave us in a place where Intel can effectively ship a single die with 12 big x86 cores. It wasn’t that long ago where you’d need multiple sockets to achieve the same thing.
While the CPU moved to a single socket configuration this year, the Mac Pro’s GPU went the opposite direction. For the first time in Mac Pro history, the new system ships with two GPUs in all configurations. I turned to Ryan Smith, our Senior GPU Editor, for his help in roughly characterizing Mac Pro GPU options over the years.
| Mac Pro - GPU Upgrade Path | ||||||||||
| Mid 2006 | Early 2008 | Early 2009 | Mid 2010 | Mid 2012 | Late 2013 | |||||
| Slowest GPU Option | NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT | ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT | NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | Dual AMD FirePro D300 | ||||
| Fastest GPU Option | NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 | NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 | ATI Radeon HD 4870 | ATI Radeon HD 5870 | ATI Radeon HD 5870 | Dual AMD FirePro D700 | ||||
Since the Mac Pro GPU offerings were limited to 2 - 3 cards per generation, it was pretty easy to put together comparisons. We eliminated the mid range configuration for this comparison and only looked at scaling with the cheapest and most expensive GPU options each generation.
Now we’re talking. At the low end, Mac Pro GPU performance improved by 20x over the past 7 years. Even if you always bought the fastest GPU possible you'd be looking at a 6x increase in performance, and that's not taking into account the move to multiple GPUs this last round (if you assume 50% multi-GPU scaling then even the high end path would net you 9x better GPU performance over 7 years).
Ryan recommended presenting the data with a log scale as well to more accurately depict the gains over time:
Here you see convergence, at a high level, between the slowest and fastest GPU options in the Mac Pro. Another way of putting it is that Apple values GPU performance more today than it did back in 2006, so even the cheapest GPU is a much higher performing part than it would be.
If you’re a GPU company (or a Senior GPU Editor), this next chart should make you very happy. Here I’m comparing relative increases in performance for both CPU and GPU on the same graph:
This is exactly why Apple (and AMD) is so fond of ramping up GPU performance: it’s the only way to get serious performance gains each generation. Ultimately we’ll see GPU performance gains level off as well, but if you want to scale compute in a serious way you need to heavily leverage faster GPUs.
This is the crux of the Mac Pro story. It’s not just about a faster CPU, but rather a true shift towards GPU compute. In a little over a year, Apple increased the GPU horsepower of the cheapest Mac Pro by as great of a margin as it did from 2006 - 2012. The fastest GPU option didn’t improve by quite as much, but it’s close.
Looking at the same data on a log scale you’ll see that the percentage increase in GPU performance is slowing down over time, much like what we saw with CPUs, just to a much lesser extent. Note that this graph doesn't take into account that the Late 2013 Mac Pro has a second GPU. If we take that into account, GPU performance scaling obviously looks even better. Scaling silicon performance is tough regardless of what space you’re playing in these days. If you’re looking for big performance gains though, you’ll need to exploit the GPU.
The similarities between what I’m saying here about GPU performance and AMD’s mantra over the past few years aren’t lost. The key difference between Apple’s approach and those of every other GPU company is that Apple spends handsomely to ensure it has close to the best single threaded CPU performance as well as the best GPU performance. This is an important distinction, and ultimately the right approach.
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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?